Unity of purpose will save the Arab Spring revolutions

Revolutions have an unfortunate tendency to end in dictatorships. The English Revolution/Civil War led to Oliver Cromwell's dictatorial Commonwealth. The French Revolution led to Bonaparte. The Russian Revolution led to totalitarian communism.

When an authoritarian regime is swept aside by a revolution, there is a natural tendency for all forms of constraint to be rejected. This may be one reason why crime rates are so high in post-apartheid South Africa.

Immediately after a revolution there is a period of confusion. The unity of purpose on the part of the revolutionaries, the single minded determination to remove the dictator and his regime, is replaced by innumerable ideas of what to do next, ranging from out and out change to all aspects of political life, to a desire to get back to normal life without the dictatorship.

The revolutionaries have many ideas, typically leaning towards self-government and anarchy (in its correct sense). On the other hand, the Civil Service remains in place, and there is a real need for it to function in order to continue running the infrastructure -  water, food production, energy, waste collection and such services as the population is used to. If this period of disorder persists, there is a high probability that a strong man (it is usually a man) or strong party to emerge and restore order.

The new incumbent tends to clamp down on what it perceives as disorder. This can then lead to a control motif in the government's actions. They seek to control public opinion through the press, to control political dissent through arbitrary arrests and imprisonment, to develop a secret police, and to develop a network of informers. They may even use the same institutions that ran the pre-revolutionary regime. There is a vicous cycle to control, since the more control is attempted, the stronger the resentment against control, and the more control force has to be used.

So there exists a malign cycle of dictatorship, revolution and dictatorship. How can humanity step outside the cycle?

The key is in unity of purpose. Revolutions succeed because all groups have a common objective - to rid the country of the present dictator. After success, everyone falls back into their old narrow concerns and self-interest, and the revolution falls apart, or is hijacked.  They may be united in the desire to have free elections, but here again a plethora of political parties show up, competing with each other, and allowing well resourced parties with links to multinational corporations to win and dominate Parliament.

The way out of this cycle is to maintain the unity of purpose after the election by addressing big economic problems.

In the Middle East/North Africa arena there are three factors that can provide this unity of purpose: unemployment and water scarcity.

Unemployment, especially youth unemployment, is a common feature of most of the countries affected by dictatorship. Water scarcity is also a feature of these lands. The area also has a rich resource

The solution is to start a massive New Deal in constructing an infrastructure to manage water efficiently. All roofs will be converted to rainwater collecting systems, linked to storage tanks. Water filters and purifiers will be provided both for collected rainwater and for grey water emerging from use. Sewage systems will be upgraded, and supplemented with dry sanitation systems where possible, especially in rural areas.

Solar desalination will be installed in coastal areas. The sea hypersalination problem associated with desalination will be met by creating salt beds. Some of this salt may have a market value, and excess can be put into dry storage underground.

Water can be applied to drip irrigation designed to increase food production, since food price rises are a major problem throughout the world.

There will be a programme of afforestation, starting in coastal areas, especially where there is an onshore prevailing wind. The relevance of this is that forestation will eventually have a moderating effect on the regional climate, reducing the need for air conditioning, which will save energy. The trees will provide forage for animals, fruit, leaves (which can assist in dry sewage systems) and wood.

The area has a huge solar power resource.  In coming years, Europe and North Africa will be linked with a HVDC supergrid to distribute solar energy across the region. MENA countries can start installing Photovoltaic electricity generators on roofs and in the desert, developing expertise in the technology.

This economic programme turns economics on its head.

The Western economic model would rely on inward investment from trans-national mega-corporations to supply a bit of high paid work, some of which wealth will be supposed to trickle down to the rest of the economy, apart from those who are unfortunate enough to miss out on work.

The new model is to create work in forming the basic hardware that lies at the foundation of all economies - water, food, energy, and waste management.

If the completed revolutions turn their attention to this new economics, they will find a unity of purpose (not least in opposing the economic dinosaurs who will oppose it tooth and nail), leading to a stable, equitable economy and society.

