We think the answer is “yes”.
During the late 1980s and 1990s we had occasion to visit politically and economically unhappy places. We made trips to South Africa before Mandela was released and visited the townships. We were guests of Chevron in the Cabinda Province of Angola when we could not leave Luanda for the rioting. We have been in Kinshasa (of former Zaire) to witness the aftermath following one of its nameless pillages. We visited Croatian refugee camps in Hungary shortly after the Berlin Wall came down and we were in Gaza just after the Hebron massacre in 1994. The face of human misery is a horror--but none of what we witnessed was "caused" by commerce.
We have witnessed the suppression of the Indian community in Fiji in the late 1980s, inter-tribal conflict in Papua New Guinea in 1989. We have tried to conduct business in Peru during the reign of the Shining Path when hyper-inflation was more than 10,000% per annum.
Much of what is being referenced was scary to behold. Guess what? Goods and services continued to move! Commerce was not easy but it continued in some form or fashion. People with any form of supply tried to identify and meet demand--no matter how challenging or perilous the circumstance. A vector for Peace?
Peace is an ideal. Commerce is pure materiality. Peace may be to Commerce what Spirit is to Materialism. These two ideas have been the twin poles of any dialectic defining social and economic progress before and since Engels and Marx.
Today is different! Despite all the confusion and anxiety of today’s economic climate—we live in unique times—because of the non-profit sector, the browser and the internet.
Notice the title of this blog: “Is Commerce a Vector for Peace?” We used the word “commerce” not “big business”. As central banks of Western economies in recent years were being savaged by the draconian effects of derivatives and over-leveraging on a global scale—what else was happening? A vanguard of new capital as “micro-credit” was in development! Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was an early innovator and distributor of micro-credit as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (starting around 1976)! Today there are more than 12,000 micro-credit banks throughout the world. Some estimates indicate nearly 1 billion people have accessed credit for the first time via micro-credit. And now, average people committed to taking action can serve as “new bankers” by contributing capital (not donations) for projects in Mongolia to Uzbekistan—at www.KIVA.com. Capital as credit—not grants, is transformative. Many people today know the phrase "Grameen Bank". It is a brand that signals "leadership". It came to the West from Bangladesh. The leadership paradigm of the world is changing--because how we access capital is changing. The new bankers are average people--not suits and corner offices.
Commerce as grassroots capital is the new vector for Peace.
Share-Capital is committed to promoting this idea—and to fostering grassroots action by “regular” people everywhere there is a browser--in order to radicalize the face (and effect) of economic activism. If micro-credit is making a difference at the level of the small entrepreneur in remote places—then the Share-Capital initiative described as People Denominated Capitalization (PDC) will potentially transform worldwide capital markets themselves!
See if you agree. Visit www.share-capital.com.
We bid you peace, until next time,
