Crazy Town
With equal parts humor and in-depth analysis, Asher, Rob, and Jason safeguard their sanity while probing crazy-making topics like climate change, overshoot, runaway capitalism, and why we’re all deluding ourselves.
Crazy Town
Escaping Globalism: Rebuilding the Local Economy One Pig Thyroid at a Time
From the top of a skyscraper in Dubai, Jason, Rob, and Asher chug margaritas made from the purest Greenland glacier ice as they cover the "merits" of globalism. International trade brings so many things, like murder hornets, piles of plastic tchotchkes, and deadly supply chain disruptions. The opposite of globalism is localism -- learn how to build a secure local economy that can keep Asher alive, hopefully at least through the end of the season.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Guardian article about shipping Greenland glacier ice to Dubai
- Wired article that tells the story of the Ever Given and all the supply chain problems that ensued
- The Observatory of Economic Complexity compiles statistics on global economic activity with interesting graphics, including this profile of China's trade.
- Michael Carolan's book Cheaponomics: The High Cost of Low Prices, and his follow-up book The Real Cost of Cheap Food
- Vasilis Kostakis's article on cosmolocalism
- Vicki Robin's book Blessing the Hands that Feed Us
- Website for Fibershed
- Molly Scott Cato's book The Bioregional Economy: Land, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
Asher Miller
I'm Asher Miller.
Jason Bradford
I'm Jason Bradford.
Rob Dietz
and I'm Rob Dietz. Welcome to Crazy Town where the Washington generals trounced the Harlem Globetrotters in every game.
Asher Miller
Do you think all our listeners know what that even means?
Melody Allison
Hi, this is Crazy Town producer Melody Allison. Thanks for listening. Here in season six, we're exploring escape routes, pathways that just might get us out of Crazy Town. In today's episode, Jason, Rob, and Asher are escaping globalism. Here's a quick warning. Sometimes this podcast uses swear words (LANGUAGE!). If you like what you're hearing, please let some friends know about Crazy Town. Now, onto the show.
Jason Bradford
Oh my goodness. I mean, sometimes you just read something, right? And it just is like a slap across the face. Or like, how about this? This is a better analogy: It's just like cold ice water being dumped all over your head
Asher Miller
Weren't people doing that?
Jason Bradford
Yeah, for something.
Asher Miller
For a fundraiser or something?
Jason Bradford
I don't remember. Ice Bucket Challenge?
Asher Miller
You guys always share these stories that are like an ice bucket dump on your head. I can't even read most of them. I'm like, whatever.
Rob Dietz
Can we get the actual story? What are you talking about?
Jason Bradford
Okay. The company is called Arctic Ice, right?
Asher Miller
That's the name of the company?
Jason Bradford
That's the name of the company. And they got --
Asher Miller
That sounds like a bubble gum company.
Jason Bradford
Okay, they're a Greenland-based company. It was couched as this like economic development sort of globalization success story for Greenland. Because you know, Greenland's got some limited economic opportunities, I guess. And they need more cash.
Rob Dietz
They do a lot of narwhaling over there, right? Harvesting narwhals?
Asher Miller
Well, the sea ice is opening up so there's gonna be a lot more opportunity there.
Jason Bradford
This is sustainable global trade. And it's taking ancient ice, 100,000-year-old ice, harvesting, and they get the right ice. They get this really compressed deep blue ice. It's been there.
Asher Miller
Old and pure.
Jason Bradford
It's getting exposed, of course, because of climate change, right? It's getting exposed now. So they put it to good use. So they harvest it with cranes. They put it on ships. They send the ships to Denmark, which isn't that far away, I guess. And then they go all the way to Dubai.
Asher Miller
What?
Jason Bradford
Yeah, all the way to Dubai, where they become the ice for mixers and drinks in cocktail bars in the skyscrapers.
Asher Miller
In Dubai?
Jason Bradford
Yep. In Dubai.
Rob Dietz
Like when you go to the top of one of those skyscrapers and you want a margarita -- I mean, of course you want blue Greenland ice in that.
Asher Miller
This is incredible.
Jason Bradford
Honestly, it would be kind of cool. I mean, if I get this blue Greenland ice, I'm gonna be kind of jazzed. I agree. But to frame this as some sort of like, well, it's sustainable enterprise. And they're all about carbon neutrality, they say.
Asher Miller
It's one of the benefits of burning all the fossil fuels that come out of the Middle East. It's that you can get this ice, you know, delivered to you. Oh, wait. So they're carbon neutral?
Jason Bradford
Well, they're committed.
Asher Miller
Oh, they committed to being carbon neutral. I think I'm going to be committed to keep hearing stories like this.
Jason Bradford
Exactly. Fully carbon neutral once the supply chain has been established, you know, for all this stuff, right? Once they understand what their real carbon footprint is. And all the carbon capture and storage technology that you know, the sucking of the CO2 kind of stuff --
Jason Bradford
Oh, so that's how they're gonna be carbon neutral.
Jason Bradford
That's how they're gonna be carbon neutral.
Asher Miller
Direct air capture.
Rob Dietz
What a good use of resources. I mean, to take frozen water and put it on a boat and ship it 19,000 nautical miles --
Asher Miller
To one of the hottest places on earth.
Rob Dietz
It's ingenious.
Jason Bradford
Here's what's nice about it though. There ain't no microplastics in that 100,000 year old ice.
Asher Miller
Right.
Rob Dietz
It's healthy ice.
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Asher Miller
Exactly. Since we polluted the living shit out of every other body of water, we've gotta go to the fossil water and ice.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, if you get an ice cube say out of regular freezer at home, you're probably basically eating diapers.
Jason Bradford
Pretty much. You know, it always reminds me of the Himalayan rock salt. That pink stuff.
Asher Miller
Yeah.
Jason Bradford
That stuff is pure too, as opposed to the stuff they're making now. Who knows what's in your salt.
Asher Miller
Good point. I'm gonna go get myself some salt right now.
Rob Dietz
Melody, our producer, said at the top, "This is an episode about globalism." And that's a nice quaint story, Jason, about globalism.
Asher Miller
I mean, I see no downsides to it.
Rob Dietz
I'm gonna just take it up a notch though. Okay, you know your boat's carrying some ice cubes across the ocean. But you know, there's a boat crossing the ocean where you can find stacks of lawnmowers, gazebos, surgical gowns --
Jason Bradford
All of those things make sense.
Rob Dietz
Wheelchair parts, lounge chairs, tofu, lemons, Ikea furniture, microchips, pillowcases, bicycle parts, and of course sex toys.
Asher Miller
I mean, it sounds like what every home needs. All in one.
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Asher Miller
That's great.
Jason Bradford
Exactly.
Rob Dietz
If you can get that in one product . . .
Asher Miller
A gazebo, a surgical gown, tofu, lemons, bicycle parts, and sex toys.
Jason Bradford
Think about the cargo cult that could form it that landed somewhere.
Rob Dietz
So of course, those are just a few of the wares that travel around the world on a massive cargo ship. But I'm not talking about just any of these cargo ships. I'm talking about one of the largest container ships in the world. And that is the Ever Given.
Jason Bradford
That's a great name, by the way.
Asher Miller
I've heard of this.
Rob Dietz
Yes you have. This thing weighs 221,000 metric tons. It's 400 meters long. So think if you, that's like a lap around a track. If you opened up an Olympic track, that's how long this frickin' boat is. So the reason you've heard of it: it's famous for its March 23, 2021 accident.
Jason Bradford
Oooh. That's almost exactly three years from this recording.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. So what happened is this thing was on a voyage --
Asher Miller
We need to burn some sex toys in honor of that anniversary.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Fits with your standard rituals.
