Greetings, Salud, welcome, bienvenido. My name is David Faubion. I began this web site in 2004 after I published the second edition of Understanding the Global Economy. The site is hosted by Deborah Lagutaris, whose Ansible Group Hosting is now open for new sites. Deborah shares my affinity for the work of Professor Howard Richards and his associates in the International Peace Research Association: IPRA. Deborah's other sites that she hosts include much of Howard Richard's writings.
Education is the main goal of this web site and knowledge is the goal of education. In this context, understanding for our individual and shared cultural action is the mode to the knowledge of economic models that bring lasting security through equity. Therefore, if you are an educator and want to use this site in your curriculum—please feel free to do so. Please send a description of your plan to use the site and all ideas for our improvement of the site toward your goals.
This web project began in 2004, in the process of publishing the 2nd edition of Understanding the Global Economy, as the means, vía high-tech, to better surround the book with its related context. That context consists of the other writings by and related human action of the author, Howard Richards, his source contributors and his colleagues in the IPRAGPEC. The other smaller part of the the context are the values that the publisher of the book and web maestro brings to the project. At the heart of this project of understanding economy are questions without definitive answers, but several possible answers, in a higher pragmatic sense.
This web site presents the book Understanding the Global Economy by Howard Richards; the site includes
- Descriptions the groups and activities that the author works with to create functional, full employment no poverty economies
- Research papers by Howard Richards and colleagues in the Global Political Economy Commission of the IPRA
- Excerpts from the book with graphic analysis for view and comment; the c
- omplete e' book in PDF and the printed book, by request
- Translation of the book into Español (Spanish) at times Spanglish—toward Esperanto
- Interpretations and extrapolations of the theory, research and analysis of free trade in a global market within the 2nd edition of the book—by way of its publisher and web author through those (my) eyes
- Lists and descriptions a few of the growing body of resources and tools on the Internet—including IPRAGPEC member’s resources—for action to cope with and transform the global economic hegemony, transformation that will occur, as the author advocates and lives through the ethic of care and via caritas—the synthesis of a new economic paradigm, a community based solidarity and sovereignty that increases options and sustainability—as the lasting solution, and
- Definitions of the common and uncommon terminology of economics, related social science, philosophy and theology. The concise and general definitions help to fulfil the author's main lament as a void in his final draft.
Explain: This site consists first and foremost of Understanding the Global Economy by Howard Richards, published by Peace Education Books (PEB); the publisher has produced this web site, largely by way of mutual author and publisher trust. As the publisher and a co-editor, I have taken the liberty to add my sense of these:
- a glossary of terms, something the author approved via his expressed wish for more time to compose one.
- other web pages with (political) economic topics
- Flash graphics to the book online to help clarify the text. In that spirit,
- ordered lists: bullet and numbered format of the book, a dense book: a highly concentrated academic treatise of economic theory, which was the condition of Howard's book in the first edition; he may as well have written the first edition as if it was his fourth doctoral presentation for the readership of academics. The pure version/edition of the book text without links and no review questions is readable here.
The browser icon for this site—Understanding Economy—has a two-fold meaning significant to the purpose of the book Understanding the Global Economy as the basis for the site:
- U the letter, has a history of use as a symbol of understanding,
- U as the homonym of the word you means (serendipitously if you will) that, in any context, understanding depends on the willingness of you, each of us at least in part as participants truly engaged in living, and
- shades of the secondary color purple, such as amethyst, lavender and violet, have a symbolic link to the ideal of understanding in the sense of comprehension and as empathy. The shades of purple are blends of the primary colors blue and red, both central in the Ancient Greek arts, literature and philosophy. Blue symbolizes the Aristotelian essential as the universal, the general, the objective, while red, especially maroon, denotes the Platonic particulars and subjective and personal sense, innate ideas and data within the universal.
