eBook PDF Download Digital Library
Author: R. J. Douthwaite
Publisher:
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 96
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This text explains why money has different effects according to its origins and purposes. It shows that to build a just and sustainable world, money creation must be democratized and the payment of interest on money in circulation scrapped.
Author: Adrian Kuzminski
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2013-05-16
Total Pages: 153
ISBN-13: 0739177184
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Modern economies must "grow" because money borrowed for investment can be repaid only by expanding production and consumption to meet the burden of usurious rates of interest. The roots of this dynamic between debt and growth lay in the financial revolution of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in Britain which established a new usurious monetary system. For the first time in history credit was made widely available, but only on condition of an exponentially increasing debt burden. To pay back debts production had to increase correspondingly, leading to the industrial revolution, economic "growth", and modernity itself. Though private creditors gained a monopoly over the creation of credit, and were disproportionately enriched, the resulting economic growth for a time was great enough to benefit most debtors as well as creditors, ensuring widespread prosperity. That is no longer the case. With today's eco-crisis we have reached the limits of growth. We no longer have the natural resources to grow fast enough to pay our debts. This is the real root of our current financial crisis. If we are to live sustainably, our system of money and credit must be transformed. We need a non-usurious monetary system appropriate to a steady-state economy, with capital broadly distributed at non-usurious rates of interest. Such a system was developed by an early nineteenth century American thinker, Edward Kellogg, and is explored here in depth. His work inspired the populist movement and remains more relevant than ever as a viable alternative to the a financial system we can no longer afford.
Author: Stan Goff
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2018-04-26
Total Pages: 212
ISBN-13: 1532617682
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Proverbs 22:22 enjoins the reader, “Don’t take advantage of the poor just because you can.” Mammon’s Ecology is a systematic investigation into the mysterious nature of modern money, which confronts us with the perplexing fact that, in the global economy as it is, we take advantage of the poor whether we want to or not. We destroy natural systems whether we want to or not. Ched Myers describes Mammon’s Ecology as a “workbook” about “the secret life of money.” Where Prather and others have shown that money is one of the perverse Powers described in Ephesians 6, Mammon’s Ecology details precisely how money exercises this peculiar power and outlines suggestions for Christians who feel trapped in this complicity—not just as individuals, but as church. Mammon’s Ecology is not a book about economics (which the author calls “the world’s best antidote to insomnia”), but rather a book about the “deep ecology” of (post)modern power and injustice. Read individually or as a group, Mammon’s Ecology will leave you unable to think about money the same way again.
Author: Alf Hornborg
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-03-29
Total Pages: 206
ISBN-13: 1136658491
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In modern society, we tend to have faith in technology. But is our concept of ‘technology’ itself a cultural illusion? This book challenges the idea that humanity as a whole is united in a common development toward increasingly efficient technologies. Instead it argues that modern technology implies a kind of global ‘zero-sum game’ involving uneven resource flows, which make it possible for wealthier parts of global society to save time and space at the expense of humans and environments in the poorer parts. We tend to think of the functioning of machines as if it was detached from the social relations of exchange which make machines economically and physically possible (in some areas). But even the steam engine that was the core of the Industrial Revolution in England was indissolubly linked to slave labour and soil erosion in distant cotton plantations. And even as seemingly benign a technology as railways have historically saved time (and accessed space) primarily for those who can afford them, but at the expense of labour time and natural space lost for other social groups with less purchasing power. The existence of technology, in other words, is not a cornucopia signifying general human progress, but the unevenly distributed result of unequal resource transfers that the science of economics is not equipped to perceive. Technology is not simply a relation between humans and their natural environment, but more fundamentally a way of organizing global human society. From the very start it has been a global phenomenon, which has intertwined political, economic and environmental histories in complex and inequitable ways. This book unravels these complex connections and rejects the widespread notion that technology will make the world sustainable. Instead it suggests a radical reform of money, which would be as useful for achieving sustainability as for avoiding financial breakdown. It brings together various perspectives from environmental and economic anthropology, ecological economics, political ecology, world-system analysis, fetishism theory, semiotics, environmental and economic history, and development theory. Its main contribution is a new understanding of technological development and concerns about global sustainability as questions of power and uneven distribution, ultimately deriving from the inherent logic of general-purpose money. It should be of interest to students and professionals with a background or current engagement in anthropology, sustainability studies, environmental history, economic history, or development studies.
Author: Paul Hawken
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 1994-06-03
Total Pages: 276
ISBN-13: 0887307043
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Outlines a series of economic strategies for business that will reverse global environmental and social degradation.
