The Revolutionary Socialist Network, Workers
Replacing the GDP with a new holistic indicator for common good solves
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- Christian Felber
- The movement proposes new rules
- The vision
Replacing the GDP with a new holistic indicator for common good solvesPadilla ’21 [Luis-Alberto; 2021; president of the board of the Guatemalan International Relations & Peace Research Institute (IRIPAZ), member of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), former Secretary General of the Latin American Council on Peace Research (CLAIP), Director of the Diplomatic Academy, Former Vice Minister, former ambassador in Chile, former permanent representative to the United Nations at the Vienna International Centre, former ambassador to Austria, former ambassador to the Russian Federation, former ambassador to the Netherlands, permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, and professor of the Seminar of World Geopolitics at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Catholic University Rafael Landivar (URL) of Guatemala; Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene, “The Matrix of the ‘Common Good’,” Ch. 5.7.1, p. 261-262] SPark The first pioneering initiative worth describing comes from the business world, and originates from the well-known concept of corporate social responsibility, based on the idea of finding a balance between responsibility towards the community and free enterprise because neither works in isolation: individuals need to cooperate to “flourish and create wealth”, while the community needs individual entrepreneurship to maintain its ability to adapt and diversify the goods and services that are produced. According to the proposal of Christian Felber, author of The Economy for the Common Good and the main leader of the movement, the key to sustainability lies in connecting the private sector to the old Christian idea of the common good, hence the name, because if a company is conducted in an appropriate and honest way it undoubtedly contributes to the welfare of all, i.e. operates for the common good. The movement proposes new rules for the game, one of which is to avoid regarding the externalization of social or environmental costs (use of water or forest resources, polluting greenhouse gases) as a ‘competitive advantage’. Naturally, either all entrepreneurs agree to internalize these costs (paying special taxes for emitting GHG or for the use of water, for example), or competitors who do not internalize them have greater benefits thanks to these subsidies of nature. Hence new rules are required and these must be accepted by all on the basis of social responsibility, or at least by a majority if the internalization responds to a legal obligation. Consequently, these new rules with internalized costs (formerly subsidized by nature) must be reflected in balance sheets which no longer measure economic well-being by indicators of exchange-value but instead by those of use-value. Indeed, the common good movement has proposed that GDP be replaced at macroeconomic level by the new indicator product of the common good, which should be reflected at micro-economic level with a new type of balance sheet for the common good (Common Good Balance Sheet or CGBC). Since 2010 this new indicator has been used by a pioneering group of 70 European businessmen who by the middle of 2015 had increased to 1811, along with 232 clubs and more than 6,000 individual members. As for the indicators of the common good, there are five categories - human dignity, solidarity, social justice, ecological sustainability, and democratic decision-making and transparency - which can be applied to groups or stakeholders such as suppliers, financial creditors, employees and co-owners, partners, and clientele. Moreover there are indicators of bad behaviour connected with the violation of labour standards established by the ILO and the OECD, such as human rights, labour protection, environmental standards, tax evasion, the secret use of payments to lobbyists, subsidiaries, prices below cost, and dumping. The initiative of the common good encourages communities and local governments to support this type of business with consumer loyalty and public recognition, and even to make their own evaluations in the so-called “common good regions” which already exist in 45 countries, including Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the UK, Greece and the United States. The vision of the movement is to have a global reach, which means fostering self-reliance and promoting changes to overarching regime structures in such a way that the ‘normal’ hegemonic mentality guided by interest in economic gains and profits is transformed, along with the way of doing business, introducing, for instance, Göpel’s ideas about doing things well and doing things better (Göpel 2016: 112-126). Download 2.09 Mb. Share with your friends:
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