Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble?

…Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet,

How sweet his music! on my life, There’s more of wisdom in it.

These verses from the Lake District poet William Wordsworth, written over two hundred years ago, reflect the spirit of the Festival starting on July 16^th in the UK’s Lake District, organised by the Brathay Trust and the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS).

Scholarship is great, but immersing in nature and refreshing our creative desires is key for developing practical wisdom. The festival will be an exploration of ideas and also format, by mixing engaged scholars with radical professionals from across sectors and cultures. The aim is for a maximum mix of people, ideas and processes with few frills. Lifeworth has supported the event with IT services. As the academic chair of the Festival, I’m chuffed we will be welcoming scholars presenting over 40 papers, and speakers who are participating without charge, some coming from across continents.

We are aiming for interaction and reflection, with the Open Space, World Cafe, Open Mic and Storytelling sessions, amongst provocative plenaries and interviews. I’m looking forward to hearing philosopher Charles Eisenstein, actor Nandita Das and author Nicole Schwab. Underlying the range of sessions is the deeper question: “How might I lead greater wellbeing?”

It is an important question, because while more people speak of sustainability, the environmental news is really bad. While more people work on wellbeing, austerity bites and few address the power relations that undermine opportunities for collective wellbeing. While more people call for leadership, we risk forgetting the need for us all to lead together.

But tough issues don’t have to be explored in a tough or dull way. We can enjoy getting to know people on a deeper level as we explore whether to let go of our old stories of success and wellbeing, and where that will lead our work and life. That kind of fresh thinking likes fresh air, so we have organised a range of outdoor activities for participants… in the forest, on the lake, on the lawn.

The festival is also a celebration. I love what Brathay Trust does day-to-day in promoting young people’s wellbeing. We want to share the beauty of the Lake District, which inspires through the cultural heritage and contours of the landscape. It can be argued that contemporary conservation was born in the Lake District in the 1800s. Today, nearly 3 years after IFLAS was conceived, with around 2000 students from over 100 countries, it is time to share the IFLAS approach to sustainability leadership more widely.

So, Up, Up, friends, come join us for these days of exploration: www.leadingwell.org

Jem Bendell

Professor of Sustainability Leadership, University of Cumbria

Founder of IFLAS (www.iflas.info) and Lifeworth

That is a meaningless statement. Neither is there a rule or principle that stops a country adopting another country’s currency as its own legal tender. Ecuador uses the US dollar for its currency and has done for over a decade.

An independent Scotland could easily adopt the British pound as its legal tender if it wanted to, without being part of a banking union. However, its banks could not issue such currency as bank deposits via loans (the current origin of 97% of British pounds), unless it registered those banks HQs and assets within Britain. That’s not that difficult – just over the border, Carlisle might even develop as a financial centre!

Although we might want to keep the UK together, we shouldn’t be misled by politicians, civil servants or reporters who aren’t willing to have a quick google to see what happens around the world.

For Scotland to keep the pound, it would not profit from the issuance and sale of notes and coins. The issuance of physical currency is a tiny issue compared to the economic and social implications of issuance of the majority of money by banks, as debt. If it kept the pound but became independent, Scotland would have no control over monetary policy. If the UK wanted a strict monetary policy but Scotland needed a less strict one to enable more credit to boost economic activity, then Scotland’s economy would suffer an absence of a means to transact. That’s exactly the situation of Greece right now in the Eurozone. It means prolonged recession, austerity and a firesale of state assets. Hmm, but wait. That’s the current situation in Scotland… because the Scotish and British public have very little control over monetary affairs right now, as it is the private banks that decide how much credit is created, at what price and for whom.

So if concerned about monetary policy, as it should be, Scotland could keep the British pound but create a complementary currency to enable internal transactions. After all, why allow the volume of local trade to be determined by monetary policies decided elsewhere? That doesn’t sound like independence to me.

Such complementary currencies are widespread, many thousands of them worldwide, and much more stable than the recent cryptographic currencies like Bitcoin that have become famous in the past year. Some are very local, some are global and involve governments bartering products and even satellite time, some are backed by commodities, like Ven. We learned about dozens of them at a UN conference we helped organise last year, and we teach about them at our Institute: www.iflas.info

Since Bitcoin shot to fame, it is becoming more widely understood that a currency can be founded on an unhackable public database of transactions that is maintained by a network of any computers that download the relevant software. Therefore there are now hundreds of adaptations of the bitcoin code, which create other currencies. It is not surprising then that an entrepreneur announced yesterday that they are creating Scotcoin.

