Capitalism and People-Centered Economics

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) November 17, 2009 -- "Economics, and indeed human civilization, can only be measured and calibrated in terms of human beings. Everything in economics has to be adjusted for people, first, and abandoning the illusory numerical analyses that inevitably put numbers ahead of people, capitalism ahead of democracy, and degradation ahead of compassion."

This was the conclusion of a 1996 white paper for a more inclusive economic paradigm.

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Capitalism and People-Centered Economics

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Reading this week's Guardian in an article about Call Britannia, one may have been left with the impression that business with a primary social purpose was something new, conceived by venture capitalist Sir Ronald Cohen.

From the Economist a little earlier, that the concept of a Social Impact Bond could attract private capital to resolve deep rooted social problems, or from the Telegraph that social investment could prevent "rioting in the streets".

Not only were these ideas published on the web, free to use, 13 years ago but they've already been proven in an international context.

The 1996 white paper was delivered when author Terry Hallman accepted an invitation to serve on the Committee to Re-elect the (US) President and in 1999, he set off for Russia in the wake of their 1998 economic collapse.

Several months later he wrote back to the Clinton administration with a proposal for a development initiative. It was to turn the preceding 'Chicago School' approach on its head, by means of a bottom-up strategy assisted by microfinance which resulted in 10,000 new small businesses in the city of Tomsk. After a year, with business survival rates exceeding 95% it was replicated by USAID in several other cities.

By 2002, he'd moved to Crimea and focussed on the potential for economic development in the repatriated Crimean Tatar community who he'd identified as a population at risk. It would be another 6 years before EU representatives came to similar conclusions about the need for economic development in the interest of peace. In his conclusions he wrote:

"Just as the US now heavily uses smart bombs in warfare, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the equivalent is needed in aid efforts. It is not enough to spend, say, US$ 7 million dollars for five Tomahawk cruise missiles and then spend a fraction of that amount in building a peaceful community which does not merit targeting by missiles. Yet, that is what we have in this case."

His 'Marshall Plan' strategy for Ukraine came in October 2006, calling on financial support from US government for a social investment fund to rollout social enterprise, afforable broadband, microfinance and childcare reforms. Tackling corruption head on, he exposed conditions of neglect in institutions for disabled children with a shocking an insightful article 'Death Camps for Children'.

The recommendation, that adoption allowances be increased to the same amounts as were being spent on state care, among several applied by Ukraine's government was over the next 2 years to deliver a turnaround, such that this year Ukraine reported that domestic adoptions now exceed the numbers going overseas.

For Ukraine's disabled children however, whose circumstances are no different to conditions exposed by the BBC in Bulgaria, there has been little progress. It was they above all that the 'Marshall Plan' identified:

"They cannot wait, particularly children. Impedance by anyone or any group of people constitutes precisely what the original Marshall Plan was dedicated to opposing. Those who suffer most, and those in greatest need, must be helped first -- not secondarily, along the way or by the way."

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