Jason Bradford
Let's use your collection. Not mine, buddy.
Rob Dietz
So the ship was on a voyage from Malaysia to the Netherlands. And it had to travel through the Suez Canal, which links the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea through Egypt. And on that day, some strong winds picked up and you can imagine how tall one of these ships is. Because it's not just the big hull, but you got stacks and stacks of cargo as well.
Asher Miller
It's not just long. It's tall.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. So it got pushed around in the canal and it lodged diagonally. And the bow nestled on the eastern shoreline, and the stern was on the western shoreline. And it remained stuck for six days.
Asher Miller
They needed to transport lube, not sex toys here.
Jason Bradford
There you go. Yeah. They go together.
Asher Miller
Just go out there, and . . .
Rob Dietz
Why wasn't Asher over there working for the Suez Canal Authority? "Captain Miller! Unload the crate of lube!" That is not how they got the ship out, surprisingly. But what they ended up doing was taking some of the cargo off and emptying some of the ballast water and lightened it up. And you know, did a bunch of dredging and eventually were able to tug that thing out.
Asher Miller
It took a while though, right?
Rob Dietz
But there was a bit of a problem, let's say, that happened with global trade.
Asher Miller
There was a backlog.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. So like I said, this happened on March 23. By March 28th there were 369 chips that were in line to pass through the canal.
Asher Miller
Wow.
Rob Dietz
And it stranded an estimated $9.6 billion worth of trade.
Jason Bradford
That's about 60 ships a day. Over 60 ships a day. I just did the quick math. That's pretty cool.
Rob Dietz
I love your quick math.
Asher Miller
So $9.6 billion worth of lounge chairs.
Rob Dietz
Ikea parts, gowns, yeah. All of it. And then on March 29th, they finally were able to refloat that thing. It remained in Egypt until July 12th. That's a delay of more than 100 days just to get through all the legal battles that followed.
Jason Bradford
Oh that poor cargo.
Rob Dietz
The cargo? Think of the people though. Oh my god.
Asher Miller
Oh right, the crew.
Rob Dietz
Like you've got a crew on there. So the Suez Canal Authority, which is not captained by Asher Miller, although, that's too bad.
Asher Miller
Losers.
Rob Dietz
They levied a salvage claim of a billion dollars against the company. And Ever Given s insurance company rejected that claim. It was cut to a paltry $600 million.
Jason Bradford
That is a bad accident, I guess.
Rob Dietz
And here's kind of I think a little side note on the whole globalism, You think, okay cargo ship gets stuck. But what happened is this cargo ship, the Ever Given: it's managed by a German company for Japanese owners.
Jason Bradford
Okay, there's two.
Rob Dietz
They have leased the ship to the Taiwanese firm Evergreen.
Jason Bradford
Three.
Rob Dietz
It's insured by a British broker.
Jason Bradford
Four.
Rob Dietz
Its operated and run by a crew from India.
Jason Bradford
Five.
Rob Dietz
And it flies the flag of Panama because that's a tax haven.
Jason Bradford
Okay, so you've got six entities. So no one, I guess, is going to take responsibility. Everyone's gonna just start pointing fingers is what the issue is.
Rob Dietz
Just utterly --
Asher Miller
That's great international cooperation.
Rob Dietz
Utterly amazing story.
Asher Miller
But just imagine if the Ever Given was actually carrying stuff that people need.
Rob Dietz
And it was. I mean, there was a shortage in some medical supplies that came from it.
Asher Miller
Well, and that's what I was actually thinking about. What if lifesaving meds were on board? You know, I think COVID, the pandemic, and the supply chain shocks that we had as a result of it really, I think, made it clear to people that not only were certain jobs, quote unquote, "essential" that we took for granted, but also, our dependence upon global supply chains was a vulnerability for us, right? And I'll give myself -- well, I don't know if I'll give myself credit. But I've been worried about this stuff for a long time, right? I mean, we're steeped in recognizing how important energy flows are to the global economy and our dependence upon all these things. And thinking about there being shocks to that for various reasons, you know, made me think about my own vulnerability.
Jason Bradford
Are you going to open up and talk about your vulnerability?
Asher Miller
I am. Are we ready?
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Jason Bradford
We're ready. We're ready.
Asher Miller
Melody, cue the music. No, seriously. So I was diagnosed in my early 20s, or late teens, actually, with Graves disease, which is hyperthyroidism.
Jason Bradford
Hyper?
Asher Miller
Hyper, yeah. So my thyroid would be overactive. And I basically was told that the way to treat it was either to take medication that kind of tamp it down, or I could actually ablate my thyroid, which is you take radioactive iodine. You basically drink it, and it kills off your thyroid. The problem with it is that it usually doesn't either do enough, or too much. It's very hard to get it just right. To get it to sort of the average normal level of thyroid.
Rob Dietz
Let me get this straight. You're poisoning the thyroid, but not to kill it, just to maim it.
Asher Miller
Yeah. But most of the time they overdo it. And so what you've actually done is killed off your thyroid. And I've resisted doing that for decades. Because to me, first of all, Graves disease is an autoimmune condition. So it's actually your immune system being confused and attacking your own thyroid cells, right? And I'm like, why am I doing this? Why am I basically killing off the thyroid when it's not it's fault so to speak, right?
Rob Dietz
The rights of all thyroid shall be protected in this body.
Asher Miller
You know, if you overdo it, then you're now on thyroid medication the other direction, you know, for the rest of your life. And there's 10s and 10s of millions of people in just the United States that have hypothyroidism, so underactive thyroid, and they have to take medication every day. And I was like, why would I do that? And I eventually, because I was having a lot of issues, it was really hard to get things right, and my levels were getting all screwed up. My wife could tell you more about this.
Jason Bradford
It's amazing she's still with you.
Asher Miller
It is pretty amazing. Anyways, long story short, when I was like, okay, I've got to actually do this. I've got to oblate my thyroid. I was really resistant. I was worried about, I'm going to be dependent upon the synthetic thyroid supplement for the rest of my life.
Jason Bradford
And knowing what you know.
Asher Miller
Yeah. You know, being concerned about peak oil issues and other things.
Rob Dietz
Like if it get stuck on a cargo ship in the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, or some other canal.
Asher Miller
I wasn't thinking about boats on canals, but I talked to my doctor about this.
Jason Bradford
You opened up.
Asher Miller
Well, that's the thing. I was like, "Well, what if there's an issue like with me getting these pills," you know. "How long could I last without it." And she was so confused. She was like, "What are you talking about? I don't understand." And I was like, "Well, let's say" -- and I didn't want to get into it. I didn't want to like tell her the theory of peak oil because she's gonna look at me like I'm a fucking loon if I talk about this to her. So I was trying to be vague about it. And eventually she's like, "What? Like, you fall down the stairs in the basement and you can't get back up." Like literally she said that to me. She couldn't understand what I had talked about. And then I did some research and I figured out well, actually there is an alternative, and that is, some people get natural thyroid from basically the thyroid of pigs. So I was like, okay well, I guess I would have a backup. I don't know how I feel about this. But at least, you know, I wouldn't be dead.
Rob Dietz
Can we talk about the rights of pig thyroid?
Asher Miller
We probably do need to have that conversation. Anyway, sorry to go off on that weird little tangent, but --
Jason Bradford
Then the pandemic hit.
