Building Sustainable Communities on Ecological Principles

Abstract

The limited life of biota provides an ecological principle for building a global society composed of self-financing, self-reliant, self-governing communities. Implementation requires communities to limit the life for owning realty, corporations and money. Limited life money and credit created by traders and investors become redeemable into units of local renewable energy. Ponzi banks and unearned income from money are eliminated. Incentives provided to attract foreign enterprises and technology are matched with built-in ownership transfer back to stakeholders resident in the community to terminate draining away surplus profits. Urban land ownership is mutualised to form self-financing Land Banks to halve the cost of new housing and attract commercial investment. This minimises non-residents extracting windfall gains and surplus profits that can make communities financially dependent on higher orders of government. Centralised big government, taxes and banking are replaced with federations of bioregional economies financing nation states that in turn finance global governance.

Keywords: Ecological capitalism, Energy money, Network governance, Self-financing communities, Stakeholder society

JEL Classification: D31, D63, E42, G32, P16, R12