STWR - Share The World's Resources

The commons includes all the things we own together and none of us owns individually -- the air and waters of the Earth, wildlife, the human gene pool, the accumulated human knowledge that we all inherit at birth, and so on. The commons form the biological platform upon which the entire human enterprise -- and, indeed, all life -- depend.

STWR would like to express our deepest sympathies for all those affected by the Asian Tsunamis. We urge all individuals and governments to give generously to the relief operation and to maintain their levels of commitment to aid over the crucial months and years ahead.

February 2006, Nina Strenitz ~ STWR

More than fifty years into the development battle, some progress can be reported: The percentage of people living in absolute poverty as measured by the World Bank's $1 a day poverty line fell from 1987 to 1998 by four percentage points to 24%; and currently 83% of children in Latin America and the Caribbean region complete primary education. Despite these improvements, significant inequalities in the access to medication and the distribution of income remain between regions, nations and even citizens within the same nation states.

A closer investigation of global poverty indicators reveals that improvements are concentrated in a few countries, such as India or China. Some nations were able to realize the potential gains from an increasingly globalized world, while others are still struggling and sometimes even fall back through net losses in trade, civil wars or natural disasters. A recent report by the WHO and UNICEF revealed that in Kenya every year, 34000 children die of Malaria (about 90 percent of the global figure), a disease that can be successfully treated with appropriate medication. In short: much, if not more than ever, remains to be done.

Charles Mercieca, Ph.D. ~ STWR Member

President
International Association of Educators for World Peace
NGO, Dedicated to United Nations Goals of Peace Education,
Environmental Protection, Human Rights & Disarmament
Professor Emeritus
Alabama A&M University

Utopia: Source of Motivation For Constructive Action

 1st Feb 2006 - Max Keiser ~ STWR

Since Brandt, there are two billion more people on Earth. Ecosystems from North to South are collapsing in real time. We see this in the millions made homeless in Bangladesh, the worst typhoon season on record in Japan, floods in Britain and the slaughtering of people of Darfur as the nomadic Janjaweed come looking for more fertile lands. In such a world, one would think that the need to share resources would be more important than ever.

Since Brandt, however, the Anglo American empire has privatised many of the Southern Hemisphere's resources, including, remarkably, the basics of life like water and seeds. Many who support the conclusions of the Brandt Report, that resources should be more equitably distributed between the North and South based on an appeal to humanity, justice and compassion now have the added hurdle of corporate profit and shareholder value to overcome.

So how do you unwind the corporate profit machine that keeps us from truly sharing resources? Clearly compassion alone over the last three decades has not worked. As ecosystems grow unstable and resource poverty spreads, violence seems to be an emerging trend.

I believe, however, that a more equitable system can be achieved at low cost, and without violence by 're-engineering' markets in ways that favor the South instead of the North.

Let me explain. It is assumed by advocates of the Brandt Report that markets have a monopoly position on greed and incivility, and that if you can unwind these monopoly positions by somehow making market 'agents' less greedy and more civil then a concurrent flowering of humane resource-sharing will follow in its wake.

This approach is noble, but futile in that monopoly positions in the market can be unwound a lot quicker and with incredible efficiency if the overall problem of wealth inequality were seen not in terms of the North not sharing its wealth with the South but rather in terms of the South not sharing its risks with the North.

I'm not talking about a semantic exercise, but a real life solution to a pressing problem; one that recognizes the source of the problem is centered in the mechanisms of finance, not, as many believe, in the policy making process of law makers. Understand that the lop sided nature of how the globe's resources are mis-allocated is engineered in the banking system by bankers and their wealthy clients creating their ability to spread the gap between North and South, rich and poor, is not with laws, but with financial products that not only make the job of aggregating wealth easier, but also do a great job in minimizing any risk attached to the wealth.

What we are ultimately talking about here is not wealth management, but risk management.

