Upstream - Is Localization a Solution to the Crisis of Capitalism? with Helena Norberg Hodge

Episode Date: October 29, 2019

It's often said that the economic system is rigged. The truth, however, is that the system is working exactly as it was designed to. Those in power, whether they hold public office or whether they sit in the boardroom of a multi-billion dollar international corporation, have taken great lengths to set up a system of rules that benefit them and maintain the status quo. Helena Norberg-Hodge, a pioneer of the New Economics movement, has spent many years studying the driving forces behind why our economies are failing us, and what we can do about it. Helena’s perspectives are informed by a systems thinking and colored by the many years she spent in Ladakh, part of the larger region of Kashmir, where she watched global capital completely transform entire communities. Helena Norberg Hodge is the Founder and Director of Local Futures, producer and co-director of the documentary films The Economics of Happiness and Ancient Futures: Lessons from Ladakh and Right Livelihood Award Laureate. We spoke with her in her home in Devon in the U.K.  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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Welcome. Thank you for joining me. Thank you. Very happy to be here. So you are the founder and director of Local Futures. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the organization and what you do. Yeah, we're essentially promoting localization globally. And our work grew out of very international experience, starting in a place called Ladakh, which is actually culturally part

of Tibet, but belongs politically to India. And I arrived there as a linguist in 1975. I was going to be there for only a few weeks, but I fell in love with the people in the place and stayed on and discovered that the people there were among the happiest I'd ever encountered, also among the healthiest, by the way, and there was no poverty as we know it in the world today. There was no hunger and generally, in a real sense, a high material standard of living. None of the comforts we have in the Western world and so on.

But I saw that in the name of development, because the area was just being opened to development, when I arrived there it had been sealed off for political reasons for I think something like 40 years. And now in the name of development what was being created was unemployment, poverty and all sorts of problems. So I ended up starting an organization that at first was active in Ladakh, and then was invited also to work in Bhutan, in Nepal, and then in many other countries.

And our work was essentially providing an alternative, a middle path, providing an alternative, a middle path, an alternative to conventional development and to the conventional model of growth, progress, development that really is having an impact all around the world. So a long, long time ago now, probably by now at least 30 years ago, I became aware that the alternatives that we need have to do with strengthening the local economy, the community fabric, shortening distances. And so that's why we're called Local Futures. So you went to Ladakh and you started to see the changes while you were there.

What was that like to start to see these things happening? I can imagine it must have just been heart-wrenching, just incredibly frustrating to see. And what were some of the first things that you started to do when you started to see these things happening? Well, it was heart-wrenching. And one of the things that happened was I became aware that speaking the language fluently and interacting a lot with Ladakhis, but also interacting with foreign visitors, I realized that almost every foreign visitor was saying, oh my goodness, what a paradise, what a Shangri-La, what a pity it has to be destroyed. And I became aware of the fact that my Ladakhi friends would have been completely perplexed if I told them that

that was what was being said. And basically, I became aware of the fact that the Ladakhis knew nothing about what was going on in the outside world. And instead of feeling that development and outside influences was going to destroy the place, they were getting the impression that on that other side of the world where people lived a modern consumer lifestyle, they never needed to work, they had infinite wealth. And the main thing that was beginning to happen was that the Ladakhis, particularly young Ladakhis, were beginning to feel that their own culture was backward and inferior. So already from the very beginning, a very important part of my work became trying to provide more information, more realistic information about what was the reality in the outside world.

And then after some years, it also became clear that an absolute foundation for the conventional growth economy that's enveloping the whole world was fossil fuels. And in Ladakh, they had 360 days a year of sunshine. So it made a lot of sense to demonstrate solar as an alternative to fossil fuels. So I started projects in that. And over about a decade, we built up a local NGO called the Ladakh Ecological Development Group. And we had one of the biggest appropriate technology projects in the world at that time, working in about 100 villages,

demonstrating not only solar for greenhouses, water heating, and to some extent solar electricity, but also small-scale hydro, some wind. We brought information about the problems of DDT and other outlawed pesticides that the Indian government was introducing. And again, the Ladakhis had no information about the fact that they'd been banned elsewhere and why. So our work consisted a lot of, again, bringing information.

