The launch of our latest book, The Traumatised Society: How to Outlaw Cheating and Save our Civilisation was held in St James’s Church, Piccadilly on 28th October. The author, Fred Harrison, explained the threat to Western civilisation from rent-seeking, which he identified as the cause of the collapse of great civilisations in the past.

The opening paragraph of an article by John Kay in the Financial Times (27^th Dec 2009) gives a succinct explanation of rent-seeking: ‘You can become wealthy by creating wealth or by appropriating the wealth created by other people. When the appropriation of the wealth is illegal it is called theft or fraud. When it is legal economists call it rent-seeking.’

Harrison identifies rent-seeking as cheating and shows how it may be outlawed so that our civilisation need not suffer the same fate as others. To avoid the unpleasant consequences of that fate, he advocates a great awakening because we cannot rely on politicians, policy-makers and economists to lead us out of danger. We have to take our future into our own hands.

‘Many people are all too aware that there is something badly wrong with our current economic system, but they are less clear about how it got so bad, what an alternative might look like, and how we can make the change. This profound book admirably fills that gap.’ Bernadette Meaden in Ekklesia

The launch was the first in a series of events to help stimulate the great awakening. Future events already scheduled are:

January 26th 2013  School of Economic Science, 11 Mandeville Place, London W1U 3AJ

April 6th 2013  St Mary Aldermary, City of London

May 4th 2013  Christ Church Blackfriars Rd. London SE1

June 1st 2013,  St James, Piccadilly, London W1

Extracts from the Traumatised Society were read by the actors, Jemma Redgrave, Jennifer Wiltsie and Carlo Nero (Vanessa Redgrave’s son).

‘One of the few benign consequences of last year’s financial crisis’, wrote Anatole Kaletsky in The Times (28/10/2009), ‘was the exposure of modern economics as an emperor with no clothes.’ If this is true, to what can we turn in our search for a new economic paradigm?

If we look back to the classical economists, we find that they too were addressing the same question for their time – it is not a new question. Their approach differed from modern economists in that they started from the premise that there are natural laws or principles which pre-exist man, which man may discover and apply in the economic sphere. The title of Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations reveals this approach.

Likewise, in The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation David Ricardo sought the principles which govern economics, but he considered ‘the principal problem of Political Economy’ not to be the creation of wealth, as Adam Smith and modern economists do, but to determine the laws which regulate its distribution.

Henry George’s Progress and Poverty sought the cause of growing wealth in the 19^th century side by side with dire poverty, again addressing the issue of the distribution of wealth.

These same problems face us to today. The attached paper, A Principled Approach to Economics, explores whether the approach and insights of the classical economists offer us any help in our present predicament.

To those who know and love Land Value Tax (LVT) the case for it seems self-explanatory, compelling and unanswerable. Yet strangely it all too often turns out to be a very hard sell. Present economic theory rests on false assumptions established so long ago that people have forgotten what they are. So the difficulty in explaining the immediate relevance of LVT is that one has to clarify first principles at the same time. This is not so easy. An audience waiting to hear how to revive the economy will not want to be asked to revise basic concepts they think they already know.

Read more here.

Rick [Rick Rybeck, director of Just Economics, Washington, D.C. (r.rybeck@justeconomicsllc.com), is a former transportation and public revenue specialist with the District of Columbia government] and Walt Rybeck explain in the current issue of PM, the magazine of the International City/County Management Association in Washington DC, that how property taxes are levied can transform Town Hall finances and boost economic recovery.

“Traditional property tax incentives are upside-down”, they argue. “They impose higher taxes on owners who construct or improve homes and commercial structures. They reduce taxes for owners whose buildings deteriorate. Owners of boarded-up buildings and vacant lots typically pay lower taxes than owners of well-maintained properties.”

For the full article click here.

Following the outcry over tax avoidance schemes Anthony Werner was invited to submit a guest blog to the Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative (GCGI) site which was established by Dr Kamran Mofid, author of Globalisation for the Common Good.

The Times in London has caused an outcry by publishing a series of articles on the secretive tax avoidance industry, revealing how the rich and famous have resorted to complex schemes. The problem of tax avoidance is nothing new. The problem is that it is only the rich who can afford these schemes. Years ago a retired judge told me that, when he was a top earning QC, his accountant had said to him: ‘Now, Sir Kenneth, you are earning enough not to pay tax’.

Is there a fairer way? Some twenty years ago Dr Ronald Burgess published a book entitled Public Revenue without Taxation. Impossible we might say – after all Benjamin Franklin pointed out that there are only two things certain in life: Death and Taxation. Read more here.

In the past many visionaries and leaders have been lawyers – think of Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. So when I arrived at the World Congress on Justice, Law and Governance for Environmental Sustainability (a pre-Rio conference) I was full of hope that just maybe we might be able to come up with some concrete legal solutions (i.e making Ecocide a crime), to halt humanity in its current trajectory of destroying the environment.

The World Congress is a closed-door invitation-only event.  It brought together some of the top legal minds in the world; Attorney-Generals, Chief Prosecutors, Auditors-General, Chief Justices, Senior Judges and other legal practitioners to discuss the role of the law in achieving sustainable development and to create a document to be taken  to world leaders at the Earth Summit.