Could Scotcoin be the answer that Scottish independence advocates are seeking? Almost. One of the problems of these cryptographic currencies is that the way they are issued. Early adopters get a huge reward, as do those with the most powerful computers. Therefore, the proposal by Derek from Scotcoin is that an agency will distribute these coins to whoever is registered as resident in Scotland.

Scotcoin, or something similar could work, if a number of things happen:

• The code is changed to adopt Freicoin’s demurrage system so that a small fraction of your coins is paid into a common pot, which can then fund an ongoing basic income payment to every registered user. This avoids hoarding and encourages circulation of the currency
• The code is changed to remove some of the less useful aspects of bitcoin, for instance, requiring a larger amount of mining power to be decisive in changing the protocol (more than 51%), and to speed up the transaction times
• The agency issuing the currency becomes democratically accountable to the people of Scotland, so that people can decide how much the computing processors should receive for maintaining the network, what the demurrage fee should be, what the minimum income should be, and what guidance should be given on new developments in the code
• If issued and governed democratically accountable, then the Scottish government adapts legal tender laws to recognise Scotcoin, so that it would have the same legal standing as Pound Sterling when debts are disputed in court. In addition, the Government would accept tax payments in Scotcoin, or even demand some tax payments in Scotcoin, from companies operating in Scotland. In addition, the Scottish government could begin to pay some portion of state employees with Scotcoin. This would provide some basis for stabilising the demand for Scotcoin, and therefore its market price against other currencies.

Such issues are too important to be left to individual brilliance. If the initiators of Scotcoin don’t like this, no problem, the Scottish government can create their own domain extension, register Scotcoin to it, create their own cryptographic currency with a public mandate in mind, and regulate so that anything called Scotcoin that is not the government-backed system, would simply be counterfeit, and its commercial users prosecuted as such.

I dont think that will be necessary but, yes, in saying this I’ll come clean I’m not an anarchist libertarian who thinks that somehow private enterprise will fix all our problems. Instead, a blend of libertarian sentiment, entrepreneurial drive, and a strong social democratic spirit, could create a more useful monetary system in the long term. Activist entrepreneurs can lead the way, but they need to team up with others who know more about community governance, for instance.

This future governance wouldn’t mean that other private currencies couldn’t emerge.. indeed we are already seeing the emergence of a multi-currency economy around the world. Its just that if one such currency is to play a role as a national currency and be backed by the government, it will need certain characteristics and forms of governance.

If Scots want to go independent and keep the pound, that’s up to them, and they shouldn’t be misled by treasury officials.

The fact this has been opened up is good news, as it reveals how little our politicians and mainstream media seem to understand about monetary issues, so wedded are they to mainstream delusion about the nature of money.

As I heard the Chancellor I was reminded of a quote I included in my new book “Healing Capitalism”:

“To desire freedom is an instinct. To secure it requires intelligence. It must be comprehended and self-asserted. To petition for it is to stultify oneself, for a petitioner is a confessed subject and lacks the spirit of a freeman. To rail and rant against tyranny is to manifest inferiority, for there is no tyranny but ignorance; to be conscious of one’s powers is to lose consciousness of tyranny. Self-government is not a remote aim. It is an intimate and inescapable fact. To govern oneself is a natural imperative, and all tyranny is the miscarriage of self-government. The first requisite of freedom is to accept responsibility for the lack of it.”

That was E.C. Riegel, quite a long time ago, in a book arguing for us to create our own currency systems. As Felix Martin says, Bitcoin ain’t all that new, as the field of currency innovation has been around as long as we have. What is new is the ability for us to create and scale new systems quickly. In bringing attention to monetary issues in the context of the debate about Scottish independence, George Osborne may have inadvertently started a conversation that will bring more people to an awareness that money systems should be what we chose them to be, not means of control and exploitation.

