Changing the economic paradigm through developing community enterprises in rural areas

Community enterprises could empower communities through encouraging the re-acquiring of traditional cottage industry skills that create products of exceptional quality, just like the artisans and guilds did in the 18th and 19th centuries. These products can be distributed through new personalized supply chains around the world utilizing the internet and ability to travel across the globe very easily with the air transport boom. This community enterprise initiative can connect urban communities with the most remote rural communities across the world and bring a new face to consumerism. 

So imagine a world where products can once again be individually produced by proud craftsmen which have an intrinsic quality that industrially manufactured products cannot provide. This intrinsic quality coupled with the knowledge that it sustains a remote community carries with it a sense of humanistic spiritualism. Thus through this compassionate consumption, any and every individual can make a difference and change the nature of modern economy, which has brought so many such heartache over the last few decades through downturn, manipulation, and fluctuation.

Through compassionate consumption, we can keep in check the ever more concentrated economy, and put in place an alternative people based system based upon community rather than multinational. Entities can become truly economically independent and evolve through interdependence based on people based rather than corporation based supply/value chains. Communities can then trade with each other on their own terms rather than those imposed by traditional market based economic paradigms.

We can have a society where people can use the finest traditionally made soaps and cosmetics, handmade bags and home-ware, where we appreciate the beauty of indigenous art, while domiciled in the centre of New York, Oslo, London, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, or Sydney. Anybody through their purchase can vote for maintaining cultural integrity of far away communities, and help to sustain them.

Trading enterprises can develop to assist these products reach urban communities through alternative supply/value chains to the "Wal-Marts" of this world. If a small percentage of consumer spending can be diverted to products produced by rural communities, sustainability can be supported in many eco-systems and hinterlands around the world. 

So opportunity exists for people of the world to create an alternative economy , where the benefits go back to community based enterprises based upon traditional skills and appropriate technology  rather than corporations. Achieve this and the world economy may expand beyond a one-dimensional  system, which has failed to date to solve our economic problems.

This invisible hand has been devious and dealt the world a bad hand. It is time to make the invisible hand visible and seek a more sustainable world. Production, technology, supply chains, and the way we consume are important components of sustainability.

It is time to adopt alternative economic visions. Governments and consumer movements have to date been unable to do this, and this initiative can only be achieved through people genuinely working together.  It's time for new economic thinking which must start at the micro level, being building community based enterprises, that base their activities upon cultural pursuits where goods are transferred to other community connected enterprises that are empowered to make a difference. This is the brave new world that could be, as an alternative to a world controlled by multinational corporations, which are bigger than many governments.

Community enterprises in rural areas will bring a revival in the use of simple artisan based appropriate technologies which bring meaning to producers and value to consumers. It will allow people to exercise some sense of spiritualism towards humanity in knowing that their purchase sustains others with low access to economic opportunities than themselves. Moreover, community enterprises will provide an alternative, be it small, to the dangerous trend of massive multinationals that control the supply chains that urban communities rely upon for survival.

There are numerous barriers to this concept, mindset and acceptance of the status quo being very powerful forces. The current economic paradigm is supported by government regulation all around the world which states what enterprises must do to start-up and comply with economic rationality prevailing around the world today. These very regulations for example that have stifled many small businesses in the food and beverage sector within the EU, allowing multinational chains which have the financial resources to comply to regulation like, MacDonald's, KFC, Dominos, and Burger King, etc., dominate many markets at the expense of family businesses.

It is well time to take a relook at the current economic models that dominate our lives and question it's sanity and long term consequences to our social existence.