Author: Didi Pershouse
Publisher:
Published: 2015-12-10
Total Pages: 316
ISBN-13: 9780692613030
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →What can Cuban doctors, innovative ranchers in Saskatchewan, and the microbiome teach us about how to care for people and the Earth at the same time? In this richly layered book, Didi Pershouse takes us on a fast-moving, sharp-witted journey through her own life: from growing up with the neurosurgeon who accidentally discovered the seat of memory in the brain, to working in a smoke-filled office at New York magazine, to her career as an innovative acupuncturist in Vermont, and on to a passion for close-knit communities, grazing cows, and soil restoration as solutions to much of what ails us.Along the way, she unfolds a surprising new take on the story of our time: how the germ theory of disease joined with a profit-based economy, and unwittingly led to a "sterilization" of medicine, agriculture, and even our social lives. This 150-year detour has brought about the near destruction of our climate as well as a great forgetting of the power of connection.By documenting a scientific understanding of the intelligence of the whole, Pershouse nudges us awake with a hopeful view and shows us how to reclaim the rich, "fertile" lives we are meant for.
Author: Adrian Kuzminski
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2008-06-01
Total Pages: 300
ISBN-13: 1628924012
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In the current climate of dissatisfaction with "democratic" Western political and economic systems, this is a timely book that demonstrates a true political Third Way. Populism is distinguished from other political movements by its insistence on two things conspicuously missing from modern systems of political economy: genuine democracy based on local citizen assemblies, and the widespread distribution among the population of privately-owned economic capital. Fixing the System offers a comprehensive historical account of populism, revealing the consistent and distinct history of populism since ancient times. Adrian Kuzminski demonstrates that populism is a tradition of practice as well as thought, ranging from ancient city states to the frontier communities of colonial america-all places where widely distributed private property and democratic decision-making combined to foster material prosperity and cultural innovation. In calling for a wide distribution of both property and democracy, populism opposes the political and economic system found today in the united states and other Western countries, where property remains highly concentrated in private hands and where representatives chosen in impersonal mass elections frustrate democracy by serving private monied interests rather than the public good. As Kuzminski demonstrates, as one of very few systematic alternatives to today's political and economic system, populism, offers a pragmatic program for fundamental social change that deserves wide and serious consideration. Populism is a genuine "third way" in politics, a middle path between the extremes of corporate anarchy and collective authoritarianism. As America takes stock of her current situation and looks toward the future in the 2008 election year, Fixing the System offers a trenchant and timely study of this deep-rooted movement.
Author: Jim Igoe
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2017-09-12
Total Pages: 177
ISBN-13: 0816530440
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"A thoughtful treatise on how popular representations of nature, through entertainment and tourism, shape how we imagine environmental problems and their solutions"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Herman E. Daly
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 218
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Contains articles first published in journals in the 1980s and 1990s by a leading commentator on the environment, offering lively criticism of existing work on ecological economics and the economics of ecology. A theme of all the essays is that changes in perspective, attitudes, and policies are required to avoid the impoverishment that results when environmental and social costs of growth exceed benefits. Issues addressed include growth economics, misunderstandings of thermodynamics, economic development and population, globalization, money, and humans in the ecosystem. The author is a professor in the school of public affairs at the University of Maryland. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Christian Arnsperger Bernard Lietaer, Sally Goerner Stefan Brunnhuber
Publisher: Triarchy Press
Published: 2012-05-30
Total Pages: 216
ISBN-13: 1908009845
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In 1972, the first Report for the Club of Rome - The Limits to Growth - famously spelled out the unsustainable consequences of an economic system that demands infinite growth in a finite world. Just as The Limits to Growth exposed the catastrophic flaws in our economic system, this new Report from the Club of Rome exposes the systemic flaws in our money system and the wrong thinking that underpins it. It describes the ongoing currency and banking crises we must expect if we continue with the current monopoly system - and the vicious impact of these crises on our communities, our society as a whole and our environment. Our money system is outdated, brittle and unfit for purpose. It is responsible for the endless cycle of boom and bust, it systematically widens the gap between rich and poor, it creates unemployment and multiplies other extremely adverse social effects of any financial/economic crisis, it undermines sustainability initiatives, it disables vitally-needed national and international action to limit multiple threats to the environment and the biosphere. It is the single structural cause common to all financial and monetary instability. Money and Sustainability: The Missing Link - Report from the Club of Rome proposes an alternative: a monetary 'ecosystem' with complementary currencies working alongside the conventional one. This is more flexible, resilient, fair and sustainable. Societies worked like this in the past. So can we. The book first explains these systemic problems in detail. It's written in a way that's clearly accessible to the general public (although it references at length a wide range of technical topics: economics theory, the history and institutions of banking, the physics of complex flow networks, the science of sustainability, and population trends and climate change). This gives a framework for understanding the present money system. The authors then describe their proposal for an alternative money ecosystem which systematically addresses and resolves the problems created by the present system. Finally, this practical proposal is illustrated by nine case studies of different complementary currencies which are either running now, in development or could be implemented at short notice in individual cities and regions around the world.