Language: web style and print grammar:
The breadth and depth of economic themes requires a concise coherence and an ease of reading. The Internet, with its vast array of interpretive content authors, poses a challenge to some of the standards of style, punctuation and formatting. Therefore, this web site adopts the new standards that are the improved norms of English for the Internet and screens, in general. For example:
| Format | Page, print | Screen, web |
| Headings | Serif font or sans ~ as preferred | Serif font for impact |
| Body font | Sans-serif for smaller technical font size serif for fiction |
Sans serif for ease of reading on the screen |
| Indent | On new paragraph | White space replaces paragraph indent |
| Bold font | Headings, subheads and rare emphasis | Headings and common emphasis |
| All caps | Acronyms, business names | As shouting and other emphasis |
Sentence case |
For complete sentences | Cap the first letter of each new line after white space, even if it is not a complete sentence |
| Title case | Books, page headings, proper names, awards, armed forces, geographical names, historical events etc., ... Complete list | Consistent |
| Italic | Book titles, foreign language words and technical terms | Broad use as emphasis only; quotation marks often replace the on-page usages—hyperlink and static title text |
| Background (BG) | Almost always white or a close shades, with contrasting black font, rarely shades of black | Too often, the artsy colored BG is exasperated by color font. Please be kind to readers, rather than indulgent with eye-candy. |
| Bibliography | e.g.: Samir Amin, Maldevelopment: the Anatomy of a Global Failure (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1990) | Consistent: author first, book title in italic, city, publisher and date of publication in parenthesis |
| Punctuation | ||
Commas |
Lists, clauses | Consistent for clarity and ease of reading |
| Semi-colons | Two complete sentences of closely related topical subjects | Use shorter sentences with fewer semi-colons. |
| Periods | At the end of sentence, abbreviations, | Consistent, web and email address punctuation |
| Colons | Use when indicated. | Use small prepositions to replace it, when possible. |
| Quote marks | They quotes dialog and indicate an absurdity, e.g., Poverty is such a "load of fun". | They are misused much more so on the screen, even self-proclaimed grammarians |
| Em dash | Emphasis on text twixt the dashes or after the dash | Consistent for clarity and ease of reading |
What I, as publisher and web maestro, now understand by way of the book, Understanding the Global Economy:
- The comprehension of economics is among the most urgent and increasingly critical studies for the well being of the individual and society. Economics has, for some time, been the key discipline in the curriculum of Education at the secondary, college and university level
- Economics is an interdisciplinary social science once removed from its roots as the moral philosophy of our mothers and Earth, yet further removed from social science into the realm of mechanics, quasi-natural science and statistical measuring.
- Economics, like the study and practice of politics, has become such a complex field that a disclaimer acknowledging a potential for relative veracity and truth ought to be attached to nearly every statement about economics. Economics requires the utmost comprehensive analysis and synthesis for it to be effective
- Nevertheless, everyone has something of economic importance to say: at least one expression of economic insight, which has meaning an relevance in contribution to the economic discourse—this includes the statement that is one's life and lifestyle.
- Life, the world, culture, society and all relationships are all about, affected by, even determined by economics. All the war, the quarrel, all the lies, all the petty and violent crimes, all the regression, all the goodwill, all the humanity, all the progression and all life hereafter has economics at its basis. The scope of the economic includes homeostasis as the balance in biological systems, metabolism/ catabolism, creation/ destruction, life/ death ...
- every aspect of all life has an economic and ecological component
- The more complex the discourse of economics becomes, the less validity, relevance, coherence and appeal it has for nearly all people
- The more cogent, accessible and attractive that the understanding of economics becomes (returns to) the more based it is on ethics such as care • sharing • inclusion • sustainability • community • cooperation • democracy • human and civil rights.
- The new (old) economic paradigm (model), which is the at the heart of Howard Richards work, has wings that are growing, getting stronger and replicating birds of care in many arenas of our cultures and societies.
The Soul Community of Solidarity in Santa Barbara, CA of Cultural Economics
It was an experiment that consisted of the deliberate blend of private lifestyles with an intentional project of shared needs burdens, a church based on the religion of unmet needs and unresolved problems if you will. Nothing of our personal lifestyles were compromised, though changes in each our lives may have occurred by the degree to which each of us were willing to commit ourselves to the needs of others. What would change in each of our lives, as expected, was our relationship to others on a daily basis. We would become mindful of the needs of others and mindful of the interest of our relationships in relation to our personal self-interests.