So while I’m at it… Psst, all you austerised local authorities… listen up! You could create your own currencies too, and back them up by your payroll, by local taxes and charges for things like your super expensive car parks. Sound odd? Well these aren’t new ideas, they have been used by around the world already, from Brazil to Kenya. It’s about time we got our DFID civil servants studying what we can learn from the rest of the world, as our Treasury officials sound far too little-Englander to me! Now the Scottish independence debate has taken a monetary turn, and we wake up to our current monetary delusion, perhaps we all might be free.

Thanks, Jem Bendell

Professor of Sustainability Leadership (www.iflas.info)

Some links:

If you want to discuss this, see you over on the Lifeworth-IFLAS Linked In Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Sustainable-Leaders-IFLAS-4778761

The BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-26166794

See Scotcoin project: www.scotcoin.org

My book where I discuss all these things: http://jembendell.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/healing-capitalism/

If you dont know about Bitcoin: http://jembendell.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/davos-conversations-on-bitcoin/

For my views on the limitations of Bitcoin: http://jembendell.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/crypto-at-the-ok-coral/

To us, sustainability means that everyone thrives in harmony with the biosphere and future generations. That does not mean maintaining or spreading a particular way of life, but a transition from behaviours and systems that are destructive, towards those that restore the environment and support individual rights, wellbeing, and community. It implies a systemic shift; large numbers of persons and organisations acting in a significantly different way. A transition to sustainability involves promoting ecological integrity, collective wellbeing, real democracy, human rights, support for diversity, economic fairness, community resilience, a culture of compassion, inquiry, non-violence to all life and appreciation of beauty.

Studies of positive transformations suggest this shift will require interacting cultural, economic, technological, behavioural, political and institutional developments at multiple levels. Leaders during social transformations appear to have transcended a concern for self, yet sufficiently sustained their wellbeing, and empowered others. Therefore our work seeks to connect the systemic and the personal, and mobilise insights from diverse schools of thought on how transformations occur. We see the transition to a sustainable way of life as an adventure, which I explained on film is a theme that frames much of our work.

Research at IFLAS will focus on actionable knowledge, action research, combining diverse disciplines, linking local with global, and learning from old and new teachings that arise from diverse cultural settings. I describe the research areas in a brief video. I am currently welcoming inquiries about potential PhD research. There is one opportunity for receiving a bursary to cover fees.

Our education will draw on our heritage as a place of experiential learning for over a century. We currently run an MBA in Leadership and Sustainability.

A sustainability leaders’ summit in July will mark the official launch of IFLAS, but the first open event is on March 11th, where we will train people on how to launch and scale a local currency. Our website goes live at the end of January.

So what am I letting go?

In the coming months, the Lifeworth jobs portal will be merged with Globethics.net who will be able to develop it further and reach a wider audience. Projects at Lifeworth Consulting will now be managed by my brilliant and steadfast colleague Ian Doyle.

As the year comes to an end, try letting go.

Unless you work in a circus.

Or especially if you work in a circus?

Cheers, Jem
Professor Jem Bendell
Director, Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS)
University of Cumbria, UK
Charlotte Mason Building
Rydal Road, Ambleside
LA22 9BB, UK

http://www.cumbria.ac.uk/iflas / http://www.jembendell.com / http://twitter.com/jembendell / http://weibo.com/jembendell

Click here to view the embedded video.

I had the pleasure of working with Thomas and the European Sustainability Academy to develop a network of professionals in Greece who organise alternative exchange systems, such as the local market currency in Volos, called the TEM. We facilitated the drafting of the Drapanos Declaration on Community Exchange, which provides a basis for future collaboration. It highlights the insight and purpose that many people share. I recommend you read it, share it, and consider endorsing it yourself.

Thomas then came to the north west of England, to speak at events organised by the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS), which I’m founding at the University of Cumbria. We organised the events with Transition Lancaster, the local chapter of the worldwide Transition Towns movement, which encourages local action to create sustainable communities. As a result of the events, IFLAS is now engaging Transition Lancaster and the Lancaster Ethical Small Traders Association, other interested business networks and community groups in the region, and the nation-wide Sustainable Money Working Group, to design experiments and action-research projects for scaling up alternative means of exchange. We hope to link this local innovation with the Working Group on the Sharing Economy, of the Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum, because we believe these issues are of global relevance.

