MSJ Highlights: Quarter Two
Localization is a global phenomenon growing stronger every day. And it’s the foundation of everything we do here at The Main Street Journal. About one in ten of our readers is not American, and many of the stories we bring you offer new international examples of local investment models, cutting-edge business designs, and supportive policies. Enjoy these highlights from our last quarter of The Main Street Journal and MSJ Extra! issues.
Our MSJ Extra! interviews highlight prominent policymakers, book authors, and other rabble-rousers.
In April, The Main Street Journal focused on Ohio’s Opportunity Zones and their failing performance.
Our lead story summarizes a new report from Good Jobs First, evaluating the impact of 1,600 Opportunity Zone investments in Ohio totaling more than $1 billion.
The conclusion? The main beneficiaries are—surprise!—real estate developers. The investments largely focused on upscale urban and college communities, and wound up gentrifying them and making them less racially diverse. The authors ultimately recommend defunding the program.
We shared the awful news in May that Mainvest, one of the most community-friendly federally registered investment crowdfunding portals, was shutting down.
Sure, there are plenty of other portals operating, but nearly all of them have fledgling business models. Only a few portals are really succeeding. Three months ago, we noted with concern that of the 92 federally registered portals, the top two (Wefunder and StartEngine) accounted for 59% of last year’s business, and the top four accounted for 75%.
This kind of monopolization is bad news for all of us. Less competition means fewer choices, higher costs, and sluggish innovation.
June included recognizing World Localization Day, an annual event to energize our movement.
No one has done more to shine a spotlight on the global localization movement—and to energize it—than my dear friend, Helena Norberg-Hodge. Every year, on June 21, she organizes World Localization Day to remind us that even though we might feel like outliers in our own communities, there are hundreds of thousands of outliers around the planet who are localizing their economies in unique ways.
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