Money and Finance
The following are the results of the GAP at the Degrowth Conference 2010 in Barcelona that are particularly relevant for this working group
The document first presents a summary, including links to other working groups (in red & capital), and then the complete results of those Barcelona working groups with some relations the current one
Summary
Limit interest rates and money creation by introducing 100% bank reserve rate, implying the disappearance of financial markets, questioning global currencies (TRADE DEGROWTH).
Transition towards local currencies (TRADE DEGROWTH). Movement to physically-backed currency and lending/borrowing. Establish cooperative banks managed by communities/municipalities, cooperative banks' environmental and social standards are set and regulated by the community (SOCIAL ECONOMY).
Working Groups from 2010 GAP in Barcelona with some connections:
Money and currencies
Core points:
Governmental institutions needed to allow the use of alternative currencies
An international research network on alternative monetary systems to share knowledge and best practice
Educational campaign to explain how conventional money is being created in the current system, and how local currency systems work
Research questions:
How do we increase the demand for local currencies by getting a wider range of institutions to accept them (e.g. local currency in payment of local taxes)?
Should we remove the powers of private banking to create money?
What is the potential of alternative currencies to transform the international monetary system?
What is the relationship between the use of interest and economic growth? Study different scenarios with different interest rates (positive, neutral, negative) and its relation to economic growth. Do we need to replace the functions of interest in a framework of degrowth (a framework of limited natural resources)?
What is the appropriate backing(s) for money (in its various functions), to prevent it from becoming detached from the real-real economy?
Appropriate way of exchange between local currencies and conventional money?
New financial institutions
Reform fiscal and monetary policy towards degrowth
Transition economy
Evolutionary movement from a debt-backed economy to an equity-backed economy by introducing floating cap on interest rates
a change in lending standards to reflect social, environmental and ethical goals
Post transition
Eliminate fiat money, for 100% bank solvency
Spur the development of cooperative banks, as key players in a system which also requires a central bank to regulate the money supply to avoid inflation or deflation
Local enterprises/cooperatives can issue bonds in exchange for energy, for instance, to ensure that money scarcity does not prevent unnecessary lending restrictions. If you do not have money you can get them for energy that is to be produced in the future. (we did not talk about what happens if companies go bankrupt...reform insolvency law)
Limits the sale of derivative
Make sure that local governments regulate central banks/cooperative banks to ensure that their lending reflects environmental & social standards
Doubts about a global currency that reflects the world natural capital, as it requires a centralized government
Trade degrowth
Proposals:
Ecological and social impacts of trade have to be measured with biophysical and social indicators, and further have to be integrated in trade policies and agreements.
There is a need for a new democratic global trade organization that moves away from “free trade” and growth as their fundamental basis, and towards social and environmental sustainability.
Food issues should be given priority to improve food security by working towards food sovereignty and productive autonomy.
Power relations have to be reduced among others by absolute foreign debt cancellations.
Research questions:
How can ecological and social impacts of trade be measured with biophysical and human indicators?
How can the problem of scale adequately be addressed with various mechanisms?
Property rights
Non-regulation of resources is not a solution. Private property needs to be restricted. This implies further discussion on options and alternatives to private property and its regulation.
In this regard, there is a need to
Distinguish between manufactured and natural resources.
Identify indicators to determine the maximum level of property
Degrowth is about halting the commodification of nature. The term private property comprises various aspects. In terms of degrowth, some of these ambits could still remain in the context of private property and these should be defined.
Degrowing in a just way demands democratic management of natural resources (including our own bodies) so the resources should not be commodified.
Global commons: It is necessary to design jurisdiction according to each global common
Local commons: It is essential to recognize and integrate communal property rights under national law.
Politics of Sufficiency
The following are the results of the GAP at the Degrowth Conference 2010 in Barcelona that are particularly relevant for this working group
The document presents the complete results of those Barcelona working groups with some relations the current one
Working Groups from 2010 GAP in Barcelona with some connections:
How to deal with advertising
Advertising increases consumption by creating the illusion that people can satisfy their needs – real or imaginary - through products. It is wasteful and is driven by the competitive nature of the capitalist system.
To deal with advertising, we need a bottom-up and a top-down approach. Bottom-up focusses on changing people’s perception of advertising to recognise its manipulative nature. Top-down refers to government action to impose limits. More research is needed on freeing communications channels from advertising.
Bottom-up proposals:
Empower people to enable them to deconstruct advertising
Detox from the imagery of the consumption society
Community child protection from advertising
Debunking the myth of satisfying immaterial needs with material goods
Reduce inequality – inequality drives consumerism
Expose ubiquity of advertising
Expose exploitation of values in advertising
Direct action, ie subvertising
Top-down proposals:
Ban everything (all ads) possible from public space
Regulate everything (all ads) possible that affect kids/vulnerable people, health, CO2-intensive sectors, sexist messages, etc.
