The Book on Slow Money
Posted by Jay on Monday, 13 April 2009
I’ve been reading Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered by Woody Tasch. It’s a meditation on both the limits of “perpetual growth” and on what a future, stable economy might feel like. It’s a marvelous little book.
Here’s a passage that gets right at the heart of the conversation Dennis, DougOLis and I had last week on this blog:
Is local a specific number of miles from Point A to Point B? Is it a specific political or contractual designation? How does it relate to a bioregion or a watershed? In the word local are connotations of rapport, relationship, rootedness, and the kind of responsibility that is the reciprocal of anonymity and absentee ownership. In the word local is a hint of the possibility of localization, that which is bubbling up in the wake of globalization.
And a passage that, for me, crystallizes the immutable ties between business, the farm and our urban life:
Products produced cheaply create ugly work lives and ugly households and ugly communities. Profits produced quickly cannot purchase patience and care. Patience is beautiful. Restraint and care are beautiful. Peace is beautiful. A small, diversified organic farm is beautiful.
The book is beautiful. Check it out.
Leave a Reply