Santa Barbara, as the north-gate of Southern California, still is the ideal setting for such an experiment for its factors as
- a University of California (UC) city with a metropolitan area under 150,000 people (relatively, not too big). As a UC city, it has a high level of consciousness and spirit to experiment with the untested or marginally tested. UCSB is the academic home of Nobel laureates and winners in economics and most significantly, ecology-economist and futurist, Dr. Hazel Henderson
- an a an affluent area with one of the two most affluent zip codes in the United States, which poses perhaps the greatest challenge for the will of the revved-up evolutionary (revolutionary) if you will, economists.
- one of a long string of socio-cultural dynamic California coastal towns and cities starting from the Redwood coast, trough the San Francisco/Berkeley, Santa Cruz to San Diego, a UC-coastal town of warmth and light marred by the racism of its neoliberal sponsor.
- a mecca of profound classical natural beauty that is the Santa Barbara bio-region, which stretches 45 miles from the Gaviota Pass 33-miles north of SB to the picturesque village town of Carpenteria 12-miles south of SB. Protected by staunch ecologists, intellectuals, naturalists, nature lovers and tree-huggers the classical beauty lends to ideals of truth, equity and everlasting economic integrity, and as
- one of the many cities and towns on the Cal coast, Californian in general and So-Cal in particular prides itself in its multicultural revved upward evolution . This includes our our general recognition of the multi-genders and right to choose them, the feminism of care for women's right, children's rights, indigenous rights and everyone's civil, human and economic rights. If one keyword best describes Santa Barbara, the word is social. The next word is conscious, then active, innovative, resolved ...
The trinity of need, doctrine of hope: In this context, a diverse array of us soul sisters and brothers as socioeconomic expressions of needs came together for that purpose. Our needs take three distinguishable, yet intertwined forms: 1) literal un-met needs, 2) the needs to nurture and help others, and 3) the need to be part of a community of solidarity based on meeting those needs.
The African-american model: The Soul Community adopted the use of the Soul to describe our work by giving homage to the model of soul culture that distinguished the African-america from the exclusive white America. From the cultural model of integrity that, to a limited extent, continues to be the African-american experience the in the halcyon days of the civil rights struggle from1950s through the 70's. Solidarity as a modern term for the idea of common cause gained notoriety in social science from Emile Durkheim in the late 19th century. It became an ideal in the civil rights and people power movement from 1950 through 1980. Solidarity takes its earliest most developed form in Tunisia (North Africa) as asabiyah, as the Islamic concept of solidarity was adapted by Ibn Khaldun, the 14th century Tunisian pioneer of modern historiography, sociology and economics. Khaldun and asabiyah continue to have central influence in Islamic philosophy.
The Soul Community used the leaderless model of absolute democracy, which is central to the purpose of the group. Being liberated from the constraints of power structures of was intrinsic to our overall objective of helping each other cope with our shared economic plight. For several years, the Soul Community rented the homelike facilities of a social action nonprofit, in the heart of the multi-cultural, social arts (activist) old town Santa Barbara. We began each of our weekly Friday potlatch meetings with a brief attunement of candlelight, music and/or silence, then our check-in and deep listening. Each of us, uninterrupted, would address the group with any feelings, thoughts, hopes as needs, wants as faith and reflective cares as charity to others in or out of the group. Each of us would have a second chance to add speech based on what we had heard from others in the first cycle. The check-in can be an effective means to resolve conflict in or outside the group if all members fully participate in a willfully honest and open spirit of sharing. Key to this is the willingness of each member to put the interest of the group above self-interest—to merge self with group and group with self. Continuity of the group depends on the practice of that skill created from ones will to be mindful. Our ceremony of gratification would continue with our potlatch (potluck) of homemade sustenance, though the busiest of us might have to buy takeout. Here is a document of meeting minutes that describes one of our Friday ceremonies of the Soul Community, the garden plot of our group.