Advertising should be as expensive as possible, i.e. taxes, accounting standards, etc.
Research questions:
Do we need ombudsmen for advertising?
How to free the internet from advertising?
How to organise free communications financially? (i.e. What are the real costs of a newspaper?)
Zero waste
Core points:
Responsibility to be shared in the individual, social, productive and political arena
Proximity: production, treatment and final disposal of different wastes as local as possible
Incentives, especially taxes as economic tools in the des-incentive of waste generation. However, reduction of waste can not be managed just with economic instruments
Education of all social actors in order to make close not just impacts of products and kinds of treatments, but also the positive implications that zero waste initiatives have in relation to quality of life.
Ecodesign and Cradle to Cradle, important role in the change of perspective of the waste in reuse sense.
Political proposals:
Promotion of legal instruments to reduce waste such us taxation (on materials, in the production process) and Deposit and Refund systems enlarged to as much as possible
Use of advertising expertise for education in reuse and reduction
Facilitation of sharing good experiences to link good practices and good quality of life
Encouragement of cooperative sharing to promote community based recycling and reuse methods
Incorporation of proximity in waste regulations as a core principle
Research questions:
Creation of an international network of agencies for life cycle analysis and waste prevention
Disagreement:
Role to be played by corporations and private sector and how much the solutions are to be looked for in the technological and/or in the social arena
Degrowth in water consumption
“Reapropiation of commons”: returning to public ownership and management of superficial, groundwater and desalted water at municipal level (if possible) avoiding to consider it as a commodity
Domestic tariff systems with basic threshold for free lifeline and quota up to a ceiling threshold, established in physical blocks terms and per day per person. Heavy industrial tariff to physical parameters and thresholds
Labelling Virtual water content (full life cycle) on all products: water points credit card
Degrowth in water consumption is tightly related to land use planning: non-industrial agroecological approach to agrarian land and food soverignity; stop new irrigation plans and water transfer and big supply infrastructures; stop urban sprawl
Downscaling to local sourcesmanagement which enable people's empowerment: public fountains of free drink water as a symbol against fetishism of bottled water; democratic control on economy; living the river and its ecosystems; building a new water culture starting from water as life
In conclusion, accelerate degrowth and downshift your lifestyle
Reusing empty houses and co-housing
Research proposals:
Encourage architectural research on alternative housing, such as collaborative design of reused / empty buildings into co-housing with residents, material reuse, etc.
What is the ‘overconsumption of space’? Is it better to talk about ecological footprint?
Political proposals:
Impose a large tax on unoccupied housing
Stop urban sprawl
State purchases houses that would be repossessed and turns them into public co-housing, empowering people
Contested proposals:
Find instruments to stimulate the reduction of living space for households that overconsume space
Strengthen squatter rights
Strengthen association
In rooted in social fabric with institutional backup to match empty houses with people living in poor conditions (i.e. homeless) who would care for the properties (i.e. self-management)
Human nature and degrowth
Human beings have biological, emotional, intellectual and spiritual potentials, and different cultures realize them differently. The social, political and economic conditions which people live in shape their values and behaviors.
Humans seem to tend to act ‘short-term’, but now with humankind facing pressing ecological limits, there is now a need to create institutions fostering us to feel, think and act more long-term (i.e. within ecological limits).
In the context of degrowth, it is imperative to draw upon and integrate research including but not limited to anthropology, happiness studies, experimental economics, evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience for transcending the concept of homo economicus. Such research into human nature would enable us to better understand how to reshape these conditions in order to favor those values and behaviors which are socially and environmentally benign - for example to better distinguish between real needs and illusory needs/satisfiers.
We propose to support existing and creating new experimental spaces, i.e. communities experimenting with degrowth at a local scale to investigate in practice how best to satisfy the basic needs for sharing, creating and mutual esteeming.
Solidarity economy, Cooperatives and Social Business
The following are the results of the GAP at the Degrowth Conference 2010 in Barcelona that are particularly relevant for this working group
The document first presents a summary, including links to other working groups (in red & capital), and then the complete results of those Barcelona working groups with some relations the current one
Summary
Limit the size of the company for maintaining the rationality of satisfaction of local needs (HUMAN NATURE). Change institutions to abolish the profit dividends and profits of distant shareholders that don’t take part of the activity (MONEY-result of dissapearance of financial markets and questioning of global currencies).
The social economy would be driven by people directly engaged on the labour force of economic and social activities and not only as investors (DEMOCRACY).
