FLOW Newsletter Archive

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Newsletter: May 2006

Our highlight this month is our Working for Good curriculum, videoconference/webcast, and business plan contest. The curriculum, a 76 page document which is available to anyone for study or pleasure, may be downloaded from our website. Anyone can watch the teleconferences live on May 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, at 10 a.m. EST. And they will be available via online streaming for several months through a link from our website. It should be a fascinating exchange.

Global Nomads Group, which has produced videoconferences for 15 years, is dedicated to “fostering dialogue and understanding among the world’s youth.” The Working for Good program is designed to put specific content in that dialogue by focusing on “liberating the entrepreneurial spirit for good.” We intend to use the Working for Good curriculum going forward as the foundation for introducing young people around the world to the positive power of personal commitment to excellence and service, entrepreneurial endeavors, and a society that is supportive of excellence, service, and entrepreneurship.

We are also planning future videoconferences based on specific FLOW curricula. These videoconferences may be broadcast, webcast and streamed, thus providing a visual media introduction to FLOW concepts, and each one will be tied to a written curriculum that guides participants to a deeper understanding of FLOW principles.

Because world peace must be at the top of everyone’s agenda for the future, our next focus will be on the development of a deep foundation for peace through prosperity and commerce. Although the democratic peace is important, recent research by Erik Gartzke of Columbia shows that economic freedom is fifty times more effective than democracy at reducing violent conflict. Meanwhile the public, and the peace movement, are entirely unaware of this finding. FLOW’s first specific mission, therefore, is to broaden awareness of this finding. The more of us who understand the foundations for peace in economic freedom, the more effectively we can work together to create a lasting global peace.

The five components of economic freedom, as measured by the Fraser Institute Index (on which Gartzke’s research was based), are:

1. Size of Government: Expenditures, Taxes, and Enterprises
2. Legal Structure and Security of Property Rights
3. Access to Sound Money
4. Freedom to Trade Internationally
5. Regulation of Credit, Labor, and Business

Most of the subcomponents on which these measures are based use objective statistics in the Fraser Index, which is why we prefer their economic freedom index to the more subjective WSJ/Heritage economic freedom index. The Fraser Index was developed by Milton Friedman and other free market economists in an effort to formulate precise, objective criteria for economic freedom.

Most people are unaware that the developing world is poor and prone to war because they are economically un-free. There is an increasingly robust body of research correlating economic freedom with peace, prosperity, and well-being around the world as measured by income per capita, investment per capita, adult literacy, infant mortality, child labor, healthy water, low corruption, civil liberties, political stability, etc.

Although Scandinavian countries are often considered to be “socialistic,” it turns out that they are among the most highly ranked nations on the Fraser Economic Freedom Index. The Anglosphere nations (including Hong Kong and Singapore) rank more highly, as do the UAE and Oman, but no other developing world nations do. If each nation in Africa, Asia, and Latin America became as free market as Scandinavia, we would have a far more peaceful, prosperous, and happy world.

I encourage you to read the Working for Good materials and watch the webcasts both for their intrinsic merits and as a prototype of future programs. Working for Good outlines a personal ethos that will help people in the developed world be happier and more effective. That same personal ethos, in combination with economic freedom, will provide a foundation for global peace and prosperity.

Our Member Platform this month is written by Jeff Klein, FLOW Executive Director and Chief Activation Officer, and producer of Working for Good. The piece, entitled “Liberating the Entrepreneurial Spirit for Good,” is adapted from the Working for Good curriculum. FLOW members and friends in New York can join Jeff at Susan Neiderhoffer’s next FLOW gathering on Thursday May 4th.

Also on our home page is a piece I recently wrote entitled “A Tale of Two Idealists,” which I will let speak for itself.

FLOW is a complex and ambitious project; the implications of liberating the entrepreneurial spirit for good are as diverse and multifarious as human nature itself. In order to help people get a handle on this delightful and surprising world we are thus starting with a personal ethos, and moving directly to a specific strategy for creating lasting peace.

In closing, we would like to congratulate our friends Ingrid Vanderveldt and Lyn Graft of IVEEA Productions on the launch of “American Made,” CNBC’s the first original prime time program. The program, hosted by Ingrid, celebrates American business leaders and the American Dream. FLOW co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey will be featured in an upcoming episode. The program airs Mondays at 8:00 and 11:00 pm EDT.

Please forward this newsletter and any other FLOW materials to your friends, of all walks of life, cultures, and political persuasions, and let us know what responses you get. We believe that there is a positive future to be created, and we want as many partners as we can get in creating that future.

Keep working for good,

Michael Strong, CEO & Chief Visionary Officer

P.S. FLOW is above all a forum of free exchange for its members in the quest for sustainable peace, prosperity, and happiness. We welcome your feedback to the content of this newsletter and all FLOW activities and publications. Please send your thoughts to .

P.P.S. Please join one of our five themed discussion groups, and participate in our active and growing community, at www.flowrealism.org or www.flowidealism.org (FLOW, where idealism and realism both lead to the same place).