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Mendocino County Dependence and Independence

February 25, 2010

The world gets smaller every day. We learned last week that budget mismanagement in a nation as small as Greece can effect the retirement accounts of residents of Mendocino County. We know the U.S. federal government, the California state government, and the government of Mendocino County, have been mismanaging themselves and the economy to the point of disaster. What is a citizen to do?

I think we need to make Mendocino less subject to external fluctuations by increasing our internal productivity and trade. We need to produce and consume more local goods and services. Doing that, we will almost certainly have more products to sell outside the county to buy what we need from the rest of the world.

We need better county government. We need to stop promising county workers wages and benefits we will be in no position to pay. We need to take a serious look at what the county government really needs to do, and what frills. And we need to consider that sometimes the best things governments can do is get out of the way of their citizens.

As to the local economy, we need to attract industrious small businesses that could locate anywhere. To get them to chose to locate here, we need broadband internet access everywhere in the county. With all the money spent by the government at every level, federal, state, and local, and with all the red tape and taxes we put up with, we don't even have as good of internet access as many developing nations have. And don't tell me it can't be done. It could have been done, it just has not been done because of our Board of Supervisors, Wesley Chesbro, and Mike Thompson's unwillingness to display backbone when corporate profits are at stake. They have plenty of backbone when they tax us, or waste our taxes in Afghanistan or Sacramento.

But the information economy needs to be part of a more organic, nature-based economy in Mendocino County. We have tremendous natural resources, but they are largely wasted by 19th Century business practices. We need to produce high-value natural products that bring money into the county, and I don't just mean high-THC bud.

We urgently need to create a real university in the county. We need a place where local students can go for a quality college education, and that attracts other California students and even foreign students. We need the kind of industries that cluster around universities and provide good jobs for our kids.

We need control of our Coast. We urgently need to take back control of our Coast from the California Coastal Commission. We are conservationists, we can conserve the coast without the needless costs associated with the current system of governance by unelected bureaucrats unfamiliar with our local needs.

There is a lot to do. I know this is an area where many people have come to escape the pressures of corporate America, just as I did. Well, a lot of our comfort was based on illusions. It was based on the U.S. having, through its imperialist domination of the world, a highly profitable economy. Now we are the most indebted nation in the world, and our spending on imperialism is making matters worse. We ordinary citizens have no choice but to spend less and work harder. Or at least smarter. That is why we should devote as much energy to developing high-value natural product industries in this county. These businesses would harmozine with our natural surroundings and yet pay good, livable wages. We don't need one big idea, or business. We need thousands of small but good ideas and businesses.

William P. Meyers