Green as it gets?  Aren’t they red? And wait a minute, Greg, aren’t you one of those “fat cats” in the fish packing biz? Smells fishy to me! 😉

I mean…good idea! Really!

The Squalicum Stimulous II

Salmon return from the ocean to spawn and die in local streams, leaving eggs to hatch, eating bugs sustained by the rotting carcasses of their dead parents.  They eat, growing fatter, trending toward ever deeper water, eventually arriving at the ocean to roam and feed for years before returning, grown, to spawn and die in local streams.

In the natural model, they accomplish this with such fecund fervor that their abundance sustains their species, the bugs they eat, and was a staff of life for coastal peoples, bears and such.

Could we learn something from this model?  Consider the difference between potlatch economies, based upon distribution, and our consumer economy, based upon acquisition.  In the former, value is perceived not in the goods themselves, but in the status and power groups might attain by sharing their wealth with others.  In potlatch economies, community wealth is shared by and between communities instead of through myriad individual trades.  According to former Lummi Nation Tribal Chairman Larry Kinley, “It was a system which tightly bound our peoples and ensured a stable social, political and cultural life..” one which “...fed, clothed, and housed its own people and…had no poverty”. Kinley describes how the Lummi’s collision with foreign economies displaced demand for traditional goods and services, reduced diversity in their economy and created dislocations that led to “nearly total disintegration of the Lummi economy”. 

Potlatch Economics, A Lummi Perspective

We, in contrast, send our labor and money upstream but it doesn’t spawn and nothing hatches. Not much floats downstream. We assume swimming will never occur without a big bingo at the headwaters, that the goal pertains to each fish, not the species or community. We rationalize squandering our resources. We poison the stream.  Only the strong survive.  The weak perish. The system lacks inherent stability.  We fail to feed, clothe, house and care. 

But are we so different? Now, like First Nations, we find our own disconnect between production and demand reducing diversity, creating unfavorable trade imbalances and economic dislocations.  Instead of salmon giving their all for the cause, we find ourselves surrounded by sharks, wondering at their insatiable, voracious appetites. Sharks that ignore the local economy, content to entertain their own marauding adventures upon the high seas. Though we may have struck upon a system that makes money work, we have failed to produce an abundance, but for the few.

I endorse restoring salmon runs to stimulate the economy.  It’s definitely shovel ready - and even fish packers need work.  It’s work that could teach us how to live in better harmony with our local environment. That’s valuable. It’s a lot more sensible than the speculative real estate boondoggle our elected officials are proposing to Obama for the central waterfront development site - or hundreds of other outdated infrastructure projects.  But if that style of local production has utility, shouldn’t we extend its advantage to diversify our productive interests? Perhaps the most valuable lesson is the shape of the model itself. Sound fishy?

What if we organized our economy after the fish?  What if our dollars, swimming up our streams actually spawned additional value for our community instead of for WalMart and the like? What if we focused our efforts on local abundance before global trade?  What if we made “stable social, political and cultural life” a priority?  What if finance focused on local enterprise, trusting that the community benefits not only from the smolts that succeed in finding the ocean, but also from efforts that fail and rot on the banks?

It’s not that it hasn’t been done. I’ve recently been using the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation as an illustration.  They successfully integrated finance with business, employment, education and social services.  Using this model, the Basque people transformed their region from one of Europe’s poorest to one of the most industrious. But models are time, place and culturally specific.  Perhaps dog salmon are a more fitting model for the Pacific Northwest, fishy as they smell. I don’t care.  Let’s try something.

Instead of doom and gloom, that failure of confidence without which any economy must fail, let’s cheer up and look toward the opportunities circumstances present.  So I don’t care if a fishpacker wants to ranch salmon.  Bully for him.  What else will it help?  I hope we can help builders use solar.  I hope we can support local growers provide fresh, organic greens to the public schools, organic beef, legumes and grains to local markets, paper and clothing, first to meet our local needs and then to “add value to the economy”.

