Creating Global Public Goods
Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grunberg, and Marc Stern, as well as a number of well known economists, including Jeffrey Sachs, Amartya Sen, and Joseph Stiglitz, have proposed a new concept that can help promote human security, survival, and development: what they call “global public goods.”
Economists have long used the term “public goods” to describe goods or services that can be used by anyone, such as parks, education, and police and fire protection. But the concept of global public goods goes much further. It includes peace, equity, financial stability, and environmental sustainability. And it reaches across borders.
The challenge, as economic innovator Hazel Henderson notes, is to organize and create global public goods through a partnership of markets, civil organizations, local authorities, and national governments. She proposes economic inventions to help prevent what economists call negative externalities and instead promote positive externalities.“A first step,” she writes, “is for all nations to establish externality profiles – i.e. the good and bad “spillovers” they produce beyond their borders. Such national profiles can facilitate realistic bargaining between nations.” Another practical suggestion are tax profiles of countries. These economic inventions, Henderson argues, are needed to more effectively address problems such as tax havens, capital flight, and money laundering through international mechanisms.
Both Henderson and Kaul recognize that markets can bring great benefits. But they also recognize the need for rules and mechanisms that balance the globalization of markets with the creation and equitable distribution of public goods. As Kaul writes, “Even the wealthiest person cannot do without public goods, including global public goods. Neither can markets. To function efficiently, they need property rights, legal institutions, nomenclature, educated people, peace and security.” Or as Henderson puts it, there are domains that are “global commons” – from our oceans and atmosphere to the Earth’s electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace. How these resources are used and allocated must be regulated through international treaties in which governments, businesses, local communities, and grassroots groups all have a say.
Excerpted from The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics by Riane Eisler
