It has been all too common to hear journalists and columnists writing off Occupy London as ‘anti—capitalist’. ‘If they don’t like capitalism’ they say in almost—unison ‘ why don’t they just move to North Korea?’ The assumption is clear: there are only two choices. Either you have capitalism, exactly as we currently have it, or you have complete state control of the entire economy and a communist state. This is lunacy. There are many ways to organise society and the economy, and to suggest that there is only a simple binary choice is disingenuous nonsense. Even the most neo—liberal state has some services provided by the state, and the most socialist countries have always had markets of some kind. We a really faced with a series of spectrums, of state control/market and egalitarian/libertarian, and a range of choices that fit into no easy ideological boxes. There are many changes we could make to make our society more stable, more equal and more sustainable without reinventing the wheel. Here are 10 suggestions for change that don’t depend on global revolution.

Continue reading →