And that took the form of, for instance, bringing the head of the Swedish organic movement, not to tell the Ladakhis what to do, but to tell them why they had worked for many years to build up a powerful organic movement and, you know, the health hazards, what happens to the soil and so on. So we did those kinds of things and a lot more. Actually, maybe also mention, I think, one quite creative aspect of our work was to organize what we call reality tours to the West. see that not only were there serious problems with our fossil fuel-based consumer monoculture, but also to see that these Westerners were actively searching for alternatives. And that's one of the most persuasive parts of it. So you mentioned that you had the place that you started in Ladakh, that you helped start there. And I know from the website that there's a mindful travel brochure,

there's ongoing global to local workshops, and some things called crop mobs, helping people come together to learn how to grow crops or harvest crops. So I'm wondering right now if we went to Ladakh, because I know you've had this ongoing relationship. What is kind of the fruits of your labor? wondering right now if we went to the dock because I know you've had this ongoing relationship what is kind of the fruits of your labor or the you know what would you say if the story was first this very beautiful place where everyone was really happy and then development came in what

would you say is the story right now well I would say that there are very, very serious signs of mental problems, especially among young people. There is a suicide a month, mainly young people, and quite serious psychological problems. And it's pretty crystal clear why it's happening. And at the same time as we have that there's also young people and older who are becoming aware and there's a sort of counter movement trying to restore respect for the community values the buddhist values the ecological values of the traditional culture so you have both of these trends and when i I say both of the trends, what I see happening is that we are worldwide being affected by a concentration of wealth in the hands of very

few individuals, but I think more importantly, giant corporate structures and banks. That's the structural side that we need to understand better in order to make change. Because it's not really so much about individuals. It's about a combination of narrow reductionism linked to large scale and speed. And linking reductionism to big and fast is a very dangerous and a very stupid direction. And so we need to localize or decentralize, and that needs to be linked to more holistic interdisciplinary thinking. coming from big money and a very heavy system pushing in the opposite direction of what I see most people wanting. You know, we evolved in community groups, we evolved close to nature, and that's who we are. That's what it is to be human. And the pressures of this big money global economy are taking us in a direction that is away from

nature, away from community, intense competition, intense speed, and very, very few opportunities for success. So the end result is serious mental problems, depression, and an increase in violence worldwide. What we're still doing in Ladakh is not just having this reality tours where Ladakhis come to the West, but we have a program where Westerners who come there. We have local workshops. We have the crop mobs, which are essentially groups of outsiders who go along and help Ladakhi farmers with their harvesting

and with other work on the land. And that helps to, at a very fundamental level, it raises respect for more land-based ecological work, because we have a major problem in the global economy that it romanticizes an urban consumer culture and makes people feel that if they're working with their hands and getting their fingernails dirty they're backward and primitive they're not worth as much as the people who are only working with their brains you know and sitting at a desk so that's a i think, it's a very important understanding that we need to be raising awareness about worldwide. One of the big challenges that I've heard to our current global economic system, which you said is very competitive, growth oriented, includes globalization development, is that alternatives inherently don't prioritize competition. They're not trying to compete, or they're not trying to grow, or they're not trying to put profit first. And so you have something maybe like the gift economy or the new economy,

which are valuing or prioritizing other things. And so inherently, the two or, you know, multiple economies kind of competing against each other, the globalized economy, because it's meant for growth and competition seems to be stronger. I'm wondering, you know, how you see that kind of relationship and what maybe needs to happen to kind of strengthen the ability for the new economy or for more localized economies to grow? Well, I think, first of all, a really good understanding of the workings of the global economy, the workings of the economy that is much stronger today, is necessary because in our analysis over the years now, what we see very clearly is that there are multiple supports

and what we call subsidies for global businesses to become bigger and bigger and more global. And they are being subsidized with tax monies raised off place-based smaller businesses. So what we have is a situation where the small and the local are being taxed, and those taxes are used to support giants that don't pay tax. So we have an incredibly unfair playing field.