The next event is a one day seminar on why and how to launch your own local exchange system, led by myself and John Rogers, co-author of People Money: the promise of regional currencies, and in association with the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service, on March 11^th, 2013.

The Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) will be formally launched next year, with a 3 day summit of international sustainability leaders. Based in the middle of the world-famous Lake District, the ILS is an autonomous part of the University of Cumbria Business School, collaborating across the University on inter-disciplinary research, education and advisory. We work on personal and collective transitions towards more fair and sustainable societies. The field of alternative exchange systems and complementary currencies is an area which we welcome enquiries, particularly from potential doctoral candidates, partners in funded research, or prospective participants in our March seminar. For this, I can be contacted via my profile page at the University.

Professor Jem Bendell

Director, Institute for Leadership and Sustainability, University of Cumbria

Founder, Lifeworth.com and Lifeworth Consulting

Just over five years ago I began working on the luxury industry.  I thought, why cant these elite brands not excel in social and environmental performance? I researched, wrote and produced the report Deeper Luxury for WWF-UK, and it triggered a bit of a furore in the fashion press and wider luxury industry (about 8000 sites now link to the report). 5 years on, I’ve helped some luxury companies with their social and environmental impacts. But I havent seen much change. Some large firms like PPR have embraced the agenda, although we wait in anticipation for more results, in terms of positive social and environmental outcomes. In the 5 years, what inspired me the most were the entrepreneurs I met. People who were creating businesses to address social and environmental problems, and targetting the luxury segment as a way to do that. I began to realise something might be in this – that these entrepreneurs might be shaping the future of luxury, and that they might be revealing a new way we can engage in social change. In the new study, I profile sustainable luxury firms Elvis and Kresse, Tesla Motors, Shokay, Source4Style, Rags2Riches, Positive Luxury, Timothy Han and Nue Luxe… It’s called “Elegant Disruption: How luxury and society can shape each-other for good”. It took about a year to write, as it involved a lot of conversations to understand just what the potential of luxury might be to influence social change. Ill be presenting it at conferences in Brisbane and Barcelona in the coming weeks.

Abstract, August 2012:

From http://www.griffith.edu.au/business-government/asia-pacific-centre-for-sustainable-enterprise/publications/working-paper-series/issue-9
This paper outlines the contemporary luxury sector, showing it is global, thriving and influential. It shows how creative destruction is typical in most industry sectors, including luxury, and how disruptive innovation by entrepreneurs is key to that process. It proposes that the current time is potentially disruptive for incumbent luxury brands and groups, due to five key trends that are beginning to re-frame the markets that luxury brands sell to. Sustainable luxury entrepreneurs from USA, UK, Philippines, India, Argentina, China and Hong Kong are profiled and described as  pursuing “elegant disruption”: a well-designed intervention in markets that both uses and affects aspirations in ways that change patterns of consumption, production or exchange, for a positive societal outcome. The paper reviews the response of mainstream luxury brands to the sustainability agenda, proposing some possible reasons why they appear to be encumbered in embracing this agenda fully. Some of the paradoxes in the notion of “sustainable luxury” are described, in order to draw implications for both the luxury industry and people interested in positive social change. The paper draws upon the authors five years of interaction with the luxury industry on sustainability issues, and is therefore written as a “first person inquiry” and draws upon principles of “appreciative inquiry” in documenting the breakthrough approaches of some sustainable luxury entrepreneurs.

In the First Policy Brief of the EU’s ‘SPREAD Sustainable Lifestyles’ project, they identified five pivotal issues for sustainable lifestyles. One of these is “the emergence of non-monetary systems: reward schemes, alternative currencies and the principle of reciprocity to incentivize people to rethink the value of services and goods in terms of their actual costs and benefits.” It recommends “a Toolbox for change makers” to “enable the transition” that should include “alternative currencies and reward schemes..”*

There is a growing sense that we are on the cusp of disruptive innovation in sustainable exchange, as EU SPREAD notes, “web and mobile technologies can play a critical role in building large-scale, sharing communities for the future.”* Data from the NGO I advise, Community Forge, show a significant uptake in the last 2 years, with now 400 currencies using its free open source software and 130 fully hosted on its servers.

