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NESTA:Helping locusts, killing bees and being invisible
It was in December last year that Geof Mulgan reflected on his disappointment since publishing 'The Locust and the Bee'
"The orthodox view that any criticism of business is unacceptable has been challenged, and we’ve seen a revival of interest in the robust pro-competition and pro-consumer policies that historically did so much to make capitalism work. There’s plenty more to be done – not least in turning finance into a servant of the economy. But at least the right questions are being asked."
Profits can be set aside in part to address social needs, and often have been by way of small percentages of annual profits set aside for charitable and philanthropic causes by corporations. This need not necessarily be a small percentage. In fact, there is no reason why an enterprise cannot exist for the primary purpose of generating profit for social needs — i.e., a P-CED, or social, enterprise. This was seen to be the potential solution toward correcting the traditional model of capitalism, even if only in small-scale enterprises on an experimental basis.
Enterprise for the primary objective of poverty relief, localized community economic development, and social support became the business model which guided P-CED’s efforts and development at a time in the US when terms such as ‘social enterprise’ and ‘social capitalism’ had not yet been coined.
Traditional capitalism is an insufficient economic model allowing monetary outcomes as the bottom line with little regard to social needs. Bottom line must be taken one step further by at least some companies, past profit, to people. How profits are used is equally as important as creation of profits. Where profits can be brought to bear by willing individuals and companies to social benefit, so much the better. Moreover, this activity must be recognized and supported at government policy level as a badly needed, essential, and entirely legitimate enterprise activity.”
Proof of concept had been established with the Tomsk Regional Initiative, an experiental poverty reduction program in the wake of Russia's economic and currency crisis of 1998. With hindsight we now know as the earliest signs of the crisis that would affect all of us 10 years later.
By our founder's own admission we were mavericks but hadn't intended to take on the cloak of invisibility. Every step was made unmasked. It is the like of Nesta who would prefer us unnoticed.
it was a fast for economic rights, including the living wage where I became involved, channelling progress to Senator Edwards of North Carolina and would lead on to Edwards own stance on a living wage , payday lenders and the Two Americas pitch - the very rich and everybody else which would be reflected 4 years later in Occupy Wall Street.
We established operations in Ukraine later that year and in 2006 made a direct challenge to the oligopoly with the "breakthrough report" on Death Camps, For Children saying:
“Excuses won’t work, particularly in light of a handful of oligarchs in Ukraine having been allowed to loot Ukraine’s economy for tens of billions of dollars. I point specifically to Akhmetov, Pinchuk, Poroshenko, and Kuchma, and this is certainly not an exhaustive list. These people can single-handedly finance 100% of all that will ever be needed to save Ukraine’s orphans. None of them evidently bother to think past their bank accounts, and seem to have at least tacit blessings at this point from the new regime to keep their loot while no one wants to consider Ukraine’s death camps, and the widespread poverty that produced them..”
By the end of 2006, a 'Marshalll Plan' for Ukraine was in governmenr channels and finally published online in the web jounal For-ua.com where it argued how capitalism could be deployed to address some of Ukraine's most intractable problems, particularly childcare reform. It concluded
'This is a long-term permanently sustainable program, the basis for "people-centered" economic development. Core focus is always on people and their needs, with neediest people having first priority – as contrasted with the eternal chase for financial profit and numbers where people, social benefit, and human well-being are often and routinely overlooked or ignored altogether. This is in keeping with the fundamental objectives of Marshall Plan: policy aimed at hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. This is a bottom-up approach, starting with Ukraine's poorest and most desperate citizens, rather than a "top-down" approach that might not ever benefit them. They cannot wait, particularly children. Impedance by anyone or any group of people constitutes precisely what the original Marshall Plan was dedicated to opposing. Those who suffer most, and those in greatest need, must be helped first -- not secondarily, along the way or by the way. '
We thought we'd managed to fend off a hijack attempt by making our work very public. This radical transparency began by publishing the full plan on a prominent web journal:
“As the 60th anniversary of the Marshall Plan came around in June 2007, noise was emerging within Ukraine of a certain political boss preparing a Marshall Plan for Ukraine. This person was a reputed mob boss — exactly the sort of entity that the original Marshall Plan meant to oppose. It seemed most likely that whatever he came up with would be self-serving, hijacking the label ‘Marshall Plan’ and turning the whole notion on its head. I reviewed the original Marshall Plan and realized that what I had written was, in fact, the definition and spirit of the original Marshall Plan. Thus, in June 2007, I appended the original title with “A Marshall Plan for Ukraine.” After some discussion among trusted colleagues over timing, I published an abbreviated version of the paper in two parts in August 2007 in the ‘analytics’ section of the Ukrainian news journal for-ua.com.”
ED Mayo of Cooperatvies UK distills the essence of "The great Geof Mulgan" according to Geof Mulgan and it's the same ED Mayo who talks about the need for .
Why - you may well ask. It's because Cooperatives Europe and Fair Trade UK have teamed up to promote people-centred business, albeit without the people who conceived and applied it.
So invisible had we been that it was necessary to "introduce" people-centred business to the EU last year.
Mulgan and Mayo won't be found beside us in the trenches of course, but they will take credit if they can. This is the new greed, the new oligopoly. A lecturn clinginging elite who harvest the fruit of another's labour. .
In December, you'll see where this has all been heading when a Lithuanian group delivers a 'Marshall Plan' proposal to the EU with a price tag of 30 billion dollars. As I've pointed out to the EU ombudsman - .
Is there a connection between these people - I believe so. They used to be called Tony's Cronies aka neoliberals. Today, indebted to an oligarch for a half million dollar donation for his Faith Foundation, Blair has joined the Locusts to talk the walk yet again: