"Small, Simple, & Local"

New Virtues: Small, Simple, & Local
(or, Bottom's Up)

Just as our political regeneration will happen locally, in counties and states that learn how to control themselves and demonstrate how to govern effectively in a time of limits, so will our economic regeneration. That will begin in someone's garage, somebody's kitchen . . . The comeback will be from the ground up and will start with innovation. No one trusts big anymore. In the future everything will be local. That's where the magic will be . . .

--Peggy Noonan, "Remembering the Dawn of the Age of Abundance"; The Wall Street Journal (2/20/09)

What is the antidote for too-big-to fail? Too complicated to understand? Too remote to be accountable?

Try, small, simple, and local.

Whoever thought that Peggy Noonan, the doyenne of the right, would sound like E.F. Schumacher ("Small is Beautiful")?

If Noonan's correct -- and I think she is -- you'd better like your neighbors and immediate community: you're going to be a lot more involved with (and dependent upon) them.