For me, most of the problems we face are because of a lack of awareness, a lack of an understanding of the workings of the economy. And so many people really do believe that these giants are more efficient, that there is something inherently more powerful about them. No, it's because we are not only supporting them financially, we have another dimension, which is regulations. And what's happening is that while we deregulate the global that don't pay tax,

we overregulate the local that do pay tax. So there we're ending up with a system that virtually makes it impossible for smaller businesses and activities that are naturally regulated by community values and by ecological constraints. regulated by community values and by ecological constraints that that natural regulation is actually a very good thing but now you have centrally managed and very often with the help of global businesses you have regulations brought in that destroy the small so i believe that what i've experienced not only in Ladakh, but I would say from growing up in Sweden and experiencing sort of the socialist model in its heyday,

having lived in America, having lived in France, having lived in Germany, and speaking all those languages and also a decade living in Spain and Ladakh and working in many other cultures, what we can offer in local futures is a perspective on this global system from the bottom up. And I'm beginning to see that this is really crucial for us to understand the full contours of the dominant economic system so that we, through that understanding, can highlight the really strategic and important things that we need to do. And one of those things is what I call big picture activism. I am convinced that the majority of

people, if they could just have a little bit of help to understand what it means to their jobs, to the livelihoods of their children, to the house prices, to CO2 emissions, to the quality of water, to the survival of democracy, if they could understand the difference between supporting unaccountable mobile banks and corporations versus place-based businesses, we would win hands down. But it's a question of raising awareness and it's a question of also showing that on a mini scale, almost all the inspiring alternatives that you see today are fundamentally structurally about localizing. They're fundamentally about reweaving a more community-based fabric and place-based in the sense that there is a respect for the ecological diversity, the biological diversity, and that almost all the inspiring examples you see around the world are essentially about localization.

So we have this wealth of material, of real live projects and initiatives that show that not only can we restore our ecosystems, restore our communities, but we can increase productivity by going local. So there, I think the most important thing for us to do is to make it clear to people that the real economy is the living world. There is nothing, nothing, nothing, no iPad, no anything that doesn't come from the earth, from the minerals, from the soil, nothing, nothing, no iPad, no anything that doesn't come from the earth, from the minerals, from the soil, from the water, from the seeds. So the real economy is the natural world. What we've allowed to happen is the creation of an artificial marriage, as I said before, between very narrow reductionist thinking, energy, and technology into a techno-economic system

that now has taken on a life of its own and people are sort of lost in a world of money creation and believe that that money represents real wealth. It doesn't. So in order to rethink the economy, I feel it's vital that we, you know, we get people to see the difference between this artificial money creation and what does real wealth creation look like? And there, again, I saw like, you know, you know, some kind of ecological encyclopedia, the changes in Lodak. And what I saw was that if a human population on this planet wants to organize themselves efficiently in order to get as much as they can out of the real wealth, the real earth resources, there is no doubt that it's more efficient to decentralize,

not to gather in huge high-rise urban conglomerates. It is more efficient to spread out and to have smaller towns and cities. Spreading out doesn't mean one person on every acre, but it does mean much more decentralized structures. And you might think, well, you know, we are now all living in big cities. Well, we aren't. We still have almost half the global population. It's changing rapidly, but almost half the global population, more decentralized, more in smaller towns and cities. And I see the urbanizing path as absolutely centrally

part of the problem of creating the multiple crises we have. It leads to greater energy consumption, greater resource consumption, more waste, but it suits global corporations. You know, McDonald's can't put a McDonald's in every village of millions of villages in the world. But to have the global population in high-rise urban conglomerates, in megalopolis centers, linked to larger airports and larger ports, that they also lobby governments to build. By the way, that's another enormous subsidy for the big players is that we fund global infrastructure with trillions of dollars while the local infrastructure is neglected. I also do feel that in rethinking the economy,

it's incredibly helpful to look at food and farming at the center of the economy. Now, first of all, I always like to stress that there's nothing else we produce that every single person on the planet needs every day. And we all know that it is better if it's fresh. So we're talking about a need, a human need for decentralized systems. What we have through heavy subsidies, the infrastructure, the taxes, etc., we have a system that's separating us further and further from the sources of our food. And our food is being flown back and forth across the planet. Fish flown from Norway to China to be deboned, you know, shrimp flown from the UK to Thailand to be peeled and flown back again, apples flown to South Africa to be washed and waxed, flown back again. It's an insanity. Why aren't we talking about it? Why doesn't Greenpeace or Al Gore

mention this dimension of CO2 emissions? This is, again, it's really about the fact that big money is funding our thinking, is funding what we look at. And I absolutely don't believe that it's because you have a bunch of evil guys, you know, in Greenpeace, for sure, not, and not in the corporate world either. The problem is that this confluence of big money and narrow thinking and specialization, which needs to be part of the picture when you're moving towards bigger and bigger and more global. So there's a structural dimension to this. So we have a de facto structural conspiracy. So that means the funding for ideas also supports that path. And there may well be, you know, some people like to talk about psychopaths and all that. That's not my experience.

