Electric cable a lifeline for idled symbol of Korean cooperation

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

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Brunei Sultan, Aquino vow closer cooperation

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Echo360 acquires ThinkBinder to add online collaboration tools

NEW DELHI: India and Kazakhstan today agreed to carry forward their civil nuclear cooperation beyond 2014, the deadline for the supply of fuel for the reactors as per the present nuclear contract, with the uranium-rich nation assuring to help meet the …See all stories on this topic »Economic Times

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India, Kazakhstan to carry forward civil nuclear cooperation beyond 2014

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Minister: Iran Keen to Boost Judicial Cooperation with Sri Lanka

Last resort to save Cooperation deal between Sudan and South Sudan.

Meetings of the joint security and political committee between Sudan and South Sudan started on Tuesday in a bid to prevent the cooperation agreement signed between the two sides from collapsing.The meetings of the committee come after the two sides have so far failed to implement the comprehensive cooperation deal, namely with regard to its security part relating to border demarcation, deployment of troops on a buffer zone and breaking the link between South Sudan’s army and armed groups fighting the government in Khartoum. They also follow intensive talks between South Sudan’s chief negotiator Pagan Amum and senior Sudanese government officials in Khartoum to find a positive atmosphere that helps the two sides to overcome their differences over the oil file which slowed down the implementation of the deal.

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Khartoum talks ‘last resort to save co-operation deal’

Ukraine Budget Depends on Cooperation with IMF

The funding of the national budget of Ukraine for 2013 adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on November 6 carries significant risks and depends on the country’s cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), experts polled by Interfax-Ukraine have said.See all stories on this topic »Kyiv Post

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Funding of budget 2013 depends on Ukraine’s cooperation with IMF, say experts

The officials held the same opinion regarding the rapid improvement of economic cooperation, emphasizing that during the first half of 2012, the trade turnover amounted to USD 12.2 million, ranking Azerbaijan as the main trading partner of Latvia.

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Parties agree to strengthen the economic cooperation

Since 1978 there has been scientific cooperation between China and Germany in many areas. Over time, one of which is research and development of high speed railways.

China and Germany have conducted in-depth cooperation in various fields including sophisticated manufacturing, information technology, green energy, the auto industry and high speed railways. The fruitful results have been seen in joint research and exchanges since China and Germany agreed on scientific and technological cooperation in 1978.

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Scientific cooperation between China, Germany still deepening