Responsible capitalism - Is Ed Miliband a plagiarist?

It was in a speech last year, that

"A choice between an "irresponsible capitalism" which sees huge gaps between the richest and the poorest, power concentrated in a few hands, and people are just in it for the fast buck whatever the consequences.

And a "responsible capitalism", and this is an agenda being led by business, where companies pursues profit but we also have a equal society, power is in the hands of the many and where we recognise our responsibilities to each other.

And my case is a "responsible capitalism" isn't only fairer but we're more likely to succeed as a country with it.

Now, this is an argument I have made for the last two years, as leader of the Labour party.

And today I want to apply it to the internet and the digital age."

It had in fact begun with the internet and the digital age, when in 1996 a seminal paper was published on-ine arguing for business which put people above shareholder primacy 

"In that it is a fundamental predicate of "people-centered" economic development that no person is disposable, it follows that close attention be paid to those in the waning Industrial Age who are not equipped and prepared to take active and productive roles in an Information Age. Many, in fact, are scared, angry, and deeply resentful that they are being left out, ignored, effectively disenfranchised, discarded, thrown away as human flotsam in the name of human and social progress. We have only to ask ourselves individually whether or not this is the sort of progress we want, where we accept consciously and intentionally that human progress allows for disposing of other human beings."

Ten years ago, in 2004, a business plan was introduced to the government unit for social enterprise and the social enterprise community, calling on government support. It included a warning about the risk of uprisings due to inequality.

"The opportunity for poverty relief was identified not only as a moral imperative, but also as an increasingly pressing strategic imperative. People left to suffer and languish in poverty get one message very clearly: they are not important and do not matter. They are in effect told that they are disposable, expendable. Being left to suffer and die is, for the victim, little different than being done away with by more direct means. Poverty, especially where its harsher forms exist, puts people in self-defence mode, at which point the boundaries of civilization are crossed and we are back to the law of the jungle: kill or be killed. While the vast majority of people in poverty suffer quietly and with little protest, it is not safe to assume that everyone will react the same way. When in defence of family and friends, it is completely predictable that it should be only a matter of time until uprisings become sufficient to imperil an entire nation or region of the world. People with nothing have nothing to lose. Poverty was therefore deemed not only a moral catastrophe but also a time bomb waiting to explode. Poverty reduction and relief became the overriding principle and fundamental social objective in the emerging P-CED model."

“Dealing with poverty is nothing new. The question became ‘how does poverty still exist in a world with sufficient resources for a decent quality of life for everyone?’ The answer was that we have yet to develop any economic system capable redistributing finite resources in a way that everyone has at minimum enough for a decent life: food, decent housing, transportation, clothing, health care, and education. The problem has not been lack of resources, but adequate distribution of resources. Capitalism is the most powerful economic engine ever devised, yet it came up short with its classical, inherent profit-motive as being presumed to be the driving force. Under that presumption, all is good in the name of profit became the prevailing winds of international economies — thereby giving carte blanche to the notion that greed is good because it is what has driven capitalism. The 1996 paper merely took exception with the assumption that personal profit, greed, and the desire to amass as much money and property on a personal level as possible are inherent and therefore necessary aspects of any capitalist endeavour. While it is in fact very normal for that to be the case, it simply does not follow that it must be the case.

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.”

“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.”

The author, an American citizen was far from wlecome at the time. When UK customs refused him entry claiming he was an economic migrants I appealed to my Labour MP, Tom Cox. His testy response was a classic "I don't know what kind of business you and your colleague are involved in, but you can't expect me to interfere with Home Office decisions"  

My colleague may have been poor but he'd recently been interviewed about his work in Russia which helped thousands out of poverty in the Russian region of Tomsk. He described how this began in 1996 with his paper for Bill Clinton. He wenrt on to describe subsequent efforts in Crimea.

"Essentially, P-CED challenges conventional capitalism as an insufficient economic paradigm, as evidenced by billions of people in the world living in poverty in capitalist countries and otherwise. Under the conventional scheme, capitalism - enterprise for profit - has certainly transformed much of the world and created a new breed of people in capitalist societies, the middle class. That is a good thing. But, capitalism seems to have developed as far as it can to produce this new class of fairly comfortable people between rich and poor, at least in the West where it has flourished for quite some time.