My experience is that you can find in a small local shop people who are more greedy than you might find, you know, working in Monsanto. So it's not so much about individuals and their values as it is about structures for me, the really, really important things we need to look at today. It is about structures for me, the really, really important things we need to look at today. And so when we look at food and farming and we realize, first of all, if this is the most important thing we produce, because it's the only thing we need every single day of our lives, if we have a major crisis with weather or a financial collapse, what is going to be the problem?

It's going to be food. Thank goodness most of the water still comes from relatively close to home, but the food is literally coming from the other side of the world or the other side of the country. And in many places you'll be eating cotton or coffee or tin or something. So decentralizing and building up local food economies is vital And it's an incredible testimony to human goodwill, to human perseverance, to human intelligence, that there is so much happening in terms of an increasing local food movement, despite the fact that all the supports are in the opposite direction. So for me, knowing that the supports are in the opposite direction is actually very inspiring because when you see how much has been achieved without help, it really opens your eyes to

the potential if we can also succeed in making changes at the policy level. And so there's huge potential there. In the meanwhile, what we advocate in Local Futures is a two-track path. We get on with the business of continuing to build local economies with a central focus on food and demonstrating that small diversified farms, including animals, can produce vastly more per unit of land and water than monocultures. So the large-scale food production has never been more productive. The efficiency was that they could produce much more food with fewer people. So that meant we had a model of food production

that could produce more pollution and use more energy and destroy jobs. That was the gain. We now have a true win-win-win path. We're talking about more jobs and not just jobs, meaningful livelihoods. And we're talking about lower energy consumption, which means less pollution, less CO2 emission, and increased productivity. So it's such a win-win-win. And I know I sound like I'm exaggerating, but it's only because this perspective doesn't get out enough. Even UNCTAD

and other UN bodies have produced studies that now support this. So it's vital that we see the direction of the new economy in this direction of shortening the distances between production and consumption. And the focus is on reversing Ricardo's comparative advantage, which, by the way, happened along with slavery and genocide. The message was... Do you want to explain that? Yeah, the message of Ricardo's comparative advantage was that it's in your interest to specialize for export rather than remaining self-reliant. So self-reliance has been described as subsistence and has been seen as dreadful hardship. On the surface for many people, of course,

it sounds like a good idea to specialize in what you're good at. Up to a certain point, I'm sure it could work. But we've had this point driven home at a time when people were literally forced away from producing a range of things for themselves to stand as slaves on big monocultures. So we have to be a bit skeptical about it. And what we now need is to reverse it so that the motto should be diversify for home needs rather than specialize for export.

And that formula and that slogan would be, yeah, again, it's a win-win-win. And on today's beleaguered planet, what I'm also sort of an expert in, I've studied a lot of the impact of the economic system on food and farming, but also on culture, on identity, on the psyche. And maybe I should let you say a few words

since I'm being so long-winded. No, I appreciate it. And it's making me think that that is one part of it, that localizing is one part of it. But that for me to wake up tomorrow, let's say, and buy food that is more grown locally or clothing that is, you know, handmade locally, that that's not enough. That's also kind of telling the same story of us as consumers in terms of economics. So I'm imagining there's also a kind of a paradigm or a consciousness shift in our relationship to materials and consumption in general. So I'm wondering, you know, this

localization of production and consumption, what's kind of maybe the other hand too that we want to think about? Well, on the other hand, I mean, what was so clear to me, again, with these experiences in different cultures, was that at one polar opposite, I would say, was the U.S., and probably the epicenter in the world was New York, and the other one was the villages.S., and probably the epicenter in the world was New York, and the other one was the villages of Ladakh and Bhutan. And very clear was that in the more traditional, non-commercialized and non-developed areas,

you had much stronger bonds at the local level. So you grew up surrounded by a whole group of people, extended family and neighbors. The boundary between family and non-family was very permeable. And every mother had something like 10 live-in caretakers for every child. So what I experienced was that the sort of lightness of being and the sense of being connected and valued was so the norm in these societies because of essentially growing up with strong living role models around you so that you were basing your identity and your sense of being

