This makes my heart flutter.  It is so necessary, so overdue, and so important to everyone's future.  If the old guard tries to touch the new economy let alone take it over, we'll have to put them to work in our organic farms.  Love this, Matt.   Let's make it so.

The argument should not about control, it should be about waste, i.e., whether or not we just replace the old waste with new waste, or, we go to what is actually needed: a huge reduction of waste. A case in point is the SUV. If a popular SUV was suddenly available that did not use carbon-based fuel - only renewal source fuel, the SUV would still be an incredible drag on the environment with its massive use of steel, rubber, plastic, and other materials that make it up and serve no purpose other than to haul around air 95% of the time.

American's orientation is for each individual person to use far more in natural resources than they ever need to be confortable. Waste has become endemic to the point that even conscientious people are mostly unaware of the waste they engage in in their daily lives. And there is certainly no public discussion or recognition of the waste mindset, let alone anyone working on soltions to the excessive waste.  

As long as a culture of waste is the predominent  view, there will never be a solution to America's gross abuse of the environment.
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This is very insightful, and should be required reading for all true progressives.

That's a very convincing portrayal of Friedman, too.

I'm very impressed.

Once you get past the global warming deniers, the agribusiness shills and the health care apologists, it becomes very clear that this country is ready for a new economy.  Sustainable agriculture, low energy density industries, green cities, an electranet, universal health care, a free culture - all of these are part of a shift away from an intense consumerism, which demands oil and therefore a vast and secretive national security apparatus.  

Matt, this is worth my $50 twice over. I literally could not have said it better myself. Wonderful distillation of the emerging future vision.

I agree.  This is a fantastic sketch on the vision front, Matt.  Thank you for pulling it together.

One thing that jumps out at me is how much the snowballing of this coalition will need to work in the arenas of popular culture, material culture (gak's point about waste is very well taken), and day-to-day life.  Many of the people we need to bring on board, even if they agree with most or all of the above, are only going to become active supporters of such a huge and necessary shift in assumptions if they are 'pulled in' by a sense of community, a sense that they and their skills are needed, and some kind of practical 'we are building this now and you can benefit now' energy that melts the cynicism and frantic inertia that tend to keep them locked into the old order.  And of course that kind of activity, networking into everything, begins to pull in lots of folks who would never take your manifesto above seriously.

For awhile the Dean campaign was hitting a chunk of this just right.  ["Hell yeah we're doing this.  We need somebody to network with group XYZ before next week's event.  Two or three people.  Who wants to tackle that?  Okay, now who knows or is interested in legal issues?  Web software?  Recycling?  Okay don't forget there's a new bat going up tonight.  Tell your friends to chip in a few bucks."]  The free culture/ open source approach can dramatically empower and energize.

What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now. - Pema Chodron

The cap and trade versus carbon tax is about whether Big Wind will replace Big Oil

Please excuse my ignorance, but could you flesh this out a bit more. I have no idea what you're talking about. I have a rough idea of what "cap and trade" means, but how does this lead to "Big Wind"?

Controlling the New Economy so that it bears the fruit that it should is easier said than done.

See Robert Kuttner's recent article Hedging Disaster to get an appreciation of how wealthy U.S. capital providers (individuals and institutions) have gotten a stranglehold over our economy.

For living proof of Kuttner's thesis, just look at the local economies of most of the counties in which we live. They are dominated by government agencies and large corporations like Wal-Mart and Target, the large food chains, fast food providers like McDonald's, etc. Nowadays most people work either for government or out-of-state big box retailers, where they also have shop to get the cheapest prices because their cost of living is outstripping their incomes.

Basically, we have an economy that is dominated by corporate predators who operate as oligopolies (e.g. the gas and oil industry) and impose unwarranted and unreasonable prices on their captive customers, or else destroy their local competitors by refusing to pay their employees living wages in order to be able to underprice and run their local competitors out of business.

These unfair business practices are destroying indigenous economies throughout the U.S. and the middle class along with them. Its members are being forced out of manufacturing jobs by outsourcing into low wage service jobs, while being prevented from starting successful local businesses of their own by lack of capital and the cut throat competition of out-of-state competitors who can underprice them.

One of the only workable options we have for turning this predatory economy around is to elect representatives who have concrete, workable plans for building a green economy around local and state based businesses that create and retain jobs and wealth. These plans have to defang the large corporations that dominate our economy by including policies that enforce laws prohibiting excess profits, union busting, and wages below the poverty line. Most importantly, they have to include the use of public resources to provide capital to start-up and emerging growth businesses. (See Progressive States Network for "how-to's" on jump-starting sustainable state and local businesses using indigenous resources and capital.)

With most of our candidates for office raising the lion's share of their campaign funds from the predatory corporations that have created the predatory economy that we are now forced to live under, we are unlikely to see such policies and platforms emerge any time soon. The only possible exception in the 2008 presidential race might be Edwards, whom we all hope will heed the advice and wisdom of his inner circle of advisors, including and especially one of his newest advisors, Joe Trippi, keeping in mind the title of Trippi's post-Dean campaign book: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrown of Everything. We really are going to need a revolution to overthrow the corporate predators who are running the show on both the economic and political fronts.

Shrinking union jobs? Matt I agree with much of what you say but we should be building more union jobs AND advocating for net neutrality. You shouldn't throw all union jobs overboard because they have been shrinking due to 30 years of republicanism.

The same could be said about you. You advocate net neutrality to save bloggers at the expense of everyone and everything else to save your job. I wouldn't say anything to that effect because it hurts the movement as a whole.

If you want to say that the cwa doesn't realize or fails to see the larger picture that's one thing but to say that union jobs are shrinking you make sound as if they are obsolete in the new economy. I hope this isn't what you are trying to say.

Had this same insight last night -- though I used very different language. Here's my version:

The species will survive a transition to different energy sources and a century or so of putrid waste and rising temperatures. There's money to be made in providing for our survival, as a species, so it will be done.

For any individual, on the other hand, survival will depend upon the ability to funnel profits to the rich. If we are useful in that effort, we make it. If not, screw us. The new boss is the old boss. Screw Africa. Etc.