The problem is that profit and money still tend to accumulate in the hands of comparatively few people. Money, symbolically representing wealth and ownership of material assets, is not an infinite resource. When it accumulates in enormous quantities in the hands of a few people, that means other people are going to be denied. If everyone in the world has enough to live a decent life and not in poverty, then there is no great problem with some people having far more than they need. But, that's not the case, and there are no rules in the previous capitalist system to fix that. Profit and numbers have no conscience, and anything done in their name has been accepted as an unavoidable aspect of capitalism.

I disagree. In 1996, I simply set up a hypothetical 'what if' proposition. What if some businesses decided to change their practices, or institute themselves as new enterprises completely, for the sole purpose of generating profits as usual and then using those profits to help people who have little or nothing? That's the way to correct and improve classic capitalism for the broadest benefit worldwide. It's now called social capitalism, or, social enterprise."

If you think it's unethical to build a campaign to lead the country based on another man's work, you don't know the half of it    

The "not invented here" culture in the UK would turn us back to Ukraine where two years later in 2006, we'd delivered a 'Marshall Plan' to Ukraine's government and subsequently published it online to protect the social mission.   

The primary focus of the work asdie from a national scale social enterprise initiative, was a proposal, for investment in childcare reform -. transitioning all institutionalised children to loving family homes. We'd taken enormous risks to speak out about widespread neglect and profiteering from the misery of the vulnerable and voiceless. The 'Marshall Plan' had included the opening words from General George Marshall's address to Harvard in 1947:

"Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis as various crises develop. Any assistance that this Government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative. Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full co-operation I am sure, on the part of the United States Government. Any government which maneuvers to block the recovery of other countries cannot expect help from us. Furthermore, governments, political parties, or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States."

Yet profit they would. Of the many to whom I appealed for support David Cameron stands out. Our efforts to leverage investment to place children in loving family homes would be passed of as his own idea, at the same time introducing his finance cronies with plans to profit from the creation of social impact bonds:

 

In a discussion on Skoll World Forum, the author of the original content made this point about intellectual property. just before the USAID/British Council hijack of social enterprise in Ukraine: 

"So, if we're inventing projects that we know will be stolen, there are at least two problem areas.
 

First, if stolen, it's stolen. It's not unlike an architect having a building design stolen. The architect/designer is in best position to understand exactly how it works and how to assemble what they've designed.

If someone wants to use a project design, it's the same as any other project design. The design comes after an in-depth research phase, which in my experience tends to be extremely difficult not least from danger involved in shining light under rocks where the core problems are to begin with. That is, corrupt bureaucrats and officials. When I finish the research part -- which I always do so far (Russia/Crimea/Ukraine) -- I know exactly what the problems are, what solutions are needed, and how to navigate. Possibly someone else could take over and manage things from there on -- implementation. I have no problem with someone else implementing a project, and usually prefer that. Even if they do, it's still a matter of stolen property in which we've invested unilaterally to produce. Almost always, however, there may remain critical components that the implementer just doesn't want to bother with. Maybe it's too dangerous. Maybe there are political considerations and conflicts. In that case, the designer is likely the only person(s) to know how to get those done. That's when it's time to consult with the architect.

Second, even if the project outcome, after theft, is what was envisioned by the designer(s), how does the venture qualify as a social enterprise? Sure, we can slowly design projects one by one as income from our funding side permits. We can do it a lot faster if we get paid for our R&D output, just like any designers.

Finally, is it acceptable to build projects with stolen property? What sort of results would that lead to? Can be build an ethical system based upon unethical behavior (such as violations of Intellectual Property Rights)?

If we invent such a system, is it anything new? Or is it just a twist on the old system?

One thing that can be collaborated openly is this: a Code of Ethics. But, whose ethics? What org(s) will enforce them, and how? Who decides who gets in, how, and why? "

In the profit and loss account of human misery, here are some of the externalities.