Change is Not Only Possible, It's Inevitable

Extending the idea of what's possible -

 a rebuttal to Margaret Thatcher's  "There is no alternative".

As the tag line on this blog of nearly two and a half years and 170 posts later maintains, There Are Alternatives to the dominant paradigm. Our political, economic, education, and social systems are human designed and can be altered by us. History gives us plenty of evidence to back that up. Sometimes, we're forced out of necessity to change, sometimes it's by choice. Often it's a combination of some of both.

This blog has tried to share "possibilities". I am not of the belief that income inequality has to be at the extreme level it has risen to. I am not of the belief that we can't slow our destruction of  the ecological systems that provide us life. I am not of the belief that we have to have war and killing forever. If the abolitionists, suffragists, environmentalists, civil right and gay and lesbian activists had bought into Maggie Thatcher's dictum we'd be living in a different and worse world.

Having played in the sandbox of sustainability for two decades I've come to realize that the dominant paradigm and Bill Clinton have it all backwards - It's not the economy stupid. Rather the economy is the wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment and is further a subset of society, not the other way around. Yet our dominant paradigm focuses on the economy (through the narrowest monetary lens) as if everything else will just fall in line if we fix the economy via free-market nostrums. How many times today might you heard or read of the stock market's inching up or down? 

From Achieving Sustainability: Visions, Principles and Practices. (Gale/Cengage, 2013)

Two recent releases help us see "possibilities" of a different way to think of and to restructure the economy, understanding that it is a human designed system embedded in larger social and environmental systems.The New Economics Foundation, a UK think tank just released a visionary possibility based upon a different paradigm, but grounded in a deep understanding of economics.

 

Towards a New Social Settlement was just released last month. While focusing most closely with the UK the authors think the principles and direction can be applied to any community, state or nation.  This 64 page report lays out the following possibilities (taken from summary).

The new social settlement has three goals: social justice, environmental sustainability, and a more equal distribution of power. All three are intertwined and must be pursued together. They tackle severe contemporary problems: widening social inequalities, accelerating threats to the natural environment, and accumulations of power by wealthy elites.

These goals lead to a set of objectives, which highlight crucial issues too often ignored in mainstream debate. Like the goals, they too are linked together and can be mutually reinforcing:

• Plan for prosperity without depending on economic growth.
• Shift investment and action upstream to prevent harm instead of just coping with the consequences.
• Value and strengthen the core economy of unpaid work, everyday wisdom and social connections on which all our lives depend.
• Foster solidarity, understanding just how much we depend on each other to achieve our goals.  

 

We challenge the dominant view that the key to progress is to deregulate markets, promote choice and competition, and boost consumption. We offer a different set of ideas that promotes well being for all within the limits of the natural environment, as well more inclusive and collaborative ways of making decisions and working together. We aim to meet today’s needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

The proposals are focused around four key areas:

• Rebalance work and time 
• Release human resources 
• Strengthen social security 
• Plan for a sustainable future

There is obviously a lot more meat to the bones in the summary and in the full report. The wholeness of the report is its greatest strength.

Paralleling this, almost as if it had read the report, is the new People's Budget, released this week by the 70 member Progressive Caucus of the U.S. Congress. You likely will not hear about the proposals in this budget. Much more media time and space will be given to President Obama's budget or the House Republican's budget. While there is much I admire and much that aligns well with the report from New Economics Foundation report noted above, it  has a long way to go to get seriously considered without a lot of pressure from citizens on their elected leaders.


For a review of this budget check out the Center for Effective Government brief summary and analysis. They promise to do a side-by side comparison of the various budget proposals in the coming weeks.

 
You can see the National Priorities Project analysis of the various budget proposals here.

You can see the Economic Policy Institute's analysis of the budget here.

To read Senator Bernie Sanders critique of the House Republican Budget see here. 

There are possibilities, but one has to nourish them if you expect them to survive and thrive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

What War Leaves Behind

Notwithstanding the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the continental U.S. has been spared war on our shores for 150 years. Thus no one born here and still alive has experienced the devastation that lingers after war here, although many a soldier has seen too much of it. This week marks the 50^th anniversary of our marines landing in South Vietnam, and a cover story in this week’s The Nation, follows a former Vietnam veteran who has returned to Vietnam to work with the legacy of the war we left behind.  It is a moving piece of journalism

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More recently we can see the affects of our wars; 2.0 million Iraqi refugees and another 1.7 million internally displaced; 2.6 million Afghani’s and additional 680,000 internally displaced; This doesn’t even include the homes and businesses and infrastructure destroyed or poisoned; the tons of unexploded weapons lingering, or the environmental destruction.

