This presentation was based on a talk given at the 11th international conference of the Globalisation for the Common Good (GCGI), held at the Cité Universitaire Internationale in Paris under the theme: “Imagining a Better World: An Intergenerational Dialogue for the Common Good to Inspire a Creative Leadership”.

1. The global sharing
economy:
making the shift
Adam W. Parsons
27th August 2013
11th GCGI International Annual Conference, Cité Universitaire Internationale, Paris. www.stwr.org

2. • Rapidly rising poverty, food insecurity and social exclusion in OECD
countries
• Extreme poverty and life-threatening deprivation in the poorest
countries:
» 40,000 poverty-related deaths each day
» A third of all child deaths occur due to under-nutrition
» Around 400,000 people die as a result of climate change each
year
A global humanitarian emergency
The true extent of life-threatening deprivation
www.stwr.orgThe global sharing economy: making the shift

3. The Brandt Commission
‘A program for survival’
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“Our survival depends not only on military balance, but on global
cooperation to ensure a sustainable biological environment, and
sustainable prosperity based on equitably shared resources.
Much of the insecurity in the world is connected with the divisions between
rich and poor countries – grave injustice and mass starvation causing
additional instability.
Yet the research and the funds which could help put an end to poverty and
hunger are now pre-empted by military uses.”
- Willy Brandt
The global sharing economy: making the shift

4. 1. Implement an unprecedented program of emergency humanitarian
relief to prevent hunger and needless deprivation across the world as a
leading international priority.
2. Establish new economic arrangements to ensure that those resources
which are essential to life are accessible to all people and available to
future generations. These include basic goods and services such as
staple food, healthcare, shelter and education, as well as natural
resources such as land, water, energy and the atmosphere.
A global sharing economy
What governments need to achieve in the most
basic terms…
www.stwr.orgThe global sharing economy: making the shift

5. • Restructuring systems of international trade: i.e. relocalisation, re-
regulation, democratic self-determination.
• Rethinking international development assistance: i.e. pool aid at the
international level, raise funds through an automated mechanism.
• Reforming and re-regulating global finance: i.e. public control of
money creation, sovereign debt cancellation, curb speculation, stabilise
currency exchange rates, control tax competition, stop tax avoidance
and transfer mispricing by multinational corporations.
• Reforming the United Nations and global governance institutions:
decommission or restructure Bretton Woods institutions, abolish the UN
Security Council with its arbitrary veto, empower the UN General
Assembly, strengthen the UN system in its mandate and resources.
Transformative change at the global level
Structural reform to tackle poverty and
inequality
www.stwr.orgThe global sharing economy: making the shift

6. Transformative change at the national level
The politics of providing universal social
protection and public services
www.stwr.orgThe global sharing economy: making the shift
• Economic growth no longer the primary criterion of success or failure of
economy policy.
• The fulfilment of basic needs and/or improved quality of life as the main
yardstick of social progress.
• A strong interventionist role for governments, and the re-regulation of
economies.
• Democratic participation of all citizens.
• Universal and de-commodified public service provision, funded by
progressive income tax, corporate tax, capital gains tax etc.

7. Can we foresee…
A public sector for the whole world?
www.stwr.orgThe global sharing economy: making the shift
• If economic globalisation is to mark a transitional phase towards a global
community of nations in any real sense, is a global redistribution of
incomes justifiable or necessary to ensure social justice in the longer
term?
• Should governments cooperate internationally to build a system of global
social protection?
• Should social and economic rights be guaranteed at the global level, and
funded through global taxes and other innovative sources of financing?

8. The global commons
A new phase of multilateralism…
www.stwr.orgThe global sharing economy: making the shift
“The creation of a global resource pool entails an entirely new phase of
multilateralism, in which nations collectively agree to preserve and protect
the various commons of Earth and maintain a pool of shared production
and goods large enough to provide for everyone‟s needs.
“In giving up a portion of their sovereignty, rich nations would recycle their
excess resources through this global clearinghouse, which would then be
redistributed to poor nations needing assistance.
“The resources required for production and the goods that are produced
would go into this common pool, and the goods which people consume or
use would come from it.”
- James B. Quilligan.

9. • Place resource management at the forefront of policymaking.
• Move beyond consumption-led economic growth and GDP as objectives
of economic policy.
• Internalise the external costs of economic activities.
• Dismantle the culture of consumerism: restrict advertising, implement
better trading standards, end planned obsolescence.
• Investment in low carbon infrastructure and energy/resource efficiency
measures.
Curbing consumption in developed countries
Prominent policies and proposals…
www.stwr.orgThe global sharing economy: making the shift

10. • Arab Spring: reacting to enormous socio-economic divisions
• Occupy and Indignados: mobilising against inequality, the „1%‟
• Anti-austerity protests: for a fairer sharing of public revenue / for
corporations to pay their „fair share‟
• Idle No More: a call to share/conserve Canada‟s national resources
• Taksim protests in Turkey: in support of shared public spaces, as
symbolised by Gezi Park
• Brazil protests in 2013: for a fairer sharing of public revenue
Worldwide demonstrations
A growing call for economic sharing
www.stwr.orgThe global sharing economy: making the shift

11. Campaigning for a fairer
sharing of wealth, power
and resources within and
between nations
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