It's too late what am I doing still up? Which is a way of prefacing that I shouldn't be commenting right now. I just want to put a marker down because I think this article can provoke some very important conversation.

I need to go back when I'm more clear headed, but my initial reaction to the article was a bit of annoyance. I take that as a clue that Korten's ideas will be somewhat controversial.

Nevertheless, the self-finance part of the ideas seemed to strike a chord. Recently I mentioned to you A Short Course in Behavioral Economics. Among the posts that I found really thought provoking there was Sendhil Mullainathan's The Irony of Poverty. The short version of that talk:

This is what I think of as a scarcity trap in which under conditions of scarcity your quality of decisions need to go up, but under decisions of scarcity, exactly because you're in a condition of scarcity, you're unable to provide that higher quality decision making.

The whole thing is so interesting, but just in a general way I was moved by Mullainathan thinking very carefully about ways to help people make better decisions. I'm so cynical that when I put business + psychology together my default assumption is there is an attempt to make people make bad decisions for profit sake.

The encouraging thing is precisely articles like Korten's and others becoming quite a bit more visible. Earlier today I read something online from Business Week that basically warned business that my default assumption along with people like me will be the death of business--I can't find the link now. Umair Haque has a regular blog at Harvard Business review, and I noticed that tomorrow Susan G. at The Daily Kos will be reviewing Joel Magnuson's "Mindful Economics." The conversation is being joined.

I very much look forward to this discussion here. Thanks Linda.

Here's the link for a short review of Magnuson's "Mindful Economics" and a few other related books at The Daily Kos today.

I'm don't really agree with Linda that "there is a lot of meat in that article" by Korten. I see the article as more bones, and outline. But there's no mistaking there are very meaty issues to hang on those bones which deserve consideration and discussion.

I think it is useful to have a little background about Korten. He's a really gifted communicator, so he makes it easy to get a hold on some of his important ideas online, and has written three recent books.

Here's his chock full Web site. I really like his The Great Turning in bullet points. Here's the first bullet point:

We humans face a choice between two contrasting models for organizing our affairs: the dominator model of Empire and the partnership model of Earth Community.

In the article in Yes magazine Korten lays out a five point agenda:

CLEAN UP WALL STREET

PLAY BY MARKET RULES

SELF-FINANCE THE REAL ECONOMY

MEASURE WHAT WE REALLY WANT

CONVERT TO DEBT-FREE MONEY

Korten provides several helpful links in the article and I want to list two of them here. The first is A Sensible Plan for Recovery (PDF) wich is a 5-page brief produced by the Institute for Policy Studies. The second is a link to The New Rules Project Web site of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. I will add a link to Prosperity which is a journal about money reform which may provide a little background to Korten's agenda item of Debt-Free Money.

One obvious way to flesh out Korten's article is to discuss the general and particulars of tax policy. Taxes are something that matters to everyone, but taxation gets quite complicated quickly. I hope Nedsters better versed than I chime in on taxes related to Korten's prescriptions.

All of Korten's agenda items are important, but "Self-Finance The Real Economy" stood out to me, probably because of what I was thinking about at the time I read the article. I was thinking about houses.

Obama has said that he plans to make energy priority #1 in his administration.

Clearly I'm no genius, so it's easy for me to relate to energy as a really hard, but important issue. For even someone as ignorant as I am, it's hard to divorce the issue of energy from the issue of atmospheric carbon. 350.org wants everyone to remember the number 350. The organization points out that 350 parts per million of Carbon in the atmosphere is where we've got to get to if the Earth is to sustain life, especially human life, into the future. Okay so there's a measure.

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has a vision called 2,000-Watt Society. People in the industrial world would cut their energy consumption "to an average of no more than 2,000 watts (i.e. 17,520 kilowatt-hours per year of all energy use, not only electrical) by the year 2050, without lowering their standard of living."

Okay, great there's another measure to think about energy, and one which is connected as needs be to atmospheric Carbon.

In the summer Elizabeth Kolbert reported on a Danish community of Samsø which had gone Carbon neutral. It's a great article and Kolbert discusses in it the 2000-Watt Society. Actually, I was hoping to use that as a reference for a point I want to make, but didn't find it there. I will continue looking for a link, but let me just make the point now:

In discussing the 2000-Watt Society the article turns to what we'd have to do to get there. An important point is where we are starting from--our constructed environment. As it stands now the majority of Europeans use about half the energy of the average American.

