Slow money investing
How do you describe — especially to a skeptic — the intangible returns of investing this way? A lot of different ways. This book is not really for them. And whose money, coming back to your earlier question, is sitting in investments that are antithetical to those values just so they have money to live on when they retire.
That is a profound case of cognitive dissonance. If you believe in something other than globalization and derivatives and inequality of wealth and the destruction of rural communities, and of course you are concerned about climate change and all the environmental damage that comes in the wake of economic growth, then there is a strong impulse to find an alternative.
If it makes sense to you, then come join us and do it. Then you write that although having the discussion is worthwhile, you and this man were pretty much talking past each other. What it brings up, though, is the macro idea that also gets right into the soil and our cells, that human life is all about increase.
We have the greatest difficulty liberating ourselves from the idea of increase, biologically and economically. But like E. Economists believe that you can keep having economic growth just off innovation. Do you agree that the operating fantasy is that innovation will produce forms of growth without consequence in the physical world, nearly frictionless?
Is that why they love their derivatives market, because it just makes money off of nothing? Of course. I want to circle back to E. His second tenet is that increased consumption is not synonymous with improved well-being. That brings the big macro idea down to the personal. When I talk to groups of people, I say the first one and ask how many people in the room disagree.
I always try to empower people to disagree. Some people raise their hands, but most people believe small is beautiful. The limits to growth is a big, complicated topic, and we can disagree on that. It is difficult to wrap your heads around in a finite way — when are we going to run out of this? Which system is going to break down first? The second one, that increased consumption is not synonymous with increased well-being, that is a personal thing that you know in your experience is true.
These are huge topics, how would you bring them down to earth? Inequality of wealth is one of those problems. Carbon in the atmosphere is another one of those problems. The destruction of rural economies is one of those problems. So when we say we must bring some of our money back down to earth, I say that is a very simple, commonsense, radical idea in the sense of being a radically obvious way of pulling some of our energy out of that system and putting it to work near where we live.
Does a certain moment from all the talking with people stand out? Does this sound like the recipe for a healthy future? Everybody said no. Also, it reflects our love of eating. We all love to eat. People, if they are lucky, eat three times a day. Let me state it in activist terms. If you are taking communion three times a day at the altar of industrial food, meaning you are putting into your body highly processed, chemical-laden food of questionable nutritional density, you are going to have one relationship to food.
If you put in your body food that is grown down the street by a farmer you know in a completely different way — organic, biodiverse, keeping water in the soil, all these different things — you are going to have a different relationship to food. So, at the end of this you get food. There is a psychological barrier to doing something that actually makes you feel better. One of the Slow Money Principles, after all, refers to making a living rather than making a killing.
Get more information about Slow Money. Built and managed by the team at Acres U. We will contact you if we have any questions. We will also forward your information to potential lenders, and let you know when we do. Interested lenders are matched directly with individual borrowers. Together the lender and borrower agree on the terms of the loan.
They sign a Promissory Note detailing their agreement — the amount of the loan, the length of the payback period, and the interest rate, amortized over the agreed period of the loan. A copy of the note is given to the lender, another to the borrower, and the third is filed with Slow Money NC.
Please support your local food enterprises, and certainly the ones that receive Slow Money financing. Money grows in circles, and we can all be part of promoting an ethical, sustainable local economy by spending our dollars locally and work to promote an economy that is restorative, rather than extractive, or exploitative to our communities and our planet. Reconnect with a portion of the money that you entrusted to strangers in faraway places and, instead, help build a more local, durable economy from the soil up!
When you make a loan to a farmer or other local food enterprises so they can expand and flourish, you can truly enjoy the fruits of their labor. Add your name to our email list to receive notices of Slow Money gatherings, events, and other news. And please join us at our events and programs. We would be thrilled if you made a donation of any size to Slow Money NC to help us keep catalyzing these loans!
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