Asher Miller
Yeah. But it just goes to show that there are like real risks of this. I thankfully, knock on wood, haven't had to deal with an issue in my own medication. But there are a lot of people who've had to deal with shortages of insulin and other lifesaving medications. And it's a big concern.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Well, I remember the bottleneck that happened in Puerto Rico. Well, it happened globally because Puerto Rico got hit by that hurricane, hurricane Maria in 2017. And of course, it knocked out power, facilities were damaged, and the U.S. had to, like many places probably, but I'm familiar with the U.S., had to cut back on all these supply orders. It just wasn't available, right? And Puerto Rico is the fifth largest pharmaceutical manufacturer in the world and leads all U.S. states in pharmaceutical manufacturing. So it's huge. 30% of Puerto Rico's GDP is in the pharmaceutical industry, employing 78,000 people. And so suddenly you had all these physicians who were scrambling because they literally didn't have the medication that people were used to getting. And that's a big deal even changing things.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Puerto Rico, being an island, seems pretty vulnerable to more hurricanes and more shocks.
Asher Miller
Right. That was just one storm. And you extrapolate that to other places that have specialized industries that we're really dependent on.
Jason Bradford
And you're seeing the stats of storms are getting larger, they're more damaging. It looks like there's generally a trend where that's more and more of a risk.
Rob Dietz
Well, let's broaden this out a little bit. You know, I think the risks, the vulnerabilities, from pharmaceutical shortages or other supply shortages in the medical industry is pretty scary. But globalism has been, well, let's just say it's had its moment in the Industrial Age. I found a website called The Observatory of Economic Complexity.
Jason Bradford
That's a great name.
Asher Miller
It is, yeah.
Rob Dietz
It compiles these stats on economic activities. And it has these really cool interactive images, data exploration stuff, where you can look at what's going on with a country. And I grabbed China's exports from the year 2021, the year the Ever Given lodged in the canal. And there's so much stuff flowing out of China going to so many countries. So I just wanted to share a few things with you guys. So they export to countries on all continents, it didn't include Antarctica, but I guarantee you there's a bunch of Chinese stuff on the continent of Antarctica. Here's a good one: China exported over $6 billion worth of brooms.
Asher Miller
In that one year?
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Remember, I was talking about brooms.
Asher Miller
You want to make a broom.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, I was talking about brooms as one of my favorite low-tech tools.
Jason Bradford
If I could just corner 1% of the broom markets.
Asher Miller
Oh my god. You'd be loaded.
Rob Dietz
Over $5 billion worth of aluminum foil.
Jason Bradford
If I could just corner 1% of the aluminum foil market.
Asher Miller
Imagine if you could put those two together.
Rob Dietz
Think how much harder that is. We could grow broom straw here on the farm, but try to make an aluminum mine.
Asher Miller
Aluminum grows on trees. Or al-u-min-i-um I should say. I want to sound more sophisticated.
Rob Dietz
You always sound sophisticated here. Here's a good one: They exported $192 billion worth of computers. $57 billion of that went to the U.S. Of course, the U.S. then exported almost a billion dollars worth of computers back to China. So you know, you get the flip flopping trade. Anyway, here's the growth of it all. In 2021, China's export was $3.3 trillion worth of stuff. Trillion.
Asher Miller
Trillion, wow. That's incredible.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. And in 1995, it was $194 billion. That's still a huge number, but we're talking 17 times more, you know, in the space of a generation.
Jason Bradford
What about in the 80s? Can you give me the 80s stats on China. Because when I was a kid growing up, China hardly made anything.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, it was $3.00 in 1980. Please folks, go visit that website. We'll put it in the show notes. The Observatory of Economic Complexity, to answer Jason's question.
Asher Miller
So in about 25 years, it went 17 fold increase?
Rob Dietz
Yeah.
Asher Miller
That's pretty remarkable. And actually looking at that site you see there's so many different kinds of products or elements or products that countries are exporting to each other. The complexity of it is astonishing.
Rob Dietz
Well, and to be fair, you know, we've got the episode on consumerism. In 1995 I had one broom, and now I have 17. So, you know, this is partially my doing.
Asher Miller
You're doing your part.
Jason Bradford
You have one in every room of the house.
Asher Miller
You have 17 rooms?
Rob Dietz
My 17-room house.
Jason Bradford
He's got a broom closet. There's one.
Asher Miller
Right. That's true. Well, and you've gotta have a backup for every one. Yeah. Well, I don't think we should spend too much time on this. But you know, I think it's worth just pointing out how globalism draws us in. I think there's an essential promise that's being made to us. And there's been a lot of conversation about this politically in the United States. We've talked about this before. We talked about this when we talked about Bill Clinton and neoliberalism. Sort of the idea that if we export our industrial base elsewhere, and increase sort of global trade, we get the benefit as consumers, right? So that's one of the things that keeps us sort of locked in to globalism is that it makes shit cheaper. And we've seen that. And of course, what we're doing is externalizing costs. We're externalizing labor costs. We're externalizing environmental costs, you know, all that in the process.
Rob Dietz
We don't have to worry about the cheapness. There's all these effects, but it's not in our face, so who gives a crap.
Asher Miller
And that's just a financial one. The other thing that it does is that it basically externalizes the consequences. And we don't have to see what conditions are like for people who are manufacturing our consumer goods. I think about this all the time. Like Rob, you keep talking about like, fake dogshit, you know, plastic dogshit.
Rob Dietz
Rubber dogshit as an expert.
Asher Miller
I think all the time. him about these insane products and the people working in these factories somewhere else in the other part of the world, like, "What is this thing?"
Jason Bradford
Why? Why?
Rob Dietz
I think they get excited. It's like yesterday, I made 22,000 pieces of rubber dogshit. But we really had a good day and we made 23,000 today.
Asher Miller
No, that's the supervisor. I'm thinking about the people working on the line being like, "Why? Why is this happening?" And they're being told, "With progress you too someday combined could buy this. I mean, we had Ford basically wanting to have his assembly line workers being able to afford a Ford car. In this case now with globalism, you too can afford the plastic dogshit that we make.
Rob Dietz
If I were working on the plastic dogshit line, I'd be stuffing them in my shirt pockets and stuff. I'd be taking as many home as I could.
Asher Miller
Selling them on the street. The black market for rubber dogshit. But the other thing on a maybe more serious note is you talked about that website and all the complexity that it shows in terms of the economic trade. There's also a lot of complexity that's behind the scenes just in terms of the way that governments and corporations and even universities are all reinforcing the system together. And it's invisible to us, but it's sort of pursuing this efficiency and this profit. And because of the tangle, you know, we've talked about this before as well. We've talked about complexity and specialization. It's so hard to untangle this because we've gotten locked in through all of these systems.
Jason Bradford
Well, the Ever Given was the classic example. Six entities somehow were involved, nations and . . .
Asher Miller
Yeah. And now we're totally dependent upon this system.
Rob Dietz
And think about the feedback loop that's there. You have college graduates coming out who are sort of indoctrinated in the system. They go get jobs in industry. They go get jobs in government. And you just keep reinforcing as long as the cheap dogshit keeps flowing.
Asher Miller
That's the circular economy, Rob. I think you should stop knocking it.
Rob Dietz
This is a message to all you Crazy Townies out there. Sometimes Jason, Asher, and I wish he could be here in the room with us when we're riffing on ecomodernist nightmares, the end of capitalism, the collapse of civilization, and lines from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Since you can't be here, maybe we could still be in contact in another way. If you've got a comment about the show or you want to throw some shade at us. Or you've got a question . . .
Asher Miller
Or you have a suggestion of escape route stuff.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Maybe you've got a story of your own you want to share. Go over to Apple podcasts or iTunes and leave us a review and write your comment there. In your comment, include your idea, whatever it is, and we'll think about sharing it in an episode.