About technology vis-à-vis this web site
For your full enjoyment of being "on the same page" with the alternative economic model that this web site advocates—please choose the Firefox browser. The browser is the flagship of the Mozilla nonprofit collective corporation of willing and able contributors, each who are a certain blend of volunteer and entrepreneur. The browser offers these nonprofit features implicit in a sustainable innovative green type of growth:
- It is an open-source software created by a collective of designers; thus, the Mozilla software fits well into the economic model advocated herein,
- As a nonprofit, Mozilla cycles its revenue back into the freeware products (for the folks who use it) and the people who create it. Mozilla has success in its economic model that inspired Google (a competitor) to invest a ten-figure dollar amount into Mozilla.
- One of Firefox' add-on features defines words on the selection of the word; it can translate the word into your preferred language, every word on every page that it displays. For the sohisticated and handy hi-tech industry add-ons visit the Mozilla add-ons page —The quick alternative path in the Firefox browser tools menu select —> Add-ons Manager link, which has the categories of Add-ons, Extensions, Plug-ins and Appearance —each with technology for global communication.
- —To view high quality PDF in Firefox: Open Firefox —> Press alt to show menus —>Tools —>Options —> Applications —>Scroll down to find the Content Type: Portable Document Format (PDF) —> In the Action selector, choose —> Use Adobe Acrobat, which integrates Firefox with Acrobat. Take Chrome over Firefox on have good pre-configure defaults. Chrome needs a better, more direct and user friendly system of bookmark display; that shortfall loses much of my vote of confidence.All browsers pummel us with advertising—if we give them the chance.
A web browser is a medium that is the equivalent of a house of real religious communion (religion for this agnostic is the matrix of all the social sciences, plus literature and other arts) for ceremony or celebration of our oneness as members of the human race and life on Earth. It is the equivalent of a gentle schoolroom that stimulates the eagerness of minds. It is analogous to an ideal workplace in which all participate and cooperate for all, willingly. The shared the browser of our experience is, however, much more intricate and challenging for us to use as the means to a quasi-mystical union of our experiences. Our willingness to translate, describe, explain and understand our experience is a broad step toward the union, the positive globalisation.
Internet Explorer™ does not quite work right in terms of display, functionality and security. It approximates the standard, yet just off enough to make it incompatible with the display designed in most software other than MS Front Page™. This is most apparent in its display of the page layout, as pages that display objects on top of text, skewed pages, incongruous placement of text and other distortions. Web authors have to use time consuming protocols to make their site compatible with Internet Explorer.
What explains Microsoft's non-compliance with the rest of the Internet? Market growth domination as usual: monopoly capitalism, a symptom of modernity: the demise of an ethics that works for everyone and the advent of an ethics that works for the few owners of production. Call it corporate socialism, though it has little to do with the socialism that Marx and Engles envisioned as the ultimate democracy wherein every adult participate as a partner and owner in the creation of production.
Some pages of web sites for institutions (public and private) are designed to open with IE—only.. Likewise, those who view this web site—as with many other sites—are urged to use a browser other than IE for the optimal function and display of this site. By doing so you will be resisting the monopoly capitalism that is MS market power. As it is true with most corporations, cartels and oligopoly, such as the IMF and the World Bank, Microsoft does some good, as well, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (world's largest) endowments, which is doing much to ease the horrendous suffering in Africa—where AIDS, poverty, colonial hegemony and its pollution, habitat and resource stripping have reduced life-expectancy to one-third that of Japan and Switzerland. However, we need to see the apparent good in the context of the underlying strategy of hegemony, exclusion and overall control: market growth: quasi-mechanical, incessant, highly contagious, chronic and terminal.
This site expands the ideas that define and the methods that create other systems of economic well-being; the site presents it by way of an interpretation of existing ideas and actual models. The main source of research comes by way of the book Understanding the Global Economy by Howard Richards; auxiliary pages and the web site that contains the book come by way of interpretation and affinity of the editor publisher: Peace Education Books.
The site includes information from the author's numerous teach-in as Q&A presentations about the new economic paradigm. These are based upon both the author's research and his proactive experience in South America over that past several decades. In addition, the focus of the author's research is on economic theory and the related philosophical and social scientific theory. Therefore, this site seeks a more complete definition the primary concepts and methodology. This site brings tangible examples to the ideas and method by way of Internet and contacts with other work, research and the experience of other economic models. Economic, philosophical and other terminology that might benefit from a more conclusive con census of definitions brought to us via the constantly comprehensive out-reaching arms of the spiders in the web.