If you are interested in these areas, then I recommend attending one of the following events in the coming months:

Sweden, 24^th August: a short workshop on community currencies with myself and Matthew Slater. Contact the organisers of Future Perfect for more information.

Greece, 10^th and 11^th October: a 2 day workshop on community currencies with best selling author and expert Thomas Greco, myself, Matthew Slater and innovators of local currencies in Greece. Contact the organisers of the European Sustainability Academy for more information.

UK, 30^th and 31^th  October: a talk and then half day workshop on community currencies with Thomas Greco, at the Lancaster Campus of the University of Cumbria. Contact the organisers at Transition City Lancaster for more information (email:  th@  reliablegreenweb.co.uk)

Later this year, at the University of Cumbria, I will be launching a trans-disciplinary programme of research, dialogue and training on alternative currencies and exchange systems, and how they might enable a sustainability transition. If you are interested in this agenda, Id be pleased to hear from you (jb at lifeworth . com).You can also follow tweets on this topic via https://twitter.com/jembendell

Thanks,

Jem Bendell

Director, Lifeworth

Professor of Sustainability Leadership, University of Cumbria (Incoming, Oct 2012)

* Quotes from: Emerging Visions for Future Sustainable Lifestyles. Preliminary policy considerations from the SPREAD Sustainable Lifestyles 2050 European Social Platform project. Developing pathways to more sustainable living. First Policy Brief, February 2012

Click here to view the embedded video.

• “Don’t worry, they won’t fail you, you’ve already paid”, from a student to another caught cheating during exams;
• “We’ve already accepted that we need to compromise our values to work in the business world”, from a business ethics student to his professor;
• “The business ethics course goes against the grain of every other course that is taught as part of the programme”, from a student to a programme director.

If statements like these are indicative of the culture in business schools today, can we seriously expect management education to be the source of globally responsible leaders to address the urgent needs of our times?

Creating globally responsible leaders is one of the three pillars of a new vision for management education developed by the 50+20 project, a collaborative effort between the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI), the World Business School Council for Sustainable Business (WBSCSB) and the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (UNPRME). Launched in June at the Rio+20 summit, the 50+20 project presented a report, which proposed a cognitive re-framing of management education, so rather than being the best in the world, business education becomes a driving social force for the world.

Anders Aspling presents 50+20 report on panel with Lifeworth’s Ian Doyle at Global Ethics Forum 2012.

The vision was also outlined at the Global Ethics Forum at the end of June where I (Ian Doyle), joined a panel with Mr Anders Aspling, Secretary General of the GRLI, to discuss how such a vision to create more purposeful business education could be implemented. I suggested the following building blocks for holistic business education:

• A clear social purpose: What is a business school for? Its time to be clear and, if necessary, to update missions. The Community Individual Development Association (CIDA) University in Johannesburg is a good example. It aims to provide education in business administration for the rural poor with a view to transforming its students into leaders of their communities in turn advancing socio-economic transformation of the country and the broader region.
• Pedagogic innovation. Schools need to work more on the pedagogic competence of their staff. This includes how staff can transmit the desire to want to discover/learn rather than assuming ‘he who knows can teach.’
• Combine theory with action-oriented research. If schools are going to have a social purpose, they will need to adapt course content so that research is centred on resolving social problems. That way, students can put theory into action and challenge it if necessary. Furthermore, this is a fun way to learn!
• Adapt management systems. Action research means that schools will need to create platforms to exchange with stakeholders on social issues. The 50+20 report calls this platform a “collaboratory.” Not only would such a platform be useful for research purposes, but it could transform the role of academics so that they become public intellectuals. To do so will also require that schools provide incentives for faculty to engage in such a process: and to be honest about shortcomings.

In the same vein, a sense of purpose requires that one measures success differently. One way to do this is to evaluate what extent research output produces results that can be used to resolve pressing issues in business and society.

