New economic paradigms

The hegemony of the growth-based model often prevents people from questioning its core assumptions. But the building blocks of a new economy are within reach, central to which is the need to decouple growth from prosperity, explains Tim Jackson in an interview with Allen White. Reposted from the Great Transition Initiative.

It’s time to write a new economic story fit for this century – one that sees the economy’s dependence upon society and the living world, writes Kate Raworth for openDemocracy’s Transformation.

We now need transformative policies able to open a new horizon, without poverty, with less inequality, without destroying our natural environment. Our new situation requires an urgent reflection on power relations and concrete alternatives, central to which is the reconceptualisation of social protection in terms of commons.

Today, a new value regime is being born, one that is not based on surplus value created in the market through capital and labour, but through contributions that are recognized as such by ‘sovereign value communities’. The question is: how can we, ourselves, create and control the surplus value that we create through our work, and reinvest it in autonomous peer production communities?

Poorer countries routinely put more resources at the disposal of donor country interests than they receive in foreign aid—but it doesn't have to be this way. The idea of implementing a system of global taxation is gaining ground, and may open up a pathway towards an authentic system of redistribution across national borders, writes David Sogge for Open Democracy.

The Republic of Ecuador, currently chair of the largest single coalition of developing countries at the United Nations, is reviving a longstanding campaign for the creation of an inter-governmental UN tax body and the elimination of tax havens and illicit financial flows.