Tag Archives: not-for-profit

An economy for society based on Lib Dem values

By Peter Ellis | Fri 8th January 2021 - 10:15 am

We are part of a wide fellowship in search of an intrinsically fairer economy and social outcomes. We stand explicitly for the ‘well-being of the individual’.

We are democrats. Democracy binds our society together, but struggles to do so when our day to day experience of economic life does not accord with our values of mutual support and well-being. A plural democratic society requires a plural economy and politics but we do not have either.

I founded a not-for-profit organisation advocating the use of our existing housing stock to create affordable tenancies, and identified it as an intervention to societise the housing market, correcting its imperfections (homeswithinhomes.org). I realised we need systemic change in favour of society and our common good, a system that co-exists with capitalism and statism in all its forms but is uniquely identifiable and attributable to a philosophy elevating collective values of equality.

These values will appeal to a significant part of the general population, they are core Lib Dem values. We are uniquely placed to give a voice to such market based, societal economic reform and by doing so can help develop a unique economic platform reflecting Lib Dem ideology, of equality and liberty, with l believe, mass electoral appeal.

Our economy developed during a period when there was no universal franchise, nor meaningful women’s or minority rights and little societal perspective. This history, based on outdated notions of ownership and control, of private share ownership on the one hand and state control of production on the other has driven us towards economic and political polarities; we have an economy that is not mixed enough.