Change Everything: Creating an Economy for the Common Good - Hardcover

Felber, Christian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1783604735 ISBN 13: 9781783604739

Verlag: Zed Books, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

A coherent and inspiring blueprint for transforming our present, failed, economic system.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christian Felber is an Austrian alternative economist and university lecturer. He is an internationally renowned speaker, author of several award-winning bestsellers and a regular commentator on ethics, business and economics in various media. He co-founded the NGO Attac Austria and initiated the Economy for the Common Good as well as the planned Bank for the Common Good, which will be Austria's first ethical finance institute.

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Change Everything

Creating an Economy for the Common Good

By Christian Felber, Susan Nurmi

Zed Books Ltd

Copyright © 2012 Deuticke im Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Wien
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78360-473-9

Contents

Acknowledgements, 
Foreword by Eric Maskin, 
Preface, 
1 A broken system, 
2 Defining the economy for the common good, 
3 The democratic bank, 
4 Property, 
5 Motivation and meaning, 
6 Advancing democracy, 
7 Real world examples, 
8 Putting it into practice, 
Appendix 1 Frequently asked questions, 
Appendix 2 Facts, figures and a twenty-point summary, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

A BROKEN SYSTEM

Cooperating, helping others and ensuring that justice prevails is a basic, biologically rooted human motivation which is found all over the globe. This pattern manifests itself beyond all cultural boundaries.

Joachim Bauer

HUMAN VALUES – VALUES OF THE ECONOMY

It's peculiar: although values are meant to offer basic orientation, serving as the "guiding lights" of our lives, the values which hold for the economy today are completely different from those which apply to our daily interpersonal relationships. In regard to our friendships and everyday relationships, we thrive when we live in accordance with human values: the building of trust, honesty, esteem, respect, empathy, cooperation, mutual help and sharing. The "free" market economy is based on the rules of the systematic pursuit of profit and competition. These pursuits promote egoism, greed, avarice, envy, ruthlessness and irresponsibility. This contradiction is not merely a blemish in a complex or multivalent world; rather, it is a cultural catastrophe; it divides us inwardly – as individuals and as a society.

VALUES ARE GUIDING LIGHTS

The contradiction is fatal because values are the foundation of communal life. We set life goals and orient our actions according to them, investing them with meaning. In Spanish the word "sentido" denotes meaning as well as direction. Values are like a guiding light which gives the road of life direction. But if our guiding light for daily life points in an ethical direction – towards building of trust, cooperation, sharing – and suddenly, in a partial realm of life, namely the market economy, a second "guiding light" points in the opposite direction – in the direction of egoism, competition, greed – then we are plagued by a terrible quandary: should we act in the spirit of solidarity and cooperation, help each other and always be mindful of everyone's welfare? Or should we always look to our own advantage first and short-change others as our competitors? The direness of the conflict lies in the fact that legislators favour the false guiding light, thus promoting values that we all suffer from. This does not necessarily become evident immediately because no law says that you should be egoistic, greedy, avaricious, ruthless and irresponsible. But what the law does say is that we should pursue financial profit in business and compete with one another. This is reflected in numerous laws, regulations and treaties of nation-states, the European Union (EU) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The result is an epidemic emergence of antisocial behaviour in business – because these kinds of behaviours lead to entrepreneurial "success".

TURNING EGOISM INTO COMMON GOOD

The "imperative" that we should compete in business and pursue the largest possible amount of personal financial gain (i.e. behave egoistically) stems from the paradoxical hope that the good of all will result from the egoistic behaviour of the individual. This ideology was established 250 years ago by Adam Smith, the first major national economist. Smith literally said: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

My aim is not to berate Smith. At the time it was an understandable notion. The pursuit of self-interest on the part of "individuals" was new; "enterprises" were primarily tiny and powerless and, in addition, locally integrated and personally responsible. In many cases company founder, proprietor, employer and employee were still united in one person (the baker, the carpenter, etc.). There was no free movement of capital, there were no anonymous global corporations, no multi-billion-dollar investment funds.

Smith hoped that an "invisible hand" would guide the egoism of individuals for the maximum welfare of all. From a metaphysical perspective – Smith was a moral philosopher – he might well have meant the hand of God. This is what Smith experts assume. Today, we know that the invisible hand does not exist. It is a pure hope, and neither economics nor economic policy operates on the basis of hopes. Markets do not automatically transform their participants' pursuit of self-interest into the common good. The constitutional mandate that "the use of property is also to serve the common good" falls short if there is no legal instrument like a common good balance sheet that documents how companies obey it. In fact, the probability that they violate the mandate is higher than that they comply, because in the global competition the decisive factor of survival is not to be "good" but to be "profitable". As long as financial gain remains the "bottom line" of business, Smith's dream is only a soap bubble. What happens in the real world if the utmost goal of human beings is to pursue their own advantage and to act against others is that they learn to take advantage of others and deem this to be right and normal. But if we take advantage of others we do not treat them as equals; we violate their dignity.

DIGNITY IS THE HIGHEST GOOD

When I ask students attending my lectures at the Vienna University of Economics and Business what they understand human dignity to be, I frequently encounter a general, awkward silence. The students do not appear to have heard or learned anything about it in the course of their studies. This is all the more alarming considering the fact that dignity is the highest value: it is the first-named value in countless constitutions and it forms the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Dignity signifies value: the same, unconditional, unalienable value of all human beings. Dignity requires no "achievement" other than existence. It is from the equal value of all human beings that our equality derives – in the sense that all human beings living in a democracy should have the same liberties, rights and opportunities. And only if everyone really does have the same liberties is the condition fulfilled for enabling everyone to be really free. Immanuel Kant wrote that human dignity can only be preserved in daily life and interactions if we deem and treat each other as being of equal value: "So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means." [emphasis Kant's] We may indeed derive advantages from dignified encounters as a by-product; according to Kant and common sense this happens automatically if everyone wants the best for all, builds up a foundation of trust, takes others seriously, listens to and esteems all others. But gaining an advantage should not be the objective of the encounter. By contrast, on the free market it is legal and customary to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Zed Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1783604735
• ISBN 13: 9781783604739
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar