Economy Is Community

Sitting in a car in a big box shopping parking lagoon here some time ago, I am reminded that Elk Grove, particularly, doesn't have an economy of its own.

Aren't we suddenly becoming attune to our globalization experiment, now that the rest of the world is following us into economic free-fall? I should mention that the nations that are suffering the worst are also the same nations, like Merika, who built economies around finance, leisure, and information. Great Britain and Iceland come to mind -- but Elk Grove...it it 110% dependent on economic value developed outside the city's borders.

One point that I try to get across, rather poorly I might add, is that a local economy is the basis for a community. The two are practically the same. A community is not tangible, it isn't something you can buy, and it is something that Elk Grove absolutely can never, ever obtain.


If you head to Estes Park, Colorado, about a 20 mile drive from my dad's ranch, visitors to this mountain resort town presume that this place has a local economy of its own, that there's a web of practical interrelationships between citizens there, all of whom understand their mutual dependency and show it by caring for their city, their work, and each other. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's completely service based, code for restaurants and retail. Their economy is almost wholly based on resources that are not local. The retail clerks, waitresses and porters who perform the work cannot afford to live there and thus shuttle themselves from Loveland, from Lyons, or farther. The wealthy visitors who rent the hotels on weekends are seen plying around Wonder View (i.e., Main Street), the women shopping for remotely manufactured goods with their men in tow, carrying twine-handled bags with their wives's booty. Why do they come to Estes Park? Because they know that their own living arrangements are so fucked up that they have to escape them to find any sense, any illusion, of a real place. Estes Park is an illusion of what everyone wants their communities to look like. These visitors are likely to be southern Denver strip mall developers, people whose livelihood is based on building patterns resembling nothing like an Estes Park.

I compare Estes Park to Elk Grove because both aren't local communities, while the former thinks it is and the latter knows it isn't.

I mentioned here that there are no practical relationships between Elk Grovians. Neighbors don't depend on other neighbors because our economy is dependent on non-Elk Grovian resources. That's why they don't give a shit about Elk Grove, why it's destined to become a suburban slum...if they don't give a shit about it now, they will not give a shit about it 30 years from now.