through these face-to-face relationships. I saw that in the modern economy, the pressures were like a machine separating us from one another. And it actually suited capital accumulation to have us all beginning to live separately and to be more and more competitive and to not collaborate at the local level. I would say that the cutting off from one another probably is the most fundamental reason for emotional and psychological problems. And I say that the connection to others, the sense of being valued, the sense of belonging, the sense of being loved, was the real centerpiece of the economics of happiness. I would say equally important was that that entire community fabric

was embedded in nature so that you grew up being surrounded by and caring for animals, for the plants, being aware of the constellation of the stars, the moon, all as part of your sense of being, your sense of self. So that deep embedded self in community and nature was really the economics of happiness or the lifestyle of happiness. And in the polar opposite in New York, the sort of tarmac, high-rise, fast-paced, isolated self

bred not only unhappiness but also violence, which is the sort of other side of unhappiness and depression. And I also want to stress that I experienced that in Sweden as well, so that even within the socialist model, you had people rapidly shoved into high-rise buildings, the fabric of smaller-scale agriculture, the smaller-scale shops, the economic structures where people were in charge and had oversight were paved over and destroyed in the name of a type of socialist egalitarianism.

But it didn't actually breed egalitarianism because the system has actually been linked to very large scale industrial economic forces that are leading everywhere in the world to a very rapid widening in the gap between rich and poor, extreme. I would say that the other side of localizing is this spiritual, invisible sense of belonging and being connected to and i think if you look around the world you'll see everywhere you look you'll see a longing for that reconnection you'll find a pattern where people who have become more urbanized and lived through that big city life, there is a pattern that they start developing, yearning for community and nature. And they start wanting more natural products. They put

eco in front of every aspect, not just products, but eco literacy, eco theology, ecological housing, ecological agriculture, ecological clothing. So there is this clear desire, as far as I'm concerned, for people to have that deeper connection and to be living in a kinder and gentler way on the planet. Yeah, so maybe even my idea of two hands is a little false. Maybe it's more, again, a systems approach where localizing the economy would also bring more belonging to place and also more connection between people as you would know

who grew your food and you would, you know, support the local family next door and all of that. So maybe the two do go hand in hand. Absolutely. And it's not just a wood. I mean, I used to write about it as, you know, this wood, but now there is so many projects that demonstrate it. You know, there's so many beautiful examples. And a lot of them, you know, are struggling because they're all the time, you know, the bigger system is often squashing them down and it's making it difficult. And yet, what we've discovered in having helped to start local food things around the world is they usually grow from strength to strength, which, by the way, is not true of local currencies and other initiatives in the same way.

Why is that, do you think? Well, I've developed a theory about that because we've had a lot of experience with it. And we actually started two local currencies from our offices. One in Berkeley, it was called Bread. And that was probably back in about 1990 or something like that. And one in Vermont. And both of them ran for about 10 years. And I worked with Richard Douthwaite, who was one of the first economists

to take localization seriously. And he did a book that we co-published called Short Circuit and went around the world, you know, looking at local currencies and so on and encouraging them. We were both encouraging them. But I would say now that I can't do that because I have seen that what happens is that usually, whether it's the gift economy or let schemes or local money schemes, they tend to attract more marginal people and they only answer marginal needs. So what you can do with that that scheme or the time sharing or the local currency is things like babysitting or gardening for each other or massage which is all absolutely wonderful but it is also things that you could do just as friendship and community. More importantly, paying the rent and paying for your food is usually not possible, and very difficult to not possible. So basically, it answers marginal needs and

tends to attract marginal people. Whereas when you start the local food things, even sort of more normal people get involved. And very often the farmers are quite conservative. And even many of the people who come to the farmers markets or join these schemes are, but because it works so well for the land, for the farmer, for the consumer, they tend to grow from strength to strength. Still, because we have all those hidden subsidies and supports, the food is too expensive for many people. So it's why it's very important that we try to work on both levels. I didn't finish saying that. We encourage that we do both the local economy building,

but also the big picture activism to raise awareness about how we can collectively build up a new political movement that will ensure that we finally get real democracy, that we take the power back to have the right to save, you know, and to protect our real needs. You've just moved back to the UK recently. And if we were to go into a town, let's say in the UK, that was interested in moving towards a more well-being-based economy or an economy of happiness, you know, we've touched on a few examples. The idea of localizing food production

and also not having maybe multinational corporations, McDonald's, the like, and also localizing the democracy or the power so the decisions could be made more locally. I'm wondering if there's anything else that you can think of, just a question you would have or something you'd focus a light on to kind of explore if a town was interested in this? Well, if a town, if a whole town were interested, well, in that case, I mean, we'd be looking at local energy systems and creating decentralized grids as a very important part of it. But in order to build up the movement that would lead to an entire town really wanting to embrace a different model,

