Published via Ecency

On April 1, 1947, 40 philosophers, historians, and economists converged in the small village of Mont Pèlerin in Switzerland. Some had traveled for weeks, crossing oceans to get there. In later years, they would be known as the Mont Pèlerin Society.

All 40 thinkers who came to this Swiss village were encouraged to speak their minds, and together they formed a corps of capitalist resistance fighters against socialist supremacy.

Milton Friedman was also at the meeting of minds. In the 1970s, Hayek handed the presidency of the Society over to Friedman.

Under the leadership of this diminutive, bespectacled American whose energy and enthusiasm surpassed even that of his Austrian predecessor, the society radicalized. Essentially, there wasn’t a problem around that Friedman didn’t blame on government. And the solution, in every case, was the free market. Unemployment? Get rid of the minimum wage. Natural disaster? Get corporations to organize a relief effort. Poor schools? Privatize education. Expensive healthcare? Privatize that, too, and ditch public oversight while we’re at it. Substance abuse? Legalize drugs and let the market work its magic.

Friedman deployed every means possible to spread his ideas, building a repertoire of lectures, op-eds, radio interviews, TV appearances, books, and even a documentary. All that remained was to await the critical moment.

“Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change,” Friedman explained. “When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

The crisis came in October 1973, when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed an oil embargo. Inflation went through the roof and the economy spiraled into recession. “Stagflation,” as this effect was called, wasn’t even possible in Keynesian economic theory.

In less than 50 years, an idea once dismissed as radical and marginal had come to rule the world.

The above except, quoted from Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bergmann, especially Friedman's quote, is indicative of where we are today.

With the negative side-effects of capitalism coming back to haunt us (interestingly, 47 years after it was introduced - the 50 year itch?) we are left looking for a new way to organise our global society, and it's unlikely we are going back to socialism.

And so I introduce a new way forward, a way that I call Collabualism. And, as Friedman started above, when the next crisis explodes we will look for ideas lying around that we can adopt. Today is the right time to come and join the Collabualism movement and help define the flexible blueprint for our next decentralised global society.