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Conscious Capitalism Movement Conscious Capitalism Movement Jeff Mowatt Are the B Team reading my blogs? Jeff Mowatt I've been wondering for several years, but today more than ever on reading a Sustainable Business article by Christiane Kleimann which argues that 'we have to choose between our economy and our future': 'The new year has just begun and we’re already inundated with horrible news: two new reports have collected further evidence that human economic activity puts life on Earth at risk, and another shocked us with the fact that the 85 richest people on the planet are as wealthy as the poorest 50% – and that the gap between them is still widening. Not to mention the brutal attack on the Charlie Hebdo office, the ongoing wars and conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine and the devastating situation of refugees.' Last October I wrote about our work with the Economics for Ecology conferences at Sumy State University in Ukraine which was a small part of efforts to tackle a growing crisis in Ukraine that have since led to open conflict. Concluding the 2009 presentation for the opening plenary at Economics for Ecology, our founder said this of our economy: 'At this point, the simple fact is that regarding economic theory, no one knows what to do next. Possibly this has escaped immediate attention in Ukraine, but, economists in the US as of the end of 2008 openly confessed that they do not know what to do. So, we invented three trillion dollars, lent it to ourselves, and are trying to salvage a broken system so far by reestablishing the broken system with imaginary money. What is not guesswork is that the broken – again – capitalist system, be it traditional economics theories in the West or hybrid communism/capitalism in China, is sitting in a world where the existence of human beings is at grave risk, and it's no longer alarmist to say so. The question at hand is what to do next, and how to do it. We all get to invent whatever new economics system that comes next, because we must.' http://www.p-ced.com/1/node/325 Capitalism, Climate & Cold War: This Changes Everything p-ced.com In March 2009, an economic activist and social business pioneer delivered a paper to the opening plenary of the international Economics for Ecology conference in Sumy. it opened with these words: This presentation will discuss the various forms of... Unlike Comment (1) Unfollow Reply Privately16 hours ago Comments You like this 1 comment Peter Burgess Peter Burgess Founder/CEO at TrueValueMetrics developing Multi Dimension Impact Accounting
Jeff ...
Yesterday I attended one of IQsquared debates in Manhattan. The debate was won by the team that trotted out the easily available statistics about the strength of the US capital market, the immense spending on the US military that therefore must make us safe, the amazing wealth being created by the oligarchs of Silican Valley and so on. The team that lost the debate argued that changes were happening, and that we had better understand these changes and act accordingly. On reflection it seems to me that the lack of understanding that permeates modern society is a function of rather poor education in analysis combined with a media that does little to inform but a lot to entertain, or worse, misinform. It seems to me that the results of the debate reflected this ,,, rather than a deeper understanding of the issues. It also highlights the problem of a lack of meaningful metrics about things that really matter. I am an optimist in that technology is amazing, and we are able to do amazing things with the technology. This power for good is matched by a power for bad. My hope is that we will soon be able to use technology to upgrade metrics to suit the 21st century. My recent essay outlines some of this: http://www.truevaluemetrics.org/DBpdfs/MDIA/TVM-Short-Introduction-to-7D-Capitalism-and-MDIA-141212a.pdf I am a pessimist in the sense that those with wealth and power and influence have little or no incentive to address the problems that are pushing the enviro-socio-economic system towards what could easily become a uncontrolled cascade of catastrophes. | |||||||||
Capitalism, Climate & Cold War: This Changes Everything In March 2009, an economic activist and social business pioneer delivered a paper to the opening plenary of the international Economics for Ecology conference in Sumy. it opened with these words:
He concluded
'They' will fight back, and do. Back in 2004, when I helped him introduce this alternative to capitalism in London our business plan had reiterated the warning about uprisings:
He died on August 18 2011 as the uprisings he predicted began to spread all over the world. The Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street were born There was more to this however than climate change alone. As I will describe below, it was a battle with both organised crime and development agencies. At the opening plenary for the 2013 conference on Ecosocialism, Richard Smith makes a similar warning:
In a trailer fo her new book This Changes Everything' Naomi Klein describes another paper delivered by a geophisicist to The Amarican Geophysical Union in 2012 The conclusion - we're fucked unless we resist.. Environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups, increases dissipation within the coupled system over fast to intermediate scales and pushes for changes in the dominant culture that favor transition to a stable, sustainable attractor.
Of all foirms of social and environmental damage, war is one of the most costly. In 2004 he returned to Ukraine where he had warned earlier of instability in Crimea, to work alongside Maidan activists who were taking a stand against crony capitalism, to begin researching local economic conditions. . In 2006 the 'breakthrough report' on 'Death Camps , For Children has revealed how organised crime profits from the wholesale neglect of children in institutions known as 'internats' It was based on a place called Torez. It would take another 5 years before mainstream media picked up the story. In 2007, the same activist helped physicists at Kharkiv Narional University secure funding for a project to upgrade the lab where Russia had developed their H Bomb to a centre for fundamental science education. The 'Marshall Plan' for Ukraine was delivered to Ukraine's government in October 2006 and published the following year in a prominent magazine, saying this about the need for change: We had to protect IP for social benefit and radical transparency was our only option. An inherent assumption about capitalism is that profit is defined only in terms of monetary gain. This assumption is virtually unquestioned in most of the world. However, it is not a valid assumption. Business enterprise, capitalism, must be measured in terms of monetary profit. That rule is not arguable. A business enterprise must make monetary profit, or it will merely cease to exist. That is an absolute requirement. But it does not follow that this must necessarily be the final bottom line and the sole aim of the enterprise. How this profit is used is another question. It is commonly assumed that profit will enrich enterprise owners and investors, which in turn gives them incentive to participate financially in the enterprise to start with. That, however, is not the only possible outcome for use of profits. Profits can be directly applied to help resolve a broad range of social problems: poverty relief, improving childcare, seeding scientific research for nationwide economic advancement, improving communications infrastructure and accessibility, for examples – the target objectives of this particular project plan. The same financial discipline required of any conventional for-profit business can be applied to projects with the primary aim of improving socioeconomic conditions. Profitability provides money needed to be self-sustaining for the purpose of achieving social and economic objectives such as benefit of a nation’s poorest, neediest people. In which case, the enterprise is a social enterprise. This is a long-term permanently sustainable program, the basis for 'people-centered' economic development. Core focus is always on people and their needs, with neediest people having first priority – as contrasted with the eternal chase for financial profit and numbers where people, social benefit, and human well-being are often and routinely overlooked or ignored altogether. This is in keeping with the fundamental objectives of Marshall Plan: policy aimed at hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. This is a bottom-up approach, starting with Ukraine's poorest and most desperate citizens, rather than a 'top-down' approach that might not ever benefit them. They cannot wait, particularly children. Impedance by anyone or any group of people constitutes precisely what the original Marshall Plan was dedicated to opposing. Those who suffer most, and those in greatest need, must be helped first -- not secondarily, along the way or by the way. In February 2008 USAID and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations were called upon for support In December 2008 it was delivered as a proposal for the EU Citizens Consultation In 2009 it was intrioduced to one of the most hard nosed capitalists in the UK, Sir Richard Branson with an offer to lead the way in Ukraine In 2010 I petitioned newly elected PM David Cameron. He would pass it off as his own work.
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