Ralph spends the entire hour with the indefatigable, Hazel Henderson, the founder of the group, Ethical Markets, whose mission is to advocate for ways to measure prosperity and promoting economic models that emphasize not cut-throat competition and fear of scarcity but are based on principals of cooperation and sharing in our abundance.
Hazel Henderson is an author, world-renowned futurist, evolutionary economist, worldwide syndicated columnist, and consultant on sustainable development. She is the founder of Ethical Markets Media and the creator and co-executive producer of the Ethical Markets TV series. She has edited and authored numerous books, including the award-winning Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, Planetary Citizenship, and The Politics of the Solar Age.
She leads the Transforming Finance initiative, co-developed (with the Calvert Group) the GDP alternative known as the Ethical Markets Quality of Life Indicators (originally the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators), and co-organized the Beyond GDP conference for the European Commission. In 2013, she was inducted into the International Society of Sustainability Professionals Hall of Fame.
Markets and money are useful tools that humans have been using for thousands of years. And it was only about 300 years ago with the Industrial Revolution that it was the idea of weaponizing money and markets and making systems of accounting that were predatory on the golden rule societies. And they weaponized money and markets for accumulation and power.
Hazel Henderson, Ethical Markets
We all know that the price system is a function of human ignorance. Because we permit the falsity of “externalities” — allowing anything you don’t want to pay attention to — to fall off your balance sheet and be passed on to taxpayers or to future generations… We’ve come to the end of the line with that.
Hazel Henderson, Ethical Markets
Healthcare can never be a market because the buyers, in other words the patients, have almost no power, no information. And the sellers, i.e., the insurance companies and the providers, have all the power and all the information. And then we have the same market failure in the food system… And then you’ve got market failures in education, and in the safety nets that every society has to have in order to operate. I mean you can’t operate, eventually, without safety nets.
Hazel Henderson, Ethical Markets
If they purport— like Musk is saying he’s going to do with Twitter— if you purport to be the public square, then you must change the business model, no longer take advertising and only give public service spots and receive no funds from advertising of a commercial nature. And basically, that has to be their new business model. A nonprofit model.
Hazel Henderson, Ethical Markets
We not only own our own bodies but guess what we own our own minds and everything that comes out of our minds. So, we need to establish ownership and get paid for every bit or byte that we contribute to any of these social media platforms.
Hazel Henderson, Ethical Markets
A cryptocurrency is a digital noun. It has no meaning until somebody decides to wrap it up in a beautiful set of dreamy ideas that will be “all of these wonderful people who will manage this currency and make sure that it’s always held to the highest standard.” Come on. This is just marketing. It’s all marketing… Creating all these new assets out of thin air.
Hazel Henderson, Ethical Markets
Anthropologists call this the gift economy. Actually, on a day-to-day basis between billions of people in neighborhoods, communities, villages, farms, you name it, there are far more transactions completely outside the monetized market system. If they ever monetized it, that would be multi-trillions of dollars.
Ralph Nader
Ethical Markets w Hazel Henderson