Do we have to rely on corporations?

by: Lucy Edwards

Sat Jul 31, 2010 at 06:59:22 AM EDT

Since I had been sharing info on local food on Facebook just before that, I started to think about agriculture, and what if's.

We can't change the essential nature of business. But by acknowledging that, we can make other changes that provide working people with a better life and help companies' bottom lines in the long run. We can have an economy that works for everyone, but only if we think outside of the jobs box.

Underlying this diary is an assumption, I think, that all business must be corporate.  But corporate food has been a disaster for our health and our environment.  So, is it necessarily true that we can't change the essential nature of business?  Do we have to rely on the corporate model we are used to for our economy?

I will now be immediately branded as a socialist, or maybe even a communist.  

But I was brought up with the idea of being grateful to live in a free country.  Can't we be free to choose what business models we want to use to do what I think the basis for any production model is, a division of labor, so that each of us does not have to produce everything we need or want for ourselves?  

Food would be a great place to start, and it has started already, with cooperatives of small farmers.  I love being able to go to a farm stand or my farmers market and buy fresh, local food, help support a grower, keep my money local and my environment clean.  

I do agree we need to think outside the box, so let's open the box up all the way, let some light and air in, and be what we were meant to be, free.  Not free in the confines of the right, which means only free to be subject to the will of any and all corporations, because that is what they really have become, but free to choose our religion, our family structure, and how we support ourselves and share with our communities.