[P2P-F] Fwd: [cc_research] Fw: Strategies for a New Economy/Registration Open

[Dante-Gabryell Monson]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <stephen at complementarycurrency.org>
Date: Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:55 PM
Subject: [cc_research] Fw: Strategies for a New Economy/Registration Open
To: cc_research at complementarycurrency.org



Complementary Currency Resource Center
www.complementarycurrency.org

-----Original Message-----
From: New Economics <neweconomics at neweconomicsinstitute.org>
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 16:02:52
To: <stephen at complementarycurrency.org>
Subject: Strategies for a New Economy/Registration Open

Dear Stephen DeMeulenaere

We are at a turning point in history.  Rising temperatures are now
recognized as a sign of a planet in crisis.  Inequities between rich and
poor, North and South, grow ever deeper.

The global economy has failed in its promise to produce and deliver basic
goods in an efficient manner for an expanding population, leaving increasing
numbers in abject poverty.

The environmental crisis, the equity crisis, and the crisis of distributed
production, all have their roots in the current economic system with
implications for our culture, our society, and for our health and
well-being.

What would an economy built on principles of fairness and sustainability
look like?  How do we model it; where is it emerging; how do we collectively
strategize to fully implement it?  These are the pressing questions of our
time.

In response, the New Economics Institute is convening "Strategies for a New
Economy," a conference June 8-10th at Bard College on the Hudson River in
New York State.  It will gather together what are often diverse and
scattered efforts to reshape our economic system, place them under one tent,
and raise the flag to announce that transitioning to a new economy will mean
engaging politicians, researchers, media, educators, citizen activists,
business leaders, financial experts, scientists, union workers, cultural
leaders, advocates for the disenfranchised, and youth -- all working
together to achieve a common goal.

The three-day conference will include over 60 workshops, plenary gatherings,
and participatory strategizing sessions organized in 10 theme areas (see
below). "Strategies for a New Economy" will highlight best research and best
practice under each theme and ultimately demonstrate that a decentralized,
sustainable, cooperative economy is already taking shape, offering a
strategy for action.

Registration is now open.  http://www.neweconomicsinstitute.org/conference
We invite you to be part of the dialogue.

Best wishes,
Susan Witt on behalf of the staff and board of directors of
New Economics Institute
www.neweconomicsinstitute.org

Strategies for a New Economy
Conference Themes

1. Visioning and Modeling the New Economy: Shared Prosperity within
Planetary Limits

What will a new/green/resilient/just/sustainable economy look like and how
do we get there from here?  That is the question addressed under this theme,
providing a framework, a long view on the subject.  Workshops will cover
historic examples, systems thinking approaches, economic modeling tools,
grass roots community planning, and leadership training for a new economy.

2.  Banking and Financing a New Economy: Scale, Criteria, Innovation

The current global banking and financing system has failed us, creating
havoc with national and regional economies, and leading to real life
personal tragedies in lost jobs and lost homes.  How might an alternative
system be structured that promotes long-term sustainable development rather
than short-term value?  Presentations will include talks on public,
cooperative and community banking, citizen-organized community financing
programs, radical impact investing, and the role of government in financial
reform.

3.  Measuring Well Being: Alternative Indicators of Wealth and Progress

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has long been used by economists to measure
wealth and progress, but is it really a measure of our well-being?  The
presenters on this theme will argue that other factors must be considered to
account for ecological health, quality of life, and well being.  The
workshops will showcase some of the popular alternative indicators, consider
how these have been applied at the policy level, and give specific examples
of putting these new measures into practice.

4. Messaging the New Economy: Education, Media, Public Campaigns

A new economics will require the development of new curriculum material both
in content and presentation.  It will be multi-disciplined, acknowledging
that the transition to a new economy will involve a complex cultural change.
It will draw on both the theoretical and practical application.  It will be
a distributed learning, relying on social media, informal learning circles,
and peer education.  Where is this new economics training emerging?  And
relatedly, how best to bring the story of this emerging movement to
attention of media and build public campaigns that lead change?

5. Rebuilding Local Economies: Engines for Resilience

The Local Economy Movement is considered by many to be the engine of the new
economy.  Vibrant, energetic, self-empowered, it is driven by citizen
activists not waiting for governments to solve problems, but building now
the kind of economy they would like for their future.  Blossoming out of the
local food movement, these local initiatives are supporting multiple kinds
of local production to meet local needs.  Shaped by local skills and local
resources they differ in form from region to region -- but all are
characterized by the vision, creativity, and community spirit of its core
groups who dare to take risk and try what has not been done before.

6. Reimagining Ownership and Work: Coops, Stakeholders, Corporate Structure

When business is owned by capital instead of by workers and stakeholders, an
uneven distribution of wealth inevitably occurs.  Workshop presenters have
both research and practical experience with new ownership models including
consumer and producer coops, the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain, the
Northern Italian flexible manufacturing networks, Employee Stock Ownership
Plans, and multiple stakeholder ownership models, demonstrating how these
have contributed to social justice, economic development, secure and
fulfilling jobs, and sound management of the commons.

7. Responsive Government for a New Economy: Politics as if People and Planet
Mattered

Some have said that the biggest hindrance to transitioning to a fair and
sustainable new economy is the impasse in our political system, the
bickering, the corruption, the cost of campaigns.  Panelists in the
Responsive Government theme will discuss the forms of governance,
participation and action‹at local, national and global levels‹necessary to
support the transition to a new economy. Speakers will move from an initial
focus on reforming our current government institutions to discussion about
deliberative democracy and alternative models of participation and
decision-making.

8. Sharing the Commons: Identifying, Allocating, Restoring

What is the appropriate place of land and natural resources in a just and
sustainable economy?  Should land be a commodity traded on the market to the
highest bidder, allowing those with ownership to benefit from our common
need and common heritage?  If not via market, how might land and natural
resources be otherwise allocated.

9. Sustainable Production and Consumption: Simplicity, Sufficiency,
Abundance

While much of the focus of transitioning to a new economy is on changes in
government policy, business structure, banking, and financing, there remains
a considerable role for individuals and households in this transition.  How
can we develop mutual support systems that replace our dependence on
acquiring more stuff?  The elegance of simplicity, the richness of
community, living within the bounds of our bioregion, shorter work weeks --
these are all elements of a new American Dream.  TimeBanks, meta-currencies,
asset-based community accounting, resilience circles -- are all tools for
facilitating what will be a social and cultural shift as well as economic.
In the process new local forms of production emerge, involving producer and
consumer working in association.

10. Transforming Money: Structuring, Issuing and Valuing New Mediums of
Exchange

Though the tool of money is a social construct, the very form and nature of
its current method of issue is rarely questioned when addressing the need to
transform our economy to one that is more just and sustainable.  What might
be sound principles for monetary issue in a new economy?  How might the
process be more democratized?  These are some of the questions discussed
under this theme from both a theoretical and applied point of view.  Panels
will examine the nature of money, its origins, its status as a commodity,
and its place in social relationship and language. Other panels will examine
specific contemporary examples of regional currencies including BerkShares,
WIR, and Chimgauer, and the potential offered by community based electronic
platforms to work alongside present currency systems.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *
To be removed from this eNewsletter list, simply write ³unsubscribe² in the
subject line of a return email.





_______________________________________________
cc_research mailing list
cc_research at complementarycurrency.org
http://complementarycurrency.org/mailman/listinfo/cc_research_complementarycurrency.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.ourproject.org/pipermail/p2p-foundation/attachments/20120213/0549eb32/attachment.htm