That really fact really brought into focus for me the consequence and challenge of energy in the American constructed environment of suburban sprawl.

The root of the current economic crisis is in lending to construct a massive suburban building boom.

Korten talks about the real economy in terms of Main Street. In some sense, were that we were so lucky that Main Street was what we could fall back on. The reality is hundreds of thousands of unconnected housing developments with sweet sounding names like Fox Run, Deer Chase, Halcyon Fields. Making the real economy work in these places is considerably different than the Main Street metaphor would suggest.

I was curious about Korten's work on People-Centered development, and its relationship to People-Centered Economic Development as prescribed in my colleague and founders work. His view was that what was absent was a clear paradigm for creating wealth and that's what he set about doing.

His manifesto, was one of reasoning the difference between the conventional capitalist model and one which address the real purpose of business, serving people.

http://www.p-ced.com/about/backg round/

Today, I read in the Washington Times that an alternative banquet for the homeless was to be held outside the White House for the homeless, in support of an inclusive, sustainable, people-centered economy.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/n ews/2008/nov/14/dignitaries-prot esters-concertgoers-converge/

I reminded myself of his fast for economic and social rights, 5 years ago in the winter of 2003 while living in a tent in Chapel Hill and my unsuccessful attempt to pitch a 'Meet John Doe' pastiche at an ABC news journalist. In this lady's case, life did not imitate Capra's art.

So we began working together, on what was to become a blueprint for microeconomic development, submitting it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Oct 2006. He was well aware of the membership.

First response to the paper came at Davos, to the recommendation of a national social enterprise strategy when USAID announced the East Europe Foundation. The paper as a whole, described a more inclusive approach to capitalism in which business, government and NGOs could work together and engender self-empowerment by application of microfinance and broadband information access. Ironically, also at Davos, much the same idea was prescribed by Bill Gates, as Creative Capitalism.

There's now a President Elect who believes in microeconomics and wants to promote social enterprise. From the point of fasting in 5 years, we couldn't have hoped for better.

Jeff

Now we can invest in the community, which is also the P-CED prescription, but there are other ways such as finance based on assets rather than debt, as advocated by Chris Cook and his Open Corporate model

http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisJ Cook/equity-shares-a-solution-to -the-credit-crash-presentation/

John seems to have picked up on one of Korten's list that grabbed him and I would mention now the one that grabbed me: MEASURE WHAT WE REALLY WANT.

I have been working with the first years students this semester. I am teaching them Intro to Computers and then this broad, abstract of "Learning Skills". Included in that piece is looking at making goals and what their function is and how they help us function.

I am beginning to think that a lack of good goals is a problem for more than my first year students. If you don't have good long-term goals, how can you know what you want, how to get there or when you have arrived?

Ostensibly the unstated goals of Economics are providing for the happiness and well-being of people. But, if we haven't thought about what well-being truly is, or what things make us truly happy, how can we know how to achieve the goals or know when w=if and when we have?

Some part of the corporate world has defined well-being and happiness (or at least set its goal) as massive accumulation of wealth. It has figured out all of the possible ways to do that not particularly considering the be possible implications of that goal on themselves or the rest of society.

The denial or at least the non-recognition of the inherent unity of our world in terms of people AND environment has severely damaged both. *We* has become *me* only to find out that in the long-term *I* can not survive without *we*.

I came to Thailand in 1998. My first trip home after that was 2000. Things had really changed (though I am sure that the change was not all from one side). where the "US" was and where I was had grown apart. I was home for about 18 months and on the whole, didn't like what I saw. I came back here in 2002 and since then, have been home 3 times. It seems to me that the changes in the US psyche accelerated during that time. The "me"-ness increased. The paranoia and xenophobia increased. And the sense that people were aimlessly wandering increased.

I think that in some way, Obama addressed these things. He rattled people enough to allow them to, if not ask "where the hell are we going", to at least realize that "we are lost." It's a good first step.

But I think that the lasting answer comes with figuring out that final goal. Where are we going? That takes asking really hard questions like "Why are we here?", "What is the purpose of my being?, the being of society? and the being of government?", "Why do I work?"

For too long work has been framed as a necessary evil required to get the money to enjoy life. I think that we have to see work as a productive joy and part of enjoying life. We have to see that work allows the community and the society to progress together. On a different tangent, work has to be seen on different levels. We need more balanced lives. We need to see that progress is not measured only by $$. We need to progress physically (in material well being and health), mentally, and spiritually. We need to have a community that supports growth on all of those levels.

