The challenge, facing those who want to solve the many problems in the world, is to find a common platform or set of ideas on which to build a global movement.

The ruling elite, through foundations, corporations and think tanks, exert control of the narrative and nearly every aspect of human activity. Using memes appealing to commonly held values, they have framed political and economic debate in accordance with George Lakoff’s “Don’t think of a elephant”, creating ideologies which obscure their control and its malign consequences. We need to discredit those memes and de-construct ideologies which have been inculcated over decades or even centuries.

A 2011 study in the New Scientist revealed 147 “super entities” (corporations which control other corporations) control 40% of 43,060 transnational corporations and 60% of their revenues. The study was based on shareholders’ registers and common directorships but doesn’t reveal beneficial ownership and control hidden behind nominee companies, trusts and foundations. Evidence suggests power is even more concentrated than the study indicates.

This stateless power dominates politics, media and education. It has subverted economics as an academic subject, suppressing fundamental economic principles and texts that expose the fundamental flaws in the economic system which grant the ruling elite their extraordinary power and wealth, rendering national governments irrelevant and
reducing politics to puppet theatre.

Hitherto, most people lacked access to information which would expose these truths nor did they have the ability to communicate globally across time zones. Today, we have both access to information on an unprecedented scale and the ability to communicate and cooperate globally.

Representative democracy is claimed to act in the interests of the people. History and current affairs demonstrate this claim to be false. People in the US and UK didn’t decide to attack Iraq in 2003; it was the government, encouraged by the corporate controlled media under the hidden influence of the ruling elite. Americans didn’t choose to submit to blanket surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA), nor did they agree to extra-judicial murder by their President; representative democracy did those things. People in the US didn’t choose to give banks $trillions in bank bailouts, hidden subsidies and quantitative easing; the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank did that with the complicity of representative democracy. We can demand something better.

Demand 1. Current political systems are unsustainable, undemocratic, unjust and lead to corruption and collusion among vested interests. We demand an alternative, participatory democracy in which all interests are represented in decision making communally, regionally, nationally and globally. All decisions should be devolved to communities where appropriate and should only be made at higher levels when it is imperative for the common good to do so.

Stateless power is drawn from three fundamental flaws in the economic system, evolved to benefit the ruling class over centuries, but these flaws have been expunged from economic discourse.

Critical Thinking at the Free University came together to develop understanding of contemporary affairs and root causes of economic instability, inequality, conflict, poverty and environmental destruction. We use evidence based research to identify levers for change and explore alternative economic and political structures which might serve us and future generations better. Two and a quarter years on from when Critical Thinking emerged from Occupy the London Stock Exchange, we’ve arrived at conclusions which can usefully be shared to help promote fundamental, radical change in the form of a New Model Charter and a means to challenge corporations and governments globally to serve the interests of people, the planet and future generations, rather than the narrow interests of the ruling elite.

Demand 1. is from the New Model Charter and is followed by three further demands to address the fundamental economic flaws.

Demand 2. The value of land, resources and other commons (such as water, the radio spectrum, genes, nature and knowledge) cannot be appropriated by individuals, corporations or governments; they are gifts from the universe or are communally created. The value of these must be shared for the good of all to fund public services and an unconditional citizens dividend.

Demand 3. Interest on money systemically drives:

• wealth from the poorest to the richest
• environmental destruction
• conflict
• exponential, unsustainable debt growth.

Debt must be unenforceable in law and usury (lending money at interest) illegal. Debt must revert to a social construct rather than a mechanism for wealth extraction, exploitation and oppression.

Demand 4. Increased mechanisation and technology has rendered full employment unachievable, unnecessary and undesirable. The Means to Life cannot be conditional on paid employment but is a right for all and must be provided in the form of an unconditional citizens dividend sufficient for a decent life.

None of these economic principles (demands) are new or novel but were well understood in times past. What may be novel is combining the three together but these ideas are shared among a growing number of groups
and individuals across the world. The New Model Charter and its four demands could be the common platform forchange, adopted globally and applied locally.

Further information is available at: http://freecriticalthinking.org/new-economy/920-critical-thinking-milestone