Library Communiveristy Open Learning Course

The Economy and Us: week 5Overview

Competition or Cooperation?

Cooperatives

The Requirements of Sustainability

Where do we go from here?

John Kenneth Galbraith: Conventional wisdom

“ … the hallmark of the conventional wisdom is acceptability. … In some measure, the articulation of the conventional wisdom is a religious rite. It is an act of affirmation like reading aloud from the Scriptures or going to church. The business executive listening to a luncheon address on the virtues of free enterprise is already persuaded, and so are his fellow listeners, and all are secure in their convictions.”

The Affluent Society, 1998

Conventional ‘wisdom’ in our time

• ‘Economic growth’ – as long as something grows, good or bad.

• Competition and its derivative: competitiveness:– exploitation – of people, animals, the

environment, scarce resources, …– a ‘race to the bottom’ – winner takes all?– poor quality – the ‘horsemeat’ scandal?

Fritjof Capra, 1939 –

Founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley (California)

Author of The Turning Point (1982)

Another view from a prophet for our time

"The great challenge of our time is to build and nurture sustainable communities – [whose] ways of life, businesses, economies, physical structures, and technologies do not interfere with nature's inherent ability to sustain life.

The ecosystems of the natural world are sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms. …

The first step in this endeavor is to understand the principles of organization that ecosystems have developed to sustain the web of life.

There is no waste in these ecological communities, one species' waste being another species' food. … The energy driving these ecological cycles flows from the sun, and the diversity and cooperation among its members is the source of the community's resilience.”

Fritjof Capra, 1999

There’s a lot to ‘unpack’ in this statement …

… I leave it as an exercise!

Time to look at co-operation

Pioneering Irish Co-operators

William Thompson (Cork)1775 - 1833

Sir Horace Plunkett1854 - 1932

Toad Lane, England

Rochdale Pioneers

21st December 1844

Into the present …

Here’s Bill KellyMeitheal Mid West

Promoting the sustainable cooperative social business model

http://www.meitheal-midwest.org/

Bill Kelly on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEBws6pSzps

Community owned energy:another view of co-operation.

Energy4AllPartners in the Drumlin Energy Coop (NI)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3UuY PY7K2U

Other resources on co-operation

• Community owned shops & pubs• Housing cooperatives

MoreSee the PowerPoints from an all-Ireland

co-operative meeting in Belfast (June 2012)http://nicoop-forum.co.uk/?page_id=171

Northern Ireland Co-op Forum

David OrrAmerican academic,

philosopher and activist • [The necessary transition – to a sustainable society - requires] … a marked improvement and creativity in the arts of citizenship and governance.

• There are some things that can be done only by an alert citizenry acting with responsive and democratically controlled governments.

• Only governments moved by an ethically robust and organized citizenry can act to ensure the fair distribution of wealth within and between generations …”

From Four Challenges of Sustainabilitywebsite www.ratical.org/co-globalize/4CofS.pdf

More from David Orr..

• Only governments (prompted by an environmentally literate public): – can act to limit risks posed by technology or clean up the mess afterward.

– can chose to adopt and enforce standards that move us toward a cradle to cradle materials policy.

– can license corporations and control their activities for the public benefit over the long-term.

– – can create the financial measures to rebuild ecologically sound cities and

dependable public transportation systems.

– can set standards for the use of common property resources including the air, waters, wildlife, and soils.

– – can implement strategies of resilience that enable the society to withstand

unexpected disturbances.

Susan Georgewriter and activist “In 1945 or 1950 …[the] idea that the market

should be allowed to make major social and political decisions; the idea that the State should voluntarily reduce its role in the economy, or that corporations should be given total freedom, that trade unions should be curbed and citizens given much less rather than more social protection--such ideas were utterly foreign to the spirit of the time. Even if someone actually agreed with these ideas, he or she would have hesitated to take such a position in public and would have had a hard time finding an audience …”

Susan George: A short history of neo-liberalism, website: www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/econ101/neoliberalism.html

… and more from Susan George

“… neo-liberalism is not the natural human condition, it is not supernatural, it can be challenged and replaced because its own failures

will require this.

We have to be ready with replacement policies which restore power to communities and democratic States while working to institute

democracy, the rule of law and fair distribution at the international level.

Business and the market have their place, but this place cannot occupy the entire sphere of human existence.

So … where do we go from here?

“… our world is in crisis —political, economic, moral and ecological — and that this crisis is in the end a crisis of worldview. Old patterns of thought and old institutions, … no longer respond to the challenge

of our time”

Peter Reason: Justice, Sustainability, and Participation, Inaugural Professorial Lecture, University of Bath, January 2002,

Text available from website: http://people.bath.ac.uk/mnspwr/Papers/JusticeSustainabilityParticipation.pdf