The great transition : Grande transition: maintenir le cap sur le changement social, économique et écologique en périodes de turbulence

The roots of this argument for an “economics for the common good” can be traced back to Aristotle; it has been reiterated by many co-operative thinkers, not the least of which is Gandhi’s theory of Sarvodaya (for the welfare of all), which stresses that the world has enough for everyone’s needs but not their greed.16 During the early years of the Space Race, Boulding tried to capture North America [...] Polanyi’s thesis of the Great Transformation showed that the process of “mercantilism” repressed and destroyed the power of the local guilds in order to create national laws and markets (market with a capital M).21 The triumph of the capital M Market signified the revolutionary ascendancy of the Economy over Society for the first time in human history. [...] Interest-free systems included the Owenite labour exchanges in England in the 1830s, Josiah Warren’s Timestore in the USA, the Star-Bowkett lending societies in England and Australia, and “free-schilling” lending practices inspired by Silvio Gesell in Germany and Austria in the 1920s and 1930s. [...] Community Land Trusts (CLT) develop affordable housing by separating out the two cost elements—the market price of the land on the one hand, and the rebuild cost of the house on the other. [...] By removing the land from the market and placing it in a CLT, the unearned equity resulting from escalating land values is taken out of the equation to the benefit of low and moderate income households and community equity.