Crisis, Society: yes we can change everything!

Current Economy and Sustainable Development-compatible? GDP growth (at all costs), economic development, inflation ... How concillier the current economy with the environment and sustainable development.
Christophe
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Crisis, Society: yes we can change everything!




by Christophe » 21/11/08, 20:13

A Belgian article that goes straight in the same direction as the article in Gérard Mermet's Le Monde: https://www.econologie.com/crise-bancair ... -3955.html

Yes, we can change everything

Revolutionize work, slow down, build a social Europe ... It's possible. And it's even urgent.

"Another world is possible", proclaimed the alterglobalists at the turn of the twenty-first century. Possible? No, essential. International finance, then most of the world's economies, until then providers of wealth, have turned upside down. Destruction of value, we say in the jargon. But bankruptcy is not just human. Ruin also threatens our environment. The recent financial crisis has somewhat relegated the fight against global warming to the background. But if you take a closer look, each report on climate change is more alarming than the last. And with its hunger riots, the onset of the oil crisis, its chain climatic disturbances, 2008 will also be the year of the first global ecological shock.

Coincidence of multiple crashes or true turning point of civilization? We would rather look for the second proposal as the challenges posed by these two crises meet. The current fiasco owes nothing to chance. These are our fundamentals that need to be reviewed. Thus, we believe in democracy, but our development model and our standards of living were also governed by a logic of continuous growth. If there was one area where democracy no longer applied, it was the production of wealth. On the contrary, the whole initiative came back to the market. Here, he decided on the technological innovations that shape our daily lives. There, it directed our consumption. Always with the prospect of reaping the best profits. Never according to social and environmental costs.

Morally, growth has taken on the appearance of a flight forward. In rich countries, for a fortune amassed, ten new poor. Meanwhile, the South is stifling and wiping out climate change first. At the end of the road, the dead end. Because even more than the capitalist model, a big consumer of resources, it is the planet that is running out. So that the greatest social disasters will increasingly have an ecological origin.

Another sign that these crises have their source in the same evil: the similarity in the lack of reaction of most decision-makers. Whether in the face of the financial crisis or global warming, it is only denial, minimization, ill will ... Before crying out for disaster and claiming sometimes a new Kyoto of finance, sometimes a Marshall plan for it weather.

Hope and necessity

The obvious is obvious: the whole world will no longer be able to live, produce and consume Western style. We suspected it a little, but 2008 will serve as an electroshock. It is with a hangover that you will have to roll up your sleeves. And change everything: putting finance at the service of the economy, the economy at the service of man and, above all, man at the controls of his destiny. Fortunately, hope has recently come to the aid of the need with the worldwide election of Barack Obama. Thanks to him, America could finally take control of the offensive against global warming. Or help to overturn the ultra-liberal dogmas that she herself established. But the Chosen One will not really be invested until next January. And let there be no illusions, he will probably try to save America before the planet.

In the meantime, we propose to explore in this dossier, with your assistance (on our site), some avenues for this necessary change. From the economy to the environment, including social Europe or North-South relationships. No, all hope is not lost. Remember Lionel Jospin. At the end of 1999, the French Prime Minister at the time watched helplessly at the maneuvers of Michelin, which announced a wave of layoffs and, at the same time, saw its share price crash. Publicly, the head of socialist government summed up the thought then: the state - and therefore politics and citizens - can not do everything. It was not that long ago. What if it was already another era?

Moralize and regulate finance? And why not revolutionize the economy!

Finance, it seems, worships performance. Performance? My worship! The Financial Times recently estimated the salaries of top US financial executives at $ 95 billion over three years. The same lost $ 500 billion. In three months. Faced with pharaonic compensation and other golden parachutes granted to the top of financial institutions, we understand the indignation of the average employee. Immoral? Not only.

Take the example of a boss paid in shares of his company (stock options). Motivating for the manager? Certainly. Beneficial for the company? Not sure. Because said boss will rather tend to work to raise the price of his shares than for the sustainability of his business. By indexing their salaries on the stock market, the system has encouraged captains of industry to turn into mercenaries, more inclined to serve the interests of shareholders first than the company itself. Disconnected, we tell you.

These excesses are denounced everywhere today. The market should be moralized. But still ... For many, the future of finance can be summed up in one word: control! Because for thirty years, the world system has obeyed only its own laws. Everyone laughed a lot at these decision-makers pleading for self-regulation of finance. Now is the time to get down to business. The market is like the octopus: to tenderize it, you have to tap it. And start by sending everyone back to their original business, then place the financial products put on the market under surveillance. Commercial banks would then just collect savings and extend credit, merchant banks would do business, and dollars would be well guarded. This is exactly what we did just after the crisis of 1929 ... Before forgetting the lessons half a century later.

Return work to workers

Moralize and regulate, therefore ... For others, it is still insufficient. Rather than emergency braking, they recommend a real change of switch. In L'Anticapitalisme Démocratique, a book to be published in December, Olivier Hubert and Raphaël van Breugel explore a new path. Of course, without regulation, capitalism goes mad. "But regulating does not solve the problem. Very supervised in the 60s, capitalism saw its profits gradually dry up. The question is therefore not so much that of regulation as of capitalism itself and its failures", advance Olivier Hubert.

In addition to these dysfunctions, the authors note that the capitalist system is fundamentally unjust and undemocratic. Indeed, shareholders and companies pay themselves on the fruit of human labor, "the only real factor of wealth". Finally, in its very logic, capitalism would soon be untenable. "Growth, essential to capitalism, is developing today to the detriment of real human needs, but also of the planet, which is seeing its resources running out."

How to get out of squaring the circle? Hubert and van Breugel's conclusions are, to say the least, original. They attack the very heart of the operation of the company, where the worker no longer has a say, whether in its direction or the distribution of profits. "The shareholders are now masters of the redistribution - so to speak - of wealth. We advocate the disappearance of the shareholder. For the benefit of an administration by the workers themselves."

A real revolution, justified both morally and economically. "Shareholders win on both counts. First, they want perfect 'liquidity', and trade their securities on the stock market whenever they want. But they also claim a right of oversight over the company. It is totally incompatible. Either we invest in the long term and we give up a certain freedom, or we speculate, but without getting involved in long-term management. The errors of the system are there. However, the proponents of regulation do not tackle it. . "

Denunciation of the exploitation of man by man, power to workers, Democratic Anticapitalism would have you like a well-known tune, once sung by a bearded thinker back into fashion. But Olivier Hubert defends himself against any Marxist or neocommunist inclination. "We consider that private initiative and competition are still necessary. It is just that we do not think that regulation is sufficient. And, very far from Sovietism, we maintain that this revolution must take place within the democratic system, and even extend this system to the economic sphere and therefore to the company. " A choice of civilization, in short: it is to politics and citizens, and not to the economy, that sovereignty over world affairs must fall.

Julien Bosseler and Jean-Laurent Van Lint

The continuation in your TéléMoustique


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Source: http://www.telemoustique.be/tm/magazine ... anger.html
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Christophe
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by Christophe » 21/11/08, 20:19

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