An economic system that supports people and planet is still possible | Guardian Sustainable Business. I direct an organisation with an ambitious mission statement: to transform the economy so that it works for people and the planet. For 30 years the New Economics Foundation has been working with others to shift our economic system away from the current model – growth no matter the cost – to one where the primary goal is maximising human wellbeing, fairly, and without destroying the environment on which we all depend.
We’ve had successes. We helped reform the EU Common Fisheries Policy for the better and created over 800 businesses in the most deprived parts of the UK. We coordinated the Jubilee 2000 debt coalition that lead to the cancellation of $100bn (£62.5bn) unpayable poor country debt. And we really thought our moment had come when we persuaded the UK government to start measuring human wellbeing. But when the financial crisis exposed plainer than ever the failings of today’s economic status quo, it wasn’t our vision that rose out of the ashes. It’s time to change tactics.
Scott Santens - Shouldn't All This Talk About Basic Income Actually Be Talk About Basic Resources? A basic income is in a way a minimum claim to resources, with each person using this to claim the resources most important to them. The fact a basic income is given regardless of work, makes it that much more clear it exists as such a claim on resources based on the shared right to such resources. This last point is important.
No one of us created the Earth. We were all born here. Its resources therefore can be seen as belonging to all of us or none of us. It is this lack of 100% full individual ownership over anything and everything we create, that provides the justification that every single one of us has a right to a percentage, however small, of everything created by humanity. For those familiar with a resource-based economy, basic income is a step in that direction. In the United States 1.1% of all labor is involved in food production. Cash is a very efficient means of resource distribution. Think of it this way, what if food stamps didn't exist? Este punto es importante. Reclaim the Commons: Tragedy of the commons.
Self-interests causing depletion of a shared resource The tragedy of the commons is a metaphoric label for a concept that is widely discussed, and criticised, in economics, ecology and other sciences. According to the concept, should a number of people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource such as a pasture, they will tend to over-use it, and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some users exercised voluntary restraint, the other users would merely supplant them, the predictable result being a tragedy for all.
The metaphor is the title of a 1968 essay by ecologist Garrett Hardin. As another example, he cited a watercourse which all are free to pollute. The principal concern of Hardin's essay was overpopulation of the planet. Some scholars have argued that over-exploitation of the common resource is by no means inevitable, since the individuals concerned may be able to achieve mutual restraint by consensus. Expositions[edit] Classical[edit] Application[edit] Reclaim the Commons: Commodification of nature. The commodification of nature is an area of research within critical environmental studies concerned with the ways in which natural entities and processes are made exchangeable through the market, and the implications thereof. As capitalism expands in breadth and depth, more and more things previously external to the system become “internalized,” including entities and processes that are usually considered "natural.
" Nature, as a concept, however, is very difficult to define, with many layers of meaning, including external environments as well as humans themselves.[5] Political ecology and other critical conceptions draw upon strands within Marxist geography that see nature as "socially produced," with no neat boundary separating the "social" from the "natural. "[6] Still, the commodification of entities and processes that are considered natural is viewed as a "special case" based on nature’s biophysical materiality, which "shape[es] and condition[s] trajectories of commodification.
Demurrage (currency) Demurrage is the cost associated with owning or holding currency over a given period. It is sometimes referred to as a carrying cost of money. For commodity money such as gold, demurrage is the cost of storing and securing the gold. For paper currency, it takes the form of a periodic tax, such as a stamp tax, on currency holdings. Demurrage is sometimes cited as economically advantageous, usually in the context of complementary currency systems. While demurrage is a natural feature of private commodity money, it has at various times been deliberately incorporated into currency systems as a disincentive against the hoarding of money, as well as to achieve other perceived benefits. Gresham's law that "bad money drives out good" suggests that demurrage fees would mean that a currency would suffer more rapid circulation than competing forms of currency.
One Schilling note with demurrage stamps from Wörgl The Islamic system of Zakat is a form of demurrage. Negative Interest rate. An interest rate is the rate at which interest is paid by a borrower (debtor) for the use of money that they borrow from a lender (creditor). Specifically, the interest rate (I/m) is a percent of principal (P) paid a certain amount of times (m) per period (usually quoted per annum). For example, a small company borrows capital from a bank to buy new assets for its business, and in return the lender receives interest at a predetermined interest rate for deferring the use of funds and instead lending it to the borrower. Interest rates are normally expressed as a percentage of the principal for a period of one year.[1] Interest-rate targets are a vital tool of monetary policy and are taken into account when dealing with variables like investment, inflation, and unemployment.
The central banks of countries generally tend to reduce interest rates when they wish to increase investment and consumption in the country's economy. Interest rate notations[edit] Historical interest rates[edit] where: Address Discounted cash flow. In finance, discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis is a method of valuing a project, company, or asset using the concepts of the time value of money. All future cash flows are estimated and discounted to give their present values (PVs)—the sum of all future cash flows, both incoming and outgoing, is the net present value (NPV), which is taken as the value or price of the cash flows in question. Present value may also be expressed as a number of years' purchase of the future undiscounted annual cash flows expected to arise. Discounted cash flow analysis is widely used in investment finance, real estate development, corporate financial management and patent valuation. Discount rate[edit] The most widely used method of discounting is exponential discounting, which values future cash flows as "how much money would have to be invested currently, at a given rate of return, to yield the cash flow in future.
" History[edit] Mathematics[edit] Discounted cash flows[edit] where Continuous cash flows[edit] Revalue Future value. Overview[edit] Money value fluctuates over time: $100 has a different value than $100 in five years. This is because one can invest $100 today in a bank account or any other investment, and that money will grow/shrink due to interest. Also, if $100 today allows the purchase of an item, it is possible that $100 will not be enough to purchase the same item in five years, because of inflation (increase in purchase price). An investor who has some money has two options: to spend it right now or to invest it. Therefore, to evaluate the real worthiness of an amount of money today after a given period of time, economic agents compound the amount of money at a given interest rate. The operation of evaluating a present value into the future value is called a capitalization (how much will $100 today be worth in 5 years?).
