Alternative Economic System Research Articles

REFORMULASI BANGUN SISTEM EKONOMI ISLAM

The idea of this paper came from the many phenomenas of economic problem occuring in various part of the world that become increasingly serious. Both economis school of capitalist and socialist was not able to provide solution for the increasingly complex economic issues. This condition raises expectation for an alternative economic system that is able to resolve economic problem. Current discourses about Islamic economic system sound relevance and begin to be studied to resolve the economic problem. Through the study and reconstruction of the history of Islamic economy, it shows that system of Islamic economy does exist legally and de facto. Now, our job is to formulate the form and concept of Islamic economy that can be accepted as an alternative economic system in the world. The formulation of the concept and theory of Islamic economy can take two alternatives: firstly, through revision of the old theory of Islamic economy in accordance with the principle and characteristic of Islamic economy, secondly, the recontruction of history through the Islamic economic thought, so that it can gave birth new Islamic economic system.

Self-Invention in the Realm of Production

In the 1960s and 1970s, self-avowed members of the counterculture, often based on the west coast and in the Rocky Mountain West, eschewed critics’ stereotypical notions of stoned and indolent hippies and struggled to build an alternative economic system. While rejecting corporate capitalism and consumer acquisitiveness, they built new enterprises, new institutions, new organizational forms, and new practices that gave proof of the possibility of creating economically sustainable, alternative lives. Do-it-yourself practices, especially building one’s own home or repairing one’s own vehicle, promised to free practitioners from working for wages in order to afford consumer goods—even as DIY culture often promoted traditional gender roles. While many of the counterculture’s attempts at escaping the employee-consumer nexus failed or were short-lived, it did succeed in outlining an alternative approach to both production and consumption that has had a continuing impact on American capitalist development.

KRITISASI BANK SYARIAH TERHADAP PEMBIAYAAN SEKTOR PERTANIAN DI SULAWESI SELATAN

The phenomenon of world's interest toward Islamic banking is not only concerned on fiqih muamalah but also on its economic potential as an alternative economic system that has been existed before but has not been able to provide welfare through the societies. South Sulawesi, for instance, as a province which has massive land for agriculture should be able to contribute greatly to inhabitants. Inattentions is the main constraint particularly of banking sector. Hence, to maximize that potency, Islamic banking have to make a strategic alliance to create a partnership with microfinance foundation like Baitul mal wa tamwil in order to get equal expansion, that is conducted by islamic banking, even for underdeveloped communities.

Why Governments Failed to Realize Prosperity and How to Structure a Sound Economic System

Happiness sums up people's attainments from living. Economics is concerned largely with prosperity as the material contributor to happiness. Prosperity is a relative term rather than an absolute one. Prosperity level can be defined as the feasible material standard of living that an economy can provide every member of the society. One of the main functions of a government is to sustain all its population at or above the specified material standard of living. Global statistics show that governments failed to realize prosperity. An estimated 100 million people were homeless worldwide (UN – 2005). As many as 1.6 billion people lacked adequate housing (Habitat, 2015). More than 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 a day (UN – 2014). According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. 805 million people worldwide do not have enough food to eat (FAO – 2014). More than 750 million people lack adequate access to clean drinking water (JMP – 204). 1/4 of all humans live without electricity — approximately 1.6 billion people (UN – 2014). Preventable diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia take the lives of 2 million children a year (UNICEF – 2014). Governments present some excuses to justify the failure to realize prosperity. This paper aims to identify these excuses, highlight the pitfalls in economic thinking, and look for an alternative economic system that would reflect fair economy and advance the needs of humanity as a whole.

URGENSI MASLAHAH DALAM KONSEP EKONOMI SYARIAH

The fragility of the economic system of capitalism and socialism makes the Islamic economic system into an alternative economic system and studied in depth by contemporary Islamic economic thinkers. In realizing Islamic economic system must be aligned with the maqasid al-shari'ah (goals sharia). There are four main approaches in the study of Islamic economics namely: a pragmatic approach, recitative, utopian and adaptive. Such an approach always leads to moral values, human brotherhood, social justice, integrating Islamic values and aims for the establishment of al-mashlahah as the core maqashid al-shari'ah can be used as an argument of the legal establishment, especially relating to Islamic economics. Ijtihad in Islam economy by using al-maslahah can be done by meeting certain requirements that do not conflict with al-Qur'an and al-Hadith and not contrary to qiyas. Besides, it does not conflict with a higher benefit, both in how to do it and in a way to preserve from extinction. Economic Ijtihad Islam implemented by analyzing the social and political realities and priorities (fiqh figh realities and priorities) in order to achieve the benefit of society and the state.

