Corporations Are Not Humans: Not Even Close --- Episode 54

                          THE ECOLOGICAL REVOLUTION 
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                                                     GUIDING PRINCIPLES 
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VI. The Principle of Common Heritage     Healthy societies recognize that the planet's environmental resources and the accumulated knowledge of the human species are common heritage resources, and it is the right of every person --- indeed every living being both present and future --- to share in their beneficial use. No one has the right to monopolize or use common heritage resources in ways contrary to the broader interest of present and future generations. Indeed, it is the rightful responsibility of any who own environmental resources to serve as trustees in the interest of future generations and of those who possess special knowledge to share it with all who might benefit. 
   Healthy social function depends on giving the rights and responsibilities defined by these principles precedence over all other rights, including the property rights of individuals, corporations, and governments. Being people-and life-centered rather than corporate-centered, these principles offer a clear alternative to corporate libertarianism's prescription for social dysfunction. 
   Healthy societies seek balance in all things. The recognize a role for both government and locally accountable businesses, while resisting a domination by powerful distant governments and corporations. Similarly, they seek local self-reliance while freely sharing information and technology, avoiding both external dependence and local isolation. 
   The appropriate organizational form for the ecological era is likely to be a multilevel system of nested economies with the household as the basic economic unit, up through successive geographical aggregations to localities, districts, nations, and regions. Embodying the principle of intrinsic responsibility, each level would seek to function, to the extent that it is reasonably able, as an integrated, self-reliant, self-managing political, economic, and ecological community. Starting from the base unit, each system level would seek to achieve the optimal feasible ecological self-reliance, especially in meeting basic needs. 
   To compensate for imbalances in environmental service endowments, units at each level would engage in selective exchanges with other units within their cluster, keeping those exchanges as balanced as possible. Households would exchange with households in their locality, localities with other localities in their district, and so on. The smaller the system unit, the greater the need for exchange. Thus, a substantial amount of household economic activity would necessarily involve external exchange. Although many households might grow some of their own food, it would be rare for a household to be self-sufficient. Community eco-economies would be somewhat more self-reliant, and so on, with regions being largely self-reliant.
   Organizing to meet economic needs as close to the local level as feasible would enable the application of the principle of subsidiarity, which maintains that governance authority and responsibility  should be vested in the smallest, most local unit possible. This would make it possible to maintain a market system in which market power is balanced with political power at each level. Local firms would enjoy a natural advantage, and there would be less long-haul movement of people and goods. 
   Less trade and greater local self-reliance may mean less consumer choice. In the Northern climates, we would eat winter or preserved vegetables and might put apples rather than bananas on our cereal. People in forested areas would construct their homes of wood, and those in hot, dry climates would build houses of earthen materials. Some prices might be higher. Overall, the sacrifices would be small compared with the prospects of greater economic security, caring communities in which people can walk the streets at night without fear, improved environmental quality, the survival of our species, and the creation of new evolutionary potentials. 
   As we reorganize ourselves into a multilevel system, it is likely that we will continue the present process of redrawing national boundaries. Countries that have grown too large and complex to be manageable may break up into smaller countries, as happened with the U.S.S.R. and has been debated in Canada. The present political movement in the United States toward greater local authority and autonomy is in part a response to the United States having reached an unmanageable size and complexity---even without the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Asia Pacific Economic Community, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. It makes good sense to devolve to the individual states more of the powers once lodged at the national level, including the power to regulate commerce and trade. Conversely,many smaller countries may find that they are too small to be viable and decide to undertake some form of merger. In the not too distant future, we may look back on the present, almost frantic press to form ever larger economic blocks through regional and global trade agreements as the last desperate gasp of a dying era. 

   The principles of the Ecological Revolution point toward a global system of local economies that distributes both power and responsibility, creates places for people, encourages the nurturing of life in all its diversity, and limits the opportunity for one group to externalize the social and environmental costs of its consumption onto others. Instead of forcing localities into international competition as a condition of their survival, a localized global system encourages self-reliance in meeting local needs. Instead of monopolizing knowledge for private gain, it encourages sharing knowledge and information. Instead of promoting a homogeneous globalized consumer culture, it nurtures cultural diversity. Instead of measuring success in terms of money, it encourages measuring success in terms of healthy social function.