The Durable Future

"This book has been about those big somethings: our awning understanding of our ecological peril and our psychological malaise. We have much to fear, and also much to desire, and together our fear and our desire can set us on a new, more promising course" (McKibben 226). This is the last quote of the book, and it pretty much sums up all of the important points that the author made throughout the entire thing. It explains that we have to learn from our past mistakes to create a better future for ourselves.

Overall I found that the book "Deep Economy" was much better than I had expected it to be. The author made many very insightful points, and explained everything with amazing examples making it easier for me to understand the important points he was writing about.

Local Economies

In this section of the novel, author Bill McKibben discusses a major point in making a local economy work. The number one thing is that you must create a local currency. This type of local currency aims to supplement money not to replace it. McKibben explained this theory using a hypothetical situation about a small town in Vermont, in this experiment he spent his "Burlington" dollars on local things and spent his US. dollars on items that had to be purchased far away. By using this hypothetical situation McKibben explained that the money is not a replacement but merely a supplement. A quote from this section that I found to be interesting was, "Which means, theoretically, that since the value of money is based on trust, there should be room for plenty currencies to exist side by side" (McKibben 163).

When I began reading this section, I though McKibben was crazy for thinking that a local town could have their own currency. But as I kept reading, I understood what he meant, that the local money would only be used in town and regular US money outside of town, creating a stronger local economy.

photo of the author Bill McKibben

The Wealth of Communities

In the beginning of the fourth chapter, The Wealth of Communities, McKibben begins to explain the possibilities for local economy with not only food but with other commodities such as energy and timber. This part of the chapter showcases a major point in the book, that local economy can be important for other products, not just with food. I found this to be very fascinating, that McKibben could take something that he had talked about so much in the previous chapter, and elaborate more on it with a different topic. The first product that he relates back to being a more local economy is the radio. "Radio is, like food, a large part of most people's lives: 77 percent of the population listens to radio an average of at least three and a half hours a day, making it very nearly ubiquitous. And like food, radio used to be mostly local, hemmed in by mountains, limited by signal strength" (McKibben 131). This is just a small passage from the author Bill McKibben speaking about the radio.

Hyper-Individualism

Another very important point/problem that was presented towards the middle of the book was if hyper-individualism is damaging our lives. The proper definition of hyper-individualism is "a tendency for people to act in a highly individual way, without regard to society". McKibben writes about whether it is good for the economy if everyone just focuses on themselves. In doing so he reflects back on the past, and the problems that our governments and economies have had and how we resolved them. "The contemporary liberal answer to our predicament is continued economic growth, but with the benefits distributed more fairly and more of them put back into the public realm. We should try, in other words, to turn back the clock a couple of decades in our political and economic life, and then correct our trajectory slightly so that we stay highly (but not, perhaps, hyper-) individual" (McKibben 105).

 Although this is a very long quote, I feel like it sums up any questions any reader could have about the problems and also benefits of hyper-individualism. He is pretty much pointing out that although we do not need to get rid of it totally we may need to tailor it to fit our economy today, by using what we have learned from previous experiences.

All for One, or One for All

The third chapter of this book, starts off very different than the beginning of the rest of the chapters. In this introduction McKibben reflects upon the past history of our country, and the challenges that our people have had to face over the last five hundred years. He writes about all of the challenges that we have had to face and how we got through them. This is a very pivotal point in the novel because not only is he reflecting on the past, but he is looking forward toward the future. "The story of the last five hundred years is the story of continual emancipation. The people of the modern world have freed themselves from innumerable oppressions: absolute monarchy, feudalism, serfdom, slavery" (McKibben 95). I most definitely agree with McKibben throughout this section in the book. He makes very good points about how much has changed over the past five hundred years, and how much is still to be changed, like parts of our economy.

Bill McKibben speaking about his book Deep Economy