• Collaborate for Systemic Change. On a systemic level, what could be some practical recommendations for action and next steps in business education to help create scale? Firstly, there needs to be a cognitive reframing of the purpose of business. Secondly, business school ranking systems currently have graduate salary as a measure of the school’s reputation. Ranking systems could be adapted to measure the social utility of projects and careers, rather than equating success with monetary worth. This will require the co-operation of business school leaders in lobbying for change to ratings systems. Thirdly, school heads would do well to reflect on the future needs of society in 5-10 years and plan for them, as government regulators and funders will no doubt follow these trends, not to mention employers. Fourthly, challenge the ‘Publish or Perish’ mentality in view of career advancement, which encourages the siloing of academics. Issues such as climate change demonstrate that the world is ill-equipped to deal with such systemic issues. Schools need to encourage interdisciplinary work and applied research so that academics are rewarded for the social relevance of their work.

Previously at Lifeworth, in a study in the Journal of Corporate Citizenship, we whittled these issues down into a 16 step process that business schools could follow to embed social purpose into all their activities.

But what might be the guiding values to implement these building blocks? I’d like to propose the following values:

Humility – an issue-centric learning focus requires a spirit of communication. This necessitates humility, not power, as people are humbled before the problem they face so that they can think together.

Love – because love tells us what is important and ultimately guides our happiness. Gary Hamel, considered the world’s leading thinker on business strategy and visiting professor of strategy and international management at London Business School, says that the word ‘love’ needs to be reintroduced into the workplace. I’d go a step further and say that the verb ‘to love’ needs to be lived out in the workplace.

Faith – to believe that there can be something other than it is, for example, the world can be a better place. If students have resolved that they need to compromise their values for the work environment then this is a sign that they have lost faith and our world then becomes stuck in a rut. People need faith so that they can be moved to action.

Accountability – the word ‘responsibility’ has been hijacked so that it only has voluntary significance but its original meaning implies a sense of obligation. It is more than just an ability to respond, and thus a choice, but a commitment to responding and a willingness to be accountable for it. Thus promoting systems for ones own accountability is the highest form of responsibility.

The 50+20 vision is timely, as it highlights that ‘responsibility’ is not something that can be instructed but can be inspired and is something that needs to be lived out. This insight is one of the key aspects of a new training course developed by Lifeworth for Globethics.net. Called ‘Voicing Your Values’, the training draws on psychological studies, executives’ personal experience, case studies, peer coaching, role play and film, so that participants:

• are empowered to create the contexts that enable ethical action.

• clarify their personal and professional purpose and associated definitions of success.

• develop a personal ethical action framework.

• can develop and deploy counter arguments to typical rationalisations for unethical behaviour.

• identify processes for working with others to create values-supportive organisational systems.

By integrating personal ethics in a professional context, managers are equipped to transform ethical reflection into ethical action.

The one day training, which also includes Training Of Trainers, so you can deploy this in your own organisation, is being offered in Geneva on 18^th October and 9^th November, and can also be offered in a location of your choice if you are able to host. A shorter version will be offered on October 11th in Crete. Please contact me at idoyle at lifeworth .com or on +33 9 52 00 53 60 if you are interested in this opportunity.

Ian Doyle,

Associate, Lifeworth.com

In the coming months, Lifeworth, in association with the world’s leading provider of free open source software for community currencies, is co-running workshops at major sustainability events in Sweden and Greece, and lecturing on this topic in Australia. Scroll down to see details on the events nearest to you. A crisis is an opportunity for a new system to emerge, if we make it so!

Sweden

At the Future Perfect festival in Stockholm, world-leaders in sustainable enterprise, science, design, and media will gather at a world-class summer music festival on 23-26 August.

At Future Perfect, we (Lifeworth Consulting) are hosting a panel on monetary reforms and innovations for sustainability, and a workshop for executives who want to start, scale or participate in alternative means of exchange.

Panel: “Currencies of Transition: monetary reforms and innovations for sustainability.”

Chair: Professor Jem Bendell (Lifeworth Consulting, Community Forge and Griffith Business School)
Ben Dyson, director of Positive Money, which campaigns for a systemic solution to monetary crises, by full reserve banking.
Josh Ryan Collins, New Economics Foundation, the Brixton Pound and co-author of “Where does money come from?”
Lynnea Bylund, Board Member, Ormita, the international business barter network.
Matthew Slater, Board Member, Community Forge, a leading provider of open source software for community currencies, and editor of Community Currency magazine.

The panel will address the questions: Is a fair and sustainable economy possible with our debt-driven money system? If not, what needs to change? What is being done already? What can we do to get involved, personally and professionally? How can we make this a movement? What mistakes can we avoid?