PERAN STRATEGIS SISTEM EKONOMI ALTERNATIF BAGI PEMBANGUNAN BANGSA DAN NEGARA

The purpose of this study is to see how the strategic role of alternative economic system, in this case is the Islamic economic system for the development of the nation and state of Indonesia. The research method used is by using literacy study. The results obtained that the Islamic economic system as an alternative economic system has been proven with the advancement of sharia banks, although the development is slow, because constrained many things such as minimal capital, regulations that have not reached the real application, human resources, low understanding of the community, maximum, monetary tools used by the state still use interest, limited office network, and services that have not been able to meet the standards as do conventional banks. However, the Islamic economic system has helped in strengthening the economic development of the nation and the country especially when the crisis occurred in 1998 until today.

Assessing the Potential for “Cultural Disruption” through Sharing Economy: A Case Study of a Time Bank in Helsinki

A better networked society has the potential to facilitate utopian ideals that embrace modes of sharing economy through the advent of the better utilization of community resources. Much has been expected of new digital communication spaces capable of linking individuals with each other outside the ambit of governments and mega-conglomerates. However, due to evolving corporate and marketing strategies, and national legal frameworks, there has been no clear demonstration of a truly alternative economic system. The recent interest in collaborative or sharing economy calls attention once more to this potential. This article presents and analyses a time-banking initiative, Stadin Aikapankki, in Helsinki, Finland. It explores the motivations behind the formation of this sharing economy community initiative, how it relates to and is expressed in terms of utopian aims and ideals, and whether this case study is able to maintain aspects of cultural disruption in the face of pressures from mainstream national actors.

Access to electricity in the World Energy Council's global energy scenarios: An outlook for developing regions until 2030

Approximately 2 out of 10 people in the world still live without access to electricity. The UN “Sustainable Energy to All – SE4All” initiative aims at eradicating this electricity access deficit by 2030. To estimate the financial effort required to achieve this target we analyse two long-term scenarios developed by the Paul Scherrer Institute and the World Energy Council, which describe two alternative economic and energy system developments. We focus on developing Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, which currently have the largest percentage of population without access to electricity. We couple a long-term energy system model with regional econometric models that forecast population electrification rates. We find that establishing universal electricity access by 2030 requires significant, but attainable investments in power generation infrastructure, and results in low impacts on primary energy demand and CO2 emissions.

Can the capitalist economic system deliver environmental justice?

Can a healthy environment for all social groups be delivered through capitalism via market mechanisms? Or is it the capitalist system, itself, that has been at the root of the environmental and social crises we now face? This letter engages with this ongoing debate by drawing on material from a wider study, ‘Achieving Environmental Justice’, which examined the extent, form and causes of environmental justice and injustice in a range of countries with varying depths of marketization—United States, South Korea, United Kingdom, Sweden, China, Bolivia and Cuba. The analysis described here focuses on the interview material from this mixed methods study, drawing on over 140 interviews with officials, policy makers, and civil society leaders. The letter argues that there is an apparent propensity for capitalist processes to exacerbate, rather than reduce, environmental problems and inequities though the pursuit of relentless economic growth and profit accumulation. Therefore, we should perhaps let go of efforts to resolve environmental injustice within the constraints of capitalism and, instead, build an alternative economic system that can meet human needs in the context of a harmonious and respectful relationship with nature.

Incentives and decision making ethical mechanisms: an Islamic exposition

The wide spread moral decay which led to consecutive economic crises in the 21st century has led scholars to seek an ethical economic system. The Islamic economic system (IES), with its ethical foundations, is anticipated to rise as an alternative ethical economic system. The main pillars of this system have been established; however, little attention was given to the incentive and decision-making pillars under an IES. This paper aims to identify the incentive mechanisms that can be utilised to motivate individuals and guide decision-making processes under an ethical IES. Moreover, the paper introduces the 'mystic incentives' mechanism which addresses the spiritual aspects of humans. The use of the 'mystic' incentive among a mixture of materialistic and moral incentives is argued to have implications on both individual and organisational decision making. The paper contends that this mixture of incentives mitigates opportunity cost of choice, principal-agent and asymmetry of information problems.

