Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Coalesce & Tragedy of the Commons


A timely article about the evolution of capitalism by Hazel Henderson of Ethical Markets can be found on the Corporate Social Responsibility Wire. The importance of evaluating investment systems against several benchmarks, not simply dollar tracking, is important in our now global society:
"Money is merely one form of information, and now the pure information-trading platforms are providing the needed extra bandwidth for trading, e.g. e-Bay, Craigslist, Freecycle and thousands of similar electronic trading systems, cellphones, and local scrip "currencies" used to match needs and resources and clear local markets starved of credit. Wall Street's single-minded focus on money led to its demise. Money was equated with wealth and ignored all the other forms of wealth, from human skills and ingenuity to the productive systems of nature in which all economies are embedded. Money, like gold, will remain a useful store of value and medium of exchange, but now as part of a new broader, more inclusive regime dominated by pure, information-based markets."
A former corporate executive now restrained for the benefit of the commons.