Contribution

In a good economy, all of us can make our best contributions. The most popular contributions may gain the greatest financial reward, but our purpose is not this reward, our purpose is fulfilling our potential in the contributions we make. A good economy will enable this.

An economy in which decisions on how we contribute are not made by us (according to what we see is needed and can provide) is not a good economy. It is a bad one, one where decisions are centralised in the hands of the few who own or control assets.

The assets controlled by the few are directed, not to our fulfilment and realising our potential (or contributing to that purpose), but to secure, financial returns.

The secure, financial return motivation quashes decentralised, informed, decision-making by most of us (who are best placed to see what we are best at) and replaces it with central decision-making designed to reduce financial risk by controlling and limiting what we do.

Corporations of centralised control work for the purpose of security and financial return. They can do this because most of us employed by them are not independently secure, but depend on the corporation for our earnings. These companies force us to choose between financial security and the right to our ideas, between financial security and the right to speak publicly, even between financial security and our freedom to contribute how we best choose.

The fault is not in individual ownership, but in the idea that assets should be directed toward secure, financial return rather than toward fulfilment and the realisation of our potential through contribution.

We would contribute far more if the rights to our contributions were our own or shared for our common fulfilment, not appropriated by corporations for secure, financial return.

[Excerpt from The Common Purpose Manifesto]