I'll give you two examples of financial engineering that demonstrate this point of risk vs. wealth. 'Program trading' is the technique of simultaneously buying a stock in one market at a low price while simultaneously selling the same stock at a higher price in another market. The Wall Street word for this is arbitrage and it takes many forms. You don't need to necessarily understand the mechanics of exactly how 'program trading' works, just understand that profits in this case are being 'engineered' and that these profits cost virtually nothing to manufacture and incur virtually zero risk. The price differences that I'm talking about are not big, and it only works if you have a lot of money to work with, and pay virtually zero commissions (as is the case for those with lots of money to begin with). Very quickly, when you begin to understand the profound implications of program trading you begin to understand that what is going on is that the entire financial landscape is being 'tilted' by those with the most capital in ways that favor them at everyone else's expense. The money made was not by 'making money' in the classic sense, but by shifting risk using financial engineering.

Another financial engineering technique used is called the 'carry trade.' This is another arbitrage exploitation where banks and their customers borrow money at 1% and invest it at 5%, thus pocketing 4% with zero risk. For every 1mn you borrow, you make $40,000 profit. Again, the system risk of the banking industry is increased, dripping cash into the accounts of the banks and their clients. They didn't 'make money' they transferred risk.

So, keeping financial engineering in mind and the question of how best to re-align the globe's resources to more equitably redistribute resources imagine this; all the world's NGO's (approximately 16,000 of them with combined operating budgets of approximately 1 trillion dollars) were to focus their non-buying power, i.e., a boycott - - not on the company that is believed to be the most socially irresponsible, but rather, on the company that is the most vulnerable to a boycott i.e., exposed to the risk.

The result would be that capital, the thing the Brandt Report is seeking to redistribute, would begin to move per the agenda of the activists along the fault lines of risk.

More precisely, if the globe's activists were to turn upside down the industrialists' notions of 'growth' and 'productivity' and see these things not as assets but as liabilities; turning the very numbers themselves upside down to create a new financial metric that only made sense to activists - a boycott vulnerability ratio in other words, - then reading the Wall Street Journal would offer daily clues about where to boycott next in the way that will cause the greatest shifts of capital in favor of activists.

Even more precisely, a common metric used by Wall Street to gauge so-called growth that can be co-opted by activists for them to gauge boycott vulnerability is what Wall Street calls, the PSR (Price Sales Ratio)

This measure tells investors the relationship between a company's stock price value and a company's sales. When the stock price is considerably higher than the sales, as is the case with Coca-Cola, investors rejoice; the company is 'growing' fast. But activists could look at the same number and conclude that the company is actually especially vulnerable, in terms of its stock price, to any loss of sales.

If activists wielding the boycott stick were to focus on boycotts that cause the most financial damage per their own interpretation of PSR and not waste time on boycotts where the PSR is low, financial engineering would have a new master; activists.

ExxonMobil for example has a PSR of about 1. It's not a good boycott (versus Coke which is 5) but activists love to boycott Exxon. They refuse to look at the numbers. They believe their passion will trump the numbers.

This may be so in the long run, but why wait a minute longer than we have to. Using PSR ratios to gauge boycotts is an instant way to empower activists to start to move money around the global finance channels per their agenda, not any company's agenda.

Once that money starts to move, there are ways to capture it and funnel it to places that need the money; the South for example could be the beneficiary of a fund that took advantage of a global PSR driven boycott campaign against Coke that moved the price of Coke's stock down. Betting on falling prices provide just as much economic reward as betting on rising
prices in the world of banking. As Coke's stock slid, and the bets against its stock price paid off, the profits could be channelled to the South. Of course now that they were, in effect, getting paid to boycott, the size of the boycott could only grow larger.

The losers in this scheme are the large companies whose stock is trading at very high multiples of sales. But isn't that what we're talking about to begin with? Where else do you think the money to fulfil the Brandt

Report objectives will come from? So why wait for the companies to volunteer? Why not motivate the world's have-nots to effect this economic change themselves by organizing their boycotts along strategic lines of PSR?

The Dimensions Of Sharing

More than fifty years into the development battle, some progress can be reported: The percentage of people living in absolute poverty as measured by the World Bank's $1 a day poverty line fell from 1987 to 1998 by four percentage points to 24%; and currently 83% of children in Latin America and the Caribbean region complete primary education. Despite these improvements, significant inequalities in the access to medication and the distribution of income remain between regions, nations and even citizens within the same nation states.