Capitalism Versus a New Economic Model: Implicit and Explicit Attitudes of Protesters and Bankers

Why is it difficult to sustain collective action that challenges the political and economic status quo? To develop an answer to this central problem in the study of social movements, this paper investigates the possible role of cognitive mechanisms using the framework of System Justification Theory. It examines the explicit and implicit attitudes of London bankers and Occupy St. Paul's protesters towards capitalism and an alternative economic system (Resource Based Economy: RBE) using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure and questionnaires. As hypothesised, bankers were more likely than protesters to demonstrate positive attitudes towards conservative capitalistic worldviews/values on both explicit and implicit measures. Also as expected, protesters had more positive explicit attitudes towards the RBE than did bankers. However, implicit attitudes towards the RBE were neutral for both groups. The implicit capitalism measures correlated positively with the explicit Capitalism Semantic Differential Scales (SDS) and negatively with the RBE SDS. No correlations were found between the implicit RBE measures and any of the explicit SDSs. The central theoretical insight of this paper is that implicit attitudes play an important role in maintaining the status quo, and that cognitive factors may underpin the resilience of extant social, political and economic structures.

Welcoming outsiders: The nascent Jesus community as a locus of hospitality and equality (Mk 9:33–42; 10:2–16)

The recent global economic crisis left millions of people destitute without formal work and further alienated the poor from the rich. As a remedy, modern Neoliberalism proposes that the poor must hope and steadily work their way up the economic ladder. What is the solution to such unbridgeable social and economic chasm? This article used the contemporary situation of economic inequality to imagine events during the first century, during Jesus’ time, whereby the rich increasingly amassed wealth to the disadvantage of the poor majority. In this article, Mark 9:33–42 and 10:10–16 was used to explore how Jesus developed an alternative economic system − one that contrasted itself in every respect from that of the hierarchical and patriarchal Roman Empire. This article argued that Jesus formed communities that directly responded to the economic challenges faced by the landless and the homeless majority by creating an alternative economy based on love and hospitality. This was done by proposing that Mark 9:33–42 and 10:2–16 are amongst the passages where the two rival economies were contrasted by way of two different household economies. Firstly, the economic system outside the house that typified the hierarchical Roman economy, and secondly, the economic system inside the house that referred to Jesus’ alternative system whereby he taught his disciples to welcome the homeless, the landless and the poor. Before developing this further, the plausible social context of the stories was attended to.

Fair Trade vs. Swaccha Vyāpār: Women's Activism and Transnational Justice Regimes in Darjeeling, India

