Introduction

Shifting the global economy towards sustainability

Making Money Our Servant Rather Than Our Master

Right Livelihood

Social enterprise

Legal and Financial Issues

‘If you throw mother nature out the window she comes back in the door with a pitchfork.’ – Masonobu Fukuoka

Why the Global Economy Behaves As It Does

The prevailing wisdom among today’s political and economic elites is that economic globalisation is in some sense inevitable, perhaps even the summit and natural flowering of human achievement.  The oft-repeated mantra is that since we cannot change it, we should adapt to it as best we can.

Rather than being inevitable, economic globalisation is, in fact, the result of a number of carefully chosen policies.  Paradoxically, as we shall see, many of these directly contradict the basic tenets of classical free market economic theory, from which the proponents of economic globalisation claim to draw much of their inspiration and authority.

By understanding the key reasons why the global economy behaves as it does today, we will be in a better position to discern the core patterns underlying economic behaviour and, if we choose, to change them.

The two key drivers of today’s global economy are externalities and subsidies.  These two factors, that we will explore in turn, heavily skew market prices in favour of large-scale industrial goods and services and against small-scale and locally-based economies.  (These are further reinforced by the money systems that are dominant in today’s global economy that promote exponential growth and wealth disparities, as we will see in the next module.)

This has permitted a progressively greater concentration of economic power in ever fewer hands in a way completely at variance with the vision and teaching of the founding figures of classical economics, such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who imagined a free and competitive market occupied by a profusion of predominantly small-scale producers serving largely local markets. 

These founding fathers of classical economics would recognise little and approve of even less in the current global economy that has come to be dominated by a relatively small number of vast corporations: today, 52 of the world’s 100 largest economies are corporations, only 48 are sovereign nation states.

• Externalities
• Subsidies
• Role of International Organisations

Corporate control of media
Click on image to enlarge
Fuente: Corporations.org

Political speeches