This is a summary of an email that John Bunzl, Trustee from International Simultaneous Policy Organisation, simpol, sent to various lists
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The very name “Live 8” used for the rock concerts on 2nd July indicates a focus on just eight politicians. It implies that just eight people could change the world and make poverty history.

But can they? Does the G-8 really have that much power at all? Bono by all accounts thinks so. It’s tempting to think that someone must be in control of the global economy because, after all, aren’t our politicians supposed to be in charge of it? But how frightening would it be if we were to discover that no one is really in control; that the global economy actually runs on a kind of auto-pilot and that governments and institutions like the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank are merely puppets in a game over which they have no significant control? How frightening would it be, in short, to find that politicians and corporate executives are merely sitting in first class and that there is, in reality, no pilot in the cockpit?

It may be true that politicians and their appointed institutions have some power to reduce or cancel debt and to increase aid to poor countries. Doing so would doubtless provide some short-term relief. But if we have a genuine intention to make poverty history, we should recognise that aid and debt are merely symptoms of a global economy that isn’t working. It is not therefore politicians’ performance that will determine whether poverty is made history or not.

Multinational corporations are considered to be the global economy’s main actors and their behaviour is often blamed for many of our global ills. But do they act purely out of their own free will? Do they have the power to substantially alter their damaging behaviour? It should be clear that in a competitive global market any corporation or investor taking on greater social or environmental responsibility – and thus an increase in its costs – would only lose out to less responsible competitors causing a loss of its profits, a consequent loss of jobs and, ultimately, the prospect of becoming the target of a hostile takeover. David Korten has said, “There are plenty of socially conscious managers. The problem is a predatory system that makes it difficult for them to survive. This creates a terrible dilemma for managers with a true social vision of the corporation’s role in society. They must either compromise their vision or run a great risk of being expelled by the system.”[ii]

Capital and employment move instantly to any country where costs are lower. If one government unilaterally impose increased regulations or taxes on business that would only invite employment and investment to de-camp elsewhere. The phrase “maintaining our international competitiveness” is an unspoken inter-governmental race-to-the-bottom; a vicious circle which forces every nation to down-level social and environmental protection so as to better out-bid competitor nations for capital and jobs. It is therefore the global free movement of capital which drives the ever-widening gap between rich and poor and which explains why the environment is continually sacrificed at the altar of competitive economic growth. Any government or restricted group of nations that moved first would lose out to all the others. Governments, too, – even the G-8 – are largely powerless to buck the vicious circle of global capital flows over which they have no significant control.

Which party we vote into government no longer matters much. This is why party politics has become little more than an electoral charade in which all parties become ‘business parties’ and none can offer substantive solutions to global problems. While we may have the mechanics of democracy, there is merely the illusion of political choice.

Even the WTO, IMF and World Bank are merely reacting to forces well beyond their influence when they recommend that each nation improves it’s attractiveness to global investors by implementing structural adjustment and privatisation programs. Taking the free movement of capital and corporations as a natural given constrains these institutions to prescribe yet more competition as the cure to our global ills and not less. Sacrificing society and the environment thus becomes neatly and logically justified by the ever-present need for each nation to “improve its international competitiveness”. In failing to realise that economic competition has become destructive, the WTO, WB and IMF serve only to exacerbate the problems they think they’re solving. They are not in control. There is no pilot in the cockpit.

There IS NO restricted group of politicians who can change the world. Such is the nature of the vicious circle of global capital flows that the system runs all by itself. No pilot needed. No pilot available.

The global justice movement have undoubtedly succeeded in bringing poverty and other global problems to wider public attention.

It is now necessary to stop blaming others for our problems and expecting others to sort out our mess. By maintaining the illusion that politicians have the power to change the world on their own, by abdicating responsibility to them, and by encouraging us to think that all we need to do is to buy a little white wrist-band and go to a rock concert, Live 8 regrettably perpetuates our avoidance of responsibility. It encourages us to think that someone else – in this case eight politicians – can save the world for us.

There are lots of little-known organisations and networks whose supporters and/or members have taken the crucial step of releasing themselves from these delusions and who, in taking proper responsibility, realise that they themselves, co-operating globally with other citizens, must take the necessary action. They know that no one else can or will do it for us. Rural and Urban co-operatives, occupied social spaces, most of them reported on indymedia… indymedia itself as an experiment of how we would like to relate to each other… Citizens who are putting alternative ways of democracy into practice while struggling to achieve environmental sustainability and global justice.

John Bunzl – June 2005.

John Bunzl is the founder and a Trustee of the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO).

Adopting the Simultaneous Policy is free! Please go to: http://www.simpol.org/dossiers/dossier-UK/html-UK/how_do_i_adopt_sp-UK.html

Simultaneous Policy: Re-Discovering Our Collective Humanity

Footnotes:

[i] See http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/06_june/10/ross.shtml

[ii] When Corporations Rule the World, David Korten, Kumarian Press & Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995.

[iii] Elisabet Sahtouris, adapted from Understanding Globalization as an Evolutionary Leap presented to the Institute of Noetic Sciences http://www.noetic.org/, July 2001. For more by Sahtouris go to: http://www.ratical.org/Lifeweb

[iv] Global website http://www.simpol.org. UK website http://www.simpol.org.uk

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International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO)

http://www.simpol.org