[Xmca-l] Imagining a new economic structure

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Hi esteemed XMCArs,


Apparently, Varoufakis has given a TED talk in Geneva, which is coming to your browser soon.


In the meantime, here is the text to the talk at his blog:

http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/12/09/the-economic-case-for-authentic-democracy-ted-global-geneva-8th-december-2015/


Most of all, and perhaps I'm naive and too idealistic, but I found this the most coherent idea anyone has proposed in the economic-political sphere, lately anyway:


At the level of the enterprise, imagine a capital market where you accumulate capital as you work, and which follows you as you move from one company to another - with each company owned solely by those who work in it at the time. Then everyone's income comes only from capital, from profits, and the very concept of the wage disappears, as each worker receives her profit share plus any benefits from a state that tops up incomes from taxes on aggregate profits. No more separation of those who work but not own from those who own but do not work in the company - no more tug of war between labour and capital - no more gaping gap between those who save and those who invest -no more Towering Twin Peaks.


Turning to the global political economy, imagine that all national currencies have a free-floating exchange rate with one common, digital currency, let's call it the KOSMOS, to be issued by the International Monetary Fund and the G20 on behalf of humanity. Imagine further that all trade is denominated in KOSMOS with each country paying, automatically, into a common global investment fund a sum of KOSMOS proportional to their trade deficit or surplus - money to be used to invest into green technologies in the part of the world where investment funds are scarce. This is not a new idea - it is a high tech version of what John Maynard Keynes had proposed in 1944 at the Bretton Woods conference. Except that now we have the technology to implement it in the context of a democratised global political-economic sphere.


It might be interesting to observe how this imagination takes flight, if it does, and how it *becomes* concrete?.

I thought there might be more than a few on this list who might take interest in this development.

Kind regards,

Annalisa