Global Partnership to Create Competitor to Capitalism

    HOUSTON, TX, October 15, 2014 /24-7PressRelease/ -- It's been a tough few years for capitalism. Occupy Wall Street, Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century, Pope Francis's critique of trickle-down theories, Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything, to name a few, have publicized its failings and call for radical change. But even if capitalism and the unfettered markets have done much to drive income inequality, habitat destruction, wasteful consumerism, climate change, and pollution, what are the alternatives, and how do societies transition?

The Local Economic Direct Democracy Association (LEDDA) Partnership, a first effort of its kind, has been formed to answer those questions, according to a joint announcement from the University of Pretoria in South Africa and the Houston-based Principled Societies Project.

The partnership -- which is expected to become a diverse, global association of academic, civil society, government, business, and philanthropy groups--will develop and test in scientific pilot trials a complement and competitor to capitalism. Focus is on a fundamentally new, parallel economic system that holds as its purpose the maximization of well-being.

The project is being led by Lorenzo Fioramonti, PhD, Director of Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation, University of Pretoria, South Africa, and John Boik, PhD, founder of the Principled Societies Project. Boik is author of the book Economic Direct Democracy: A Framework to End Poverty and Maximize Well-Being, which proposes the economic system that the partnership will develop and test.

A computer simulation illustrates how the proposed system helps cities and regions transform their local economies into sustainable, flourishing systems. Small and medium-sized businesses thrive, family incomes rise, income inequality is reduced, and full employment is achieved. A paper describing the model was published October 2014 in the online International Journal of Community Currency Research.

The system under study is called the LEDDA framework. It is designed to infuse a local economy with democracy and to network local economies in order to facilitate trade and cooperation.

"Not only do alternatives exist to economic lethargy, environmental degradation, and rising inequality," says Boik, "but the desire for greater democratic control over economic decisions, and the capacity of modern technology to facilitate group decision-making, make innovation and deeper democracy inevitable."

A LEDDA itself is a membership-based, community benefit association open to residents, businesses, schools, nonprofits, local governments, and others who voluntarily choose to participate. It acts to maximize membership well-being and benefit the global public. The term maximize is specific.

Fioramonti, author of Gross Domestic Problem, which offers a critique of GDP, explains: "The focus of policy around the globe is economic growth, meaning an ever-rising GDP, or economic output. But people don't want maximal output--they want maximal well-being. They want access to education and health care, job satisfaction, a clean environment and stable climate, time for family and friends, economic security, safe neighborhoods, quality food, and so on."

The LEDDA framework incorporates well-being indexes as scorecards, and provides participants with the incentive, information, means, and capacity to comprehensively address local and global issues of importance. The computer simulation illustrates how a LEDDA in even an average sized US county could annually channel billions in zero-cost financing toward local for-profit and nonprofit organizations.

"The idea is to empower participants to create the type of local economy that best serves them," says Boik.

For more information, visit http://www.PrincipledSocietiesProject.org. The partnership invites participation and support from the professional and lay public.

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