The people I want to talk to, if they’re listening, I want to talk to banks about looking at how do you do two-tiered loans, where you lend half the money to a business, and you help the business raise the other half of the money from their community in real time? How do you mitigate your risk, mitigate that sense that the community has, that you’re just extracting value from their town, and at the same time make money, being in the money business?
I think it’s these hybrid strategies that are going to be successful in the future.
Brendan: Do you think individual investors can do that?
Douglas: I do. I really do think individual investors can do that. It’s no different form of educating yourself about a local business or the likelihood of your friend to do well with his restaurant, as it is to see what some mining company is doing 5000 miles away.
Brendan: The book talks about how we’re too focused, right now, what’s happening in the present, but you also say there’s a way to reclaim what you call that home field advantage. How do you do that?
Douglas: I don’t think people are focused on the now. I think they’re focused on the fake now. The now in the phone — that smartphone “now” — isn’t really what’s happening now. It might be sort of now, but it’s somewhere far away. What’s happening now is what’s happening between you and other people.
I think the home field advantage for humans is the local reality; this return to local, whether it’s community supported agriculture and local sourcing and local employment, isn’t just a style. It’s not just some northeast cultural creative, San Francisco, Birkenstock trend.
There’s a deeper social need being filled here, and part of that is the sense that we can’t depend on banks to lend money to factories and corporations to hire people to give you a job. This long supply chain of employment is not stable, and it doesn’t create security.
But people in communities are beginning to recognize that there’s a whole lot of economics that they can do with one another, and maintain what I’m calling the home field advantage of a local economy.
It’s what Adam Smith was really talking about when he believed that local economies would always have the advantage over long-distance economies. He didn’t really envision us going where we’ve gone. I think that we’re finally at that place where we can begin to exploit that.
As people look around, what can we source locally? What can we do locally? How can we make that more efficient?
Brendan: Douglas Rushkoff, author of the fascinating book, Present Shock. Thank you for your time.
Douglas: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
The article An Interview with Douglas Rushkoff originally appeared on Fool.com.
Brendan Byrnes owns shares of Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, and General Motors (NYSE:GM). The Motley Fool recommends 3D Systems, Amazon.com, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, eBay, Facebook, General Motors, Google, McDonald’s, Stratasys, and Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS). The Motley Fool owns shares of 3D Systems, Amazon.com, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, eBay, Facebook, General Electric (NYSE:GE) Company, Google, McDonald’s, Stratasys, and Walt Disney and has the following options: Short Jan 2014 $36 Calls on 3D Systems and Short Jan 2014 $20 Puts on 3D Systems.
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