Having a better understanding of externalities and having better relationships between producers and consumers of goods and services makes sense. And most of us can play both roles–producer and consumer.
When we do that we may have a keener sense of reciprocity and connection, and less of a sense of what Marx referred to as “alienation,” whereby we don’t get satisfaction from finding personal meaning in our work.
But one caution would be that our embrace of the local should not lead us to intellectual and social stagnation. Our approach to ‘re-localization’, as some of the peak oil or ‘transition movement’ folk refer to it, should be done in such a way that we don’t kill our cultural vibrancy by cutting ourselves off from mixing (our ideas as well as our genes) with people from all over the world.
Encouragingly, activists fighting against what we see as the abuses of global capitalism are not turning our backs on further developing global networks for building social movements.
Also we’re not turning our backs on ethnic, religious and other forms of tolerance which are based at least partly on a cosmopolitan appreciation of diversity.
Venting middle class or working class frustration without political consciousness can lead to xenophobia and other forms of intolerance, which ultimately are at odds with the egalitarianism which is the basis of many movements for reform or revolution.
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