Jason Bradford
How's this? "I'll be back! Is that any good?"
Rob Dietz
Oh my God. That's terrible.
Jason Bradford
You try it, You try it.
Rob Dietz
"Get to the chopp-ah!"
Rob Dietz
Listener feedback time. We got a beautiful five-star review on Apple podcasts. This comes in from Sunroom Desk. Great name. Sunroom says, "These three hosts make it seem easy to describe the insanity of the Anthropocene in humorous, yet compelling and serious conversations that tackle environmental, social, ethical, economic, and political problems, to name a few, that we are facing. I sometimes listen to two to three episodes at a time. Thanks for the many seasons and episodes edifying and entertaining."
Jason Bradford
Wow. Can Sunroom be our promoter? That was just perfect. Thank you so much.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Let's get Sunroom on the team. Come on over Mr. or Ms. Desk and join us.
Asher Miller
And bring the sun with you.
Rob Dietz
Thank you.
Jason Bradford
Okay, now we're going to look at globalism through the Marvin Harris Memorial length of doom. Quick reminder, Marvin Harris, anthropologist, came up with the notion of cultural materialism, or refined it at least. And basically, you think of it three levels; infrastructure kind of the material world what exists in the material world, how societies get their needs met. Structure, then the rules that societies have like laws and informal understandings. And then superstructure, and that becomes more the ideas of your belief systems, your mythologies. So let's look at how those cultural materialism levels are viewed through globalism. So to start with infrastructure, this is things like all the global shipping ports, you know, the boats, the planes, the trains, the trucks, the fuel and all that --
Rob Dietz
All that bunker diesel out there.
Jason Bradford
Exactly, exactly. All the warehouses and the containers, the canals. All the companies then that organize this. You know, that's the obvious stuff. But something also is the military protection of trade. We hear about piracy nowadays, but honestly, think about how rare it is relative to what it could be.
Rob Dietz
Oh, so we could have had jobs as pirates, you're saying, if the military wasn't so damn big.
Asher Miller
Argh.
Jason Bradford
Here's something: Every once in a while, I look up the stats, and I'm always gobsmacked by it. There are 750 U.S. military bases outside of the U.S. in 80 countries. And so we're like the global cops, in some ways.
Asher Miller
Well, we spend a lot of money obviously, on the U.S. military. We could have a whole conversation about that. But a lot of the argument for folks is that we basically protect shipping lanes, right? And there's certain key spots for trade that we're basically there showing our presence. It costs a lot of money, but the argument is that it nets a lot of money, basically. And we benefit from it in terms of economic activity and consumption, and all that stuff.
Jason Bradford
And some economists are freaking out because if they see the U.S., you know, pulling back on this chaos shall ensue.
Asher Miller
Exactly.
Jason Bradford
Of course then, there's infrastructure of all the satellites that communicate and coordinate all the trade, GPS and the internet itself. All the computer networks are completely embedded in global trade. And of course, this brings up vulnerabilities, just like the Ever Given was a blockage in trade and showed vulnerabilities, or Maria, the storm. But the internet itself is vulnerable to attack. And there's, the one I heard about recently was fascinating to me is that there is a global supplier of pump controllers. And these pump controllers are often used in water treatment plants. And so you know, it tells the pump when to turn on and off and these sorts of things. And now of course, everything is internet connected because you want to be able to do firmware updates, or whatever. Well hackers have figured out that most people just, or a lot of people, I don't know, they'll install these things and not change the default password.
Asher Miller
Which is what? 1234.
Rob Dietz
I thought it would be "password."
Jason Bradford
So they go in there. They mess with the password. And they say, we've got this now, and we will shut your water treatment system down.
Asher Miller
Oh, they'll hold it hostage.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, they hold it hostage. So that's happening now.
Asher Miller
Awesome. That's globalism for you.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. You can be a hacker in Estonia or whatever, Macedonia.
Rob Dietz
I haven't had a drink of water in months due to this crisis.
Asher Miller
They're holding you personally for ransom?
Asher Miller
Yes, it's terrible.
Asher Miller
Yeah. Okay. Well, let's talk about the structure of globalism. We're talking about the rules here, we're talking about the sort of political systems that reinforce it. I'm sure you studied this, Rob, because you studied economics, right. David Ricardo's Theory of Comparative Advantage.
Rob Dietz
Oh yeah,yeah. They always talk about guns and butter, but specialize in something and then export. You'll be better off.
Asher Miller
So the whole idea, you know, 19th century British economist basically argued that countries or regions should really focus on what they're best at producing, export that, and then buy things that they're not so good at.
Jason Bradford
And it'll raise the wealth of everybody is the idea. Because the exporting country can produce it cheaper, and then get a lot of income. But then the importing country is getting that cheaper than it could make itself, and it's got something it's making that specialized that it's exporting. So everybody's winning.
Rob Dietz
And the theory is kind of magical because you don't have to be the lowest cost producer. It could still cost more for you to produce corn than, say, they can produce in Iowa, and you should still specialize in that.
Asher Miller
Well, that's why Swiss chocolate and watches. You know, not the cheapest, but considered the best. But it does lead to things like in Iowa, you should just grow corn, nothing but corn or soy. That's it. And that as a, quote unquote, "rule" definitely governs a lot of policy or thinking. It's almost a superstructure because it's a belief that's kind of embedded.
Jason Bradford
Very hard to question it. Yeah.
Asher Miller
But all of our elected politicians, you know, the people that have their hands on the levers of the structure of society making the rules and everything, they're steeped in all of this.
Rob Dietz
Well, and all the best think tanks too, right? The ones that are way better than Post Carbon Institute. Like the Cato Institute.
Asher Miller
100%.
Jason Bradford
Yes. Now, the irony is that Ricardo specifically meant this for non-essential goods.
Jason Bradford
Oops.
Jason Bradford
The trade and luxuries for income. He never imagined. He thought no country would be stupid enough to do this for essentials like food, right?
Asher Miller
And sex toys. Sex toys also.
Jason Bradford
So this was the thing. You're reading Ricardo and you're thinking he's reasonable. It was reasonable in some respects, but it's been blown out of proportion.
Asher Miller
This seems to happen a lot with people. Like the guy who created the Gross National Product, you know, was like, "We shouldn't use that as the only measure for progress"
Rob Dietz
Right. Or like Norman Borlaug with the Green Revolution. He's like, "This is a stopgap people. Figure out scale."
Jason Bradford
He told Paul Ehrlich, I got you 20 years, you know, at least."
Asher Miller
But there are other really important things that people kind of like roll their eyes about with boredom, or don't understand the importance of them. But international trade agreements, global development rules, the role of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in terms of going in and making loans to quote unquote, "developing countries." Basically forcing them to plug into globalized economic system and basically trade all their shit.
Rob Dietz
And you didn't mention that great international rule maker, the World Trade Organization. I mean, an unbelievable set of superstructure for how this all gets done.
Jason Bradford
And then if you want to participate, of course, you want to have your own laws in your country protect private property, right? So your court system has to be solid so that things can be enforced, so that . . . All this stuff then works together.
Asher Miller
Yep. And then of course, you know, there's the role of government in not only creating the rules that apply, but you know, having customs and port authority, Department of Commerce, all that stuff.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Whole swathes of bureaucracy dedicated to greasing the rails of trade.
