Democracy Talk 

If there were ever a poster child for humanized economic life, it is platinum blond, gentle-featured Judy Wicks. Only she's not a child. Philadelphia restaurateur extraordinaire, Judy, fifty-seven, has an exuberance for living that seems reserved for those who've discovered meaning and beauty by going after what they love-in Judy's case, attending to the real human beings and other creatures affected by her business choices.

Judy's White Dog Café is a downtown hive of activity, relying on renewable wind-powered elegance and local suppliers and linked to a range of community betterment initiatives. It's a homey eatery and a welcoming community learning center, all at the same time.

"When I eat the food from my restaurant," Judy told me, "I think of the farmers out in the fields of Pennsylvania picking the fresh, organic produce they will bring into town that day. I think of the goat herder, Dougie, who says the cheese is better when she kisses her goats' ears! When I drink my morning cup of coffee, I think about the Indians in Chiapas, Mexico, who grew the beans. Business is about relationships. Money is simply a tool."

Judy works to bring forth what she calls local, living economies, believing that a democratic economic life is not only possible but essential to fulfilling deep human needs. Economics, � la Judy, isn't about, or at least isn't only about, distant, anonymous links in supply chains. It is about real human connection.

And Judy's not alone. The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies that Judy cofounded has hundreds of member businesses in nineteen chapters nationwide-from Seattle to Salt Lake City-working to build viable face-to-face economies from the bottom up. I'll discuss its Local First campaigns in a moment.

But "Judy economics," as a friend of hers recently dubbed Judy's vision, doesn't neatly fit our dominant mental categories. In Judy's living economies, whether as shopper, business owner, investor, or worker, we pay attention. And from that attention, we "attend to" the impact of our choices on the community and the earth itself, whether it be the chemicals we use to manufacture a product, the detergent we buy to wash dirt from our clothes, the fund to which we entrust our retirement savings, or the wages we pay an employee.

And the cool thing is, we enjoy it. As we pay attention, our lives grow ever richer in meaning, and all our senses thank us.

That's what Judy Wicks's life seems to be saying.

How different this is from the dominant mental map! Society bombards us with cues that the only thing we should really pay attention to is financial gain.

This narrow focus on self is supposed to make us happy, when actually, research here and abroad tells us it's just not true: those who "strongly value the pursuit of wealth and possessions report lower psychological well-being" than those less preoccupied. The more materialistic among us also report experiencing more depression and ill health.

Economics as Relationships

But what do we mean by economics in the first place?

It's easy to think economics is about things-something I own, something a corporation sells. But I've gradually come to see what Judy is telling us: that economics is not about things, really. It is about relationships. Money or a corporation is a way of organizing our relationships with each other and only secondarily about things. Even something like the home we own is both a thing and also a set of relationships with everyone from our lender to our neighbor to our town's property tax collector to our heirs.

And those relationships of economic life we take for granted today in America-where just five corporations, for example, control over four out of ten of all grocery purchases and corporate branding covers everything from stadiums to socks-are brand new. They have appeared in a blink of historical time. The question is not whether they will change but how they will change.

These reframing thoughts add up to power: Power for us. For if economic life is truly a web of human relationships ever evolving in response to our choices, then we are creators. Each of us participates in-or might someday participate in-at least six economic relationships. Some we experience every day.

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