We can press Cameron to take action on tax havens

Here is a letter to your MP that you can copy, modify and email to your MP here.
It is more effective if you also send a hard copy by mail to your MP at House of Commons, London SW1A  OAA




Dear [MP name]


I am following developments regarding tax avoidance measures practiced by large corporations. Estimates of the wealth leaching out from the real economy of the UK to tax havens go up to £120 billion a year, and Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/ estimates that some £20 billion per year could be recovered if the Government were so minded.

The argument is put that if the UK tightens its tax regime, companies will simply migrate to countries with easier regimes.  There is therefore a strong case for global action on tax policy as a logical response to the globalization of commerce.

Already on the agenda of the next G20 meeting in France this November are headline items relating to “Strengthening financial regulation”.

The G20 needs to take common action to close down tax loopholes and tax havens to prevent the “race to the bottom” induced by low tax regime competition.

I would be grateful if you would ask the Prime Minister (who will be leading the UK G20 delegation) if he will welcome and support a global closure of tax havens and loopholes.

Yours sincerely

[your name]

Middle East Criis: Danger and opportunity. New economics needed to complete the job

@NevineZaki






As a small child, I was once impressed to see a jet of marmalade, a sticky, fragrant volcano applying itself to the ceiling of our kitchen when the weight was blown off the top of my mum's pressure cooker. Hold that thought.

Our whole world is changing.

Old regimes are falling, and around the world, the same thought is passing through millions of minds:

"Maybe we are not powerless after all. 

Could be we really can change things. 

We have political power  - if we all act together".

We in the UK are not going to succeed in regime change - that requires decades of repression on an Egypt scale - but we can hope to change the destructive financial policies of the Coalition.

Common purpose is the key the success to this amazing revolution. 

Of course, the new forms of communication have played a part. The old power of state media is undermined by social networks. But it was the sense of common purpose that gave the Tunisians and Egyptians uncommon courage and persistence, born out of deep desperation resulting from decades of repression. The oppressors were the focus, enabling the extraordinary social unity, shown most memorably in the photo above of Christian youths forming a protective circle around praying Muslims,

They will need more of that unity of purpose if they are to succeed in the post-revolution phase, and this is not going to be easy.

There is a tendency for people to go a bit dis-inhibited after the removal of a repressive regime. Authority is no longer respected. Crime can flourish, both small and big. In the place of a single dominant political party, a plethora of parties arises, some built on naked self interest. The corporate giants will try to move in again, paying politicians to act in corporate interests.

In short, revolutions can be disappointing. Disorder flourishes, and people get fed up with crime and disorder, a strong man or strong party take over, and the cycle begins again.

Common purpose is the way out of this vicious cycle.

The spirit of co-operation that was manifested in Tahrir Square can and must be maintained in mending, not just the politics, but the economics of the renewed nations.

Unemployment and its consequence, poverty and hardship, are very common features of the youth uprising.

The ruling classes response to that is to promise that sooner such demonstrators who do have jobs get back to work, the sooner the economy will pick up &c.


"Believe us. Trust us". er...no.

The revolution deserves better than this. It deserves a new economics.

Insofar as the revolution is a response to unemployment, it is a rejection of conventional economics, which is based on market values, and uses unemployment as an instrument to keep wages down and profitability up.

The new economics begins by asking, what do we need in order to live?

The answer is clear. We need water, food, houses, energy, and waste management. After that we are free to be with friends, make music and dance.

In the Middle East, water, food and waste recycling are the prime commodities for the people to provide. Local circumstances will show up other needs.

If there is a task to be done, it is the job of the Government to ensure that the work gets done. Governments must invest in broad, employment intensive infrastructure projects to secure access to water and food.

In creating a new sense of purpose, of everyone working together on projects that have an immediate benefit to society, the power of the people is focused on construction rather than crime, self-interest and destruction, the unity of the revolution is maintained, and a new social and economic order can emerge, not just in the Middle East, but around the world.


More:
Overview of the new economics
Water projects as channel of co-operation

IDS Welfare Reform Bill: Drowning, but rejecting lifebelts

The Quiet Man is in the news, with his Welfare Reform Bill. It is a curate's egg of a bill, simplifying benefits, and making the passage from benefits to work a little easier.


But.