The event opened on the 17th at the impressive Tribunal de Justica, Rio De Janeiro.  Achim Steiner, the UN’s Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director, gave an inspiring speech whilst Ricardo Lorenzetti, the Supreme Court Chief Justice of Argentina, made clear the importance of the judiciary in ensuring governments do not  renege on their promises. We then took a shuttle bus 100 km out of Rio to the Portabello Resort in Mangaratiba; where surrounded by luscious green mountains and a palm tree-lined private beach, it was quite easy to forget the urgency of addressing the critical issues humanity and the Earth are facing.

In Mangaratiba the first day opened with Bakary Kante, UNEP’s Director of the Division of Environmental Conventions. He is a clear leader with a strong moral radar. Kante emphasised that the outcome of the World Congress “must mark environmental law history” and that “we cannot have an elephant give birth to a mouse”. The following days were long, and heated discussions took place relating to the nexus between human rights and environmental rights, and the need to identify transnational environmental crimes. In these sessions I emphasised the need to create a crime of Ecocide which led to fruitful discussions; it was evident that there was much support for the idea. I also took up Bakary Kante’s call for participants to put in writing any substantial proposals to be included in the final outcome document.  It was then up to fate. Whilst a select few disappeared behind closed doors to determine the content of the final document, we were left with Bobby McFerrin’s classic tune being strummed on a guitar with the hopeful words ringing in our ears, “Don’t worry, be happy.” Read More …

Many of us have great hope riding on the result of the Rio+20 Earth Summit. We’re not sure what the outcome will be, but we know that the Eradicating Ecocide team have done everything possible to put Ecocide on the map before the summit even began.

Two of the Eradicating Ecocide team are out in Rio as you read this. Louise, who heads up their Legal Outreach, was invited to speak at the Conference of Youth for Rio+20.  This was a great success: 2000 youth have called for making Ecocide a crime and included it as one of their 20 Solutions for a Sustainable Future at the 6th World Youth Congress in Rio last week. Their other team member, Sarah, spoke at the People’s Summit and will be reporting back from both inside the official conference and outside amongst the people to tell us what is being discussed by people from both ends of the spectrum. You can read what Sarah and Louise have to say about Rio in ChinaDialogue.

The press have also picked up on the campaign; the BBC has written “Ecocide: a Legal Green High?” and The Independent has written “The Earth’s Advocate: Defending our Environment”. Treehugger.com has published the thought-piece: “Why Outlawing Ecocide is Essential for the Economy”.

Side events at the Rio+20 Earth Summit have discussed Earth Rights and Ecocide. We have been receiving many reports back that there is much discussion about the law of Ecocide. Sarah and Louise say that there’s a real feeling of growing momentum, especially with recent endorsements by Caroline Lucas, head of the UK Green Party, and Kumi Naidoo, International Executive Director at Greenpeace.

To highlight the issues tackled by the campaign, Polly Higgins has written “Eradicating Ecocide” as well as “Earth is our Business”.

Walter Rybeck’s Re-solving the Economic Puzzle, we are sorry to say, did not win the People’s Book Prize for 2012, but voters left some insightful comments, expressing their appreciation of the book which may be viewed at this link.

International lawyer for the Earth, Polly Higgins, winner of the People’s Book Prize, has launched a ‘Who is Charles Grant?’ campaign to coincide with her new book Earth Is Our Business.

The book outlines an international Law of Ecocide that Polly has proposed to the United Nations. This would enable environmental destruction to be declared illegal by making it the Fifth International Crime Against Peace.

Ecocide is defined as: “The extensive damage, destruction to or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished.”

The Law of Ecocide would make CEOs and Heads of State legally responsible for protecting the Earth. Polly is calling on world leaders to add an amendment to the Rome Statute which requires two-thirds of the statute’s signatories (81 votes) to become law.

The release of the book coincides with the launch of the ‘Who is Charles Grant?’ campaign, an international campaign aiming to find industry leaders ready to stand up against mass destruction of the environment. The Biggest Job on Earth advert has been placed in Forbes Magazine.

Who is Charles Grant? campaign: the campaign seeks a modern-day Charles Grant figure – a champion for the Earth. Grant was a director of the East India Trading Company in the 19th Century and publicly renounced slavery. Once he ceased to use this practice in his business he inspired other business leaders to follow. Grant played a big part in a revolution that lead to the abolition of slavery.

High profile supporters of the Eradicating Ecocide campaign include Daryl Hannah, Nnimmo Bassey, Jane Goodall, Vandana Shiva, Pablo Solon, Fransesca de Gasparis, Maude Barlow, Jonathan Porritt, Michael Stewart, Michael Mansfield, Michael Meacher, Evin Laslow and Deepak Chopra.

Three Shepheard-Walwyn authors have been voted through as finalists for the 2012 People’s Book Prize for non-fiction. This includes one of the titles from our Ethical Economics list: congratulations to Walter Rybeck, author of Re-solving the Economic Puzzle . Click here for more information on this book.

The other two titles are Hoodwinking Churchill: Titio’s Great Confidence Trick by Peter Batty and This Life of Grace by John Symons.

Voting to determine the winner opens on 21^st May and closes on 30^th May. Anyone who so wishes may add their vote by clicking here but you may only vote for the finalists between 21^st and 30^th May.

The winner will be announced at a gala award dinner at the Stationers’ Hall in the City of London on 30^th May. The prizes will be awarded by Frederick Forsyth.