In very concrete terms, how we move the global economy is to reform our national accounting system. As long as the wrong things are valued without the counterweight of the right things being valued (like our environment and wellbeing), the global economy will be incapable of a just and equitable change.
The Intemerate Equation addresses this very issue. The equation is tangible in that how we account for restoration fulfills three things: 1) it embraces indigenous and local methodologies to value and interact with their environment; 2) encourages data ownership so that communities can be more self-determining; and 3) promotes people-to-people translocal and interglobal exchange. From a national perspective, a new accounting framework provides the Global South with a path away from the trappings of debt dependency and boomerang aid schemes towards a true mirroring of our economic value, seeking the elimination of the tiered structure that provides advanced economies advantages over developing countries as well as greater access to capital for disadvantaged, displaced, and impacted communities.
Progressive International published an excellent article by Max Ajl called The NIEO in a State of Permanent Insurrection” where he writes, “Production of goods under the law of generalized commodity production, accumulation of value, and for exchange value cannot deliver a decent world. Capitalism cannot be reformed. There must be a shared horizon of production of goods and services for use, with prices engineered to achieve a worldwide just distribution of these goods, social rights guaranteed, and political institutions created to allow for the human reproduction of the ecology. There must be appropriate and ecologically modulated sovereign industrialization alongside regional collective self-reliance.”
We mostly know what the problems are. While we may not know the history that has led us to this place, collectively, we understand the failures of free market capitalism, the myopic pursuit of neoliberalism, and the enforcement mechanisms used to entrench peoples and countries. It is time to sit down and address a tangible pathway forward.