A closer investigation of global poverty indicators reveals that improvements are concentrated in a few countries, such as India or China. Some nations were able to realize the potential gains from an increasingly globalized world, while others are still struggling and sometimes even fall back through net losses in trade, civil wars or natural disasters. A recent report by the WHO and UNICEF revealed that in Kenya every year, 34000 children die of Malaria (about 90 percent of the global figure), a disease that can be successfully treated with appropriate medication. In short: much, if not more than ever, remains to be done.

Development Aid

In an encouraging speech on September 24, 2003 at the Hilton Foundation Conference "Humanitarian Intervention Today", Professor Jeffrey Sachs held that "the world is - passing these places by, but for reasons that are understandable, identifiable and correctable". He then outlined that $25 billion a year from the rich world to the poor, the equivalent of one thousandth of the rich countries annual income, could save eight million lives per year through 49 basic live saving interventions.

The importance of sharing the world's resources through humanitarian aid to developing countries is not debateable, especially as aid levels are falling. Figures on development aid are similarly disappointing with total Oversees Development Assistance (ODA) contracting by 6% to USD 53 billion in 2000. Today, only Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands donate more than the UN set country target of 0,7 % of GDP. The US currently donates 0,1% and the EU 0,31% of its combined GDP. Outlooks after the Monterrey Conference are promising. It remains yet to be seen whether the promised increased aid levels will be realized.

However, even if these required aid levels were provided for, there still remain several other problems. An analysis of aid destinations reveals that a country's level of need is not the most important factor in determining aid allocation. In 1999, Central and Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia received the largest portion of ODA with $19.5 billion as compared to $8 billion allocated to Sub- Saharan Africa. Similarly, in 1998, the UK donated £54 million to Ghana while Zimbabwe, arguably in larger need, received £15 million. In addition, this development aid is mostly tied to policy reforms, which are, despite large protest, to a significant degree still directed by the North. Due to the "one- dollar- one- vote" voting structure in the World Bank and IMF, the combined weight of Northern votes amounts to about 60%.

If aid levels were raised and allocation prioritized according to a country's level of need, would development aid be able to set countries on the path to sustainability Evidence confirms that the sharing of one's surplus through the provision of developmental aid is not the most effective way to foster sustainable development in the long run. Though precise econometric ratios are still debated, recorded long term reductions in poverty and inequality are largely attributable to economic growth.

Economic Growth

Early developmental belief held the view that providing financial aid to boost growth levels is the key to economic development. Empirically however, the pure link between investment and sustainable economic growth is less straight forward. Some argue that aid reduces domestic savings; others hold that it has only been effective in countries where sound management and "good governance" were in place first, which today provides the basis for the US Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). Historically however, although the success stories (such as South Korea, Taiwan or Malaysia) were recipients of financial aid, a detailed analysis of their tale reveals that aid per se could not have been the trigger that lifted millions of people out of destitution.

Developmental wisdom has changed over the years. In the 1980s, international developmental agencies embraced the free market paradigm, including for example the full liberalization of trade and inflows of foreign direct investment. In the 1990s, due to substantial failures and criticism, the "Washington Consensus" has been augmented to include the need for sound institutions and good governance. This is an important step forward, but still ignores other factors for success. The original basis of these policy "recommendations" remains with donors pressing recipient countries to open up their markets. After all, an open market is "known" to sort things out for everyone, even for the poorest. But is it really? And have successful countries followed this path?

'Fair'¯ Trade

Arguably, international trade has never truly been liberalized, not even by its strongest proponents- the developed world and especially not with regards to product markets that are of significant importance to developing countries. The recently reformed European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) guarantees European farmers steady subsidies until 2013. Such subsidies immunize European farmers from world commodity price fluctuations and, through lower production cost, allow them to export cheaply and suppress international prices for agricultural products.

