Alternative Essay Winners Alanna Hartzok and Jeffery Smith

Nadine Stoner

[Reprinted from GroundSwell, 2002]

Alanna Hartzok and Jeffery Smith, both frequent contributors of articles to GroundSwell, were among the five winners in the "There Are Alternatives" Project. Hartzok and Smith each won $100 and a nice Certificate. The TAA Project, http://www.mkeever.com/taa.html, was sponsored by the McKeever Institute of Economic Policy Analysis, directed by Michael Pierce McKeever, Sr., Economic Instructor at Vista Community College, Berkeley, CA.

Quoting from the McKeever Institute of Economic Policy Analysis website, the "There Are Alternatives" Project arose several years ago when Great Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher "announced that 'There is no alternative' to a world wide system of market based capitalism. This effectively meant that the economic development of lesser developed countries was to be left to market forces. Economic activity in these countries was to be focused on those commodities in which there was a 'comparative advantage' so that merchants in those counties could export those products and import other goods with the proceeds. Sadly, the promise that export led growth would provide benefits to all people has been proven wrong. Growth which depends on market forces brings uneven benefits - some people are helped and some are hurt. Thus arose a need for the creation of alternative economic models so that all people can choose how much to enter or how much to withdraw from the global economy. This project is an attempt to find and publicize such alternative economic models."

Judges of international renown determined the five winners. They were John Jopling, a London barrister and founding member of the the Foundation for Economics of Sustainability based in Dublin. Also Terry Manning, a New Zealand lawyer residing in the Netherlands with 20 plus years' experience in the development of water pumping technologies for the world's poor. Plus John O'Connor from SW Florida who had served in senior staff positions at the IMF and World Bank before he took early retirement to study how decentralized decision-making could mesh with top-down processes; some of his process activities feed into the UN Commission on Sustainable Development.

McKeever Institute of Economic Policy Analysis can be contacted by email at miepa@mkeever.com, or postal mail to 3060 Curran Avenue, Oakland, CA 94602 USA.