444 Feminist Studies 40, no. 2. © 2014 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Debarati Sen Fair Trade vs. Swaccha Vyāpār: Women’s Activism and Transnational Justice Regimes in Darjeeling, India During my ethnographic work among women organic tea producers in rural Darjeeling, India, I frequently faced difficult questions about the meaning and materiality of fair trade. Women smallholder tea farmers were gradually becoming conscious about the global popularity of the organic tea they produced. Whenever I showed Prema, one of the farmers, examples of fair trade publicity materials with smiling faces of women tea producers like her, she always offered comments such as: Another one! You know that smiling woman on that tea package is not us. It’s nice to know people around the world care about us so much, but why now? Where were these people when we had no roads, when no one gave us loans, when we ate only stale rice? What can they do for us if they do not care about what we women want? Prema’s sarcastic response is a powerful critique of the moral basis of the fair trade movement’s empowerment directives—directives that govern tea cooperatives in producer communities and that have specific consequences for smallholder women tea farmers’ political lives. It is also a rebuke of the virtual environment in which fair trade maintains its legitimacy. Similar pointed reflections on “fair trade” gradually revealed to me how intended beneficiaries of the global fair trade movement understood the value of fair trade in the context of their situated identity Debarati Sen 445 struggles and their efforts to gain social and economic justice. As a trade-based, transnational social justice movement, the key tenets of fair trade are to empower marginalized producers, in part by ensuring their participation in key decision-making institutions in their communities, and to promote social justice in general, with a core focus on women’s empowerment.1 It is also an alternative economic system, distinguished from so-called free trade by its biopolitical imperative to measure and manage the working of social justice through its trading system.2 Fair trade promoters and activist consumers believe that the ethical buying and selling of fair trade goods across nations can fulfill these overt goals by channeling new resources and governance mechanisms to producer communities. The fair trade product label stands as a proof and promise of trade-based justice work. What remains unexplored within this abstract global discourse on fair trade is how subjects of transnational justice regimes understand and mobilize around the governance practices of the ostensibly ethical transnational justice regimes of fair trade. In this article, I examine how smallholder women tea farmers in rural Darjeeling negotiate such regimes in the context of their specific identities (as housewives and savvy entrepreneurs) and histories of conflict over gendered access to resources in their own communities. Through long-term ethnography of fair trade operations and their effects on a smallholder tea farmers’ cooperative in rural Darjeeling, I contend that fair trade interventions can inadvertently strengthen gendered and patriarchal power relations in producer communities but that smallholder women tea farmers also make creative use of specific fair trade interventions to defend their own priorities and rupture fair trade’s imbrications with local patriarchies. AsIwilldemonstrateethnographically,thewomenfarmers’repeated juxtaposition in regular conversation of fair trade with swaccha vyāpār, a distinct Nepali iteration of fair trade that incorporates awareness of gender hierarchies, allowed them to articulate the shortcomings of fair 1. See Catherine Dolan, “Virtual Moralities: The Mainstreaming of Fairtrade in Kenyan Tea Fields,” Geoforum 41, no. 1 (2010): 33–43; and Sarah Lyon, “We Want to Be Equal to Them: Fair Trade Coffee Certification and Gender Equity within Organizations,” Human Organization 67, no. 3 (2008): 258–68. 2. See Debarati Sen and Sarasij Majumder, “Fair Trade and Fair Trade Certification of Food and Agricultural Commodities: Promises, Pitfalls, and Possibilities ,” Environment and Society 2, no. 1 (2011): 29–47. 446 Debarati Sen trade. In particular, this rhetorical strategy highlighted fair trade’s inability to promote their specific economic pursuits, some that were nurtured during previous participation in other transnational justice regimes such as microlending. Strikingly, women’s situated reading of...

The Riba Conundrum: The Ethical Appeal of Islamic Banking

The rule of Islam is simple: if you advance a loan, you are entitled to receive your capital only and nothing more. If you wish to secure profit you should enter into a partnership and become a shareholder. Prohibitions against interest are not peculiar to Islam. If we were to trace back through history, a number of examples of such prohibitions can be found in the early Greek, Roman and Rabinnical thought. As a consequence of the decline of the influence of the Catholic Church and the Jewish aphorism that the taking of interest from gentiles is a commendable practice, laws were subsequently drafted for legalizing interest transactions. As a result, industrial, financial and commercial power become concentrated in the hands of giant Western corporations and a worldwide dominance of capitalist imperialism followed. This practice has created widespread acceptance of the practice of charging interest (usury) and has dominated Western law and ethics for over a millennium. But, the Western or capitalist economic system has proven a failure in its quest for economic justice, which serves to benefit all in society, both the rich and the poor. In particular, capitalism is currently causing a terrifying scenario of making the rich richer and the poor poorer due to interest charges. The fundamental motivation for the paper is to examine whether an alternative banking or economic system could contribute in alleviating the global financial crisis we face. This alternative banking model is to rest on social justice. It is necessary to reassert that this banking system is based on the avoidance of all forms of financial exploitation and on having as its principal object the combined purpose of the creation of wealth and the alleviation of poverty.

The Sufficiency Economy: Envisioning a Prosperous Way Down

After briefly summarising the critique of growth, this essay describes in some detail an alternative economic system, which I will call ‘the sufficiency economy.’ This term is typically applied to so-called ‘developing economies,’ which either have not yet industrialised or are still in the early phases of industrialisation. These economies are sometimes called sufficiency economies because they do not or cannot produce material abundance, or do not seek material abundance. Instead, sufficiency economies are focused on meeting mostly local needs with mostly local resources, without the society being relentlessly driven to expand by the growth-focused ethics of profit-maximisation. My point of differentiation in this essay will be to consider the notion of a sufficiency economy within the context of the most highly developed regions of the world – where an economics of sufficiency is most desperately needed – and to explore what such an economy would look like, how it might function, and how the transition to such an economy might transpire.Rather than progress being seen as a movement toward ever-increasing material affluence, the sufficiency economy aims for a world in which everyone’s basic needs are modestly but sufficiently met, in an ecologically sustainable, highly localised, and socially equitable manner. When material sufficiency is achieved in these ways, further growth would not continue to be a priority. Instead, human beings would realise that they were free from the demands of continuous economic activity and could therefore dedicate more of their energies to non-materialistic pursuits, such as enjoying social relationships, connecting with nature, exploring the mysteries of the universe, or engaging in peaceful, creative activity of various sorts.

