The earth is shrinking.

From a device that fits neatly into a shirt pocket, you can see an image of your property (or any property on earth) from outer space in real time. Borders are meaningless, governments and institutions are vulnerable, and privacy is a fond memory in an age of instant and unlimited information.

The same program that brings my granddaughter in Texas to a notebook computer in my kitchen makes it possible to collaborate with someone on the other side of the globe face to face in real time.

It allows you to telecommute from your den to your office. It allows that someone on the other side of the world with whom you've been collaborating to telecommute to your office, too. If that person can do the same job that you can - and for less compensation - then management is left to determine what your relative proximity is worth.

This leveling of the the playing field across geographic borders is what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was referring to in 2005 when he wrote "The World is Flat."

We can bemoan the effects of globalization, but we cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Jobs, like water, will continue to flow downhill to the sea and to other shores, seeking the lowest level of compensation possible to produce an acceptable outcome.

The resulting suppression of wages has diminished the middle class, limited economic mobility and skewed the distribution of wealth - not just here, but in every developed nation. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius observed, " This new world may be flat, but it's also tilted - with the benefits flowing disproportionately toward the elites."

At Occupy Moore, Fenton Wilkinson pointed out the folly of expecting our institutions to be responsive to the problem. The social and financial institutions that appear broken to the vast majority of us are actually working quite well from the perspective of those whom those institutions are intended to serve.

Congress may appear dysfunctional to most of the electorate, but dysfunctional works just fine for entities with the resources to pay for the process. Gridlock is an effective deterrent to meaningful reform. Courts that do not distinguish between currency and humanity work marvelously for the perpetuation of the status quo, at least for the foreseeable future.

We tend to make political distinctions between those who see government as the problem and those who see government as a solution. More likely it is neither. Government is, whether deliberately or unwittingly, an accomplice to a system that works without regard for the best interests of the majority of those it governs.

Wilkinson suggests that the solution is to learn to work in our collective best interests without relying on institutions that are failing us.

If the globalization of Wall Street is a problem, then maybe the localization of Main Street is a solution. If carbon emissions and the capriciousness of oil prices threaten us, maybe locally available renewable energy sources can secure us. If mega-banks overwhelm us with stealth fees and random foreclosures, maybe banks more rooted in the community can serve us better.

A localized economy in a globalized world is not as fanciful as it sounds. Nearby, Chatham County even uses its own currency, the plenty (used there in a one-to-one ratio with the dollar) to encourage the use of local goods and services first. Lyle Estill, founder of Piedmont Biofuels, writes about the experience in his book "Small Is Possible."

It is well worth the drive to Pittsboro on a Sunday morning to have lunch prepared with locally grown food at the Chatham Market and then drive to Piedmont Biofuels for a tour of the facilities. They practice organic and hydroponic gardening in the compound as well as producing biodiesel fuels from a variety of organic waste and byproducts. Estill conducts a lot of the tours himself and he is gracious with his time and expertise.

The idea is to create local economies that are as self-sustaining as possible to insulate communities from institutions that do not serve local interests and from market forces that are beyond their control.

We are unlikely to wean ourselves completely from the world in that device in our shirt pocket, but we might just mitigate the effects of the new economic reality to the point where a system that regards us as almost irrelevant becomes almost irrelevant.

Kevin Smith lives in Aberdeen. Contact him at kevinasmith@gmx.com.