It is totally and utterly pointless to train, motivate and force claimants to seek work, and to facilitate their passage into said employment if there is no bleeding work out there for them to take up.

Here is my response of last November. 

It addresses the above problem by stretching out IDS' measures to ease the passage to work by transforming benefits into a Wage Subsidy for the green sector of the economy.

In this way, it relieves poverty, helps job creation, greens the economy, helps bring about a Green New Deal, and lays the foundation for acceptance of Citizens' Income.


I put a submission in to the IDS' DWP consultation.

They have not acknowledged receipt.

Green Economics can grow UK out of recession

This afternoon a debate broke out among several Greens on Twitter about economic growth.
Debate on Twitter is possible, but not if you have 6 participants because the  @name list means that you are down to 100 characters or less. So I have been invited to invite everyone round to my place here. Welcome.

The question was "Is it OK to grow our way out of recession".

Natch, we disagree with the Coalition who believe the Easter Bunny Invisible Hand of the Market will make everything all right in the economy once they dismantle public spending.

Labour, insofar as it has a policy, believes that we must simply grow our way out of the recession. "Derr".

The Green Party has, rightly,  always been critical of economic growth because of the inconvenient truth that it is impossible to grow indefinitely in a finite space, and to take forever more from a finite resource. We aim for a steady state economy, where we live in balance with Nature's resources.

In this steady state, we will not have excesses of wealth and poverty, and we will be on a tendency for everyone to have enough. "Tendency" mind. We are realists, not Utopians.

So what do we do? Side with the ToryLibs and enjoy it as the UK wallows ever deeper in the mire of recession? Or change our stance on growth, and side with Labour?

Happily, that is not the choice we face. The reality is a bit more subtle than that.

What we are in fact against is growth in throughput of materials. We have no objection to the growth in Gross National Happiness, growth in knowledge, growth in the care of the elderly and sick. What we are against is the totally irrational and fantastical idea that we can continue to expand our ecological footprint on this planet.

We. Simply. Cannot. Do.That.

It is the throughput of materials, mining at one end, and churning out waste, toxic or otherwise, at the other.  That is what has to stop. That and the destruction of renewable resources like soil, fisheries and forests.

We live in an unsustainable economy that provides superficial and unstable wealth to some, and hands out unemployment and poverty to others, in the process, wrecking everything that is beautiful.

We need to work towards a Steady State Economy, where we humans live in a dynamic, fluid, but basically harmonious relationship with the processes of our planetary system, notably the global heat control mechanisms.

This requires a radical shift in the way we carry out our economic activity, and indeed how we look at economics.

Here is a brief overview of green economics.
Here is an interesting take on what is meant by work, linking physics, economics and biology.
Here is a proposal to change the JSA into a Green Wage Subsidy, so that we emerge out the other side of a recession with a strong green core to the economy, and the foundation of Citizen's Income at the same time.
Here is the same proposal with cleaned up language, Government for the enticement of.
The banking system needs radical change, because it demands and creates economic growth

Both show that green economics is real economics, and conventional economics is a distortion of reality.

Back to the question: How do we make the transition from where we are now?

We are in a position where we can offer Green Growth (or "Green Development", for people who sufer an allergic reaction on exposure to the word "growth").

We can offer hundreds of thousands of jobs in a Green New Deal.

I advocate a GND+, where the GWS is added in. In my book Bills of Health (1996), I calculated that this could produce between 1 and 2 million jobs, at a time when the unemployment figures lay between 1 and 2 million.

So there we have it.
Our starter for 10.
Let debate begin.

Post-revolutionary Arab governments must address unemployment and poverty

	TUNISIA	EGYPT	JORDAN	YEMEN	SAUDI	SUDAN	BAHRAIN
DICTATOR	X	X	M	X	X	X	M
CORRUPTION	-	X	-	-	-	X	X
FREE SPEECH	-	-	-	-	-	X	-
POLICE BRUTALITY	X	X	-	-	-	-	-
UE	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
POVERTY	X	X	X	X	-	X	-
FOOD PRICES	X	x	X	X	-	-	-
WATER	-	-	-	X	-	-	-
INFLATION	X	X	X	X	-	X	-

KEY
RPG = Rich Poor Gap
M     = Monarchy
RPG = Rich Poor Gap
UE    = Unemployment

This crude table represents data that I have picked up on searches about the causes of protests in the Arab States. It is work in progress, and blanks (-) mean that I have not yet gathered anything on that field.

