Designing Rules as if Community Matters

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) proposes a set of new rules that builds community by supporting humanly scaled politics and economics. The rules call for:

  • Decisions made by those impacted
  • Communities accepting responsibility for the welfare of their members and the next generation
  • Households and communities possessing or owning sufficient productive capacity to generate real wealth
NewRules.org discusses the importance of rules and catalogs the best.  We make the rules and the rules make us. More
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Borders Books is on "death watch," according to one industry observer.  Virgin shut down its last U.S. record store this month. Office Depot and Staples are struggling.  Circuit City is gone.  Best Buy has launched a desperate ad campaign.

While the decline of independent businesses has leveled off, the rest of the retail sector is undergoing dramatic consolidation as a small number of massive companies become ever more dominant. This is an ominous trend for manufacturers and consumers, and it exposes serious flaws in U.S. antitrust policy.  More
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Community Choice Aggregation lets cities and counties select their own electricity provider, prioritize renewable energy and encourage conservation, without having to own the utility or the power lines. It has expanded in California, and this paper provides an update on this innovative policy. For years, the U.S. has been served by four forms of electric utility: investor-owned, cooperative, municipal, and federal (e.g. Tennessee Valley Authority).  This list is changing. More

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ILSR, a member of the Rural Internet and Broadband Policy Group, submitted comments to the Federal Communications Commission  on the matter of a national broadband policy.  Our comments highlight the importance of long term investments that will prioritize local ownership and control as well as open access networks.  The absentee-ownership model has proved detrimental to many rural communities. More

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ILSR announces a new site focusing on publicly owned broadband networks and the benefits they offer to the community.  MuniNetworks.org explains the many advantages of community ownership and documents the impressive speeds available from some of the top-performing networks.  Community broadband networks offer some of the fastest speeds at the most affordable prices in the United States. More
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A coalition of environmental and community groups are celebrating a recent San Bernardino County Superior Court judge's decision that invalidates Wal-Mart's environmental impact report (EIR), preventing a supercenter from locating in their community.

Judge Barry Plotkin spurned the faulty EIR, stating that the retail giant did not take adequate measures to mitigate its contribution to climate change and used a faulty market analysis when claiming the new store would have no negative impact on existing businesses. More