The world and life are not all about money. Money is only a small, small part of it. We need to balance things out and find out where we are headed and work on the other pieces that need to happen for us to get there.

I really have to go - I have 30 vocabulary notebooks and 30 time management journals to read - but the other thing that I have been telling my students is that goals have to be specific and measurable. What kinds of goals do we as individuals and as a society need to have that are specific and measurable and get us closer to that final goal that we have yet to define?

Toodles.

Linda this may be of interest when you have time.

Ramla Aktar, a people-centered business advocate from Pakistan has thought a lot about what our well being and happiness actually mean to us, in terms of physical, emotional and spiritual needs.

http://www.triplebottomline.com. pk/response.asp?id=1&sub_id= 7

I mentioned that Korten's article seemed like a skeleton to add the muscle layers too. Where to start doing that probably isn't so important as the notion that the muscles have to work together as a body.

Measure What We Really want is clearly important. As a teacher, you've had to look at evaluation and take it seriously. In test construction teachers know there are two measures: reliability and validity. A test's reliability is a quantitative measure, whereas validity is a qualitative measure. In economics quantitative measures reign supreme, so much so that qualitative measures are suspect.

Indeed most economists would prefer to walk away from ethical judgments entirely. The scary thing about resort to such ideas as "the invisible hand" or "creative destruction" is the value judgments implicit in them are obscured.

There really isn't a good way about talking about qualitative measures in economics, at least that I can see from my ignorant perspective. So for me the importance of Korten's emphasis to Measure What We Really Want is to begin to admit the ethical and qualitative as necessary to economic decision making.

As far as politics goes, I "buy" into the idea of "government by the people for the people." My high school history teacher was very wise with his red pencil remarks on my papers to be careful when using the expression "the people." He wanted me to learn to become more specific. Yes of course he introduced us to themes as a way to understand history, but also never to loose sight of the real people who participate in history.

Anyway all that blather is to say that I think it very important for ordinary citizens like me to participate in economic discussions; that is to say what we really want. Economics is a field and a discipline, so it's not always easy to participate in discussions without such background. In the current economic crisis there is lots of argument between people well-trained in economics. Implicit in Korten's article are issues about taxation. And the war of words about taxes tends to put non-economists like me in our place. Still taxes are something that affect everyone, and we ought to have a voice.

Stirling Newberry writes furiously online. I like what he writes, but there's a lot of it. One point he's made over and over is that the current economic crisis is at root a Constitutional crisis not a financial crisis. In a prescriptive mood he wrote:

The Liberal Democracy is dead; its fundamental agreements are broken. We are now facing a crisis in which institutions are corrupted and the implied bargain not go beyond certain bounds is being violated by the very people who opposed it, requiring a yet broader mandate of government. What can and must follow the Liberal Democracy is a National Commonwealth, which by removing old intermediaries directly bonds the citizenry with the government, because the citizenry are directly responsible for the debts that that government has taken on. If pride of ownership is to mean anything, then it is applicable here: Americans must see themselves, not as adversaries of their government, but as owners of it.

Government policy, in particular tax policy, has real implications. Oh man, but the particulars are complex. I once heard someone say: "I'm a Republican; I'm against Government unless it benefits me, personally, directly." I've got to love the simplicity of that philosophy, except benefits that are so strictly personal seem hard to envision. And in any case a government of looters for private gain seems the very definition of corruption. Perhaps the notion of a National Commonwealth is equally simplistic, but at least that idea makes sense to me, it doesn't seem so fraught with internal contradictions as the measure of "benefits me directly."

The American automakers are in a real pickle, banks won't lend, but they must borrow so that dealers can have cars to sell, and they must lend in order to buy parts to make cars. Crunch time is really coming fast. Oh but the moral scolding by politicians is almost gleeful: "Let them die and good riddance."

I'm shocked by this and the shock seems a bit strange. I do care about atmospheric Carbon. And I think we focus too much attention on cars and roads when we think of transportation. But the cascading catastrophe of the automakers failing seems obvious to predict. So I can't imagine the intellectual space such politicians are coming from. It seems very much like W's "Bring it on!"