How to use Google Translate™
Is your writing technical, scientific, original prose, poetry and other literary forms, sophisticated or simple? If so, it is best to use Google translate in these steps belo. Google draws its vast cached storehouse of web data to make the translation. If Google has never seen your original writing, it may make translation errors.
If you let Google translate your entire site in that Google translate mode, Google will do so in quantities of your site or large page that it can process in a single pass. So, have Google translate one page at a time of which it may still leave some of the page un-translated. Pasting the Google translated text directly into the file page of your web authoring software will do to unfavourable things:
- increase the size (bytes, kilobytes ... ) your file, thus its download time, and
- make your text hard, if not impossible to edit. (Google omits mention of this fact.) So, copy paste your text from Google Translate into Notepad, then into your web page file of your translation.
The renewal of the ethics of care via the worldwide web
A prime expression of the new, though in fact oldest, economic paradigm exists within the Internet. It has been active from the start and through the brief, condensed history of the Internet. Thus, the worldwide web has brought to humans another innovation, which is a re-innovation, beyond the digital and other technologies, to the forefront of modern culture. Much less well-known, respected and understood though vastly simpler and more easily integrated into the human psyche, freeware, which is also known as open source code has been a vital part of the Internet from the inception of the web in the 1980s. It appears as though the altruist pioneers of high-tech and the Internet were attuned to the feminist (non-patriarchal) values or were friends of the movements, such as labor and civil rights, which rediscovered the ethics of care as the more direct path to equity and lasting security for the entire spectrum contemporary society.
What goes around comes around: the vision of pay-it-forward: giving without measure gives in return: The expression of gifting in the form of careware and freeware continues today from its origins at the outset of the PC and Apple high-tech revved-up evolution in the 1970's. The gifting of freeware by technology entrepreneurs and open source known as careware rings true to the paradigm of caring, which the ancient Greeks, many Indigenous, maternal and/or matriarchal and faith-based cultures placed above all other economic models. Similarly, the early roots of careware (freeware and to some degree shareware) lives on in the work of the programmer and maestro of that site and the work of a growing and determined groups of others in field of Internet Technology known as IT. This site describes the early years of Internet as recounted by a programmer who was and still is part of the other economic model, as it lives on in his work and that of a small, determined groups of others. Careware vía Mozilla.
The first economy of the Internet was a non-economy—spawned by and for the use of the small group of activist academics—those first inhabitant of the new world: the Web world in the communicant system. Thus, the early worldwide web was a use value, or had use value, which fulfilled needs—rather than an exchange value, which demands a profit; the early web served the social code of use rather than exchange, sharing for the slow growth creation more of rather than more profits for rapid growth and the displacement it brings. For the inspired pioneers of the new universe of tool use, this unwritten code sent them soaring out of the box that is market economics. Within the Internet today, this spirit still thrives, though dwarfed by frenetic commerce and its consumerism.
Nevertheless, for a few golden years the heroic blend of technical genius and social vision raised our ethical consciousness to the level of their proficiency of the technology they had brought to the world. The old Internet of gift economy,which, in fact, a non-economy, still lives on to once again sit back upon the seat of virtue and, thus, to dethrone exchange value, profit and overproduction, as the result of chronic excess capacity and the treatment of people as little more than a market and resource for expansion and exploitation by the few who own the means of production.
About to be done: First, the Spanish translations will continue to be perfected, in terms of accuracy to the original English text. Secondly, additional translations of the associated papers and pages may begin. Thirdly, pages that need and deserve more development will have it, such as this ongoing page.
Concurrent with the bilingual attunement and the ongoing project pages will be the creation an evolving page that celebrates some of the growing examples of cultural economics as the new paradigm: the models of sustainable growth—perhaps one new model inspired and/or innovative work per week or per month. Eventually, the currently inactive weblogs on this site, as dormant outlines, will become active for user dialog as essential input.