Working Groups from 2010 GAP in Barcelona with some connections:
Social economy, changing the corporation status
Proposals:
Limit the size of the company for maintaining the rationality of satisfaction of local needs
Change institutions to abolish the profit dividends and profits of distant shareholders that don’t take part of the activity. The social economy would be driven by people directly engaged on the labour force of economic and social activities and not only as investors
Research questions:
Can we think in a profit maximization enterprise in a de-growth society?
How can we link producer and consumer cooperatives to strengthen the non-profit rationality?
Property rights
Non-regulation of resources is not a solution. Private property needs to be restricted. This implies further discussion on options and alternatives to private property and its regulation.
In this regard, there is a need to
Distinguish between manufactured and natural resources.
Identify indicators to determine the maximum level of property
Degrowth is about halting the commodification of nature. The term private property comprises various aspects. In terms of degrowth, some of these ambits could still remain in the context of private property and these should be defined.
Degrowing in a just way demands democratic management of natural resources (including our own bodies) so the resources should not be commodified.
Global commons: It is necessary to design jurisdiction according to each global common
Local commons: It is essential to recognize and integrate communal property rights under national law.
Trade degrowth
Proposals:
Ecological and social impacts of trade have to be measured with biophysical and social indicators, and further have to be integrated in trade policies and agreements.
There is a need for a new democratic global trade organization that moves away from “free trade” and growth as their fundamental basis, and towards social and environmental sustainability.
Food issues should be given priority to improve food security by working towards food sovereignty and productive autonomy.
Power relations have to be reduced among others by absolute foreign debt cancellations.
Research questions:
How can ecological and social impacts of trade be measured with biophysical and human indicators?
How can the problem of scale adequately be addressed with various mechanisms?
Social Security
The following are the results of the GAP at the Degrowth Conference 2010 in Barcelona that are particularly relevant for this working group
The document first presents a summary, including links to other working groups (in red & capital), and then the complete results of those Barcelona working groups with some relations the current one
Summary:
A ceiling on the level of income (implying a 100% tax above certain level of income) in needed, as well a basic income (NATURE RESOURCES, WATER, HOUSING/SHARING, AGRICULTURE – minimum access to and maximum use of resources).
The maximum ratio, between the minimum level of income and the income ceiling, within both society and companies, should be democratically decided (DEMOCRACY, SOCIAL ECONOMY, HUMAN NATURE in relation to attaining social status, in the absence of high income).
A progressive tax on income, property or natural resource use is proposed to finance basic income. Basic income can be in provided in the form of local currency, specific products and services like housing or health (SOCIAL SECURITY). (POLITICAL STRATEGIES, related to the feasibility of gathering sufficient political support for basic income.) There is a need to develop risk sharing systems for saving and financing for the transition. Pensions can be financed by green taxes.
Research on world basic income is needed as a viable alternative to development aid (ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE). Social science research on basic income and its experience is proposed (HUMAN NATURE).
Working Groups from 2010 GAP in Barcelona with some connections
Social security and pensions
Proposals for the transition:
Need to develop risk sharing systems for saving and financing for the transition
Progressive taxation system focused on income (above maximun income 100% tax) and green taxes for increased pension funding as is required
Proposals final aim:
Happiness of people
An equalitarian society where social security is not needed i.e. everybody can satisfiy their basic needs with basic income (basic income is not necessarily money)
New (macro)economic models for degrowth
Need to pull together degrowther economist modellers to do specifically modelling about degrowth.
How to incorporate some critical issues:
Fating productivity analysis in macro models to investigate labour income and employment benefits of worktime reduction
Explicit representation of: constraints of resources, incorporate absolute scarcity in physical flows, and consider strong sustainability (critical resources)
Stability of the system when contracting (is it predictable?)
Research questions:
How to represent in the models the financial system and interest rates?
Which scale do we need degrowth models (regional and local)?
Changing the definition of work, how to incorporate unpaid work?
Complexity in modelling macro-micro relationship: How to deal from macro degrowth with the micro level?
Investigate how to take into account in the degrowth models the increase in the marginal utility redistribution
Take into account non-community goods
Degrowth models are important to see what happens to welfare state and social services
Not so much disagreement between participants
Basic income and income ceiling
Basic income for all
Research Themes/Questions:
Comparisons between BI and a negative income tax plus a social welfare state to inform public opinion. That is, not only from a monetary-based approach, but also from a moral perspective.
Will economic degrowth provide sufficient means to finance a BI institution in the long-run?
Can a BI institution be a viable and fruitful alternative to development aid?
How has human psychology, values, and moral ideas played a role in preventing the application of a BI system in the past? What psychological insights can be derived from human populations where BI as an institution has been applied?
Issues needing further attention:
In order to finance BI sustainably a tax-based approach should be implemented progressively on income rate, rent or ownership, natural resource use, and consumption.