When I garden a challenge I always face is: What to do in the meantime? Little perennial seedlings will take at least a year to gain size and flower. Trees and shrubs many years. So I have to envision a future for the beds, and lay in the seedling, but also fill in with annuals. Economically we have to do something similar. We need to have an idea where we're headed, but in the meantime industries like automakers fill in the void. I guess I'd call my preference the anti-shock doctrine. The howls for collapse screeching at loud volume now in the media: "Kill em off!" "Let em die!" "Creative Destruction!" send chills down my spine.

Indeed we should shudder John, that the mood of enviro-fanaticism has engendered as much intolerance as would have been found in pre-war Germany, or the revolutionary communism which urged for crushing the kulaks.

One can imagine a car workers army, disenfranchised and angry and a cost to the state and the system of taxation that supports it, however inadequate the benefit. It was that very idea, forcing others to accept poverty, to the extent of considering their existence threatened that gave rise to this warning in 1996.

"Once a nation or government puts people in the position of defending their own lives, or that of family and friends, and they all will die if they do nothing about it, at that point all laws, social contracts and covenants end. Laws, social contracts and covenants define civilization. Without them, there is no civilization at all, there is only the law of the jungle: kill, or be killed. This is where we started, tens of thousands of years ago."

"By leaving people in poverty, at risk of their lives due to lack of basic living essentials, we have stepped across the boundary of civilization. We have conceded that these people do not matter, are not important. Allowing them to starve to death, freeze to death, die from deprivation, or simply shooting them, is in the end exactly the same thing. Inflicting or allowing poverty on a group of people or an entire country is a formula for disaster."

These words were delivered to the White House, in September 5 years before the 9/11 attacks.

I'm also reminded that Maynard-Keynes saw the folly in forcing reparations on Germany which offered a seed bed of resentment for extremist political movements to take root.

By the same token, this attitude towards car workers might be extended to weapons workers in faraway Siberia, made redundant in the economic collapse of 1998. Our founder felt otherwise, and related that to the President.

These things as you say will take time to grow, although your new President is pretty well grounded on the principles. It will take time.

For the immediate problem of peak credit, I'll leave that to the economists, but consider the concept of asset based finance has great potential:

http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisJ Cook/equity-shares-a-solution-to -the-credit-crash-presentation/

Jeff thanks for the Chris Cook presentation.

I'm very happy that Linda opened this discussion, and clearly I want to discuss. While economic concerns are important to everybody, discussing economics is hampered by by the specialized jargon and theories. But the jargon and theories are useful precisely to help keep on track as we traverse a really large territory of economics.

What I hope is people here will chime in on the subject without worrying too much what direction they're coming from so we can all expand our ideas about this subject vital for our lives.

I was impressed with Cook's presentation because it opens up ideas of new sorts of economic institutions. We do need to invent better institutions and there's a necessity to experiment to find ways that work well.

It's so cool that Linda is in Thailand and knowledgeable about economics because Thailand provides a large scale experiment dealing with the Asian financial crisis, as well as having a new paradigm of thinking in sufficiency economics.

Obviously I don't have enough context to know the ins and outs of Thai politics. Nevertheless I was interested in this news piece from a couple of years back where Pridiyathorn Devakula defends sufficiency economics. The reason I find it so interesting is the attempt to apply two very different concepts of economics in the real world. The Wikipedia article on Thaksinomics is useful to understand the distinctions he makes.

He said sufficiency economics did not decelerate economic growth. The economy has become more resilient to cope with future developments. Sufficiency economics helps limit economic excesses, a premise also included in Keynesian economic theory.

Korten's article was mostly aimed at what the government should do. That's hardly all that Korten thinks needs doing, as clearly he's written extensively about a post corporate future.

I may have it wrong, but it seems that both Jeff and I are more interested in various non-government approaches to the economy. Surely too we recognize that what the government does provides a context for this to happen. I'm in the USA and tend to have an American-centric view of the situation. I'm really happy that Linda and Jeff are enlarging my view.

Sorry Linda for being such an unruly student, taking this discussion all over. And I do appreciate that you're too busy to crack the whip and keep us on track here. Don't worry about telling me to straighten up, I'll try to.

I have one more link that seems related to the challenge of creating new economic institutions that work. Ethan Zuckerman has a great post up today Michael Heller and the gridlock economy.

“When too many people own pieces of one thing, nobody can use it.” Too much ownership in a society causes gridlock - the gridlock economy - and cooperation breaks down, wealth disappears, and everyone loses.

