Michel Laloux

Detoxify the economy Michel Laloux

There is an alternative to disaster capitalism and dictatorship by financial markets. It requires a revolution in our concepts about money, financial capital, labour-remuneration and land-real estate. In this first volume by Michel Laloux, we discover a triple circulation of money: one for everyday purchasing, another for the financing of enterprises, and one for contributing the economic surplus produced in the commercial economic circuit, to the noncommercial circuit of commonwealth goods and services. This triple monetary circulation is solely at the service of the real economy, and dispenses with financialization and speculation. A tri-articulated institutional architecture incorporating the separation of financing and payment system functions is conceived, as a new type of civil society regulated public service, operated by transparent and accountable civil society organisations CSOs; without recourse to investors nor central banks. Issues of wage, social and environmental dumping can be resolved by new approach to determining conversion rates between foreign currency units of account. Such conversion innovation is not dependent on speculative activities in the unreal economy of financial markets, but on key factors within the real economy. This new monetary architecture provides the foundation for an International Monetary System for the Real Economy, and enables us to discover its mechanisms and institutions. For Michel Laloux, the real economy contains within itself that which makes it healthy and humane, from the moment when all forms of speculation are removed from it. Without moralising about solidarity and social justice, the author makes us dive into economic phenomena, enlightening them from the inside, and deducing the operational laws of an Economy of Human Added Value. A revolutionary book that reassures us that: "Another economy is possible!"Economist and philosopher of education, Michel Laloux carries out research on lighter and evolutive forms of social and institutional organisation, which allows human initiative and creativity to constantly animate and renew them. He is the author of several books (in French) that reveal new innovative approaches to education and democracy, fit for the challenges and opportunities facing humanity in the 21st century.