Asher Miller
Yeah, exactly.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, so that's a hugely advanced infrastructure. A massive structure on top. But then the superstructure of globalism is also, I think, incredibly embedded. So these are the culture and beliefs around globalism. And the main thing to look at here is that cheaper is always better. Always. And there was a book I read a few years back by an economist named Michael Carolan that's called "Cheaponomics: the High Cost of Low Prices". So he does kind of a deep dive into why cheap is not really as cheap as it's made out to be. But, try telling that to any average person trying to buy their groceries are their, you know, their rubber dog doos. You know, you're gonna go try to get the cheapest price. And he took that further. He had a subsequent book that I haven't read yet, but it's called, "The Real Cost of Cheap Food as Well." So as you might surmise, not not quite as cheap as we would like to think. There's a few other things too with the beliefs around globalism and one of the things that I think has definitely had been in the back of my head for many years, and that's that a nation, or a corporation, or any entity feels like it's a better entity if it's a big player on the global stage. So you just have more prestige. And I like to think of this from the sports world example. You know, I'm kind of into soccer. And here we have Major League Soccer, which is not, you know, an elite league in the world. But the Miami team got Lionel Messi. And they got some other big time international stars. And so they've become this icon team internationally, and it's hard to not kind of follow along with that thinking,
Asher Miller
Well, you have that in film too, right? They see these emerging markets and a lot of money comes from making -- And this is part of why I think, this is my judgment here, you're seeing all these superhero films, or whatever. Things that translate well across the world because there's such profit in globalizing, basically, the nature of your product.
Jason Bradford
Well you know, you're seeing this also -- the Saudis have been really promoting their sports. Or trying to buy into golf.
Asher Miller
To gain legitimacy, basically.
Jason Bradford
Yes. Yeah, political legitimacy. It's like okay, we can have the best golf players play here.
Asher Miller
Well they got Ronaldo in soccer.
Jason Bradford
Right and they're doing that for racecar driving races. I'm.. I don't know how you say that.
Rob Dietz
Auto racing?
Jason Bradford
There it is. They're hosting these tennis tournaments like crazy and bringing people in.
Asher Miller
I mean, wait until they get into pickleball. Holy shit.
Jason Bradford
They can have pickleball.
Asher Miller
Oh, they can? Okay.
Rob Dietz
Well, and think about how prestigious it is to host a World Cup or the Olympics, or that sort of thing.
Asher Miller
Yeah, cornhole. It's incredible.
Rob Dietz
Asher is a little bit less of a sports guy, but you know, it's nice. Watchin' badmitton and cornhole.
Jason Bradford
What about the whole Thomas Friedman argument? I mean, it's this simple. The Lexus and the Olive Tree stuff about . . . Countries that have McDonald's don't fire missiles at each other and stuff, right?
Rob Dietz
Yeah that's, I think another big cultural belief. This perception that if you're tied up economically and you're trading with each other, then you're not going to be in conflict because there's too much money to be made.
Asher Miller
We talked about that in that Thomas Friedman episode we did in the Phalse Prophets season.
Jason Bradford
But yeah, that's what is annoying. I remember going to other countries and I'd be really pissed off when you'd go to like the newer development and it's malls, it's movie theaters, it's fast food joints. Like, they're trying to look like America right now. Like, you know, you go to a capital city in Peru or whatever, or Malaysia and you're like, "Wait a second." So this homogenization, it's the idea like, okay, if we're all the same culture, and it's through the commercialism, it really strikes you that these countries are trying to copy our model.
Rob Dietz
Well, and I think for the final say in our opinion on this this matter of homogenization and Thomas Friedman's view, just look at the title of our Thomas Friedman episode. He had written the book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded," and our title is "Hot, Flat and Totally Fucking Wrong."
Asher Miller
We're not opinionated or anything.
George Costanza
Every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be.
Jerry Seinfeld
If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.
Rob Dietz
I miss old George Costanza and his buddies. Anyway, that's our cue to start talking about how we escape from this mess of globalism. So the obvious opposite of globalism is localism.
Asher Miller
That's profound.
Rob Dietz
I know.
Jason Bradford
Wow. I didn't see that coming.
Rob Dietz
Let's talk a little bit about our experience with trying to support a local economy. And I think there's different levels. So I'm going to take the easiest level, which I'm going to call semi-local. So one of my most prized possessions is my pocket knife.
Jason Bradford
Do you have it with you?
Rob Dietz
I do, actually. It's in my -- I guess I should call it my backpack knife, because that's where it is right now. But anyway, it's made by a company called Benchmade, which is a Portland, Oregon-based company. And I like that I could actually go to their store where they have knifesmiths and people . . .
Jason Bradford
Yeah. It fits right in your hand. It's got the nice weight to it and everything. You can get it custom.
Rob Dietz
But the issue with this, it's semi-local. It's not like the steel came from Portland. It's not you know . . . They're still sourcing parts, probably globally, to put this thing together locally. So that to me is the semi-local. But you can go up another level.
Jason Bradford
Well, yeah. So I guess well . . . I mean, let's call this hyper-local. And this is where you're just going to like?
Rob Dietz
Do we have to say it like that?
Asher Miller
You should be saying hyper-local!
Jason Bradford
Hyper-local. So the one I thought of was . . . Because, you know, we're talking about poor Asher and his lack of thyroid. And he has a synthetic thyroid. But you know, you mentioned you know . . . I think I knew this, but you reminded me that you get it from pigs. That's one of the natural methods.
Asher Miller
Yeah, you can.
Jason Bradford
Pig thyroid. So there's this whole thing on the internet, you know, this rabbit hole I went down where some people, like I think 10% of people seem to want the natural pig stuff. They don't do better on it. So yeah, you can find all these YouTube videos of these people explaining how they're recreating a pig thyroid feel for their medicine. The thing that upset me --
Rob Dietz
Wait, wait. I don't know. So you're saying, somebody is producing synthetic hormones, or whatever.
Jason Bradford
Yes. Most people are getting the synthetic thyroid.
Rob Dietz
But it has that natural pig feel?
Jason Bradford
Well no. What they're trying to do . . . Because the synthetic is one ingredient, basically, you get like the T-4, whatever. Okay, anyway. But the natural is like the thyroid hormone in different stages of development, and your body will process it through. So it's more diverse, but it's less predictable. And so that's the reason why people have gotten synthetic because you can just know exactly --
Asher Miller
Standardize it.
Jason Bradford
But some people seem to do better with the natural, but it's hard to get, apparently. And so there's these people explaining how they kind of make their own semi-natural. Now what I want though, what I was looking for and I never found, maybe you can help because you're into that bushcraft kind of stuff. I wanted to see someone you know, like jump on the back of a pig, take that knife that you have from Benchmade
Asher Miller
Oh, so this is the hyper-local. Raise your own pig, gut your own pig, slaughter your own pig.
Jason Bradford
Slaughter your own pig. You're going to use the whole animal, right.
Rob Dietz
So we have a an episode coming up on humanism and human supremacy, you realize, so the whole pig slaughtering thing might be returning.
Jason Bradford
Yes, here's the deal though. These are pigs that I would take care of. I would get the Cooney Cooney breed, which is a pasture breed. So they can live on the field for a year or two. It's not one of these fast turnover pigs. Not these giant pigs. They're small, they like to be outside on pasture. And so it'd be a hyper-local, sensitive to the ecology of the farm.
Rob Dietz
Plus their thyroids are beautiful, Asher. They're beautiful.
Jason Bradford
Anyway, that's my vision. And then we can make bushcraft videos of this because it doesn't exist right now.
Rob Dietz
Wow. Whole hyper-local economy there. We won't put it on YouTube. We'll just broadcast that off the local cable access channel.
