Building a Whole Earth Economy Through Right Relationship

* Book: RIGHT RELATIONSHIP: Building a Whole Earth Economy. By Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008

URL = http://tinyurl.com/634ha3

Description

"Our current economic system—which assumes endless growth and limitless potential wealth—flies in the face of the fact that the earths resources are finite. The result is increasing destruction of the natural world and growing, sometimes lethal, tension between rich and poor, global north and south. Trying to fix problems piecemeal is not the solution. We need a comprehensive new vision of an economy that can serve people and all of lifes commonwealth.

Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver use the core Quaker principle of right relationship—interacting in a way that is respectful to all and that aids the common good—as the foundation for a new economic model. Right Relationship poses five basic questions: What is an economy for? How does it work? How big is too big? Whats fair? And how can it best be governed? Brown and Garver expose the antiquated, shortsighted, and downright dangerous assumptions that underlie our current answers to these questions, as well as the shortcomings of many current reform efforts. They propose new answers that combine an acute awareness of ecological limits with a fundamental focus on fairness and a concern with the spiritual, as well as material, well-being of the human race.

Excerpt: "Right relationship with life and the world is both a personal and a collective choice, but it is a choice that we must make. It can support and inspire people struggling to find a foundational base for the development of productive societies and a healthy human--earth relationship. Opting for healthy human and ecological communities is a decision we can make that will require us to find new ways to live and to run our economies. Of course, "right relationship" is simply another way of expressing similar precepts found in many of the world's religious and spiritual traditions. The reductionist science of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries transformed ethical ideas by removing, for many people, their theological foundations. Now, the relationship science of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries is beginning to change human perceptions of reality, particularly in terms of human duties to the other life forms with which we share life's prospect."

More Information

• short video intro via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjfx7diJ-ug