Synopses & Reviews
Few people would contest that modern capitalism comes with major costs: it damages the environment, harms workers, and increases inequality, to name just a few. Yet we’re told time and again that those are simply inevitable side effects of the constant need for profit and growth—and that while they may be regrettable, there’s no other way.
Christian Felber disagrees. In Change Everything, he lays out a wholly new vision for a humane economic model—the Economy for the Common Good, or ECG. Not just an idea, but a rapidly growing international movement, ECG is a practical, detailed blueprint for a new way of doing business, a people-centered approach that could sweep away austerity, support human (and humane) development, repair our damaged environment, and utterly reorient our relationship to work, money, and the purpose of both. Its vision is just short of breathtaking, but it remains grounded in reality, as evidenced by the fact that more than 1,700 companies around the world have already endorsed its principles.
Nothing less than a call to re-examine all that we’ve ever been told about how economies work, Change Everything is a ringing manifesto for a new, better age.
Synopsis
Is it possible for businesses to have a bottom line that is not profit and endless growth, but human dignity, justice, sustainability and democracy? Or an alternative economic model that is untainted by the greed and crises of current financial systems? Christian Felber says it is. Moreover, in Change Everything he shows us how. The Economy for the Common Good is not just an idea, but has already become a broad international movement with thousands of people, hundreds of companies, and dozens of communities and organizations participating, developing and implementing it. Published in English for the first time, this is a remarkable blueprint for change that will profoundly influence debates on reshaping our economy for the future.
About the Author
Christian Felber is an economist and university lecturer and the founder of the ECG movement.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Eric Maskin
Preface
1 A broken system
2 Defining the economy for the common good
3 The democratic bank
4 Property
5 Motivation and meaning
6 Advancing democracy
7 Real world examples
8 Putting it into practice
Appendix 1 Frequently asked questions
Appendix 2 Facts, figures and a twenty-point summary.