The whole piece is worth reading. I was particularly interested in the exchange between Heller and Yochai Benkler. Zuckerman summarizes Benkler's points:

Benkler ultimately sees the problem about a mis-definition of the boundaries of property, suggesting that the gridlock scenario is a specific manifestation of poor definitions of property and a poor transactional system. Clearly, that’s the beginning of a much longer conversation, and one I’m unqualified to act as scribe for.

LOL "a much longer discussion." Yes precisely such conversations that I hope many of us will engage in. Linda what do you think about the idea that "boundaries of property" as a facet of "measure what we want?"

I think - off the cuff - that any talk of property as a measure of what we want is using the wrong lens for the problem.

As I said before, I have been working with my students to learn to set goals. I find myself playing the "Why?" game.

• I want a good paying job.

  • Why?

• I have only ever had one goal: I want to be a doctor.

  • Why?

• I want to buy my parents a new house and a new car.

  • Why?

None of the sentiments they have voiced is bad. I just want them to find the final goal. My feeling is that ultimately, they (and I) will find that the final goal has nothing to do with money, or property or job.

I have also been using the metaphor of driving a car. A good driver doesn't grab the steering wheel and hold it on course relentlessly and then make a massive correction. They know that although the "goal" is to go straight that the real goal is to get where you are going safely and without endangering others. Fiercely holding on to the wheel rather than being flexible and making constant minor corrections can result in danger to every one as you don't really have your eye on the real goal.

We in the west have been fiercely holding on to the "goal" of massive accumulation of wealth (money). That has over time perverted (as if the original wasn't perverted enough) to greed. Focusing on that has led us to consequences such as were described in Zuckerman's blog like inappropriate intellectual property rights, making high risk loans (for potential high returns), securitization of those loans to minimize the risk (people are not entirely unaware of the stakes in the game), stress when the markets go crazy, etc.

Our obsession with accumulation of wealth has become so obvious to me here in Thailand because it is so "in your face". Out here in Ubon where, for the most part, people really don't have accumulated wealth, there are no fences and no bars on the windows. In Bangkok, there are bars on every window, sometimes cages over apartment balconies, walls with broken glass plastered in the top or spikes, or barbed wire, to keep people out and "away from their stuff".

I would be interested in how the "Why?" game plays out in your goals evaluation. ;-)

Interesting that you refer to perversion, Linda. There's an ancient speech I have listened to many times, of the founder of one of the UKs most successful (and widely respected) retail organisations.

He refers even then to the perversion of the true workings of capitalism, and himself asks why.

http://www.johnlewispartnership. co.uk/Display.aspx?&MasterId =d749663a-957e-4d4e-b720-c9a1e1a 6c410&NavigationId=755

I can remember being quite irritating as a child for asking "Why?" And I can remember getting the answer "Because I told you so!" too.

I hear what you are saying about property being the wrong lens to measure from. Nevertheless I think it's fair to say that property is currently a very commonly used lens.

"Will" is an deep subject, and when it comes to philosophy the concept of will begins to resemble an onion in layers, or a Russian nesting dolls.

When it comes to the "Why?" game in my goals evaluation, it's pretty clear that most of the things I do, I do for superficial reasons. Why do I cut wood? I cut wood to build a fire. Why do you build a fire? I build a fire to keep warm.

But even in the superficial things I do there are times which remind me there are deeper layers. And these reminders generally seem to make me appreciate living more. I cook food to assuage my hunger. I like to add spice to increase the pleasure of taste. I take care to cut food to make it more palatable and to make sure the food on the plate pleases my eye. So the "Why?" game suggests new ways to create something good. My goals are rarely simple.

Umair Haque has a new piece up Detroit's 6 Mistakes and How Not to Make Them which goes to your point of being clear about ones goals as we begin to find measures. It's great stuff, and shows how much we take for granted ain't necessarily so.

In the context of this discussion, I got a chance to fire a challenge at our PM this morning.

http://blog.makeyourmark.org.uk/ 2008/11/18/gordon-brown-joins-th e-debate/

Can anyone present a defense that an economy that is based on unlimited growth is sustainable? Brown is still talking that line.

Yes, that was strange to hear. I was more perturbed at his reading the script back to me, without any action.

No I can't, unless he's talking about the social economy and the developing world specifically.

I'm not sure I really heard Gordon Brown talking the line that an economy based on unlimited growth is sustainable. What I heard him say is that the economy will grow.

