'Disease Resistance' is the ability to resist infirmity or discomfort. In the human body, such disease resistance is built by boosting the body's immune system. Good nutrition and stress-free living play a major role in creating a healthy immune system. If ever the body succumbs to dis-ease (whether occasioned by infirmity or stress), it becomes a carrier of that dis-ease to others. This is why local health is often thought of as a global responsibility. But, if local health depends on ease and good nutrition, the best global cure is a local ounce of prevention. To ward off global infection, we must ward off festering local wounds. If we render our local governments incapable of responding locally to infectious and stressful conditions, we risk global infirmity.

 

Healthy local government is the best preventive measure against any global risk. This perspective reflects a 'good-neighbor policy', wherein the best insurance against a universal threat is caring for one's neighbor. That is not to say that government and military are unnecessary. Rather, the effectiveness of governments and military are boosted by local initiative. If we retain the initiative to care for one another, the government has no need to intervene with global and sometimes locally inappropriate cures. By hindering local initiative, we force the onus for governance onto a global infrastructure inherently incapable of meeting that challenge.

 

In the world of agronomy, the best insurance against widespread crop failure is not uniformity of process but healthy soil and diversity of kind. The farmer that plants only corn or only one variety of corn risks economic collapse if, for only one year, that crop fails. Likewise, if a farmer's corn possesses certain biological characteristics that erode the ability of his soil to reproduce his crop naturally, regardless of the short-term profitability of his yield, long-term agrarian sustainability is compromised. Processes that deplete the topsoil or its organic nutritive value ultimately promote generational sterility. Local initiative is the topsoil of global prosperity. Wherever local initiative is hindered or discouraged, long-term global viability is being sacrificed to the pleasure-god of short-term profitability. Such shortsightedness is both irresponsible and reprehensible.

 

Global irresponsibility and lack of restraint inflames the local infirmities that further compromise global economic health. The answer to big government is never bigger government. The answer to big government is State and local accountability. If the State cannot hold the Federal government accountable for its lack of restraint or its irresponsible behavior, it is only inevitable that States will become the victims of such tyranny and negligence. Likewise, if local communities cannot rein in the State abuse of power, the local communities that ultimately sustain the State will suffer.

 

Local suffering has global consequences. But global initiatives rarely solve local problems. Rather, it is local initiatives that become the inspiration for global change. And yet, to globalize a local initiative is bound to have disastrous consequences. The distinctions of localities and their constituents require distinct, localized treatment. Though universal principles to curing local infirmities may apply, those cures must be evaluated and applied locally. It is this local flexibility that gives a global economy its resilience.

 

Disease resistant economies are locally resilient. If you impair local resilience by creating global dependence you also compromise global economic resilience. A global-dependence infrastructure, while profitable for certain dynasties in the short-term, is unsustainable and very difficult to manage. It requires a measure of global logistics that precludes efficiency or long-term economic viability. The best way to solve local problems that drain the global economy is not to shift responsibility for them to a global governing body. Rather, the best way to solve local problems is to empower local agents to resolve local problems locally.

 

Some would regard such local autonomy akin to anarchy. They would argue that if everyone possesses power, no one does. But the global corollary to this argument is that a one-world government demands a locally unsustainable infrastructure. Tyranny and anarchy are equally oppressive. Both oppress by lawlessness. Tyranny oppresses because one tyrant is above the law. Anarchy turns everyone into a tyrant. The victims of both tyranny and anarchy suffer from neglect. The only difference being that tyranny institutionalizes negligence while anarchy promotes it as a universal freedom.

 

The happy medium between tyranny and anarchy is perhaps best expressed in that original paradigm envisioned by the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. In that paradigm, the States retained local autonomy and yielded to a measure of Federal governance, not by force but by the will of the people whom they governed. The measure of Federal governance, adopted for the good of the State as well as for the universal benefit of the United States, was determined by the people and imposed upon the Federal government. Now, due largely to ignorance created by information saturation, the Federal government determines its own measure of governance and imposes it upon the States and their people.

 

This sad state of affairs is a recipe for disaster. It institutionalizes tyranny and inspires the least disciplined members of society to adopt the polar anarchist extreme. Caught in the middle of this inevitable war between tyranny and anarchy, the responsible citizens most able to stabilize the economy are becoming the victims of both. Adhering to neither extreme, in the eyes of those whom they oppose, they have become the enemies of change. While it is by their efforts that the world is able to resist the bulk of social and economic disease, those citizens most immune to propaganda are being accused of being the main cause of its infirmity.

 

Reversal of this diseased state of affairs depends on the propagation of truth, the restoration of local governing autonomy, the redemption of Constitutional government, the promotion of local initiative, and the adoption of a local 'good neighbor' policy. There is no other vaccine. Unless these steps are taken in practical and tangible ways, and their benevolent consequences recognized and publicly applauded, the only other path toward a disease resistant economy is through the economic infirmity that will either kill it or immunize it against related future infection.

 

Localization, not globalization, is the way forward. No amount of top-heavy global infrastructure will ever cure an economic disease caused by top-heavy global infrastructures. Economic resilience depends on diversification, not on uniformity. Diversification gives people the freedom to make the personal choices that are best for them and their local economies.

 

Freedom is a function of choice. Where there is no choice, there is no freedom. Where there is no freedom, the means for economic resilience has been restrained if not wholly abandoned. People must first be seen as citizens rather than as consumers and, as citizens, they must be respected and inspired to sustain their local economy. Local quality is more important to economic resilience than global quantity. A disease resistant global economy must promote local economic resilience.

 

A locally resilient economy has the following core characteristics:

1) It has sufficient income and product diversity to weather market fluctuations

2) The core of its sustenance is locally produced

3) Its citizens recognize and embrace locally responsible consumerism

4) Its wealth is based more on local exchange than on currency

5) Its relationships with neighboring communities are healthy

6) Ethics, integrity, and accountability are primarily local initiatives

7) Its economic viability is largely independent from external regulation

8) It promotes the export of its surplus over the export of its daily bread

9) It trains its people to adopt sustainability as a core economic value

10) It adopts neighborliness as its primary security protocol

 

 

Michael Hennen