It should awaken us to the follies of war and those who rattle sabers as if military might will bring a just and lasting piece. –note the thunderous Congressional approval last week of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s criticism of diplomacy with Iran.

 

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Vice-President, George Perkovich, forcefully contradicted Netanyahu’s speech to Congress that criticized the President’s stance on Iran, “There is no better alternative to this approach. Period.” 50,000 Israeli citizens we out clamoring for the end to the madness just this weekend, and even Israeli military and intelligence leaders were calling Netanyahu’s belligerence, madness.

Perkovich went on, “Indeed, it is peculiar how much deference is being given in the U.S. Congress to a prime minister who does not have a great track record in resolving conflicts. He has not resolved fundamental differences with any of Israel’s neighbors, or even within his own country.”

The President’s new budget calls for yet more money for military solutions to address our global challenges as if we just buy and sell more weapons, teach more people how to be effective killers, we’ll all somehow live in peace. What a colossal waste of resources – human, financial, environmental. The Military-Industrial-Complex counts on American citizens apathy or sense of futility to continue this madness. Our attention is easily diverted via March madness, Academy Awards,  television, and the pursuit of more technologically enchanting devices.

Meanwhile the pundits and chicken-hawks call for more weapons for our favored side as of the moment.

They might consider, for example, reflecting on International Crisis Group senior analyst for Libya, Claudia Gazzini’s recent piece on why more weapons are not the answer in Libya.

What are we leaving our children? 

Will we step out of our apathy and self-satisfying amusements long enough to come together to create alternatives to violence. I think it’s possible.

 

Apathy is consent.

Ending Hide and Seek

Who’s Afraid of Information?

It has been said that sunshine is the best disinfectant. Why is it then that so many who seek wealth and/or power want to hide the process by which they acquire and use it? If there is a cry to hide information from those who can use it to make decisions that affect their lives, can it be that the powerful are afraid of sharing information?

The ongoing battle against transparency is getting more volatile. The Citizens’ United ruling allows wealthy donors to hide their efforts to affect election outcomes. Monsanto and other big food corporations don’t want consumers to know which foods are genetically modified. The government doesn’t want us to read about atrocities (torture,drone killings, etc.) done in our name.

Joseph Stiglitz won his Nobel award in economics based upon the basic notion that without full information even the miracle of markets do not work and that transparency and access to information are essential for consumers to make informed decisions.

                

          “Transparency is about information, the obligation to provide it, and the right to      access it. As such, it is an important concept in the effort to achieve sustainability in politics, economics, environmental well-being, and numerous other fields. In any field, information is needed for decisions, and informed decisions are likely to be better than decisions made in the absence of good information. Strong transparency policies enhance the availability of information and thus provide the informational framework for good decisions and good practices in both the public and private sectors.”  (William B. T. Black, Professor of Law “Transparency” in Achieving Sustainability: Visions,Principles and Practices (Gale/Cengage, 2014) p. 742.

The stakes of the game are being raised.  Note the recent announcement by Charles Koch that he and his brother David hope to raise and spend nearly $1 billion on the run-up to the 2016 election campaign and most of it will be untraceable. I’m pretty confident that thanks to Citizen’s United the Koch Brothers will not be alone among the wealthiest trying to use their exorbitant wealth to affect the outcome of our supposedly democratic election. At a time when we need to rely on skilled and dedicated journalists and news organizations to do the muckraking that can inform us who is pulling the strings in our society, the daily news organization is decimated.

During the recent fight over a new farm bill, the handful of global corporate giants who control a majority of the food system successfully lobbied to kill stronger requirements even for country of origin labeling on some foods. Senator Barbara Boxer with 13 co-sponsors just introduced legislation (S.511) that would require food that has been genetically modified to be so labeled. If the marketplace is supposed to work, consumers ought to know what they are buying.  It would also be nice if we knew who’s getting rich off who when we make a purchase. Could we post the pay ratio of a business on it’s website or on its door, or perhaps the minimum and median wage of the employees. It would help me make an informed decision when selecting retail establishments. 

Regardless of one's personal views on Ralph Nader, we can thank him for pushing the idea of Freedom of Information, which is now not only a legally transcribed avenue here in the U.S. but in numerous other countries as well.  If we don't know what our government is up to, how can we hold them accountable. In Michigan we have someone like Rich Robinson

 

who has the led the Michigan Campaign Finance Network which has helped provide access for citizens to the money affecting election campaigns in this state. 

We have a right to be skeptical when the powerful want to hide information from us. Hiding information from consumers and citizens releases the odor of corruption. As the powerful gather more and more wealth and more and more power, we should demand more transparency, not less. Even glorified markets can't work without sunshine. Let's open the curtains!!!