Workshop: “How alternative exchange systems work and how to get started”
Trainers: Professor Jem Bendell and Matthew Slater
The trainers work with Community Forge, which provides free open source software for community currencies. This video explains why, what and how Community Forge operates.

To book your tickets to the festival, visit http://www.futureperfect.se

Greece

In Greece right now there is an exciting air of change and thirst for new ideas and innovations. On the 10th October Lifeworth’s Jem Bendell will co-lead a half day seminar with Matthew Slater of CommunityForge.net on creating and participating in alternative exchange systems and community currencies. They will be joined by Greeks who are pioneering these solutions to the current crisis. On the 11th, Matthew Slater will offer a software training for those wanting to implement a local currency.

The seminars are part of a 2 week sustainable business summit to launch the new European Sustainability Academy in Crete. Information on the final days of the summit, including these workshops on alternative exchange systems, is here. Contact the European Sustainability Academy for more information or to book.

Australia

“Currencies for the Sustainability Transition” is a speech that Professor Jem Bendell will give in Brisbane at the Necessary Transition Conference at Griffith Business School, on the 26th-28th September. Contact the centre for more information on tickets.

As a meeting place of leaders in business and government, the WEF seemed the ideal place to share ideas on how to tackle the jobs crisis. Many of the discussions highlighted small things that businesses can do, such as helping promote employability through funding career-relevant education, or investing in internet start-ups that provide new job opportunities. They also discussed how governments could invest more in infrastructure, education and look again at labour mobility. However, all these issues are secondary to the prime role of our banking system in determining levels of potential employment. As money is issued as debt, if the banks won’t lend to businesses in the real economy, particularly small and medium sized businesses who provide the majority of jobs in any society, then as debts are paid back, so the amount of currency in circulation shrinks. The first key function of a currency, any currency, is to help connect assets, including people’s time, with needs. If a currency becomes scarce in an economy, then there is less ability for exchange. That means needs go unmet, and assets go underutilised. It’s called unemployment.

This critical factor was mentioned at the WEF events in passing, for instance when a finance minister from a North African nation called for more regulations on the percentage of bank lending that must go to small and medium sized enterprises. However, I did not hear discussion of how governments around the world have previously addressed this problem, for instance in East Asia, where 5 year plans often included controls on bank lending, to guide lending to the real economy and job creation, rather than lending for consumer debt and speculative activities. Indeed, I heard from a senior official in Thailand’s planning ministry that credit controls had been dropped from the new 5 year plan. This indicates that the mainstream discourse on the job crisis needs to shift, and business leaders from the real economy, could play a role in that, given that job creation is a win-win for business and society.

For business leaders to play a role in addressing the challenge, the first step is to gain insight into the most significant levers of change, and escape untenable myths about the key causes of unemployment. Five myths I heard from delegates in Davos, Bangkok and Istanbul about the main causes of the jobs crisis, that business leaders need to escape from are:

Myth 1: “Unemployment is due to falling demand.”

Are people’s needs really falling? Or just the amount of money in circulation to employ people/assets to meet those needs? Clearly, given the levels of human need in the world today, its the latter.

Myth 2: “Unemployment is due to technology displacing human labour.”

Could we not design systems of ownership and revenue distribution so that the income from technology frees us to work creatively and caringly for each other? How can we govern technology to release us to a world of service, not a life of redundancy?

Myth 3: “Unemployment is due to the cost of hiring and firing.”

Why then do some countries with high wages and labour standards, like Scandinavia, have less % unemployment? Where would competition between nations to lower costs of hiring and firing lead us? What will competition between nations for the same number of jobs worldwide lead to the total global level of unemployed? Clearly the loosening of employment law is not a systemic solution.

Myth 4: “Unemployment is due to a lack of skills and appetite for the new types of work.”

The world has more skilled labour than ever before, and more labour mobility than ever before, and many people with Masters degrees can’t get a job. The internet means that people can access knowledge more easily than ever before. Education is important, and a lack of education may be a problem for specific groups, but is not a critical factor in mass unemployment at present.

Myth 5: “Unemployment is due to the option to claim benefits.”

