Introduction

Shifting the global economy towards sustainability

Making Money Our Servant Rather Than Our Master

Right Livelihood

Social enterprise

Legal and Financial Issues

‘All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind’ – Adam Smith

Shifting the Global Economy towards Sustainability

The current global economy did not emerge by accident.  Nor, as is sometimes implied by our political elites, is it the result of some natural evolutionary process.  Rather, it is the product of carefully chosen and easily identifiable policies and structural arrangements. 

This Module will help us identify the key systems and patterns that make the global economy behave as it does today - that explain, for example, why economic activities that erode natural capital tend to be the most profitable and why it is often cheaper to buy goods flown in from the other side of the world than those made next door.  An understanding of how and why these systems work as they do will better enable us to explore how the global economy can be turned towards sustainability.

This exploration will include an examination of some of the key concepts and models that are currently being proposed – and in some cases implemented – to effect structural change in how the global economy operates.

Currency notes

Industrial pollution

Seedling