The global sharing economy:making the shiftAdam W. Parsons27th August 2013

11th GCGI International Annual Conference, Cité Universitaire Internationale, Paris. www.stwr.org

• Rapidly rising poverty, food insecurity and social exclusion in OECD countries

• Extreme poverty and life-threatening deprivation in the poorest countries:

» 40,000 poverty-related deaths each day

» A third of all child deaths occur due to under-nutrition

» Around 400,000 people die as a result of climate change each year

A global humanitarian emergency The true extent of life-threatening deprivation

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The Brandt Commission‘A program for survival’

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“Our survival depends not only on military balance, but on global cooperation to ensure a sustainable biological environment, and sustainable prosperity based on equitably shared resources.

Much of the insecurity in the world is connected with the divisions between rich and poor countries – grave injustice and mass starvation causing additional instability.

Yet the research and the funds which could help put an end to poverty and hunger are now pre-empted by military uses.”

- Willy Brandt

The global sharing economy: making the shift

1. Implement an unprecedented program of emergency humanitarian relief to prevent hunger and needless deprivation across the world

as a leading international priority.

2. Establish new economic arrangements to ensure that those resources which are essential to life are accessible to all people and available to future generations. These include basic goods and services such as staple food, healthcare, shelter and education, as well as natural resources such as land, water, energy and the atmosphere.

A global sharing economyWhat governments need to achieve in the most basic terms…

www.stwr.orgThe global sharing economy: making the shift

• Restructuring systems of international trade: i.e. relocalisation, re-regulation, democratic self-determination.

• Rethinking international development assistance: i.e. pool aid at the international level, raise funds through an automated mechanism.

• Reforming and re-regulating global finance: i.e. public control of money creation, sovereign debt cancellation, curb speculation, stabilise currency exchange rates, control tax competition, stop tax avoidance and transfer mispricing by multinational corporations.

• Reforming the United Nations and global governance institutions: decommission or restructure Bretton Woods institutions, abolish the UN Security Council with its arbitrary veto, empower the UN General Assembly, strengthen the UN system in its mandate and resources.

Transformative change at the global levelStructural reform to tackle poverty and inequality

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Transformative change at the national levelThe politics of providing universal social protection and public services

www.stwr.orgThe global sharing economy: making the shift

• Economic growth no longer the primary criterion of success or failure of economy policy.

• The fulfilment of basic needs and/or improved quality of life as the main yardstick of social progress.

• A strong interventionist role for governments, and the re-regulation of economies.

• Democratic participation of all citizens.

• Universal and de-commodified public service provision, funded by progressive income tax, corporate tax, capital gains tax etc.

Can we foresee…A public sector for the whole world?

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• If economic globalisation is to mark a transitional phase towards a global community of nations in any real sense, is a global redistribution of incomes justifiable or necessary to ensure social justice in the longer term?

• Should governments cooperate internationally to build a system of global social protection?

• Should social and economic rights be guaranteed at the global level, and funded through global taxes and other innovative sources of financing?

The global commonsA new phase of multilateralism…

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“The creation of a global resource pool entails an entirely new phase of multilateralism, in which nations collectively agree to preserve and protect the various commons of Earth and maintain a pool of shared production and goods large enough to provide for everyone’s needs.

“In giving up a portion of their sovereignty, rich nations would recycle their excess resources through this global clearinghouse, which would then be redistributed to poor nations needing assistance.

“The resources required for production and the goods that are produced would go into this common pool, and the goods which people consume or use would come from it.”

- James B. Quilligan.

• Place resource management at the forefront of policymaking.

• Move beyond consumption-led economic growth and GDP as objectives of economic policy.

• Internalise the external costs of economic activities.

• Dismantle the culture of consumerism: restrict advertising, implement better trading standards, end planned obsolescence.

• Investment in low carbon infrastructure and energy/resource efficiency measures.

Curbing consumption in developed countriesProminent policies and proposals…

www.stwr.orgThe global sharing economy: making the shift

• Arab Spring: reacting to enormous socio-economic divisions

• Occupy and Indignados: mobilising against inequality, the ‘1%’

• Anti-austerity protests: for a fairer sharing of public revenue / for corporations to pay their ‘fair share’

• Idle No More: a call to share/conserve Canada’s national resources

• Taksim protests in Turkey: in support of shared public spaces, as symbolised by Gezi Park

• Brazil protests in 2013: for a fairer sharing of public revenue

Worldwide demonstrations A growing call for economic sharing

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Campaigning for a fairer sharing of wealth, power and resources within and between nationswww.stwr.org

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