Even without a nudge, people can already choose to support local agriculture - one way is through a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program like DA BOX where you get a seasonal selection of local products each week. They work with the Hawaii Food Basket, can take SNAP (50% discount! - local farms are subsidized by the feds in several ways - those dollars do play a hard to escape role), and have many pick-up locations island wide. It's a fun, but not the cheapest, way to get a variety of produce to try out while supporting local farmers and building community resiliency.
In Puna, the informal economy is also quite active with a mix of plant & animal materials and labor, being exchanged for other plant & animal materials and labor. Which is great when it works, (backyard honey never spoils, is easily exchangeable, and can be eaten when needed - overall a better hedge than gold! ;) but it's hard to pay for parts, medical bills, and taxes with honey and papayas. At some point, these local goods and labor have to be exchanged for dollars in order to participate with the global economy, which for decades has predominantly been through exports and tourism. Hard to see how import tariffs and reciprocal tariffs on exports along with an economic down-turn help those arrangements.
Some of us in the degrowth circles (a subset of those "bed-wetting" over climate change), are watching with a grim fascination as this all plays out. Any system analysis makes clear that the primary difference between unwinding a social system, and crashing it, is the rate at which it occurs and the number of people harmed in the process.
But maybe we'll all get to move to the ferret diet of local coffee, chocolate, honey, and beef (there's plenty to go around right?) and if it doesn't have to be priced to compete, we won't have to happily live in a camper to do so ;) Maybe the smoke meat guys can do smoked pork bellies for bacon (serious question, do they already?)
And then some day the tourists will return to Hawaii now with flying cars to see how people live on the self-sufficient reservation without modern tech or soma to get by. That story has a happy ending right? Hopefully we'll get a chance to write a better one but the path ahead looks like a long-haul fight to get there.
In Puna, the informal economy is also quite active with a mix of plant & animal materials and labor, being exchanged for other plant & animal materials and labor. Which is great when it works, (backyard honey never spoils, is easily exchangeable, and can be eaten when needed - overall a better hedge than gold! ;) but it's hard to pay for parts, medical bills, and taxes with honey and papayas. At some point, these local goods and labor have to be exchanged for dollars in order to participate with the global economy, which for decades has predominantly been through exports and tourism. Hard to see how import tariffs and reciprocal tariffs on exports along with an economic down-turn help those arrangements.
Some of us in the degrowth circles (a subset of those "bed-wetting" over climate change), are watching with a grim fascination as this all plays out. Any system analysis makes clear that the primary difference between unwinding a social system, and crashing it, is the rate at which it occurs and the number of people harmed in the process.
But maybe we'll all get to move to the ferret diet of local coffee, chocolate, honey, and beef (there's plenty to go around right?) and if it doesn't have to be priced to compete, we won't have to happily live in a camper to do so ;) Maybe the smoke meat guys can do smoked pork bellies for bacon (serious question, do they already?)
And then some day the tourists will return to Hawaii now with flying cars to see how people live on the self-sufficient reservation without modern tech or soma to get by. That story has a happy ending right? Hopefully we'll get a chance to write a better one but the path ahead looks like a long-haul fight to get there.