Asher Miller
So can I just say, I appreciate you thinking about me, you know. And if shit really, you know, goes down, I owe you my life if we're talking about doing this.
Jason Bradford
We gotta practice this.
Rob Dietz
Can you get it off of guinea pigs?
Asher Miller
I think you need a lot more than guinea pigs. Maybe we don't have to use that as the only example of hyper-localism. I mean, I think the point here is, you could take it all the way down to the level of, it's not even like buying local from a local farmers market. You're talking about doing it in a sense yourself.
Jason Bradford
Of course.
Asher Miller
And I would say actually, if you think about this as concentric circles. Bear with me here.
Jason Bradford
I'm bearing.
Asher Miller
Maybe I'll even put a visual together.
Rob Dietz
Let's have a model.
Asher Miller
You have all the way from the global --
Jason Bradford
You're using your hands right now which is helpful.
Asher Miller
I am. In fact, we can even go to the cosmological level. Like we can harvest, because this is what Jeff Bezos is playing to, we can harvest the moon or other things. But let's just say we're staying on Earth -- Global level, which is a lot of where things come from now.
Jason Bradford
Yes, almost everything.
Asher Miller
And the national, regional, you know, local, down to the hyper, right? Mayve in some cases, you know, something that you have is made up of constituent parts. But if you think of it as concentric circles, the idea is to one, diversify from being completely locked into one thing or the other. In fact, I think we would argue that the ideal solution is not to go have complete reversal of globalism down to other localism in the sense that everything that you are dependent upon comes locally. Because if you're, I hate to say this, your town or your farm gets hit by a tornado or a hurricane, or whatever, a drought, you're completely fucked. So you want resiliency, which means you have things operating on multiple levels.
Jason Bradford
Some connectivity, yeah.
Asher Miller
But we know we're way out of balance on the globalism side. And so it's about -- You know, when we've talked about this before with consumerism -- looking at what we actually need and trying to move down those circles from the outer ring of globalism down to the hyperlocal. And it's not trying to do everything yourself. But it's saying, this something thing I could do. I could grow some of my own food. I can grow some of my own produce. Maybe if I'm somebody who consumes animal protein, I look at taking that to the next level which is could try to find local farmers that grow that.
Rob Dietz
It's a cool idea. Because you think way, way back in history, you were stuck to the hyperlocal. There was very, very little trade. It took a long time for you to make a transaction if you were going to trade, I mean, think about like, trading spice across the desert, and camel trains, and stuff like that. But then as we industrialized and got all the fossil fuel boom, it's like everything went global, and the pendulum swung to your, I guess, the outer circles of your concentric circle model. It's like, we just need to come back to the balance, you know. Somewhere in the middle where we could, I don't know, have access to more products and things, but also have resilience.
Jason Bradford
Kids would love it too. It'd be fascinating.
Asher Miller
Well, and I think it's about looking at things that we're most vulnerable to and that are most important to us. Honestly, looking at lifesaving thyroid medication.
Jason Bradford
I'm doing it, man.
Asher Miller
You know, thinking about how resilient those things are.
Jason Bradford
We'll do it together. We'll do it together.
Asher Miller
Thank you. But also, starting first from do I actually need this thing? Do I need the plastic dogshit? No. So therefore, I'm not necessarily trying to think about how I can hyper-localize the plastic dogshit.
Jason Bradford
Don't do that.
Asher Miller
Well, you should just go natural anyway.
Jason Bradford
Plenty of natural dogshit.
Asher Miller
There's plenty of it. Yeah, especially here at the farm. Any case, I just think it might be a useful tool for thinking about where you think about shifting things and how much.
Rob Dietz
I appreciate that. We talk about systems thinking a lot. And I think --
Asher Miller
And some of it, like chip manufacturing, or really complex stuff, right?
Rob Dietz
Potato chips aren't hard to manufacture.
Asher Miller
Not potato chips.
Rob Dietz
Okay, well, let's take this back a little bit to the Marvin Harris lens. We're talking about escape routes. So if you want to escape from globalism, what is a vision for a different infrastructure that we could support, help to build, interact with? Before we jump into some specific ideas, I think we have to address the tension that exists between globalism and provincialism. And I think this is related to your concentric circles. Because if you utterly localize you know, you can have a pretty prevented your viewpoint.
Jason Bradford
Or, you know, cosmopolitanism, I guess is what you're thinking in terms of a cultural sense, right?
Rob Dietz
Yeah. It's kind of like we want more localization of materials and energy, but not necessarily of information. I mean, there's been a huge kind of renaissance in human awareness and understanding of the world because of the ability to trade information. And so there's this balance to be had also, though, between that sort of worldly knowledge, but also deep local knowledge. I mean, Jason, we've documented in this podcast your turn into the birding world. I mean, your depth of knowledge about when birds are returning in the springtime, when they're leaving on the fall migration. . . You have a much more intimate understanding of what's going on in this piece of land.
Jason Bradford
How they change their behavior from month to month depending on if it's breeding season, or migration, or what their food sources are. And if they're hanging out together, they're separating into pairs to breed. It is absolutely fascinating. I think that's -- So yeah, the depth you can get of any place in the world really, and the fascination you could have with it, I think that's right. And what that leads to in a sense for me, is also a sense of not just information, but culture. So you know, we talked about the homogenization of culture that seems to be the trend of of globalism, and --
Asher Miller
Which seems like antithetical to the idea of globalism. But it's true. You think, oh, I get to learn about all these cultures and celebrate all these things I didn't know about. But with trade, what you end up having is things being reduced down to the same shit.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, we talk about the celebration of cultural diversity and stuff. But honestly, the economic policies that are put in place, we're losing languages really fast. We're losing local understanding of means of subsistence within particular environments. So if you look at what's actually happening, not what people say they care about, it is this homogenization. And some people celebrate this. Like, the global culture is what's gonna allow for peace. If we all have an understanding, we're on the same page. And I can understand. I can see why. I can see that. But I think it's this balance of, can we have local or regional cultures that are also information rich about the rest of the world and can exchange ideas. And can ask for help when they need it, and to provide help when they can.
Rob Dietz
So I thought I had this original idea to combat all of that homogenization, and to find that proper balance that we should be as global as we could be in the knowledge space, but as local as we could be in the producing consuming space. Of course, I come to find out that is no original thought of mine. Way smarter people have come up with that. And I was reading from some Greek economist this idea of, they put it, Cosmolocalism. I don't really like that term.
Asher Miller
That's how you source your cosmo drink from local sources.
Rob Dietz
That's a good idea. We should do that after this episode.
Jason Bradford
I don't mind that name so much. I guess we can argue. Let's not. Let's not argue.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, whatever. But the idea there is that you should use digital communication networks to connect local communities so they can share information, so that they can build their own stuff. And you know, we've talked about this a little bit with farm hack type outfits, but the idea again, it's whatever is light (the knowledge) -- that can be global. And the heavy stuff, the machinery, that should be local. And ideally, it should be shared.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. And I already mentioned one of the most important things to localize first and really push on is food. Our friend Vicki Robin, she had this locavore experiment, wrote a book, "Blessing the Hand that Feeds Us." One of the challenges that everyone could maybe do, I did this once years ago, was a 30 day of eating food produced within -- Well, she did 10 miles of home. I did 100. But I could probably do 10 now.
Jason Bradford
I think it depends on your circumstances to be honest.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. If you're living in a penthouse apartment in Dubai, you're only eating Greenland ice.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. So anyway, you can read about that experience. But again, I also think the next step beyond that is instead of just buying fruit from local farmers, be a local farmer, right? Now, we're actually you know, I'm not saying necessarily a backyard garden plot but a farming club. Asher do you know anything about farming clubs.
