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Directors Bios

Meet the FEC Directors

Kevin Turner – Chairperson

I am 69 years and have loved spending time building schools and homes in the Bellingen Area. I have also used to great success the Biodynamic methods on two small farms.

I am passionate about creating a Fairer, Sustainable, and more Participatory Society using the Economy as the means.

Gavin Tang – Secretary

I am 60 years old and live in the Upper Blue Mountains. I have been a carpenter for about 30 years (before that farming and teaching and a long list of other jobs), but my big interest has been in the realm of economics and social justice. For the past 25 years or so, I have been trying to work out, and implement, a socially just and sustainable economy from a grassroots project (i.e. without government support). The FEC approach is one such way. I may be considered the ‘architect’ of the FEC.

Mark Patton – Treasurer

I have consciously studied and participated in capitalism from many angles including studying commerce at Uni to managing private enterprise, to working in the education sector to local government youth worker. I’ve come to appreciate the necessity of collaboration and empowerment of the human spirit. The fractal economy model addresses some of the inequalities of the capitalistic system and is worthy of our participation.

Dr Gull Herzberg – Director

I have always seen the collective as a powerful force for good. Having lived on kibbutz for for seven years, I have hands on experience in intensive collaborative lifestyle. While this is not for everyone, there are important lessons from communal living that can be adapted to society at large. I have lived in Bellingen Shire since 1997, working as a doctor, for many years as a GP in Bellingen and currently Integrative and Cannabis Medicine in Coffs Harbour. My two sons were born in Bellingen Hospital, and I live in Kalang. In 2015 I instigated a drive to create a community entity to purchase the former Fosters Garage site in central Bellingen with a view to creating a community run business. While this didn’t get off the ground, there was much excitement and interest in the community. When I came across FEC, I recognised an idea, process, and people with similar perspectives to me: local economy, pooling and fair allocation of resources, direct democracy, unity through diversity, to name a few. 

It has always seemed obvious to me that the uneven distribution of resources is one of the major hurdles on the road to a better world.  There is more than enough to go around. The Fractal Economy Cooperative is one way to help make this happen. I am honoured to be involved. 

Toni Wright-Turner – Director

I am 68 years old. I have worked in Steiner Education as a teacher and principal.

My current interest is in caring for Possum’s and Birds as a Wires carer.

I also have a deep interest in environmental protection and economic resilience.

Contact Us

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Transaction Tax

In the national economy, a transaction tax would be a flat rate tax on every monetary transaction with only a few minor exceptions such as transfers within a family unit. No costs or expense s by businesses will be tax deductible. Purchases of things like shares and currencies will also incur this tax (which pretty much wipes out the speculative transfers of capitalism). In the FEC economy we apply this tax to transfers between members so that we as a collective can do very good and powerful things with it. For marketing reasons, we have renamed this tax to ‘community contribution’.

Commons

We at the FEC do not think that the government is the appropriate collective institution to manage things like banking, taxation and land rental. These can all be taken out of the hands of government. Government should be restricted to policy making in the political realm. What we call the commons is an economic collective. This economic collective does not have the argy bargy of the political life. Outside of the capitalist context, it is the principle of cooperation and mutual aid that pervades the economic life, and it will have a very different structure to government. Because the term ‘public’ is often associated with government, we prefer the term ‘commons’ in reference to this economic collective.

Community Contribution

‘Community contribution’ is in fact the same as a transaction tax as described elsewhere [see Article 2 in ‘Further reading’]. The reason we have renamed the tax is for marketing reasons as people recoil from the notion of paying an extra tax. Tax payments is in fact how we as individuals contribute to the community in order to fund things like public transport, welfare and a functional judicial system. So people should be proud in saying that they pay their taxes. The reason that we have an aversion to the word tax is brought about by corporations who have the ability to make their expenses cost deductible. They load up all costs of dubious things into their income-expenditure calculations that they can get away with not paying a lot of the taxes that are their due. The whole scam trickles down to the rest of the economy and tax avoidance/evasion becomes an acceptable sport. In a true transaction tax, no expenses are tax deductible.

What is a fractal?

A fractal is by one definition ‘An object whose parts, at infinitely many levels of magnification, appear geometrically similar to the whole’. Take the fern leaf as shown in this image:

The first image above is a graphic picture of a whole fern leaf. If we take one of the ‘branches’ of the leaf – as depicted in the boxed section – and examine its structure, we find that the ‘branch replicates in full the pattern of the original fern leaf. The boxed section of the first image, rotated and appropriately magnified as in image 2, show an identical pattern to the whole leaf. If we take yet another ‘sub-branch’ out of the fern in image 2 as depicted in the boxed section of Image 2, we find the same leaf pattern replicated again. And so on.

The Fractal Economy Cooperative takes its name from this feature of fractals – that the part replicates the whole. We believe that what needs to be done in the global economy is the same as what needs to be done in the national economies; and that it is what we intend to do in the fractal economy. This means that we policies in a number of places that should also be practised in the national economy in order to make it a socially just and environmentally sustainable economy: direct democracy in the realm of policy making, direct individual participation in the allocation of public/commons spending; all the practices that make up for what we call commons banking, a new taxation system (which we call ‘community contribution’ for marketing reasons); support for cooperatives over share ownership of companies; a return to common ownership of land effected through the banking system.