공동체화폐운동 참여자의 소비생활에서 나타나는 윤리적 소비 특성 연구

The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of ethical consumption in the Community Currency Movement participant's daily life as a consumer. Qualitative research methods are used for the understanding about the participation activities and the daily lives as a consumer of Hanbat LETS participants'. The characteristics of ethical consumption used for analysing of the Community Currency Movement are the subjective participation, production process-aware consumption, others care to consumption, sustainable consumption, voluntarily simple life. The major results of this study show that the Community Currency Movement is the alternative economic system practicing the ethical consumption. The Community Currency Movement increase the subject participation, realize the social responsibility and community society and the ecological value and voluntary simple life. This research get the meaning for considering the Community Currency Movement & the ethical consumption on the discriminatory perspective.

LETS as Alternative, Post-capitalist Economic Spaces? Learning Lessons from the Totnes ‘Acorn’

Against the complex economic backdrop of a deep-impact recession, rising public debt, and national austerity measures, this paper revisits LETS as one example of an alternative economic system and perhaps a more relevant operating mechanism for some communities in the months and years ahead. Drawing on the case study of the Totnes Acorn, this paper considers the continued relevance of LETS in a contemporary, perhaps even post-capitalist context, and against competing initiatives such as local currencies, resurging time banks, and the Big Society campaign. It is argued in this paper that the changing economic and political landscape of the last decade, which has coincided with rises in personal wealth, coupled with the celebrity status of the Transition Towns Initiative, the dated image and administration of some LETS may explain their decline during a period of economic decline. Yet their potential economic role could be reinvigorated and prove invaluable as a mechanism to stimulate and maximise local economic activity in the years ahead, as the full effects of expenditure cuts and a possible double-dip recession begin to take hold.

The command economy cometh

The paper is a philosophical discourse on capitalism and its intellectual rationalization, economic theory. Both blithely ignore the most fundamental character of the human condition. Both may pay a price: capitalism through being replaced by an alternative economic system and economic theory through concomitantly disappearing from the intellectual firmament.

Contemporary Western Rural USA Economic Composition: Potential Implications for Environmental Policy and Research

/ The rural West of the United States is considered strongly antienvironment. The traditional economic reliance of the area on natural resources has long explained this antienvironment stance. The region consistently elects federal officials who as a group consistently vote against environmental bills and seek to undo existing federal environmental regulation. These politicians defend their antienvironment actions based on their perception of the economic composition and interests of the region. Recent studies, however, have suggested that rural residents are increasingly concerned about environmental issues. These studies, however, lack a consistent theoretical basis. This article uses an alternative economic typing system to examine the economic composition of rural Idaho and suggests that the results found using the alternative typing system might provide a theoretical basis to explain why some studies are finding increased rural environmental support. The results show that rural Idaho is much more economically diverse using this alternative typing methodology compared to the outcomes of traditional USDA economic methodologies. The policy and research implications of these findings are examined.KEY WORDS: Rural; Environmental policy; Economic composition

Beyond Capitalism and Socialism in Africa

Ideological conflict between capitalism and socialism is more than 150 years old in the industrial countries of Europe and North America. Its gradual extension to other parts of the world during the twentieth century has entailed a basic alteration of the terms of debate. Within the leading industrial countries, partisans have debated both the economic merits of privately-owned productive capital, and the justice of profit-taking as a right of such ownership. In socialist thought, ‘social justice’ has meant that the whole product of labour belongs to those who actually produce it; hence its value should be realised by the producers themselves, either individually, or collectively through public institutions. On that basis, socialists have promised to construct an efficient, humane, and just social order. With equal conviction, proponents of capitalism hold that no alternative economic system produces as large a volume of goods, jobs, and other material benefits for as high a percentage of the population; that social inequality is inevitable, regardless of the property system in effect or the organisation of economic production; and that justice, in any case, is always individual, never ‘social’.