Corporations Are Not Humans : Not Even Close ---Episode 53

              Localizing Economies, Globalizing Consciousness 
                                           (continuation)

   Economic globalization deepens the dependence of localities on detached global institutions that concentrate power, colonize local resources, and have no loyalty to any place. The greater a locality's dependence, the less its ability to find within its own borders satisfactory solutions to its own problems. Although advocates of economic globalization commonly argue that globalization creates interdependence and shared interests, the argument is a misrepresentation. What actually happens is a growing dependence of people and localities on global corporations and financial markets. The consequence of this dependence is to pit people and localities against one another in a self-destructive competition for economic survival, yielding ever more power to the center. 
   The power of the center stems from a number of interrelated sources : its power to create money, its ownership of the productive assets on which each locality depends, and its control of the institutional mechanisms that mediate relationships among localities.  This power resides increasingly in global financial markets and corporations, which have established themselves as the de facto governance institutions of the planet. The more global the economy, the greater the dependence of the local and the greater the power of central institutions. 

   If the world achieves an ecological age, people will be unified not by the mutual insecurity of global competition, but by a global consciousness that we share the same planet and a common destiny. This consciousness is already emerging and has three elements unique in human history. First, the formative ideas are the intellectual creations of popular movements involving millions of ordinary people who live and work outside the corridors of elite power. Second, the participation is truly global, bringing together people from virtually every nation, culture, and linguistic group. Third, the new consciousness is rapidly evolving, adapting, and taking on increasing definition as local groups meld into global alliances, ideas are shared, and consensus positions are forged in meetings and via the Internet, phone, and fax.
   This process is creating a growing web of understanding, shared interests, and mutual compassion that is the proper foundation of a global community of people. The strength and vitality of this web arise because its members --- unlike the Stratos dwellers who live in splendid, wealthy isolation --- are rooted in real-world communities of place. They experience directly the consequences of th spreading crisis. Their experience is real, and they are naturally inclined to the human rather than the corporate interest. 
   By participating in the social movements that are the driving force of the Ecological Revolution, growing numbers of citizens are committing themselves to rebuilding their local communities and reaching out to others engaged in similar efforts. They actively recognize the need to act cooperatively in the global human interest through voluntary processes based on consensus and shared power. 

                                  GUIDING PRINCIPLES 

   The formative ideas of the Copernican Revolution were produced by the scientific observation of physical bodies and can be traced to a handful of prominent scholars from the physical sciences. In contrast, the formative ideas of the Ecological Revolution are products of the collective human experience and the study of both living and nonliving systems. These ideas are articulated in countless consensus documents and declarations of citizen movements. They find theoretical grounding in the intellectual treatises of scholars from diverse  academic disciplines, including history, sociology, ecology, economics, biology, physics, general systems theory, and ecological economics. These ideas may be distilled into a number of guiding principles fr the creation of healthy twenty-first-century societies. 

I. The Principle of Environmental Sustainability   Healthy societies are environmentally sustainable, which means their economies must satisfy three conditions : 

   1. Rates of renewable resource use do not exceed the rates at which the ecosystem can regenerate them.

  2. Rates of consumption or irretrievable disposal of nonrenewable resources do not exceed the rates at which renewable substitutes are developed and phased into use.

  3. Rates of pollution emission into the environment do not exceed the rates of the ecosystem's natural assimilative capacity. 

   Any use of environmental resources or sink capacities greater than these rates is by definition unsustainable and compromises the opportunities available to future generations. The principle of environmental sustainability thus defines a collective property right of future generations that takes natural precedence over the individual property rights of the current generation. 

II. The Principle of Economic Justice     Healthy societies provide all their members, present and future, with the essentials for a healthy, secure, productive, and fulfilling life. There is nothing wrong with additional rewards for those who contribute more, but only if everyone's basic needs are met, the options of future generations are not impaired, and there are strict limits on the concentration of economic power. 

  III. The Principle of Biological and Cultural Diversity    Healthy societies nurture the biological and cultural diversity of the planet. Diversity is the foundation of evolutionary potential. Nurturing biological and cultural diversity is fundamental to our constructive participation in the evolutionary process. 

  IV. The Principle of People's Sovereignty { also known as the Principle of Subsidiarity}    In healthy societies, sovereignty resides in people. The purpose of the human economy is to meet human needs --- not the needs of money, nor of corporations, nor of governments. The sovereign right of the people to decide what uses of the earth best nourish their bodies and their spirit within the limits of the first three principles is inalienable. People are best able to exercise this right when : 

   * Ownership and control of productive assets is locally rooted, thus increasing the likelihood that important decisions are made by those who will live with the consequences.
   * Governance authority and responsibility are located in the smallest, most local system unit possible to maximize opportunity for direct, participatory democracy. 
   * More central system levels define their roles as serving and supporting the local in achieving self-defined goals. 

   V. The Principle of Intrinsic Responsibility     Healthy societies assign the full costs of resource allocation decisions to those who participate in making them --- an essential requirement for efficiency in a self-regulating economic system. This principle applies to individual persons, enterprises, and political jurisdictions. No entity has the right to externalize the costs of its consumption to another. The goal is to structure economic relationships so as to encourage each locality to live within its sustainable environmental means. Much as a global economic system offers maximum scope in privatizing economic gains while externalizing the costs, a more local economic system of self-reliant local economies encourages internalizing costs, because both the consequences of cost externalization and the power to require that these costs be internalized come together in the same locality and even the same persons.