Is a basic income preferred to a guaranteed-job-offer? Should local currencies, or product-specific vouchers play an important role in the making-up of a basic income-rent?
How to implement BI at a political level; in particular taking into account voter participation in political processes.
What are the links between a society of employment and a society addicted to consumption?
Income Ceiling
IC is on the political agenda in Europe now.
Measures to redistribute income & wealth and measures to give equal access to environmental services are compatible and, in fact, they should go together.
Proposals on IC:
Minimum-maximum ratio
Ratio within companies
New ways on attaining social status (in the absence of high incomes) should be found
Work-sharing
Research questions:
Relationship between labor productivity and reduced resource use?
How can we achieve changing recognition of different kinds of paid work and unpaid work?
What is the definition of work in a degrowth society?
Reflections on barriers to lower working hours from other elements of degrowth
Debt Consumerism Low incomes
Access to the conditions for a good life
What is the aim of work in a degrowth society?
Relationship between a basic income and reduced working hours
Research that can recognize the value and contribution of the core economy (unpaid, household work) in our current economy
Political proposals:
Tax reform / Tax on resources, not labor / A more progressive income tax, with a larger tax-free threshold
Incentives to encourage companies to enable work sharing and part-time work
Other uses of taxes
Need to provide accessible childcare, including at conferences like these!
Legislation that supports co-housing
Need to reduce the power of financial capital
Focus on gender issues, including the equality of pay for genders
Resources and Extraction
The following are the results of the GAP at the Degrowth Conference 2010 in Barcelona that are particularly relevant for this working group
The document first presents a summary, including links to other working groups (in red & capital), and then the complete results of those Barcelona working groups with some relations the current one
Summary:
The exploitation of natural resource should be limited, and a cap on the extraction of fossil fuels and non-renewable resources should be introduced (HUMAN NATURE – reduce resource consuption, ADVERTISING – reduce consumption). Public subsidies for extractive industries should be abandoned and the social and environmental cost associated with them paid by companies. (SOCIAL METABOLISM, INDICATORS). A global moratorium on resource extraction in areas of high biodiversity and ethnographic value is needed.
There should be prior informed consent by local communities, who should participate in decision-making about mining projects. (SOCIAL ECONOMY- accountability and transparency , INDICATORS, DEMOCRACY).
Working Groups from 2010 GAP in Barcelona with some connections:
Reduction of natural resource exploitation
Political proposals:
Global extractive moratoria on areas with high biodiversity and ethnographic value
Internalization and transparency of mining real (and long term) costs
Binding capacity for local communities in deciding about mining projects. Full information, a proper process and respecting national and international environmental protection norms
To create funds for financing independent researches on mining
To promote companies international accountability (campaining in countries of origin)
Research questions:
How could we enforce a national cap on fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources while maintaining fair access?
How to tax advertising for discouraging resource consumption? With which criteria?
Which could be the results of an international found for compensating socio-environmental impacts?
Also disagreement points
Environmental justice, the environmentalism of the poor and degrowth
Proposals:
Build next conference together with environment and climate justice movements in order to integrate within degrowth the concepts of social, political and environmental justice.
Increase the visibility of positive examples and proposals of bottom up and alternative life sustainance models.
In order to work towards a world where economic growth in the Global North and in the Global South are delinked, we need to distribute wealth and compensate for ecological debt. For exemple, we should support the Yasuni initiative, carbon tax to redistribute revenue, work in the noth to reduce degradation in the south
Share our knowledge in a copyleft degrowth journal/platform
Research questions:
Different way to collect data to measure and stop the negative impacts of degrowth on disadvantaged groups
Need to redefine development categories ( North, south, poor rich 1-2-3-4 world, national state, developed underdeveloped, post- anti- high income, low income central marginal eco abuse, green economy,....= find the right lenses to identify who is affecting and who is affected
We recognize that poor and other marginalized groups in the global north are also environmentally disadvantaged in the Global South
Moratoria on new infrastructures
Proposals:
Eliminate/nationalise mega-construction companies (due to their levels of debt) that drive the building of infrastructure projects as ends in themselves.
Some infrastructure projects must clearly be abandoned: Nuclear, ammonia production, incinerators, high speed train and large scale dams.
Some infrastructure must be limited: highways, long distance transportation and airports.
At the same time, transformation of some existing infrastructure must be promoted: smaller more compact cities, converting car based infrastructure to walking and cycling and open common space.
Research questions:
Research the full life-cycle impacts and components of infrastructure materials.
Activities:
Support social campaigns that change the imaginary of people regarding the need to travel, long distance travel, levels of consumption and production and dependence on infrastructure.
Support communities that fight large infrastructure projects.