The situation:
Global Challenges, like the financial crisis, food insecurity, natural disasters and climate change cross borders and require global solutions. Institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and groups like the G20 are at a crossroads: they face severe governance and accountability questions, but the global cooperation they claim to represent is more needed than ever before. Increasing aid, tweaking the existing financial system or building on existing trade agreements is not enough: citizens, civil society organizations, advocacy groups, policy experts, students and non-profits are calling for a New Economy that ensures
- Socio-Economic Justice
- Equitability
- Sustainable Development
What does a new Global Economy look like*?
New Economy Story: Articulate and popularize a new cultural story of the possibility and potential of living economies that support a healthy biosphere, a prosperous and meaningful life for all people, and vibrant, democratic communities of place.
Living Wealth Indicators: Replace GDP, stock indices, and other purely financial indicators by which we currently evaluate economic performance with indicators of human health, social well-being, and ecological integrity. Concurrently identify and eliminate system characteristics that create an imperative for endless economic expansion
Living Wealth Money System: Democratize the official money system to root the power to create and allocate money in people and democratically governed communities of place. Money is an accounting chit that shapes the resource allocation decisions of human societies. Those who control its creation and allocation control the society, so place that power in the hands of those who have a natural interest in using it to link underutilized resources with priority needs to create living community wealth.
Shared Prosperity: Promote public values and policies that support an equitable distribution of money and real wealth to meet the needs of all. We all enjoy greater health, happiness, and security when we share resources equitably.
Living Enterprises: Promote a public culture and policies that favor locally-owned, human-scale enterprises that are rooted in communities of place, work in harmony with natural systems, support vibrant community life, provide meaningful living-wage jobs, treat profit as a means rather than an end, and cooperate with like-minded businesses to create community wealth for all stakeholders.
Real Democracy: Change the rules of the electoral system to replace the current political and economic plutocracy (one-dollar one-vote rule by wealthy persons and powerful corporations) with a real democracy (one-person one-vote rule by real living persons).
Local Living Economies: Encourage and support local efforts to develop regionally self-reliant, energy efficient living economies that function as subsystems of their local and regional ecosystems. People with a sense of attachment to a living community of place have a natural interest in optimizing the long-term health and well-being of that community and its local ecosystem.
Global Rules: Support a transition to a global system of rules and institutions designed to act at the global level to ensure universal rights and protect the integrity of the biosphere and act at all levels to ensure that decisions are taken at the most local level feasible and that the rights of regions to pursue diverse paths are protected.
Peace Economy: Renounce war as an instrument of foreign policy, strive for regional and national self-reliance, and reallocate resources from maintaining instruments of war to meeting needs of all in ways that eliminate root causes of the violent competition for resources.
*Source: Institute for Policy Studies
What you can do
- Show a movie discussing the issue. Check out our film library for a list of free films you can borrow from AIDemocracy. Films come with discussion guides and free shipping. It couldn’t be any easier!
- Organize an event on your campus. Bring in a speaker. Organize a debate. Stand up and demand change. Check out our event database for some great ideas to get you started.
- Request a mini-grant to make your film or event a success. We provide small grants to help pay for materials, food and speakers. Contact us to discuss.
- Speak out to the network. Write a blog for our site. Post something on our Facebook group. Share photos or video with us on YouTube. Share your opinions with other concerned students like you. Here’s how to submit materials.
- Ask for advice and support. Not sure how to get started? Need to talk through ideas for your event? AIDemocracy staff and student leaders are here to help
- And more…