Farmers in developing countries, on the other hand, do not enjoy similar subsidies and, already disadvantaged through inferior technology, must compete on the international market. Similarly, subsidies per head of cattle in the EU amounted to an estimated $436 and those in the US to $152 in 1998, which ironically implies that, unlike 1.3 billion people, the majority of all European cattle live above the World Bank's $1 a day poverty line.

What often gets out of sight when looking at development as a phenomenon of numbers and applying rational economic textbook policies, is the fate of individuals in developing countries. Recently, newspapers have been swamped by articles of high suicide rates among farmers in Andhra Pradesh or other regions in India. Farmers are driven into desperation because of their inability to repay government loans and to feed their families after years of draught, soil exhaustion and falling international prices for grain. The Indian example does not stand alone. In these situations, implementation of the principle of sharing by the international community would require not only to support these farmers in the short run but also to recognize that unfair competition cannot be the basis for sustainable development in the world's poorest regions.

For developing countries to catch up, reach economic sustainability and become equal beneficiaries of the potential gains from globalization, they must industrialize as history shows. Agricultural products are unlikely to provide the basis for sustained growth as demand for their products is inelastic. Already in the 19th century, List has pointed out that for a country to gain from international trade it must first reach a similar level of industrialization as its trading partners. Though all successful late developers have experienced their individual path to industrialization and no sweeping generalizations can be made, there are some patterns of similarity. Common success factors in South Korea, Taiwan or Malaysia were trial and error investments into mid- technology industries, knowledge acquisition from abroad, large plant sizes that allowed for economics of scale and some diversification in their investment portfolios to spread financial risk.

As Ha- Joo Chang shows in his important analysis "Kicking away the ladder", counter to mainstream policy believes, no country be it the UK, the US, or more recently South Korea, Taiwan or Malaysia, has successfully industrialized without some form of infant industry protection. Such initial protection allowed for the development of economic competitiveness through economics of scale before the opening of borders to international trade. Of course, such protection, when carried too far can also be harmful and the right balance must be found. The financing of such industry investments, which necessarily involves failure rates, remains a challenge for developing countries that have already fallen far behind. Internal savings are low, debt service levels are high and surplus creation through primary goods export and agricultural production are limited. Agricultural trade on fair terms could at least provide for the right basis.

The Principle of Sharing

By viewing international development through a historic lens and adopting a long term perspective, it becomes clear that effective development aid and resource sharing requires more than donating one's own surplus, which has earlier been secured through asymmetric trade realities. As such, sharing the world's resources must be understood as giving countries the freedom to develop socially, politically and economically. Following historical examples, granting this freedom might also mean allowing developing countries to not only trade their goods at a fair price but to also provide them with the time to develop their own sustainable growth engines. Ultimately, the implementation of the principle of sharing requires the transformation of the international economic and political environment, which today is still heavily biased toward the world's rich.

Bill Stevens

A Catalyst For Change

Many years ago the computer giant IBM embarked on a research project. IBM wanted to look into the future of computing. They wanted to know where the frantic pace of technological development would lead? What would computers look like and what would they be capable of? The fruit of this research became a concept which IBM named “The Dyna Bookâ€Â¯.

The Dyna Book, would be a small hand held device with the overall size and appearance of a hard back book. It would understand and communicate using human speech, while images and video would be displayed on a colour screen set in the front cover of the book.

But the most remarkable aspect of the Dyna Book, would be its ability to hold within its electronic covers, the entire sum of human knowledge! More than a mere encyclopaedia, one could talk to the Dyna Book, ask it complex questions, and receive an answer immediately.

Does this sound like a science fiction fantasy? At first glance it probably does. However, by combining the information freely available on the Internet today, together with a modern laptop computer or PDA, perhaps we are not as far from the Dyna Book as we might first imagine.

If we had a Dyna Book today, what would it actually contain? If it held the sum total of human knowledge, what would that be? Naturally it should reflect the truth, good or bad. So if you asked it to compare your current salary with the average income in the developing world, would we be shocked to find that 2.8 billion people, more than half the people in developing countries, live on less than $700 a year. Many probably would.

The Internet is still some way from becoming the Dyna Book IBM dreamt of. But you can still ask it such questions, and you can still be shocked by its answers. But as we shall see, it can be far more than a mere repository of human knowledge.