I feel we need to focus a lot on that big picture activism to raise awareness. And what we're raising awareness about is not just how we need to collectively act to bring about that political change, but we're encouraging, you know, people to understand just how damaging the isolation and the competition is. So we're urging people sort of as one of the first steps to connect in smaller groups. And, you know, there are wonderful centers like Schumacher College where this happens, you know, where like-minded people come together, but then they have to disperse afterwards. So we've developed a long time ago a program where we encourage people

in the area where they live to maybe show a film or something to get some like-minded people to come together and then encourage that they meet in relatively small groups regularly, human scale groups between three and maybe maximum 20 people to start a process of deep reconnection, which also involves being willing to expose our vulnerabilities, to being willing to share our problems. And as we do that reconnection, we actually start regaining more energy, we start changing the I to a we, so we start gaining a sense of power in terms of what we can then do jointly to bring change in the world. So maybe the next step through a process of reconnection, which, by the way, we also think it's incredibly important

that that time allows for celebration, for doing things that we enjoy together. Another lesson from traditional culture is people singing and making music together. It's something we've done from the beginning of our time on Earth, but we've lost it in this commercial competitive system where a few stars sing at us, but we don't participate ourselves.

So it's about creating a participatory, connected mini culture where you live and music, time in nature, calming the mind. There are a few sort of tools that can really help that. And then at the same time, encouraging this look at the bigger system and seeing the key elements we need to shift. a really strong city movement so that the city is willing to take on the regulations, there are huge changes we can make. But that means taking on what are actually globally determined rules

that pressure down on national governments, that bring in all kinds of regulations that mean, for instance, that if a McDonald's wants to come to Totnes, they don't have to go through the same process that you do if you want to build, you know, put a window in your house. You know, it's just like a crazy, crazy situation we have now. So there is a community rights movement in America, and they're basically encouraging communities to see that the laws that often are supposed to be brought in to protect the environment or to protect us are actually not what they seem to be, and that the EPA is actually protecting corporate business interests.

And so they're waking people up to the fact that we have to question these laws. We can't take them as a given. What I see also is this absolute necessity to question the prices in the marketplace. I see such terrible economic illiteracy that people will say, oh, we can't do that because it's too costly. Or people will say, yeah, there's just huge illiteracy on so many different levels. But so to come to the prices, for instance, you know, we really have to understand that worldwide, a local, natural, handmade product is now too expensive for people.

It's only now it's been enclosed, so it's something that only the wealthy can afford. It's completely upside down, whereas a product that has lots of embodied energy has been transported back and forth, used far more materials, and involved even value-added processes, cost less. And we have an artificial support for the unnatural, for the distant, and we absolutely need to change that. Now, changing that would not be as difficult as we think. The biggest obstacle is the ignorance about how the

economy works. And what I see happening is that in the Western world, unlike in the so-called developing world, in the Western world, people have come to treat economic change as some kind of evolutionary inevitable force. There's no point thinking about it. And people don't think about it. They treat it in a very fatalistic way. And there are lots of statements or things people tell themselves to prevent them from looking at that economic system. They include things like, it's going to collapse anyway of its own.

So, you know, but more than anything, it includes this ignorance about the workings of it. In the less developed so-called world, people are at least aware that, oh, the World Bank decided, you know, to build this huge dam, and this is part of a plan. You know, this was not ordained by God. You know, we can see these things coming in, and we do have a choice. We can say we don't want it. I'm not saying that, you know, this was not ordained by God. You know, we can see these things coming in, and we do have a choice. We can say we don't want it. I'm not saying that, you know, everybody is doing that, but I think this emphasis on building awareness

about how we have to rethink the laws, we have to question, you know, now one of the things that's happened is that people are so afraid of being sued. This is a wonderful tool for extractive capital, the fear, which then drives up the costs, you know, at the local level. But I didn't mention this earlier, and I really need to mention it. I hope you can include it. And that is that one of the reasons why I feel quite optimistic today is that the central thread of the economic system we have, that has given global banks and corporations far too much power and essentially power over our governments is the deregulation of trade and finance through treaties. These treaties started in an orderly way after the

Second World War with the Bretton Woods institutions, when not only the World Bank and the IMF were set up, but also the GATT. And that trajectory of this continual process of trade treaties has been this not dark hidden secret, not even promoted by some kind of greedy men with big fat cigars in a dark room, but actually promoted by idealistic people, idealistic politicians. that path is what has put us in this disastrous situation. So for me, that's positive, knowing that actually it's been misguided idealism that has supported this, and that there are a lot of good people out there who, if they had greater clarity about what's happening, I have no doubt whatsoever that they'd want to see a reversal towards supporting strong local economies worldwide.

