Monday, March 14, 2011

How does our economy compare to this chart?

Local Living Economy                                      Global Imperial Economy

- secure fulfilling livelihoods for all and increase the generative power of the whole
- make money for owners to increase their power and their claims to the resources of the many
- create beneficial local options, take only what you need, and accept responsibility for the whole
- create global monopolies to eliminate local choice, take all you can get and pass costs to others
- rules favour participating owners, human-scale enterprises, wealth creators, rights of people, and self-organization by people and communities
- rules favour absentee owners, monopoly-scale enterprises, financial speculators, rights of property and central planning by global corporations
- recognize the need of all living entities to protect and balance individual and community interests, proponents support both firms and communities in establishing managed protective borders that support fair, balanced and mutually beneficial exchange
- deny any responsibility for public interests, proponents seek to secure impermeable boundaries around the exclusive private interests of corporations and their wealthiest owners while demanding that the communities eliminate any borders protective of public interests


A different world is possible.

Study of life reveals it “to be fundamentally co-operative, locally rooted, self organizing enterprise in which each individual organism is continuously balancing individual and group interests.”

Nature and life provide a template for economic activity. Livingeconomies.org

The Earth Charter sets out basic principles
1. respect and care for the community of life
2. ecological integrity
3. social and economic justice
4. democracy, non-violence and peace

Corporate led economic globalizations posits that human progress is best advanced by deregulating markets and eliminating economic borders to let unrestrained market forces determine economic priorities allocate resources, and drive economic growth. It sounds like decentralization but the reality is quite different. A market without rules and borders increases the freedom of the biggest and most economically to become even bigger and more powerful at the expense of the freedom and right to self-determination people and communities. Corporations and financial markets make decisions and reap the profits. Communities are left to deal with mounting human and environmental costs. P. 124, 127.

- democratic, market-based economic system on local ownership and control
- community-led local living economies

Love of life/ love of money

p. 342 Summarized and quoted from David Korten, The Great Turning, from empire to earth community

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