Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Guilds offer a dynamic, flexible model for relocalizing and reinvigorating local economies.
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charles hugh smith |
The solutions, therefore, cannot come from State central-planning or from global corporate cartels. The solution is to develop alternative models that reinvigorate the local, community-based economy and that leverage the new tools of productivity: the Internet, freely available software tools and new technologies such as desktop fabrication.
Though guilds have been around since ancient times, the Western model developed in the 1200s. The guild model is broadly based on mutual benefit and the conservation and sharing of applied knowledge. According to the Wikipedia entry:
An important result of the guild framework was the emergence of universities at Bologna, Paris, and Oxford around the year 1200; they originated as guilds of students as at Bologna, or of masters as at Paris.
While the Medieval guilds had an income-protection purpose much like a trade union or a cartel, modern incarnations of the model are aimed at serving both members of the guild and customers by establishing trusted information about local small-businesses.
To get a better understanding of the emerging guild movement in the U.S., I interviewed Mike Hartrich, guildmeister of the Santa Cruz Construction Guild(SCCG) in Santa Cruz, California.
1. What inspired you to start the Guild?
"I have always worked by word-of-mouth and never needed advertisement. The 'Great Recession' affected me personally in 2009 when the calls stopped coming in. That was a shock. I had been learning about online marketing so I looked into what was available for contractors to market their services online. I looked at Angie's List, ServiceMagic, Diamond Certified and others. These are all large national companies that use the power of computers to provide online referral services nationwide. Some do this better than others.
The bottom line is that while these companies focus on local business they themselves are not local. Construction is really a local business. You build up your business one job at a time through a growing referral network. Word-of-mouth is the essence of that.Also, these companies are impersonal, not personal. They are not made up of people who connected through being part of the same community. They are strictly a business, and only secondarily concerned about the local area.
I decided to set up a local online referral site that would use the Internet to draw attention to the members. At the same time the focus would remain strictly local. That's how this adventure started. Little did I know what I got myself into. I had help from a webmaster and selected Wordpress as the platform so I could make changes myself. There was a lot to learn.
The basic principle is a LOCAL online hub for quality builders and constructions pros who are invited by REFERRAL.More>> oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: A Non-Corporate Model for the Localized Economy: Guilds