Why then was the existence of benefits not keeping people out of the workforce before the recession? Why do some countries with the most supportive welfare states, like Scandinavia, have less % unemployment?

These myths arise from a general lack of understanding about the monetary system. Once we understand that the availability of a currency in an economy determines employment levels we must then look at the monetary system. Once we look at the monetary system we must question why governments have chosen to create a system where 97% of our money is created by private banks as debt with interest so that governments cant spend on public needs without taxing us to pay interest to banks. Rather than maintaining the myth that the financial markets are like the tides or the weather, its time to redesign these entirely man-made systems, to enable currencies to be in fair, stable, sufficient and targeted supply, for job creation. To tackle jobs crisis we need to:

1. wind down non-reserve banking and replace private bank credit creation with government issuance of money, according to strict rules enshrined in law, to avoid inflation. In this situation governments could create credit to lend at low rates to banks who would then lend it to businesses.
2. regulate bank lending and leverage to ensure a large share of lending goes into the real economy and not into consumer debt or speculation.
3. create complementary currencies or exchange systems for communities and businesses, some of which could be issued or backed by local governments.

In my video keynote at the Rebuild21 conference in Copenhagen last week I went into some detail on the monetary system and what we need to do about it, as responsible professionals working towards sustainable development. Then at the World Economic Forum in Istanbul, on video, I explained further how we need to work on monetary reform in order to solve the global jobs crisis.

Once these reforms and innovations occur then governments and companies in the real economy will be far better placed to invest in the necessary transition to a low carbon and resource efficient economy. As Ida Auken, the Environment Minister of Denmark explained at the WEF in Istanbul, there will be tens of millions of jobs created in the green economy of enterprises that deliver more efficient use of resources. Government needs to guide businesses in that transition, but if its only tools are bonds, even eurobonds, then that means very limited spending, higher taxes for future generations, and greater resources for global banking to invest in what it decides will deliver the highest returns. If anything is learned from the financial crisis is that the power of global banking is out of hand.

Folks, in the 5 years since the beginning of the credit crunch, it is now clear that not enough politicians or civil servants know what to do, or are willing to take leadership on the root causes of the financial crisis. In this situation, we need more statesmanship from business leaders from the real economy, to help shift the policy debate onto real solutions. In so doing, as business leaders you will be protecting your own businesses from the disruptive effects of recession. There is also a case for institutional investors to engage in this issue as well, as the long term interests of savers are being risked by the current monetary system.

To sum up: how can your company help create more jobs? By getting involved in monetary reform efforts, and alternative exchange systems, including business barter networks, and the fledgling self-issued credit systems that people like my colleagues are working on. It might be easier to parrot the myths I mentioned above, but it wouldn’t be responsible, or effective.

Professor Jem Bendell

Founder, Lifeworth Consulting, Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum.

June 10th, 2012.

These developments in “collaborative consumption” bring a new dimension to the existing forms of alternative exchange systems, such as business barter networks or countertrade agreements, and community currency systems that help connect underused assets with unmet needs. Countertrade accounts for around 20% of world trade, while one national barter network now involves 1 in 5 small or medium sized companies in Switzerland, amounting to over US$1.5 billion a year. The new sphere of peer-to-peer financial-lending has taken off, and predicted to reach US$5 billion next year. It appears to be a time of disruptive innovation through new forms of sharing, exchanging, renting and co-owning.

Some of these activities are important to sustainable development, and, therefore, to the broad field of responsible enterprise (whether we label our work corporate social responsibility, sustainable business, social enterprise, shared value, responsible or impact investment, or some other term). For business executives to contribute to a positive sustainability outcome from these developments requires enhanced understanding of how to explore ways to become involved, including by adapting their own business models.

Which means there is an educational need, for those of us interested in enabling the sustainability transition. Lifeworth Consulting is conducting research on these developments, for presentation in July at the EABIS colloquium at IMD (in Lausanne), and in September at the Necessary Transition conference at GBS (in Brisbane). So, if you are currently employed, and would like to receive the results of this research, please participate in our 5 minute survey, it would really help:

http://www.lifeworth.com/survey-responsible-enterprise-collaborative-consumption

Please, click that link!

Thanks, Jem Bendell

Lifeworth founder and Adjunct Professor @ GBS