It follows that if one has to choose between receiving $100 today and $100 in one year, the rational decision is to cash the $100 today. Simple interest[edit] See also[edit] Minimize capital accumulation. "Capital-building" redirects here. For the headquarters of the European External Action Service, see Triangle building. In a more broad sense, capital accumulation may refer to the gathering or amassing of any objects of value as judged by one's perceived reproductive interest group. [citation needed] Definition[edit] The definition of capital accumulation is subject to controversy and ambiguities, because it could refer to: a net addition to existing wealtha redistribution of wealth.
Most often, capital accumulation involves both a net addition and a redistribution of wealth, which may raise the question of who really benefits from it most. In economics, accounting and Marxian economics, capital accumulation is often equated with investment of profit income or savings, especially in real capital goods. And by extension to: The measurement of accumulation[edit] Harrod–Domar model[edit] In macroeconomics, following the Harrod–Domar model, the savings ratio ( ) and the capital coefficient ( ) is: . Minimize rent-seeking. In public choice theory, rent-seeking is spending wealth on political lobbying to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating wealth.
The effects of rent-seeking are reduced economic efficiency through poor allocation of resources, reduced wealth creation, lost government revenue, national decline, and income inequality. Current studies of rent-seeking focus on the manipulation of regulatory agencies to gain monopolistic advantages in the market while imposing disadvantages on competitors. The term itself derives, however, from the far older practice of gaining a portion of production through ownership or control of land. Description[edit] Georgist economic theory describes rent-seeking in terms of land rent, where the value of land largely comes from government infrastructure and services (e.g. roads, public schools, maintenance of peace and order, etc.) and the community in general, rather than from the actions of any given landowner, in their role as mere titleholder.
Asset management. Infrastructure asset management[edit] Infrastructure asset management is the combination of management, financial, economic, engineering, and other practices applied to physical assets with the objective of providing the required level of service in the most cost-effective manner. It includes the management of the whole life cycle (design, construction, commissioning, operating, maintaining, repairing, modifying, replacing and decommissioning/disposal) of physical and infrastructure assets.[1] Operating and sustainment of assets in a constrained budget environment require some sort of prioritization scheme.
Historical background of asset management[edit] Civilization has always relied on its technological assets to support key functions like transport, public health, business, and commerce. There is a clear link between the provision and sophistication of technological assets and our modern lifestyle. Financial asset management[edit] Enterprise asset management[edit] See also[edit] Risk management. Risk management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks (defined in ISO 31000 as the effect of uncertainty on objectives) followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events[1] or to maximize the realization of opportunities.
The strategies to manage threats (uncertainties with negative consequences) typically include transferring the threat to another party, avoiding the threat, reducing the negative effect or probability of the threat, or even accepting some or all of the potential or actual consequences of a particular threat, and the opposites for opportunities (uncertain future states with benefits). Introduction[edit] A widely used vocabulary for risk management is defined by ISO Guide 73, "Risk management.
Vocabulary. "[2] Risk management also faces difficulties in allocating resources. Method[edit] Principles of risk management[edit] Risk management should: Resource Stewardship. The concept of resources has been applied in diverse realms, including with respect to economics, biology, computer science, management, and human resources, and is linked to the concepts of competition, sustainability, conservation, and stewardship. In application within human society, commercial or non-commercial factors require resource allocation through resource management.
Biological resources[edit] Economic versus biological resources[edit] Computer resources[edit] Land or natural resources[edit] Natural resources are derived from the environment. Resources can be categorized on the basis of origin: Natural resources are also categorized based on the stage of development: Potential Resources are known to exist and may be used in the future.
Natural resources can be categorized on the basis of renewability: Non-renewable Resources are formed over very long geological periods. Natural resources are also categorized based on distribution: Economic resources[edit] See also[edit] Community management. Common pool problem[edit] Elinor Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson won the 2009 Nobel prize in economic science for work in this area, where they suggested that with good community management of shared resources, as found in successful firms, the "tragedy of the commons" can be avoided.[6] Shared information resources[edit] The creation of open source software projects or other open collaborative projects, such as Wikipedia generally require some form of community management, whether it involves leadership or egalitarianism. Unlike as is the case with physical resources, the sharing of information does not necessarily deplete the resource.
Nonetheless proper management may be necessary to encourage a network effect, where collaborative use actually enriches the resource, and to avoid conflict. Methods of management[edit] A community may itself be actively developed and managed in order to promote communal activity and welfare. See also[edit] References[edit] Regulating / Taxing Speculation. History[edit] With the appearance of the stock ticker machine in 1867, which abrogated the need for traders to be physically present on the floor of a stock exchange, stock speculation underwent a dramatic expansion through to the end of the 1920s, the number of shareholders increasing, perhaps, from 4.4 million in 1900 to 26 million in 1932.[1] Speculation and investment[edit] The view of what distinguishes investment from speculation and speculation from excessive speculation varies widely among pundits, legislators and academics.
Some sources note that speculation is simply a higher risk form of investment. Others define speculation more narrowly as positions not characterized as hedging.[2] The U.S. According to Ben Graham in Intelligent Investor, the prototypical defensive investor is "...one interested chiefly in safety plus freedom from bother. " The economic benefits of speculation[edit] Sustainable consumption level[edit] Speculation usually involves more risks than investment.
Subsidy Elimination. Emissions trading. Creating Shared Value. Circular economy. Pigovian tax. Ecotax.