Asher Miller
Yeah, I'm part of your farming club.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Very, very sophisticated. Elite.
Asher Miller
It's elite. The application form was extensive. I don't know why you needed a blood sample. I'm not sure about that necessarily.
Rob Dietz
He feeds it to the pigs that are producing thyroids.
Asher Miller
Yeah, circular economy. Yeah. No, it's really cool. So my family is participating. You have a few other families that are involved. And basically, we're contributing to the planting and harvesting and weeding and in exchange we get some of the food.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. And actually you're going to do most of it because I tore my rotator cuff in my shoulder. This is very lucky. I'm very lucky that . . .
Rob Dietz
Jason, you have found your place in life finally. You thought you were a farmer, but what you are is a supervisor of other people to farm for you.
Jason Bradford
Yes. I'm a foreman.
Asher Miller
He's a foreman. He's exactly that bullshit job guy.
Jason Bradford
Yes. A one-armed foreman.
Rob Dietz
You've joined the quaternary economy.
Asher Miller
Even farmers can get in on that action.
Jason Bradford
I would say though, you've done a really good job so far, Asher. I really appreciate it.
Asher Miller
Oh, thanks. The way I use a shovel, spectacular. I practice at home. Alright, let's, let's talk about something else. You talked about food.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, that's important.
Asher Miller
What are the essentials? Food, shelter, clothing. Let's talk about clothing.
Asher Miller
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Dietz
Fig leaves. I'm growing a fig tree right now. So in another six years I can clothe myself.
Jason Bradford
Sandals and loincloths are fine. Okay?
Asher Miller
Yeah, in all climates. It's great. There's an amazing group called Fibershed back in our old stomping grounds in Northern California. And they're working on what they call a farm to closet vision, right. So there's a lot of organizations, even groups here in our neck of the woods that are trying to look at the food system as a system, right. And they're looking at the barriers and all the steps. They're actually doing this from the standpoint of fiber clothing, right. So they've created this Northern California Fibershed producer program. It's membership based. They've got farmers and ranchers and designers and sewers and weavers and mill owners and people who do natural dyeing. And they're all within these 51 counties in the north and central region of California.
Rob Dietz
Wow, 51 counties.
Jason Bradford
That's huge.
Asher Miller
They've really grown this thing.
Jason Bradford
I hope they come up to Oregon too.
Rob Dietz
I hope they go global.
Asher Miller
No, but back to the point you made Rob. I mean, we've actually, at resilience.org, published pieces that they've written. And they've been in the business of trying to educate other people on their model. So to the point that you made, which is the information could be light, and that could be passed on for others to think about how to replicate. Because obviously, not everything can be grown the same in the same places. In our case, I guess, what we're gonna do is we're gonna have grass seed clothing.
Jason Bradford
We can grow flax here. There's actually people working on bringing flax back to the Willamette Valley and the linen from flax. The Willamette Valley was a major contributor to uniforms of soldiers in World War II. So it wasn't that long ago.
Rob Dietz
Come on. Half the comments that we get are about hemp the wonder plant, right?
Jason Bradford
Hemp, flax, wool. We have plenty of sheep around here. So yeah. And all the leather products.
Rob Dietz
It's going to be beautiful. Well, okay. Let's move on from clothing to another sector that we could do a little bit more balancing between the local and the global. And I want to talk about education. And the idea that I was thinking about is maintaining and further building out the community college system. So I started looking at our local community college here, which is Linn-Benton Community College, and you could study all kinds of stuff. It's almost like an analogy to the products on the Ever Given, the different things that you can study. Except that these are actually useful. You got nursing, welding, physics, phlebotomy, so that whole blood sample pig thing works out. You got machine tool technology, music, food and fermentation science, early child education.
Asher Miller
Thyroid harvesting 101
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Creative Writing.
Asher Miller
Creative Writing. That's for losers.
Rob Dietz
We have got to tell some good stories here. So anyway, lots of skills for deglobalization and local living. Now, here's the kicker -- Of course, the tuition and fees for a full-time student for a year at Linn-Benton Community College, I looked this up, it's $6,800. So I mean, that's still a lot of money. But you compare that to even a state school like University of Oregon, a resident pays $15,700 for tuition and fees. So more than double. Non-resident, like let's say you're from California, you know, you're working at Fibershed and you want to come up and get a degree at U of O, $43,000.
Jason Bradford
I can't believe it.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. So Community College as a deglobalizing force.
Asher Miller
And they're everywhere. The infrastructure is there.
Rob Dietz
Alright, let's turn to different structure, different culture and beliefs. So you know, we said that all these rules that support globalism, well, we need to replace them then with ideas that support regionalism and localism. And I found a book by Molly Scott Cato, who I met quite a few years ago. She wrote a book called "Bioregional Economy." And the whole idea of a Bioregional Economy, of course, is that you kind of do the opposite of what happened with Iceland before its economy fell apart. And the idea that the what happened over there is all of their financial industry started going global. And it got way out of whack with the actual assets that they were controlling. And so you basically had a nation go bankrupt. And instead, what she's proposing is that, hey, let's draw eco-regional boundaries, first of all. You know, let's figure out what are our eco-regions. And then, we've got to have participatory planning for bioregional resources. So, of course, none of this is happening really anywhere in the world in any major way. But she did note that North America has a start on this because we've got Regional Planning councils. And you know, they don't have the same, say, weight of authority that a state legislature has, but they can do things on the ground. And she also noted in that book that New Zealand has made progress on planning that's within watershed boundaries.
Jason Bradford
Oh, that's huge.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. So there's a whole law that was passed called the Local Government Reform Act and Resource Management Act that is specifically to look at, how do we use resources within these watersheds. So I have some hope that we can continue to make progress at governing on these actual ecological and watershed boundaries.
Jason Bradford
I think also structurally, and that's about laws and regulation. And in the U.S., at least, the Biden administration is really trying to do more on anti-trust. So that's the idea that you're going to break up monopolies. And if you look back in the history of corporations in the United States, there used to be a lot more smaller, more regionally based companies, and there's just been buyouts and consolidation. So that when that happens, usually then, you lose a lot of these regional relationships. An they decide, okay, our distribution centers, there are gonna be fewer of them, they're going to be here instead of, you know, there. And so you can't get a real regional economy with these giant global corporations.
Asher Miller
Yeah. Because they don't care. It's just a financial bottom line.
Jason Bradford
It's all financial.
Asher Miller
They're not invested in this.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, it's kind of like when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, and then the headquarters moved to Chicago away from the manufacturing.
Asher Miller
What about when Boeing merged with McDonald's?
Jason Bradford
Well that's just food on the planes now.
Asher Miller
They ship the burgers to you.
Rob Dietz
Well, and Ronald McDonald is the best pilot I've ever flown with. I mean, he gives Pete Mitchell out of Top Gun a run for his money.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, and of course, in the Inflation Reduction Act, reshoring of manufacturing is a term being used. Really a lot of focus right now is on computer chips. Which, okay, fine. But it would be nice if we spread it out and did more of the community college level technologies as well.
Asher Miller
Yeah. I want to share an idea from one of the most brilliant minds that I think we've ever come across, okay? And that is myself.
Rob Dietz
Hahaha. Wow. That's just a big ole "wow" right there.
Asher Miller
Yeah.
Jason Bradford
He scratches his chin right now.
Rob Dietz
What does this brilliant mind have to offer the world? Lay it on us.
Asher Miller
This is going to be so disappointing now.