I don't mean to be dense in the head, seems I'm just made that way ;-) I think some of the confusion in talking about "the economy" is we tend to imagine "it" as a concrete noun., but it seems to me "the economy" is really more abstract. I think that "the economy" refers to ideas and concepts more than it does stuff we can sense.

Often models of economic growth are compared and contrasted to models of steady state economics. In October The New Scientist did some pieces on steady state economics. In the article just linked two principles were stated:

We have two guiding principles: we don't use natural resources faster than they can be replenished by the planet, and we don't deposit wastes faster than they can be absorbed.

The article notes:

There is disagreement over how much economic growth we will ultimately be able to achieve. Some optimists think technology will allow huge amounts of growth without increasing our impact on the planet.

I'd put Brown in the optimist camp. Perhaps as Linda points out that in fact makes him wedded to the old models of unlimited growth. But I see some movement towards the two principles that the NS article puts forth. Likewise here in the USA I think Obama shows some movement towards those principles.

I think it is quite possible that shifts in paradigm are rapid and revolutionary. Certainly they seem that way when taking a long view. But I'm not so sure that in shorter time horizons they really look that way. I think there's a period of experimentation and testing.

So rather than confront political leaders head on saying they've got the wrong paradigm, I'm more inclined to cheer them on in directions toward a more sustainable future. That said there is a real need for revolutionaries. The thing about politics and politicians is being stuck in the middle of competing demands. Everyone looks for political leaders, but to lead politicians need a base which pushes them in better directions.

PARADIGM

The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines this usage as "a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly : a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind.

and from Wikipedia

A simplified analogy for paradigm is a habit of reasoning or, the box in the commonly used phrase "thinking outside the box". Thinking inside the box is analogous with normal science. The box encompasses the thinking of normal science and thus the box is analogous with paradigm. "Thinking outside the box" would be what Kuhn calls revolutionary science. Revolutionary science is usually unsuccessful, and only rarely leads to new paradigms. When they are successful they lead to large scale changes in the scientific worldview.

There are two aspects of the current economics paradigm that seem to be unsupportable. One is the model of man where mainstream economics holds that man is rational, ruled entirely by self-interest and maximizing his well-being by constantly increasing consumption. I think it is safe to say that that definition of human behavior leaves every single Nedster out in the cold. The second is man's "dominion" over and ownership of nature. This is the part of the paradigm that allows for over-use and mis-use of the environment and resources.

I guess I am of the opinion that paradigm shifts do, in fact, result from out of the box thinking and until you get out of the box, you can't even see them. That means, I think, that all paradigm shifts are from dramatic "aha" moments and as such are rapid and revolutionary. Of course after you see the change, you tend to go back and check how your new "vision" works compared to the old vision.

I think the most dramatic paradigm shift was perhaps the shift from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian relativity. (Aside: Did you know that there were a number of scientists that committed suicide because they could not face the shift?) Main-stream economists tend to be people who are still in the Newtonian box and looking for simple single answer solutions rather than facing the complexity of reality.

So, when I heard Brown talking about the economy doubling, I heard him saying something like - Don't listen to the doom-sayers. This economy is going to double. We are going to show them...and it is you social entrepreneurs who are going to make it happen. No shift in view or framework, just a band-aid.

Maybe an example that struck home for me. CSR when it first came out was sceptically received as corporate appeasement of the masses. And I think it was, and in many cases, still is. The people outside of mainstream economics view CSR not as a program but rather the main framework of the new economics. As long as you look at CSR from in the box, you say "But look what we are doing!" You don't and I am not sure you can, see the difference between doing and being.

I don't know if anyone has created the expression yet, but what I'm thinking equates to the social enterprise version of Greenwash. So Linda, what you say about the difference between doing and being strikes a chord.

Here for example earlier this year, the CSR pitch is for showcasing from Gordon and at the time, I just wish I'd have the opportunity to say - It's not a question of many making gestures, but of those who really want to be the change, existing for that purpose entirely.

http://www.business-call-to-acti on.com/?page_id=21

Moving beyond CSR and philanthropy he says, but then refers to showcasing projects.

Join us he says but then when trying to do so, one finds oneself simply ignored. We are obstructed, I believe by the corporate ego, that sees competition in anything which is not its "brand". In this context, like the trickle down of wealth, CSR goodwill does not trickle down to participation with those external to the corporation.

These are people who aren't willing to endorse or support what grassroots organisations have achieved because the brand will sell better by taking ownership of ideas and airbrushing out the activists.

