Real Economy Lab

Description

Jules Peck [1]:

"The Lab’s vision is of radical renewal, reform and revolutionary change to the dominant contemporary socio-economic system known as ‘capitalism’.

Such change is necessary to enable all of the communities on the planet to achieve high-levels of wellbeing, social justice and empowerment within the Earth’s ecological limits. This degree of systemic change will mean that current shibboleths such as growth will need to be questioned and perhaps replaced.

We believe such change to be desirable in itself for a better life for all. We also believe that such change is possible.

The mission of the Real Economy Lab:

The Lab’s mission is to help bring about this change.

Due to the systemic nature of the transformation required, it will involve change across institutions, norms and culture in all areas including economics, business, civil society, academia, politics and government/policy.

But the future is partly already here. We are also seeing more and more mainstream championing of co-operative and mutual forms of business and increasing examples of citizen co-op take-over of key sectors like energy. We are seeing the rise and rise of a digital-democracy powered, peer-to-peer, crowd and matrix of citizen ‘makers’ and doers. Cities and local communities are taking matters into their own hands, weary of waiting for political leadership.

Despite these fascinating seismic shifts in people powered politics and commerce, there is still little in the way of a concerted big conversation in society about updating our economics, nor our vision and narrative of progress.

We believe that if the right people can be brought together under the auspices of a collective enquiry, a consensus can be built towards a vision and narrative for a new way of living, working and a new movement for action for change. This is the aim of the Real Economy Lab."