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The Rules of the Game Need to Change
By Jim Cochren, ROC Stewardship Council
Nov. 2, 2008

During much of human history, you could ask the average person what the world would look like two years hence, and they would be able to give you a fairly accurate picture. They would be using the ‘rules’ that underlie their society at that time to predict ‘more of the same.’ Whatever group was ‘in power’ would likely still be ‘in power,’ whatever they would be eating probably wouldn’t change much---what was true yesterday would most likely be true tomorrow. In our era, the march of housing across farmland would proceed predictably, the proliferation of shopping malls filled with products from around the world would continue, people would have jobs doing more or less the same thing, and so forth. Sure, technologies would speed up the process from time to time, but the direction was predictable.

We embarked on our journey to create a sustainable food system in California during one of these periods of social stability. The immediate past was reliably the prologue to the near future. For many Californians, the system looked to be working just fine. It was a hard sell to convince people that they might have to give up some of the ‘benefits’ of the system (a big house, big car, a big Wal-Mart, and a Big Mac) in exchange for a more ‘sustainable’ society, whatever that was. Why talk about changing the rules when things were going so well?
Amongst ourselves, we saw flaws in the system: farmland disappearing, people left outside the ‘good life,’ communities disintegrating, etc. But it was hard to convince the average Californian that we should substantially change direction. People could say that simply tinkering around the edges would improve the outcome for more people. A few more food banks, a few more health clinics, a few zoning changes, and presto! The Good Life for (almost) all.

But this is one of those times in history when the past is not prologue. The rules are about to change. We don’t know what California will look like two years hence.

In a democracy, the people get to have a say in what the rules are. But most of the time, their voice is not very powerful: the rules of the game have already been set, and the outcome is resistant to change. The system (whatever it is) works reasonably well, so why do anything more than tinker with it a bit? In a previous era, all evidence pointed to the fact that the earth was flat, and as long as ship captains avoided the ‘edge’ (which they did), all would be well. Anyone who proposed otherwise would be in serious trouble with the Catholic Church.

Today’s version of the ‘conventional wisdom’ has been shown to have some serious flaws: the financial system has brought a crisis upon itself, and the effects are working their way down to Main Street. It has become clear that the rules of the game need to change.  We’re not sure exactly how, but we do know that the financial landscape is about to change dramatically.

The good news is that the ROC community has been thinking about this new vision of what California could look like for a few years now. We’ve been stretching our imaginations, talking to disparate groups that we don’t normally talk to, and generally trying to envision a new set of rules to play by.

Our timing appears to have been perfect: it is at times like this that our voices are most effective. The ‘old paradigm’ driven by Wall Street capital markets is on the ropes. Main Street has an‘opening’: local economies, local food systems, better communities, should now be sounding much more appealing to the average Californian. The discussions we’ve been having could soon be the basis of a new economic paradigm in California, where Wall Street serves Main Street, rather than the other way around. We will come up with economic solutions that work better for all of us, for the environment, and for our health and communities. It’s about time.

See:
‘A New Architecture for the California Food System’   March, 2004
‘Carbon on Credit: Global Warming and the Credit Derivatives Market’  May, 2007
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