The Global Spring: Building a Cooperative World
The United Nations estimates that 10% of the people in the world own 85% of the assets. Such concentrated wealth, and the concentrated political influence that goes along with it, are bad for the general well-being of human society. Building a cooperative economic system is critical to global well-being.
Want Well-Being for Yourself, and for Others as Well
In an interdependent age, where nuclear weapons, disease, conflict, and global travel and communications make us truly interconnected, the well-being of others directly affects our individual well-being. In a word, we are all in this together and the world really is a small place.
It is important, and possible, to decentralize wealth. It will take a global social movement to accomplish it, like the profound social movements that have gone before. The 1960s saw a cultural revolution that sparked with the Free Speech movement in Berkeley and became a widespread peace movement. Historically there were the American and French revolutions, and more recently the Prague Spring, the Velvet Revolution, and the Arab Spring.
Buy Local, Buy Worker-Owned
We can build on the momentum of the “Springs” around the world, and work to shift the global social system from a competitive to a cooperative footing. It all depends on how people spend their money, and what they expect of governments.
To decentralize wealth, people need to have an ownership interest in their work and goods need to be produced much closer to home. It used to be, before the Reagan Revolution, that people owned their own businesses – the corner grocery, the neighborhood coffee shop, the local auto repair place – but now, 93% of people are “employees.” Walmart, Starbucks, and other corporations are the beneficiaries of this “employee” norm.
In addition, wealth is created through the “value-added” process of manufacturing. Most of the world’s basic goods are made today in a few far-away places, put on ships, and spread across the world. This concentrates wealth, adds to environmental destruction, and lessens people’s security and resiliency by making them dependent on distant production.
To make the needed changes, we can buy from worker-owned, local or regional companies – a “buycott” rather than a boycott. If worker-owner companies don’t exist yet, help to create or convert them. We don’t need fewer “capitalists,” we need many, many more.
Expect Public Functions to be Noncommercial
Not only can we change where we spend our money, we can change what we expect of governments.
The global economy has been at sea since 1980, when the Reagan Administration created a doctrine of “privatization” that changed the face of society in a profound way. Before that time, basic public functions in the US – police, fire, education, healthcare, military, foreign assistance, basic research, and transportation, for example – were performed on a noncommercial basis, largely by governments and sometimes by not-for-profit corporations. Today still, some public functions like police and fire are performed on a noncommercial basis without a profit involved.
The problem is that when a “profit” is included in the performance of public functions, they are too expensive to afford on a society-wide basis and levels of public well-being are lowered dramatically. And as we see today, if we try to pay for public functions that include a profit, the federal budget soars. Privatization as a social operating concept is now so deeply entrenched in the US that popular discussion paints any activity that is performed without a profit incentive as “socialism,” despite the fact that public functions have been performed efficiently without a profit incentive for years in a “capitalistic” society.
There is a strong presence of unyielding self-interest in the commercialization of public functions currently, and the job falls to the public to demand that profit be taken out of basic public functions. Performing public functions on a noncommercial basis is not socialism, and no one should fall for the spin.
Shun the Unethical Accumulation of Wealth
Not all wealth is accumulated equally. Some of it is acquired through hard work and innovation, and some is garnered by walking all over the fundamental interests of others. If you have to hurt people to get your money, it is unethical – easy examples are making and selling cigarettes and soda, but there are other ways to walk all over the interests of others that are not as obvious. There’s nothing wrong with making money, as long as you don’t have to hurt anyone to get it. It’s important to separate the ethical wealthy from the unethical wealthy.
Expect Governments to Help Their Citizens to be Self-Reliant
Putting people “on the dole” isn’t good for the economy, and neither is leaving people to “sink or swim.” The role of government should be to help its people to satisfy their fundamental human needs, and if they need assistance to be self-reliant, it should be provided. Whether this is helping people start their own businesses, get educated, or break an addiction, there should be a social expectation that it is the government’s job to help people to help themselves.
And it’s not just the US that should be concerned about whether the American government is meeting the social needs of its people – American military spending can be as high as it is because the American people don’t have an expectation of mutual obligation. Extreme American military spending adversely affects all corners of the world.
Deposit Your Money in Non-Profit Banks
The nine largest banks in the world hold most of people’s deposits. That, by definition, makes them “too big to fail,” and also gives them too much power and influence. There’s an easy solution – move your deposits out of commercial banks and put them in credit unions. Plus, push Congress to raise the cap on the percentage of business loans that credit unions can make.
Join the Campaign to Decentralize Wealth
You can help us get started, by crowdfunding an advertising campaign, a revolving fund to establish cooperative businesses, and a certification system for labeling corporate ownership structure.
Find us online at: www.TheGlobalSpring.org
