Hi Jill. Thanks for your thoughts. You raise an important question. To paraphrase a bit, can societal transformation occur in smaller, more manageable steps? If there is transformation, my guess is that it would occur due to many people trying different approaches. A local currency is one example of a smaller step that is being tried in numerous locations. While I see that work, and others like it, as important, I also believe it would be useful if some groups approached the goal from a big-picture, systems perspective. The advantage of the latter is that the path to the larger goal is made explicit, and each small step within the project is a step directly related to and consistent with the larger goal.
Also, while it might seem that the R&D project I propose is quite large, from another perspective it is moderate to small. Many other tasks that the scientific, technological, and other communities have undertaken are much larger and more complex. Funding requirements would not be so different from what is spent on modern tech startups. So, ‘small’ and ‘large’ depend on viewing perspective.
A disadvantage of ‘small’ steps that address only a limited arena or a limited portion of the problem is that a project, for example, a business coop, must compete and operate within the larger political and economic systems. A new coop might have a greater chance of success if other portions of the political/economic system were changed to be more supportive. In this sense, ‘small’ changes can be more difficult that ‘large’ ones. You might think of my R&D proposal as a community-level coop, vs a business-level coop. Further, each community-level coop acts within a network of other community-level coops, vs a network of other coop businesses. The point here is that the more broad and deep our level of cooperation, the more effective and empowered we are.