Are the highest values purely economic?  It may be our success at building “stable social, political and cultural life” that counts in the end.  How can we work together, not selflessly but in the interests of the whole community to be productive and have fun?  Culture isn’t defined by a ticket for sale.  It’s how we find quality community cohesion in the things we do every day. How can we do it better?

Look to our recent past. The country was founded on the notion of independence. The communities of Blanchard, Bow, Edison and others were intentionally conceived as producer cooperative communities.  They were part of a wave of utopian idealism crushed as a few industrial markets systematically reorganized our economy to eliminate that indepencence. We lost street trolleys and had to buy cars.  We lost local farms only to support agribusiness and corporate grocers. Only the chicken and egg farms remain, but they too have been corporately transformed.

Look to our less recent past. People lived here in health and plenty, with art and culture, for thousands of years.  They, too, were steamrolled, almost wiped out by waves of hegemonous exploitation.

Look to our most recent past, in which years of hard work and prudent savings have left many facing homelessness while a few receive obscene bonuses.  In these modern times, worker pension agreements are on just as solid ground as our treaties with the tribes.  Are we so different, after all?

So I say let’s go for the salmon.  But let’s see if there are ways the wisdom of the salmon might enlighten our other economic endeavors. Are we so different from the tribes?  The Haida of Wall Street may have just plundered our stores.  We may never be able to absolutely prevent such pillage.  But do we as a community have adequate tools to recover, to survive and prosper?

Adam Smith described “enlightened self interest” as the engine of the “invisible hand” driving the economy.  Perhaps it is time to focus on the enlightenment ahead of self interest. Maybe salmon can lead the way.

Some readers may be confused by the teasing I’m taking from my friend Tip.  And I do appreciate his additions to this article, even though they are far lengthier than the article itself!

I am neither a fat cat or a salmon packer.  Though in the glory days of my youth, salmon packing was my passion as a young entrepreneur.  Other than some consulting work, it’s been more than a decade since I put a salmon in a can or a box.

This is not to say I’ve forgotten how important they were to me and all the people I once employed; fishermen I once worked with; and customers around the world who bought these fine fish.

If only I were still young enough to enjoy the potential of my proposal.  No, all kidding aside, this is not likely to benefit me. 

It is important that we remember what we’ve squandered in a short sighted exchange of our common wealth for personal gain.  It’s important to realize that we can undo our mistakes.

If we invest in nature, our waters and environment, the rewards can be enormous - in the long run.

Just in case any confusion remains, I was indeed teasing my esteemed colleague.  And my second comment, “far lengthier than the article itself”, was entirely intended to lend credence to the article’s proposal, both specifically and generally as a model.

For the record, though my comment focuses on the economy of community, I remain an ardent entrepreneur. I have no problem with individuals deriving personal benefit from doing the right things. I wish more would. What grates me is when individuals are punished for doing the right things while others benefit from doing the wrong things.

Within society, our success or failure depends on how well we follow “the rules”.  But as a society, or species, success relies on adherence to far greater laws. Finding ways to make sure our rules conform to these laws may be our greatest challenge.  Finding ways to accept those who take this challenge comes in a close second.

But, I mean, really, aren’t they red, not green?

Actually, dog salmon, in their terminal stage at spawning, aren’t red but go from “calico” to a light olive green.

And they don’t smell “fishy.”  That’s the smell of money!

And I would add Paul Krugman has several good articles on the critical characteristics of stimulus spending at the New York Times.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/ if you’re interested. His recent article “Ideas for Obama” is worth reading.

In particular he discounts the notion of “jump starting” and the significance of projects being “shovel ready.”

Given the magnitude of the morass, he seems to be arguing that stimulus not only needs to be large, but needs to be applied for a long time.

Which to my ears is recognition that these are systemic problems not susceptible to quick fixes.  We aren’t going back to the economy that has let us down.