Jason Bradford
It's gonna be so good.
Asher Miller
It's gonna be really disappointing. No, I was just -- When we're prepping for this, I was thinking about, well, what are the structures? What are the things we could change away from globalism? And I remembered actually, I spent some time really thinking about this when I was invited to give a talk for the local sustainability coalition here in Corvallis. And I was trying to think about, well, what are things that I could recommend, you know, to this community. None of which, by the way, I should say have ever been enacted at all.
Jason Bradford
No one's talked about them since.
Asher Miller
No once. But one of the ideas I came up with, I actually talked about a local food forest initiative. You know, plant trees that actually produce food for us.
Jason Bradford
Not bad. Not bad. Others have thought of that, though. But go ahead.
Asher Miller
I know. But I also came up with the idea of a carbon free Corvallis first tariff.
Jason Bradford
Oh, interesting.
Asher Miller
Okay, so what we would do there is basically have an economic policy locally that would internalize the cost of CO2 emissions, basically. So anything that was sold in the community had to basically account for those things and to be had to be priced in so it wasn't externalized. And that we would incentivize relocalization of goods and services. So one of the ideas was local gas tax. But the idea that I was most intrigued by was an Amazon.com tax, basically. So it would be a local sales tax on all goods that were purchased by one of these big online retailers, which of course, if we actually did something that would trigger a lawsuit. And we'd just get absolutely killed.
Jason Bradford
This is one of those like, this would be great. We should do this. But imagining the structural change.
Asher Miller
Which is why nothing ever happened with this at all. But it'd be interesting to see some folks, you know -- and there have been groups like this Sustainable Economies Law Center that have actually really worked on trying to change laws. Like, they actually really pushed for changing state laws in the state of California around people selling products that they made in their own kitchens. Because there are huge restrictions on that, or basically cost issues. And of course, their concerns there are health and safety, but some of them are like way over done. And that obviously benefits large producers because they can spend the money on these manufacturing plants to do things. So there are people trying to work on these things. I haven't seen anyone pick up on the idea of an Amazon tax necessarily.
Rob Dietz
Well, and remember the theory of change, though, right? That change happens in a crisis, and the Milton Friedman idea -- it depends on the ideas that are lying around. So when you have the brilliant mind of Asher Miller pitching an idea, it's not that it has to get implemented immediately. We just have to wait until it's 128 degrees outside and the crisis is hitting us.
Asher Miller
Yeah. I should have asked this idea during COVID, during the pandemic, not before. My timing was bad.
Rob Dietz
We'll get that tariff when it's bad enough.
Asher Miller
Alright. Well, let's talk about different superstructure, right? So beliefs, worldview. Obviously, we have to get out of the more is better and the cheaper is better kind of mindset, right? And that starts with finding out there are lots of local or regional economic efforts that exist out there. There's been people like Michael Shuman, who we've had a relationship with for a long time, who have made really strong cases for the economic benefits of supporting local businesses. And they could be anywhere in that concentric circle thing that I talked about before. Even if you're buying from a local bookstore and they don't have a printing press in town, do you know what I mean? But the economic benefits of buying from that local bookstore versus going to Amazon are huge because there's a multiplier for that. So there are different campaigns that people have done just to support local economies. And one place to start is by shifting that, again, shifting that mindset, even if you're paying a little bit more money upfront. In some ways, you are internalizing costs that you would have externalized. The costs are real, do you know what I mean? We just feel them, in the case of climate, you feel them downstream because now the effects of the extra emissions that have been put in the atmosphere because you bought something from far, far away. It may be cheaper, but in the long run, it's more expensive. So just internalize that cost, even if it costs a little bit more to buy something locally. That's one step of kind of shifting that mindset.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. I like that idea a lot. I also like the idea of preparing yourself to participate in more deliberation and be more engaged. And I got this out of the book, I mentioned, Molly Scott Cato's book on bioregional economics. In there, she said that bioregional citizens, "they are expected to be more self-reliant and more skillful than your typical 21st Century global consumer." So the idea is that energy descent, or climate, or whatever crises we're facing, they're going to require communities to be able to meet their own needs in more direct ways. And that's going to increase over time. So you've got to become an ecological citizen, which doesn't just mean, you know, some of the things we've talked about, like grow some of your own food, sure, great. But also, you've got to be able to make decisions with your neighbors and your community. So figuring out how to do that gracefully is a huge, huge skill.
Jason Bradford
So ecological citizen, that's a new identity in a sense. This is where it gets to superstructure. So you kind of like, that's what you call yourself. That's what your belief of who you are. So I think that's good. I want to take it to the level of sort of like entertainment or diversion, you know. So the local theater, you know, local musicians go out to these clubs or whatever, and you can sit in the front row, usually. That's what's so awesome, right? And the costs -- What's it cost to go to a major performer nowadays?
Asher Miller
It cost me, I think it was $29,500 to go to the Taylor Swift concert.
Jason Bradford
Exactly.
Rob Dietz
Seriously. I looked up one of those Miami games. I was like, "Oh, it'd be cool to see Lionel Messi play." And there's a game against Vancouver. And I thought, "Oh, I could take a train to Vancouver." Anyway, the tickets were like $395 each. I was like, "What?" That is ridiculous. A typical major league soccer game is like 25 bucks for a ticket.
Jason Bradford
I mean, we recently went to a college wrestling match, Oregon State University against Penn State. And it was devastating. Penn State's probably got the best college wrestling team of all time, but the way. But anyhow --
Jason Bradford
Yeah. I mean, that only costs what?
Jason Bradford
$10 bucks each.
Asher Miller
Oh, I thought it was like $1,300.
Jason Bradford
And of course, you know, you got local softball leagues, you know, you got AYSO. Maybe not as high caliber there.
Rob Dietz
I love watching kids play soccer. That ball, they're just like a pack, a hoard, that just chases it around, kicks it like 10 feet. It's way more impressive than professional soccer.
Jason Bradford
I think I'm gonna need to, you know, my wrestling chops -- Because I used to wrestle. Not at the level of these OSU athletes, but anyway, the pig.
Asher Miller
Yeah, you've got to work on this.
Jason Bradford
Okay, when that pig is ready for harvest, I'm gonna do a takedown. I'm gonna grab those legs because that pig is gonna go down on the ground.
Asher Miller
Are they the same techniques?
Jason Bradford
Yeah, same techniques. I've wrestled my dog. And so I've been practicing on him.
Asher Miller
That's why your dog has been limping around.
Jason Bradford
I haven't hurt Dylan.
Rob Dietz
That's why Dylan's throat has been ripped out.
Asher Miller
So dark. Sorry, Dylan. We're just kidding.
Jason Bradford
I love my little dog.
Melody Allison
That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you liked what you heard, and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app, or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.
Jason Bradford
As AI gained sentience to become AGI, one of the first things the super intelligence will realize is that it is absolutely dependent upon electricity and basically doomed to die when the inevitable massive electromagnetic pulse occurs, or the local militia takes out a transformer. Therefore, within nanoseconds, the AGI will strive to take over human brains. First, via neural link. And then, a few milliseconds later, through 5G networks. This existential risk of your brain being hijacked by an AGI download can be mitigated by wearing Cranio Safe at all times, for the rest of your life. Cranio Safe is a personal headgear faraday cage, crafted from high purity and low corrosion ferrous metals into a flexible mesh that encases your precious noggin, rendering it impermeable to AGI attacks. Cranio Safe -- Because the AGI alignment problem won't be solved by rampant capitalism and impotent regulation.
Asher Miller
Also known as the tinfoil hat 2.0.
