Corporations Are Not Humans : Not Even Close---Episode 66

                               AGENDUM FOR CHANGE 
                                            (continued) 

    EQUITABLE ALLOCATION OF PAID EMPLOYMENT 

Access to opportunities for paid employment should also be allocated as fairly as possible through measures to reduce the work week and assure equal employment opportunity regardless of gender, race, and other extraneous considerations.

Such measures can be phased in over time and adjusted to reflect experience. The idea here is not to provide a prescriptive blueprint but rather to illustrate the kinds of policies that would lead us to healthier societies. Different approaches will surely be appropriate in different settings, and the administration and findings of such initiatives should be undertaken by the smallest and most local governance units as possible. For example, in predominantly agrarian societies with equitable land distribution, a very small guaranteed minimum income might be adequate. The same might be true in stable egalitarian societies in which living costs are low and there are ample employment opportunities for all who wish to work. A guaranteed income is probably most necessary to correct imbalances in societies such as the United States, where living costs are high, there is extreme inequality,and jobs paying a wage adequate to maintain a decent living are scarce. 

If we are to manage our economic spaces in the human interest, we will need accounting tools suited to this purpose. Sixto Roxas, an economist and former international bank executive from the Philippines, explains that conventional national income accounts do not meet this need, because they measure the costs and benefits of economic activity from the standpoint of the firm, not the community. The differences are fundamental. For example, the firm profits by employing the least possible number of workers at the lowest possible wage. The community profits by having its members fully employed at the highest possible wage. The firm may profit by depleting a local forest or mineral resource and then moving elsewhere, while the community is left devastated.
   Roxas and his colleagues are developing community-based accounting systems that assess economic costs and benefits in terms of their consequences for the health of households, communities, and ecosystems. They also record how much of the value generated from local economic activity remains in the community and how much flows out. Thus, if local forests are being clear-cut and the timber and profits are being exported while the community is left with a barren landscape, this shows up as a net loss rather than the net gain recorded by conventional economic accounting. Significant attention is needed to developing and applying such systems as economic management tools. 

                   LOCALIZING THE GLOBAL SYSTEM 

   Transnational corporations have for decades used global institutions and international agreements to circumvent democratic processes, force open national economies, and transfer control over markets, finance, resources, and productive assets to themselves. Any agendum to reclaim economic and political spaces for people must address the need to replace this predatory system of global governance with a system that : 

* Empowers people and institutions at national and local levels to control and manage their economic resources to their own benefit ; 

* Makes it difficult for any locality to externalize its production or consumption costs beyond its borders ; and 

* Encourages cooperation among localities in the search for solutions to shared problems.

These objectives are strongly supported by the application of sound market principles. As we have already seen,to function in the public interest, markets must operate within a framework of enforceable rules that maintain the conditions of socially efficient market allocation. Otherwise productive investment is driven out by predatory speculation, cost internalizing firms are put out of business by cost externalizers, and the market becomes dominated by centrally planned corporate monopolies. It is therefore important for global institutions to support national and local governments in their efforts to implement sound market rules. Normally, such rules will favor local producers that use local resources to meet local needs and will protect local markets and resources from colonization by economic predators. At the same time, the people of a country must have the freedom to decide the extent to which they wish to integrate their national economy with the national economies of other willing partners. Whatever its level of integration, a primary obligation of the individual country to the international system is to keep its exports and imports with the rest of the world roughly in balance.