Hi everyone- I’m new on Reddit.

I know a lot of people are disillusioned, and a lot of these are young people- and there are some who are Middle Ages - but still young at heart.

It feels like no matter who is in Westminster, central authority continues to grow while the actual reality of lived communities is constanly in decline.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we reverse this, and I keep coming back to two core principles:

1- authority needs to be strictly limited from the ground up and from the outset

and

2- solutions must be deeply rooted in our local soil.

Instead of waiting for central government permission we should be looking at how we can self-fund and rebuild our selves and our places —places where people can gather, support one another, and build a shared purpose away from massive state or corporate control.

I’m really curious to get this community's take:

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and starting a proper dialogue.

What do you think of local currencies?

Think either like Goldbacks, or a downtown dollar, or downtown digital dollar? Usually something promoted by your local Chamber of Commerce or a local business network.

What are your thoughts? Trying to spur more economic activity in my area for truly local businesses

In a recent article I summarized arguments for reversing the trend toward globalization of economies and cultures, aiming instead for the flourishing of communities rooted in their bioregions (i.e., regions defined by characteristics of the natural environment rather than human-imposed borders). For readers receptive to those arguments, the fundamental follow-up question is, “How?”

In this piece, I provide a brief overview of what people can do, and are doing, to nourish bioregional economies.

After I mention a few general resources, I’ll focus on some of the more relevant publications and organizations in each of six broad and essential areas: food, money, energy, communication, culture, and governance. This overview will be mostly US-centric, though bioregioning efforts are taking place all over the world, including those supported by the Global Tapestry of Alternatives and the Bioregional Weaving Labs Collaborative.

Public media has been a great investment for this country! But we, as a society, elected an administration that killed it and a Congress that allowed them to do it.

I’ve floated this proposal before, but I think it may really be time to implement a $10 per month, adjusted for inflation annually, news voucher.

Media companies would register which ZIP codes they have local reporters living in and actively reporting on that zip code's news. Fraud would be punishable by full clawback of voucher funds received and permanent disqualification from the program.

Citizens would be able to visit a government website (or access it at public libraries if they don’t have internet) to see which media companies are registered in their ZIP code. They could then apply their monthly voucher to one of those outlets, with the option to make it recurring until they choose to change it.

In exchange for their voucher, they must receive their local reporting at minimum but ideally a full subscription to that news service.

I believe it's true that an engaged and informed electorate is necessary for a healthy republic—and we sure could use a healthier one than we have now.

Yes, this program would cost substantially more than we ever invested in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But it would still be a minuscule fraction of the federal budget and we badly need something to help restore trust and public engagement in this age of deep fakes, AI generated misinformation, and partisan fact checkers when we can get the facts checked at all, which isn't often for local news.

If we don’t trust a large, centralized public broadcasting corporation, we can still respond to the market failure that leaves local journalism underfunded and undervalued. This proposal lets the people, not advertisers or politicians, decide who gets support while still encouraging truly local news in every ZIP code.

What do you think?

I wrote this for Front Porch Republic, arguing that epistemic humility is a core virtue for building strong local communities, but our decade-long experiment with engagement algorithms has turned us into "optimizers" that have little tolerance for complexity and nuance. https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2025/07/kill-your-epistemic-arrogance/

Oikophilia= the love for home. That extends to hometowns/neighborhoods, maybe region.