{"id":23858,"date":"2019-02-04T12:38:31","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T17:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/?p=23858"},"modified":"2020-07-31T15:20:47","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T19:20:47","slug":"the-spiritual-growth-of-wealth-redistribution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/the-spiritual-growth-of-wealth-redistribution\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spiritual Growth of Wealth Redistribution"},"content":{"rendered":"
>> Back to February 2019<\/a><\/div>\n

\"\"Over 10 years ago I went to live, study and work in the Santi Asoke community in Thailand. The Asoke group are fundamentalist Thai Buddhists who are building an anti-capitalist economy based on the economic model of bunniyom.<\/em> Bunniyom<\/em> is the pursuit of merit, whereas thunniyom<\/em>, the Thai word for capitalism, is about the pursuit of profit. The Asoke community believes that merit and profit are in opposition. When you make a profit, you lose karma. Their economy is centered on practices that generate positive karma, such as selling goods at cost, and festivals where goods are offered for free. I loved how the Asoke communities\u2019 spiritual beliefs had drastically shifted the way they participated in the economy. I wanted to contribute towards building an economy framed around wealth redistribution and spiritual growth in the United States.<\/p>\n

After studying Buddhist economics, and working at Schumacher Center to learn more about local economics, I got involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement. I was fired up, and I was also a member of the 1%. I began to feel urgency around understanding my family\u2019s wealth, my own wealth, and shifting my investments into alignment with my values. I wanted to move money off of Wall Street onto Main Street, and I was learning how to do that through my work doing research for local investing visionary Michael Shuman.<\/p>\n

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