The Internet has had a profound effect on the world. For the first time in the history of humankind, ordinary people from all over the world are able to access information previously beyond reach. From statistics and academic research, to spiritual and cultural knowledge. The Internet is changing the way we look at the world. For example, we no longer need to rely upon the traditional national news media. There are many hundreds of news sources freely accessible on the Internet, each providing a different political, cultural or religious perspective on current affairs.

The Internet also provides a unique environment for new organisations with new idea's and perspectives to flourish. A simple Internet search engine will provide access to countless organisations working within a particular field of interest. Just type the phrase “Human Rightsâ€Â¯ into google and see what you get! Never before has humankind had the ability to be so well informed, and this information is transforming our understanding of the world and its people.

If the status quo is maintained through ignorance, then the ability of the Internet to inform will surely shatter that ignorance. Until recently this ignorance has allowed the politicians and corporations to exploit and sublimate the developing world. But now that we are free from the blinkered view of traditional media, we can see the results of government foreign policy and corporate greed. We can see it first hand from those whom it affects. From farmers fighting for the right to use GM free seeds, to ordinary Iraq's relating daily life under US military control. The Internet is keeping us informed.

So we can no longer remain in ignorant bliss. The Internet brings the realities of the world right into our homes. And with it comes the desire for knowledge, understanding and change. We want to know why a particular thing is happening, we want to know what is driving it, and if we don't like it, how can we change it? This need to know has provided fertile ground for the surge of organisations seeking to inform, educate and motivate us.

In just a few short years the Internet has transformed world society. We now have a tool to reveal truth and teach understanding. But what of change? What can the Internet revolution do to change things?

In a word: Participation.

If you want to change something, you must first become aware of the need for change, you must become informed. Next you need to talk, to communicate your thoughts, feelings and idea's with others. Then by joining and co-ordinating with others you can become the force for change.

The latest generation of web sites, this one included, provide a way for you to actively create and participate in initiative's to effect change. These web sites allow you to express your thoughts, idea's and opinion's. You can discuss and debate issues with people from all over the world. You do not need to be a computer wizard to do this. If you can press keys on your keyboard, you can participate. This is the start of the next Internet revolution, and it is right here, right now!

Web sites such as this one with its forum's and chat room's, facilitate the meeting of minds and hearts, allowing the free flow of idea's and information. From this will inevitably rise the course of action required to effect change, together with the body of people to implement it!

Hmm, revolutionary stuff you might say.

Well... Yes!

It is a revolution. The Internet has broken down the geographical barriers, and is enabling people from all over the world to talk. I marvel at the prospect of reading a forum discussion with contributions from a German academic, a Brazilian shop keeper and an Indian farmer, and I can only wonder at the solutions they may come up with.

In participating, every citizen of the world has a role. From factory workers to university professors. Nursing mothers to tribal leaders. The more we talk, the more we understand. The more minds on a problem, the quicker that problem can be resolved. Technology has created a wonderful tool through which we may all have a voice, and have that voice heard.

Sharing is at the very heart of social, political and economic justice. By sharing the world's resources, we can overcome the inequality and misery endured by the majority of the world's population. If we are to succeed in this we must begin by sharing information to inform, sharing thought's to inspire, sharing idea's to create solutions.

So participate. Be a part of the change. Make it happen. Use the forum's on this web site and others, to share your idea's, thoughts and opinion's. Share your knowledge, share your experience with the world. We all have something to contribute.

Politicians may have any number of personal and party agenda's. But the one thing they all respond to is public opinion. In a democratic society, a politician must respond to public opinion or risk losing the next election. It is as simple as that. So for all those wishing to make a positive difference, it is important to create that opinion and make it heard throughout the world.

When IBM first looked at the future of computing, few could have guessed at the revolution about to unfold. The development of the Internet and its ability to share knowledge, is one of humankind's most important achievement's. But more importantly still, is the effect and influence this knowledge will have. How it will bring people together. How it will create change.

Bill Stevens is a member of STWR, an IT consultant and a life long worker for peace and justice.