Make City 2018 Festival - Newspaper

14th JUNE – 1st JULY 2018 Strukturen / Prozesse Structures / Processes 39
The focus of much current policy, social attention and media
bandwidth is devoted to propping up our energy-intensive,
materially greedy economic system. Based on a
20th century economic paradigm, this is a system that reduces
people, communities, and societies to their economic functionality.
But economics should be conducive to the common good,
serving people and communities in order to legitimise itself—as
is written in our constitution.
Our welfare system is funded by the taxable profits of an
economy that is dependent on steady growth and continually
rising demand just to keep pace with gains in productivity. Inevitably,
it has to rely on a continual externalisation of negative
effects and the consequent over-burdening of ecological foundations
and resources – natural commodities – to cut costs and
stay competitive. But when social welfare is based on economic
activity that extracts fundamental material and immaterial resources,
then it is doomed to fail.
Capitalism invalidates itself. Firstly, it destroys its own production
bases without considering conditions for regeneration.
Secondly, it transfers this exploitation into financial capital,
which is accumulated by an ever-shrinking elite, thirdly, the majority
of people are denied the opportunity to participate in market
activity. It becomes the opposite of a market economy, and
contains a dynamic that makes future viability impossible.
However, neither the current basic economic and political
direction nor the regulatory framework are up for debate. This
old developmental path, caught up in the fossil-fuel ideas of the
20th century, has natural, ecological limitations as defined by, for
example, the nine planetary boundaries and global overshoot.
’Old‘ industrial societies based predominantly on the Western
European model remain locked into path dependencies, despite
the fact that the promise of boundless progress and increasing
prosperity is fulfilled less and less often. Now, all indications are
that new forms of business and social relationships are emerging.
They are the result of formerly developing countries ’catching
up‘, new technological possibilities and, above all, new, different
ways of thinking driven by younger generations keen to
overcome old path dependencies. A new relationship between
people and the economy is developing, one in which plurality,
difference, and new forms of subsidiarity are beginning to displace
the ageing, rigid hierarchies and models of governance.
Indicators of these changes include the formation of new
communities in which national, cultural, and linguistic borders
are playing an ever-decreasing role. At the same time, the sharing
economy is proving to be more useful and resource-efficient
than the unlimited accumulation of property by individual owners;
entrepreneurial approaches using collaboration and decentralisation
as a competitive edge are beginning to take hold; new
digital infrastructures such as blockchain, the Internet of Things
and AI exploiting and strengthening subsidiarity and are increasingly
capable of displacing established hierarchical organisational
structures, thus enabling more pluralistic governance
models.
Our experience of the global interdependencies and transboundary
impacts wrought by our economic and political activity—through
climate change, economic development, the food
chain, and refugee movements – is also deepening the profound
changes in our understanding of and interaction with the world.
The demand for a renewal of our relationship with the living
world corresponds to a fundamental reorientation in cultural
evolution.
These dynamics are also having an effect on obsolete ideas
of ownership and economic participation. Because casting the
state in the role of trustee for common natural, social, and economic
commodities did not work properly, and short-term interests
of the few as a burden on the many became politically
prioritised, new concepts of ownership are increasingly taking
root, concepts such as democratic ownership—under the governance
of the people rather than the states—through the re-appropriation
of public resources, securing them against shortsightedness,
incompetence, and the greed of political and
economic interest groups.
A particular preconceived idea of humanity – one that does
not promote empathy and freedom – is, however, proving to be
an obstacle. Institutional confidence in a responsible and collaborative
public is lacking, despite the fact that life experience tells
us something different. Take any standard monoculture forest
and create within it a large, open space – a clearing, a void – and
it will be used and populated with a huge variety of different species.
This happens of its own accord, as evidenced by the last 3.8
billion years of evolution.
The first person to describe themselves as a neoliberal, Walter
Euken, was also the founder of Ordoliberalism. He struggled
to combine liberal development with community focus and
coined the phrase, “Those who reap the benefits must also bear
the costs.” Regulatory policy should replace state rationality and
serve to increase degrees of freedom. An example from constitutional
law is Article 14: “Property entails obligations. Its use
shall also serve the public good.” This applies analogously to the
communal service obligations of private property on the one
hand, and the securing of its protection on the other. In the Civil
Code, however, only the protection of private goods is defined
and justiciable. Anyone can go to court to protect their private
property but, in contrast, the public service obligation for private
goods is not legally defined anywhere. An ordo(liberalism) conducive
to public interest would be one that allowed for the
justiciability of public common interests over private interests.
If there were, for example, a statutory obligation to reveal previously
hidden externalisations by companies, and provision for
judicial claims against unfair competition for producers operating
sustainably, this measure would go a long way towards both
preventing the marketplace from rewarding those companies
that do externalise, and to supporting market access for goods
that are produced fairly and sustainably.
FESTIVAL CENTRE
JUN 28
Daniel Dahm, keynote, Frauke
Burgdorff @ panel ’Does Ownership
come with Responsibility‘
JUN 14
Aurea Leszczynski Vieira Gonçalves
SESC São Paulo @ panel ’New Coalitions
for the Cooperative City?‘
HUB
JUN 27–29
’The Principle of the Unfinished‘,
conference and performances @
Universität der Künste Berlin
STUDIO TALK
JUN 1
Pfefferberg: ’Its history – its
foundation model – its architecture‘,
talk with Justus Pysall @ Atelierhaus
Pfefferberg
SESC – ein einzigartiger Sozialvertrag
für die Metropole / A Metropolitan Social
Contract Made Simple
Wenn der Staat die Wirtschaft direkt zu Kasse bittet,
um landesweit autonom agierende Kulturinstitutionen
zu finanzieren, dann hat das einen Namen:
SESC (Serviço Social do Comércio). Diese weltweit einzigartige
Verbindung zwischen Staat und freier Wirtschaft wurde
1964 in Rio de Janeiro aus der Taufe gehoben und hat sich seitdem
auf 572 Standorte in über 2.000 brasilianischen Gemeinden
ausgeweitet. Mehr Gewinn, mehr Geld für Kultur: Der
Staat treibt 1,5 Prozent Lohnsteuer von allen Dienstleistungsfirmen
des Landes ein und verteilt die Mittel direkt an autonom
agierende SESC Niederlassungen. Die kulturelle Vielfalt des
Programmes spricht die gesamte Palette des sozialen Spektrums
an: Kulturprogramm für alle, auch in strukturschwachen
Stadtteilen. Die Idee der steuerlichen Umverteilung zur Kulturförderung
ist natürlich nicht neu, die Unmittelbarkeit und
Einfachheit des SESC Modells ist es schon. Auch nach fünf
Jahrzehnten ist es noch richtungsweisend. / LS
Photo: Linda Vlassenrood
Teil der Stadt: öffentlicher Innenraum im SESC Pompéia / Indoor public space as part of the city
If the state were to directly request the economy to hand over
money in order to finance autonomously-operated cultural
institutions, then this has a name: SESC (Serviço Social do
Comércio). This unparalleled arrangement between the state and
the free economy was instituted in 1964 in Rio de Janeiro, and
has since spread to 572 sites in over 2,000 Brazilian municipalities.
The more profit, the more money for culture: the state imposes
a 1.5% tax on all service-based firms in the country, and
then redistributes the money directly to autonomously-operated
SESC subsidiaries. The cultural diversity of the programme
means that it addresses the entire spectrum of society. Cultural
programmes are available for everybody, even in infrastructurally
weak suburbs. Although the notion of a tax-based distribution
of cultural funding is not new, the immediacy and simplicity
of SESC is unique. Even after five decades, this model is still
groundbreaking. / LS