So, I feel likewise, that we are offered a palliative in that social enterprise is expected to fill the gap, as if they will arise from nowhere. I see a great gulf between the rhetoric expressed and the willingness of either government or corporate business to help empower the changemakers.

I think the second of the two aspects of the current economic paradigm which Linda finds unsupportable: "man's 'dominion' over and ownership of nature is quite comparable to Korten's:

We humans face a choice between two contrasting models for organizing our affairs: the dominator model of Empire and the partnership model of Earth Community.

Einstein's theories resulted in a paradigm shift in physics. We might note that Einstein participated in a series of exchanges (debates) with Neils Bohr. That Wikipedia article notes:

In his last writing on the topic, Einstein further refined his position, making it completely clear that what really disturbed him about the quantum theory was the problem of the total renunciation of all minimal standards of realism, even at the microscopic level, that the acceptance of the completeness of the theory implied.

I bring up the debate as an example of what I mean by the unsteadiness of in the shorter views of paradigm shift. Einstein contributed very significantly to the paradigm shift in Physics. The shift was "sudden" but really happened over decades. And Einstein spent a couple of decades resisting the direction the revolution he had no small part in creating was going.

In my liberal cocoon I'm always relieved to be able to link to a neo-rightist like John Derbyshire. So here's the link to Derbyshire's excellent review of Gino Segre's "Faust in Copenhagen." A recent article in "Seed" explains a test about realism. There is consensus if not unanimity in the field.

The point I'm trying to make with Quantum Mechanics as an example is that shifts in paradigms require some hammering out.

I certainly agree with Korten:

There is no technological fix for the human crisis. The underlying problem is a consequence of social dysfunction and the only solutions are cultural and institutional.

And the emphasis on telling stories is something I think Korten has just right. So the attention to politicians like Gordon Brown is reasonable. After all it seems the winners get to write history, and the bets are pretty good that politicians are in some sense the winners.

But if you cut to the chase, Korten seems to be saying that strong communities will be the new winners. He seems to be saying forget those top down presumptions you hold. Now I think that politicians are very important folks. But I take Korten pretty seriously and therefore I'm not really looking towards politicians for the kind of stories we need. I'm far more interested that politicians begin to hear the stories they need to hear.

Upton Sinclair famously observed:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

I think that's the problem with politicians in a nutshell. Like it or not politicians make a difference, but rarely are the ones ar the forefront of paradigm shift. I think that those of us who in various ways have gotten an "aha!" about the dominist economic model and are eager to go towards a partnership model of economics are on the edge, and that these ideas are moving to the center. Whether right or left, most politicians represent some sort of center. So I see the task more of getting the ideas to the center, rather than to expect politicians to move the debate to the edge.

The hope is that our ideas can move politicians not the other way around.

John,

I believe that politicians have been moved, already.

In August 1998, Russia's economy collapsed to the extent that they devalued the rouble by a factor of 1000. Behind this many saw US economic intervention as the cause. The article 'How Harvard Lost Russia' describes the HIID activities in Moscow.

http://jboy.chaosnet.org/misc/do cs/articles/shleifer.pdf

Terry, who had the opportunity to deliver his paper on People-Centered Economic Development to the Clinton re-election committee, spent 6 months in Russia in 1999, to identify Tomsk as a potential target for economic development, applying a bottom up approach. He recommended the location to Clinton describing local business opportunities.

That resulted in a microfinance bank with a moral collateral loan model derived from Grameen. In the 4 year pilot it created 10,000 new businesses in a city of 600,000 with >99% repayment and business survival rate. Putin ascending to the Presidency during the research phase permitted the project to be replicated several times before forming the basis for the Russian Microfinance Center.

In 2002 he moved on to Crimea, attempting to introduce something akin in the Tatar community. His report weighed the cost and return of investment against a finite cost of dealing with conflict retrospectively, with cruise missiles. The targetted intervention was described as an economic 'smart bomb' and this idea gained currency to the extent of the CSIS tuning in later.

http://www.csis.org/smartpower/

Corruption prevailed with local interference at the time and he enforced copyright to prevent it being used. That involved asking UNDP to back off, when he was staying with me in London.

He'd been fasting and blogging from a tent in Chapel Hill before coming to the UK, about economic and social rights in the US. His Senator, John Edwards soon after created the Center for Poverty Work and Opportunity.

