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WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Another Kind
of Economics Is Possible
By Mario Osava
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil (IPS) - Democratising
economics as well as politics is essential for ending
irrationality and discrimination as part of the struggle
for social and environmental justice, said participants
at one of the panels of the seminar assessing the World
Social Forum's (WSF) first 10 years.
The field of "the gratis economy" or "freeconomics" is
"expanding dramatically" with the rising importance of
knowledge as a major component in goods and services,
economist Ladislau Dowbor, a professor at the Catholic
University of São Paulo, said in his presentation.
Using a street is free, and no one wonders about the
cost of construction and maintenance. The same is true
of vaccines, state schools and a wide range of public
goods supplied at no cost to the user.
But of course these do have costs, which are usually
paid through taxes contributed by the general
population, or surcharges on other products, he said.
Vaccines save so much in health costs that it would make
no sense to charge individual beneficiaries.
As the knowledge society advances, freeconomics is
expanding, based on relations that are entirely
different from those derived from material goods, he
said.
For instance, Dowbor said, if someone sells their watch,
they have to do without it, but the case of knowledge is
different: you are not deprived of it by sharing it with
someone else; instead, "creative dynamics are
generated," an outcome that encourages charging nothing.
In contrast, natural resources like water, biodiversity
and magnetic waves can be appropriated by private
interests and turned into profitable businesses, he
noted.
Bottled water sells for 1,000 times the cost of piped
water, and the plastic bottles and transport it requires
for distribution contribute to pollution costs.
There are collective consumer systems that reduce costs,
Dowbor said. Piraí. a small town near Rio de Janeiro,
offers free broadband internet connection to all
residents, and computers for teachers and students at
very low cost by means of bulk buying. This improves
learning and promotes local industry and even exports,
he said.
"Costs should be re-assessed, and more should be given
away free," he said. There would be advantages, for
example, to free public transport in huge cities like
São Paulo, where residents spend an average of two hours
and 43 minutes a day in traffic, at a terrible cost to
everyone in terms of quality of life and pollution.
Unemployment has such enormous social costs that it
would be worth giving unemployed people in cities work
in environmental clean-up operations, said the
economist, who gave more examples about wasteful
practices that impoverish humanity, although they boost
GDP.
But the apparently bright future of freeconomics has a
dark side: the invisibility of "work assumed to be part
of women's gender role," said Uruguayan sociologist
Lilian Celiberti, of the Articulación Feminista Marcosur,
an umbrella group for women's organisations in
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and
Uruguay.
The cost of reproducing the workforce "is borne by
women, in every culture," because women are the main
providers in the "care economy," a key concept for
feminist economists, which extends beyond childcare and
care of the elderly, sick or disabled, she said.
The sexual division of labour, where "private space is
women's realm and public space is for men," encourages
"masculine irresponsibility," reflected in fathers not
recognising children born out of wedlock and "millions
of other examples that can be seen in family courts."
"A society that nurtures this kind of human being is
plundering nature and is careless of human beings
themselves, and for that reason is suicidal," Celiberti
said.
Delivering free public goods to which everyone has a
right, like access to health, water, education and other
basic services, is the state's duty, said Bolivian Dr.
Nila Heredia, head of the Latin American Social Medicine
Association (ALAMES).
The "mercantile logic" which makes "sick people feel
guilty for not having looked after themselves properly"
must be fought, as well as the pharmaceutical industry
"that creates illness" in order to sell more medicines,
she said.
French philosopher Patrick Viveret, author of a report
titled "Reconsider Wealth," also condemned "mercantile
fundamentalism" which he said leads to "privatisation of
money, a public good in the service of exchange." But he
highlighted the difficulties faced by freeconomics in
the context of "relations of dependency and rivalry."
A good example of the solidarity economy, which is
not-for-profit but does not exclude payment, was
presented by João de Melo Neto, the coordinator of
Palmas Bank, the first community microcredit
organisation in Brazil, which was founded in 1998 in a
poor neighbourhood in Fortaleza, the capital of the
northeastern state of Ceará.
The Palmas Bank helped to organise and promote the local
economies of many poor neighbourhoods in Brazil's
impoverished semi-arid Northeast region, each of which
issue "their own coin, so that local wealth circulates
within the community." It has also inspired other such
projects. At present, 52 community economies of this
kind are operating all over the country.
The "for-free economy" was the subject of one of the
four daily debates held Jan. 26-28 at the seminar to
assess the WSF's first 10 years in Porto Alegre. A
session to systematise the outcome of the debates, and
an Assembly of Social Movements, will be held Friday.
More than 8,000 people enrolled in the seminar, which is
part of the Greater Porto Alegre WSF, consisting of a
series of meetings in seven cities in Brazil's
southernmost metropolitan area, close to the border with
Uruguay.
On Jan. 26 Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
addressed the WSF and criticised the shortcomings of
international aid to Haiti, where the capital,
Port-au-Prince, was devastated by an earthquake on Jan.
12. He announced he will be paying a visit to the
Caribbean country Feb. 25, to extend his solidarity.
Lula also remarked that the World Economic Forum in
Davos, Switzerland had "lost its glamour" since 2003,
the year he took office. The annual meeting of the
world's most powerful political and financial leaders -
to which the WSF originally emerged as a sort of
counterpoint - will be honouring Lula with a "Global
Statesman" award at a special ceremony Friday, although
he has excused himself for health reasons. |
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