A New Direction for Economics ?

 

 In recent months the World has tottered on the brink of another debt crisis, our situation is similar to the high speed train collision with its inevitable mayhem. Conventional economic wisdom is incapable of plotting a course away from the disaster. Economic fundamentals need to change. 

 

Standing against the volume of rhetoric pouring from politicians and the media promoting growth, is the UK Government's Chief Scientific Adviser Prof John Beddington who has long since warned of the coming “perfect storm” of shortages bearing down upon the World. This particular disaster relates to those supply side problems catching up with us such as the flagging Agricultural output, shortage of potable water, energy scarcity, not to mention Rare Earth Metals as China stops her exports of these essentials ….. The clock counting humanity's number now tops Seven Billion spurring on the the dash to acquire resources. Conflict is near to hand. 

The media also shuns those voices who would propose solutions to our woes; Professor Tim Jackson, former UK Economic Sustainability Commissioner ( Publication: Profitability without Growth – Earthscan) and now founder of the New Economics Foundation calls for the rediscovery of the work of that great economist and thinker Dr E F Schumacher ….

• “Value and preserve the Natural Capital of the World”.

• “People themselves are the most important components of any economy ”.

These fundamental thoughts are central to any Economic creation that purports to replace the Status Quo.     

Humans have a capacity of spirit, to conduct themselves towards great good. Likewise their principle weakness may be described as a “persistent and troublesome Greedy Nature” the epitome of which was reflected in the Royal creations of the Joint Stock Companies of the late 16^th century merely updated over time and now grown up to be the organisations we all love to hate: The PLC.

Described by economist David Korton as “often Sociopathic”, the Global PLC is now the primary vehicle through which humanity demonstrates its unacceptable greed driven behaviour. Global financial systems are now all designed to feed these capital and profit seeking monsters. With my hat doffed sincerely to Chris Cook, Senior Research Fellow at UCL Institute for Security and Resilience Studies whose Open Capital concepts will drive the coming revolution.

 

Keith Community Partnership

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Our current economies are formed and driven by consumers seeking to extend their ownership of material goods, facilitated naturally, by the cash supplying Financial Systems who in turn funnel pension and savings towards aiding those trading and producing corporates.

To change the future economic shape of a country we must change:-

1. Consumer attitudes towards ownership – After all there is no need what so ever to own all the material goods we are surrounded by,  we must teach that value is in the use of an item or facility, and not in the right to destroy. The goal is to eliminate all waste,  Manufacturers themselves must recover the technical nutrients that only they know are used used within the product. 

2. Make available the new Partnership structures which work on shared value with the investor. These new structures operate without debt and so become freed from Capital's ironic need to diminish and devalue human activity.

Change is now urgently sought by a world stagnating and choking on debt, propped up by the credit cards of tax payers themselves!

 

It is our responsibility to encourage and direct people towards the concepts which will provide Business and Community leaders with the tools necessary to forge truly sustainable solutions for this new economy that needs to come into being.

 

• Natural Capitalism, where “service” to clients is accepted as the alternative to ownership in the drive to eliminate waste, loss and to preserve our environment from further damage.

• Where the use of “Open Capital” (defined as proportionate share in an enterprise for an indeterminate time) becomes the norm for property ownership, business and commercial ventures, and the Cooperative Corporate Community Partnership has potential to become a liberating vehicle modernising the delivery of what ever it takes for Humanity to thrive!