In October 2006 two papers were sent to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who included Barack Obama and Joe Biden. One was a national scale blueprint for microeconomic development and social enterprise, the only detailed 'Marshall Plan' which exists in other than rhetoric from other Presidential candidates.

The other from an aligned source called for investment in a fundamental science laboratory, the former site of Russia's H-Bomb development.

At Davos 2008, USAID launched the East Europe Foundation, which addressed the social enterprise recommendation while around the same time the laboratory entered an agreement to produce medical isotopes for the US.

http://biz.yahoo.com/pz/071227/1 33558.html

Now with a President Elect, who could not have failed to notice some of these events, we have a new champion of microeconomics.

http://socialentrepreneurship.ch ange.org/blog/view/obama_white_h ouse_wishlist_office_of_social_e ntrepreneurship

Other new ideas appeared in 2008. One being that of Creative Capitalism, which is pretty close to what what delivered to Clinton in 1996, the other B Corporations, which agree to socially benefically objectives.

http://www.bcorporation.net/abou t

"The P-CED concept is to create new businesses that do things differently from their inception, and perhaps modify existing businesses that want to do it. This business model entails doing exactly the same things by which any business is set up and conducted in the free-market system of economics. The only difference is this: that at least fifty percent of profits go to stimulate a given local economy, instead of going to private hands. In effect, the business would operate in much the same manner as a non-profit organization. The only restrictions are the normal terms and conditions of free-enterprise. If a corporation wants to donate a portion of profits to its local community, it can do so, be it one percent, five percent, or even fifty percent. There is no one to protest or dictate otherwise, except a board of directors and stockholders. This is not a small consideration, since most boards and stockholders would object. But, if an arrangement has been made with said stockholders and directors such that this direction of profits is entirely the point, then no one will object. The corporate charter can require that these monies be directed into community development funds, such as a permanent, irrevocable trust fund. The trust fund, in turn, would be under the oversight of a board of directors made up of employees and community leaders."

In all, it's going to be very difficult for he or I to believe that these ideas and hands on efforts haven't influenced politicians and business leaders, whatever we hear about the official source of inspiration.

On the matter of debt free money there is an extended trailer of the film The Money Fix up. The trailer is very good at presenting what indebted money is, not so much on the fix part.

Thanks for that link, John! We are going to add that to the lunch menu for the conference along with the Schumacher videos on Buddhist Economics and Appropriate Technology and Mark Albion's video More Than Money. Another 8 days and people will start arriving...perhaps....if the demonstrations cease at the airport in Bangkok....

And hopefully the flood waters will be down so that the people who were going to stay at the Asoke community can get there. Am I having fun yet?

Linda your work on the conference is the sort of thing a medal for it is called for, but alas...

Yesterday there were several blog posts related to money which I found interesting. I don't mean to put them up so you'll spend time looking for them now. But in some ways they relate to Korten's call for moving to debt free money. Frankly I have a hard time getting my head around money. Just what is money?

I have an interest in alternative currencies. Recently I discovered Keith Hart's Web site The Memory Bank. Hart is a character. I discovered his site via Naijablog who linked to an essay Africa on my mind . There are so many reasons I enjoyed the article, not the least of which was an honest portrayal of graduate research in Ghana--unusable but essentially defining over a career.

Jean Francois Noubel and The Transitioner Pioneers are having a Future of Money Conference in Mexico City starting today--there's video up here.

John Robb and Rob Patterson posted this week about Slow Money. You know the idea of slow food? Well think about that in terms of money.

I'm very into the idea of local, but am also very keen on the World Wide Web. There's a sort of contradiction inherent in various local money schemes and global interest. Just as there seems a contradiction in "Think globally, act locally." The trick is to find ways to dance with both the local and global. Discovering Keith Hart has been exciting and helpful for me. There are many videos of Hart at YouTube. Relevant here are 3 videos of Hart talking about an alternative currency from Limehouse (London). Here's the first and from there to get to the other two.

Anyhow, I found those discussions on the Web about money this week quite interesting. Korten's push for debt free money is an important subject, but when it comes to money there's so much involved that there's a sort of striking a balance. I'm skeptical that such a radical transformation of money will happen all at once. My sense is there will be many schemes for alternative currencies. Sometimes these are referred to as complementary currencies and I like that notion because national currencies are enormously important. Indebted money is enormously important. I don't think it's really a matter of opposition but rather workable complementary sorts of money which could help the most.

I have sent an invitation to Arthur Brock to join this conversation. His expertise on alternative currencies might help.