Exploration 8 - Alan Brophy

The Idea of a Local Economy by Wendell Berry is an eye opening read that shows the view of the economy from someone who has decided not to be a sheep to the Shepard of corporate greed. I like Jireh White's comment on how blunt Berry was in his article and the fact he can be considered offensive as he is defending the ideals of localization of the economy. Berry attacks corporations, but not necessarily the people running them, because he states, "I don't mean to say, of course, that all corporate executives and stockholders are bad people. I am only saying that all of them are very seriously implicated in a bad economy." I took this as the global economy is shepherding people into a system that is hurting the world and those that run it are stuck in an unending loop that they may want to get out of, but have no way of doing so. I think that Berry is right in saying that local economies should only export their surplus, but that is not how the world works currently. The global economy works as such: make for less, and sell for more. This is not a healthy way of going about business.

I think that we should have talked more about alternative energy in the classroom if we even did talk about it. Personally alternatives to fossil fuels need to be discovered for us to be able to sustain our culture and more ahead. Fossil fuels are non-renewable resources and also hurt the environment quite a bit. Although, since the efficiency of wind farms and solar farms are way too low for being cost effective, that is not going to happen in an instant. Nuclear is too expensive for anyone to start to build, and water is too location dependent. Thus I believe more R&D needs to go into alternative energies for us to move on.