Path To Living Economies

* Report: The Path to Living Economies. A Collaborative Working Document. By Larry Brilliant, Edgar Cahn, et al. Social Ventures Network, 2010

URL = pdf

List of collaborators: Larry Brilliant, Edgar Cahn, Duane Elgin, Hazel Henderson, David Korten, Bernard Lietaer, Amory Lovins, Russell Means, Richard Perl, John Robbins, Elisabet Sahtouris, Michael Shuman and Judy Wicks

Description

From the introduction, by David Korten et al. :

"In "living economies," goods and services will continue to be produced, distributed and utilized worldwide, but that which is produced--and how it is produced--must fit into more cooperative systems that emulate nature's cycles in which everything that is eliminated finds a new use, and every form and creature has its place. We believe the time has arrived where this evolutionary step is not only necessary but possible. As leading thinkers, doers and entrepreneurs, the moment has arrived for us to innovate new forms of cooperation that are themselves the seeds of more sustainable and just life-affirming systems. Significantly, we know that in nature, individuation and competition, within and between species, are important driving forces for progress toward mature cooperation. Thus, we do not seek to end all competition, but rather to foster a dynamic balance between competition and cooperation within a higher order framework that is fundamentally cooperative. As we present below, inspiring examples in evolution and in nature today abound. They serve not only as relevant precedents for the shifts the human species--beginning with the individual and local community-must make, but as models for the forms in which the new human alignments can and must occur. Indeed, in our current, unbalanced and largely uncooperative systems, we waste not only physical resources, but human lives, including the compromised spirits of those at every rung of the current economic ladder. The upside, then, is not just survival, but opportunities for fulfillment only attainable when the Earth's body, and polity, are in good health."

(https://davidkorten.org/wp-content/uploads/Richard_Perl_liv_econ.pdf)

Summary

From the reading notes of Michel Bauwens:

This is a collective text, convened by the Baille organization with David Korten, on the survival and future of the economy:

- Each great crisis in earth's history has been answered by a shift to a higher level of cooperation

- We must be ready, for a shift towards 'living economies', i.e. a socio-economic system that is 1) sustainable ; 2) equitable; and 3) cooperative

- This should be achieved by the socially responsible business community, and its natural allies in the nonprofit sector, and the vast sympathetic public

- We need to foster a dynamic balance between competition and cooperation, within a higher framework that is fundamentally cooperative.

We need to evolve from an Era of Empire to an Era of Community, which is characterized by:

- 1) Life as the defining cultural value

- 2) Cooperation and partnerships are society's organizing principle

- 3) networking is the predominant organizational form

It consists of living enterprises which are centered around:

- fair profit (<> profit maximizing)

- place-based, human scale

- stakeholder owned, democratically accountable and life serving

We need to stimulate communities of people engaged in the business of creating livelihoods. Industrial processes need to be redesigned on a biological line, in closed cycles with zero waste.

Counting what counts: we need to transfer taxes from income to the use of natural resources.

Despite the growing numbers of 'cultural creatives', 90% of their exchanges are still done within the unsustainable economy. Changing this will also require a new monetary system for 'sustainable abundance'.

Current currencies ahve four characteristics:

- 1) they are attached to a nation-state

- 2) it is 'fiat' money, created out of nothing

- 3) through bank debt

- 4) against the payment of interest

Interest encourages direct competition, fuels the need for endless growth, and concentrates wealth. There is an in-built transfer from the poor to the rich, in the design, independent of the intentions of the participants.

A redesign would keep the cost of capital and interest low; it's circulation aspects would be promoted against its 'store of value' aspect. And they should be convertible against each other, but not with fiat money (= the mistake of the Swiss WIR system).

The new systems like the Time Dollars are not only good for stimulating exchange, but create cooperative and localized relationships. The market has to be impacted from within.

A possibility would be the use of cash cards for 'mixed payments', which would include a portion of complementary currency.

- "If conventional economic efficiency analysis were corrected by full-cost prices and thermo-dynamic efficiency, local production and exchange would be most efficient." (Hazel Henderson)

Self-reliant communities do not equate to isolationism! If committed consumers would align with committed producers, the (marketing) cost of products would go down, and producers, such as farmers, would get more.

Excerpts

A mature species cooperates

"The concept of respecting the "commons" that is shared with other people and life forms is appropriate to a species reaching its mature stage; monopolization of resources reflects a more early stage of development. Elisabet Sahtouris, in EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution, writes, "Nature's evolutionary process, endlessly repeated from the most ancient times till now at all levels from microbial to ecosystemic, passes through aggressive competitive phases on the way to maturity (typified as the species of Type I ecosystems) on the way to maturity (as in Type III ecosystems). Only at maturity are individual, communal and ecosystemic interests met simultaneously and reasonably harmoniously." SVN member Terry Mollner writes of the process by which humanity will "move successfully from capitalism to the next step of maturity" and postulates that there are several "stages of maturity" through which individuals and civilizations must pass."

Holistic globalism

"Hazel identifies seven levels of the global economy, each of which need restructuring to reflect the dimensions of human economic activity, including: The Global System, The International System, The Nation-State, The Corporate System, The Provincial and Local Systems, The Civil Society and The Family-Individual.

The essential re-alignment can and must take place on every level. Indeed, while acknowledging life threatening trends resulting from human activities on all levels continues, seemingly unabated, Hazel identifies progress being made by committed individuals, domestic and transitional civic organizations and governments to bring about an alignment on each level, toward a newly balanced holarchy or Living Economy. We do not see globalization itself as the issue, but rather the limited values by which globalization has been and continues to be implemented across the planet. The principles for a holistic and valuesbased globalism have been developed, see the Earth Charter, (www.earthcharter.org); the issue remains the processes to achieve a new globalism in light of the unacceptable and unsustainable globalization which now dominates the world. David discusses this very point in a recent keynote address at the U.S. launch of the Earth Charter; see <http://www.pcdf.org/2001/EarthCharter.htm>."