The idealism, you know, came out of the conviction that we needed to do everything we could to avoid another world war and we needed to avoid another depression. And so these men sat down, big business and governments, and decided we have to integrate economically. Well, integrating economically meant further strengthening global banks and global trading corporations, giving them the right to move in and out of individual national and regional economies that is how we have you know now corporate rule and it's very very encouraging that people have woken up to how disastrous those trade treaties are we have every reason to believe that if

awareness continues to grow as it has over the last few years, we will be seeing a major turnaround within sight. I'm hoping in my lifetime, I'm hoping maybe it could even happen within the next two or three years, but it needs help. And that's why I'm very glad about your podcast and your work, Della. I really appreciate it. Yes, thank you. And I'm reminded of a quote I heard from Joanna Macy about things are getting worse and worse and better and better, faster and faster. And I'm just thinking about, I've heard

from in the documentary called The Divide, Catherine Round interviewed someone who was an advisor to Margaret Thatcher, who was a big proponent of neoliberalism, who recently said, we were wrong. And we were absolutely wrong. And so that kind of coming to one senses and that kind of idealism went wrong. And so we're in a very space with a lot of tension, but a lot of opportunity. with a lot of tension, but a lot of opportunity. Absolutely. And I think I also see that so many of the smaller,

you know, farmers that we've dealt with, for instance, setting up farmers markets and small business owners worldwide, actually have tended to be quite conservative. And they've ended up feeling that government is the problem. And so I just want to make a plea also for people trying to think more globally or to have more information from other places because what happens when you see the change only from your own local village or local town, it looks as though government is the problem.

village or a local town, it looks as though government is the problem. And around the world, I see people focus on this sort of national theater of left or right, and oh, is this a good politician, or is this a better one? And if we have a woman, isn't it going to be better, and et cetera, et cetera. But actually, the real politics, the real, real politics the real absolutely centrally important power structures have to do with these global corporations and their influence on our lives we have to remember too that we're talking about global media we're talking about the psychological impact of romanticizing the consumer culture and making young people feel inferior if they don't have the latest products and so on so this that's the real politics and in most places the conservative you know small businesses and farmers and so on in seeing these problems just in terms of national government

the tendency is for them to think we want laissez-faire economics, we want government out of the way, and partly because of some of the bad regulation and the over-regulation of the local. And they often will then blame the left and the greens. It's a real pattern here, and will feed into a sort of Tea Party or Trump-like mentality, I am convinced, and it's been confirmed by other people too, that if one can just get out, if we can reach them with a different analysis to show how much big business is part of this problem. And it's big government working with big business, destroying not just these small businesses, but even livelihoods for middle class and even upper middle class people. That is the problem.

And well-being for people in the planet. Absolutely, absolutely. But many of them, in terms of their first focus, are so struggling just to survive, just to have a job and to survive economically. But then when you can show the incredible, again, win-win benefits of these more interdependent local economies, and we have examples where people who were previously very prejudiced against each other, again, in the new farmers' markets, you see it.

The farmers were very sceptical about these greenies who didn't want any sprays, you know. And again, they tended to vote conservative. The buyers tended to be more, you know, green and left. And literally, sometimes only within months as they start communicating and as the farmers see that these buyers don't care if there are a few specks on their potatoes

or, you know, if the apples have been, you know, eaten by a few worms or something, they want the healthy product. You start having this coming together that is so, so inspiring. Wonderful. Well, this conversation has also been inspiring. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You've been listening to an Upstream interview with Helena Norberg-Hodge.

Funding for this conversation was supported by the Guerrilla Foundation and listeners like you. Please consider supporting this podcast by donating at upstreampodcast.org forward slash support. Thank you. La vie est la vie A O O O O O O O O

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