Is there intelligent life in the theoretical horizon of economists?

Synopsis : The world is moving gradually into what has been characterized as a disaster in slow motion, and the necessary adjustments in the very heart of the ways we manage the economy are still under development. Frightened by the accumulation and overlap of critical trends, people are looking for a way back to a structure more like what worked in the past century. We naturally fear sudden stressful disturbances, and this generates a kind of increasingly dangerous institutional inertia. Innovation is needed. The good news is unease with lack of logical direction is generating a global network of economists who are beginning to sense a vision of an economy that serves society, rather than how to better serve it.

The following article is by Ladislau Dowbor.

Ladislau Dowbor

The lamentable economic mainstream still finds the price of commodities can be left in the hands of a group of international speculators, that the future of oil will resolve itself, that climate change is an unpleasant prospect proposed by scientists eager for headlines, that deficits generated by financial speculators (almost 100% of GDP in the U.S. alone) must be paid by the poor, and the increasing global inequality will be solved by the invisible hand. Who are these dreamers?

The world is moving gradually into what has been characterized as a disaster in slow motion, and the necessary adjustments in the very heart of the ways we manage the economy are still under development. Frightened by the accumulation and overlap of critical trends, people looking for a way back to a structure more like what worked in the past century. We naturally fear sudden stressful disturbances, and this generates a kind of increasingly dangerous institutional inertia. Innovation is needed.

In Paris, this month of April 2011, economists met from different continents to discuss the designs of a "global economic alternative." The initiative is the CCFD, an NGO that fights for the traditional social advances on the planet. There were three days of submission of proposals and anguish on the part of economists who are aware of the scale of the challenges, and the fragility of innovative proposals, compared to the dominant interests who cling to old practices and privileges.

This was a meeting for solutions, a new kind of catechism, one with few rules. The challenges are too complex. And yes, theoretical strands for solutions are emerging.

Julia Wartenberg brought a little of the atmosphere that prevails in the United States, where a wave of pessimism is sweeping the map of solid faith in indefinite progress, that each new generation will be better off than their parents, that crises are a thing of poor countries, that a person who wants to work hard to rise in life, that if we leave the market alone will things be resolved. With a debt equivalent to one quarter of global GDP and 40% of corporate profits from production, not financial speculation, really it is about time that U.S. economists start thinking instead of repeating dogmas of the past century. Confused, north Americans wonder why things are not working, and are seeking solutions that are less ideological and more functional.

The French economists are shaking; Geneviève Azam, Xavier Ricard, Christian Arnsperger and Gael Giraud, for example. Rich countries have been putting off problems by replacing the demand based on actual production with demand based on consumer credit. People began to consume not from the income already received, but according to the credit obtained - via credit cards and home loans - thus creating huge financial profits, but a demand which is strangled by the accumulation of debts. "Because life is now," so to speak. The result is an artificial level of consumption with a profit account that appears today. With the right in political power, it is not financial intermediaries who are required to pay, rather, it is those who are dependent on social policies who's services for needs are restricted. In the name of austerity, this reduces popular demand, thus deepening the crisis.

From Latin American economists, particularly the indigenous representatives, comes the powerful emergence of the idea of "vivir bien" — "living well", which means reducing the race for extractive resources and consumer obsession; to seek balance in values​​ and goals expressed through a real quality of life for people living well with respect for mother nature. It is not poetry, it is common sense. It is idiocy to think we can continue to plunder the planet with impunity, and balance the economy to focus resources in the hands of financial minorities.

Teopista Akoya, Uganda has brought us focus on the immense challenges of family farming, which still occupies half of the world. In line with the excellent report which contributed to the IAASTD, analyzes the countryside not only as a source of production and exports, but as dynamic that has to be culturally acceptable to the people. Modern scientific agriculture can perfectly accommodate family farming, streamlining traditional systems, instead of expelling people with extensive monoculture that generates fields of depleted soil, chemical contamination of water and slums in cities.

We are, of course, facing predatory elites, and largely feel powerless. Arnsperger forcefully brings the vision of the necessity to democratize economic procedures, both by enhancing transparency, for processes to enable supervision, especially in the financial world which actually works with the money of others. Democracy is also necessary in a number of other critical areas. In reality, there is no reason to stop democracy in the doors of corporations. Any activity that has social impact should be accountable to society, there should be no misuse. Those who have clean hands can show them.

The views that emerged at the meeting tended to focus on economic democracy as their common denominator. The economy should be at the service of society. It is time to rethink the free market paradigms, and not with nonsense that it is referred to as "science", but with common sense. What we have today is a crisis in worldview. Can we face ourselves and also accept the death of ten million children a year when we have the organizational and financial resources to solve the problem?

Alberto Arroyo speaks of communitarian socialism, democratic and decentralized, rather than bureaucratic socialism. Kavaljit Sing, India, introduced the Fixing Global Finance, Oscar Ugarteche, the need to seek practical ways to expand the understanding of the new "common sense", particularly with the widespread access to knowledge. Numerous proposals, and little power. Still, the network that is forming on the planet is the power of actual organic human evolution, this is a huge fact and it tends to generate new convergences.

This is a positive reality, a world wide web of viver bien is nurtured through numerous initiatives, ranging from meetings of the World Social Forum, to network Otro Desarrollo in Latin America, the New Economics Foundation in London, New York Ethical Marketplace, Alternatives Economiques in France, our blogs Crisis and Opportunity, the move Real Economics, Madhyam in India. Necessity is creating a Planetary network of economists who are beginning to sense what economic recovery is synchronous evolution with how efficiently free economic life in a free market serves democracy and humanity, not how humans fit into it.

---------------------

Translated by Garrett Connelly

One thought during translation, vivir bien is both Portuguese and Spanish. Comunalidad is a Spanish similar thought direction that includes friendship, fun, good feelings and communication among neighbors, neighborhoods and communities. Good living extends from there to good relations with Mother Earth. Those who live within comunalidad simply refer to other systems as "not communality."

Mechanistic, individual anarchic struggle to extract private reward from both civilized humanity and mother earth is not communality, it is predatory piracy.