What emerges very strongly already is that unemployment, poverty and food prices are very common factors driving the dissent. Unemployment is the hey, because it creates poverty, and increases the RPG.

Even when all the dictators are gone, the new democratic governments will face major economic problems. It is very clear that the current economic model is not working. If there is no food, not even the purest of pure democratic governments cannot magic food out of the air.

We need a new economic model that can address unemployment, poverty and food prices. Conventional economics has one simple, single minded answer to this: Economic Growth in the Free Market. This model is not delivering. It pours investment into big businesses, who do employ some in making grandiose projects, but most of the investment sticks to the upper levels of management, who can buy grand homes, and save their wealth in banks at home and overseas.

Conventional economic growth does enable the rich to get richer, but the money does not "trickle down" to the working classes. The Trickle Down theory is discredited.

Green economics turns conventional economics on its head. Instead of beginning with money and markets, it is founded on ecology - our relation with the natural resources we need to live - water, food, energy, shelter, hygiene - and conviviality. (More)

The Green economic approach has a lot to offer the incoming democratic governments. The major headline areas for employment are water, food, energy and corruption control.

Water, for instance is an acute problem in Yemen, and a challenge in all arid regions.

Strategists have long worried about conflict over water resources.

However, Peter Gleik of the Pacific Institute states "Water resources have rarely, if ever, been the sole source of violent conflict or war."

Humans have evolved a way of co-operating about this most basic life resource.

Aaron Wolf believes that co-operation over scarce water resources offers a path to peace. Here is his resource page.

I have long been advocating the expansion of the approach of Friends of the Earth Middle East in cross community approach to water as a pathway to peace in Israel-Palestine.

So. Unemployment and water shortages are threats, but also opportunities.

We can create work in water management.

First, stop wasting water. Rural communities can use composting toilets instead of crapping into the drinking water. You know it makes sense. Return the matured compost safely to the land to boost fertility.

Second, harvest rainwater. You need plastic guttering, pipes, and storage tanks. Fit to each and every roof, and run the water into tanks. Use, after filtering and treatment if necessary.

Third, plant trees from the coast inwards. Forests act as aerial aquifers, absorbing and storing moisture, increasing cloud cover and precipitation.

Fourth, solar desalination plants offer great promise in production of electricity (ans salt) from seawater.

That's water. Next, food.

The Cuban response to food shortages is well known: Maximise domestic and small gardens.

In hot countries, this has an important secondary, cooling effect. Every bit of sunlight that is captured and turned into sugars by photosynthesis is a unit of sunlight that does not overheat the city.

Here is a .pdf on the Economic, Social and Ecosystem Benefits of the Urban Forest.

Even widespread use of window boxes can have a cooling effect, while at the same time providing fresh food to the household.

Vertical Gardens are a promising approach to extending urban growing space.

Next, Energy. North African countries are plentifully supplied with sunlight.

Solar water heating and photovoltaic collectors can be distributed on homes and workplaces.

Insulation is still necessary in hot countries, to keep heat out as well as in. All measures that reduce heat in living spaces reduces the need for energy expenditure on air conditioning.

As well as small-scale, distributed activity, there is a huge opportunity for economic activity in large scale solar energy collection, in the form of Concentrated Solar Power, as well as large-scale PV arrays.

Linked to this is the High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) technology that will be able to export surplus solar generated electricity to countries that can use it. In the long run, HVDC grids will play a very important part in our transition away from insecure and damaging fossil fuels.

These last two offer opportunities for classic, large scale investment, while the other measures are low-tech, small scale, labour intensive technologies that benefit people directly.


Finally, one more employment opportunity for white collar workers: an Anti-Corruption Police force. A new unit can be set up charged with identifying and prosecuting corrupt officials. This will massively reduce economic inefficiency.

In short, there is an opportunity in the green sector of the economy to address unemployment directly, with the result of both short and long-term economic benefit.