THIS CAUSES…
THIS!
Friends, an article on Al Jazeera has prompted me to reflect upon where we might be headed in the future as, uneasily, we sit among the spreading ruins of the world economic system. The article was entitled, A Financial House Of Cards by Mark LeVine, an economics Professor. Please read it (link in Sidebar).
The article details how the world went on a spending spree of unparalleled proportions, all of it funded by easy credit which included remortgaging one’s house, no interest loans, credit with no repayments for several years, and credit given to people who were unemployed or who didn’t earn enough to meet the repayments, etc. The mantra was: you can have anything you want and you can have it now!
The banks and finance companies made it all possible and the Business Barons licked their lips! So people got caught up in the madness and, believing the mantra and seeing all the cheap consumer goods, borrowed themselves silly and, for a time, everyone was happy. World stockmarkets reached into the stratosphere and real estate values soared and it looked as though the party would never end. Well, it has but some folk don’t want to believe it!
And now we wonder about the future while world leaders run in circles trying this, trying that, but the collapse continues and unemployment grows and recessions begin to turn into depressions. There is talk of more strict regulation of financiers and banks, the opening up of tax havens, spending our way out of the mess, etc.
Levine said, “After all, a long-term drop in global consumption is one of the few conceivable ways to stop the slide toward the tipping point of global warming and environmental degradation, not to mention the increasingly violent resource wars and global poverty, that are the inevitable outcome of a world economic system premised on limitless growth and consumption.” The emphasis is mine!
The key words are ‘limitless growth and consumption.’ Obviously, we can’t have a system based upon this false premise yet that is what the current economic order of the world is based upon. That is what the Business Barons and the wealthy want to see returned, an unregulated, greed-based capitalist system that allows them to reap enormous profits without regard for the environment or for the cruel inequalities it generates (see photos).
The bottom line is that the capitalist economic system must be changed. It doesn’t work. It is deeply flawed, unworkable, has within it the seeds of its own destruction. The only solution that I can see is for Governments to, via taxation and repossession, get rid of the wealthy class who control most of each countries’ assets then use the sale of those assets to redistribute wealth more equitably and to build needed infrastructure like schools and hospitals.
Then we need a hybrid political system that merges aspects of socialism (so the less capable are looked after) with a strongly controlled and regulated capitalist system where environmentally-friendly innovation and enterprise are encouraged but greed is punished via a sliding scale of taxation that takes more and more as profits rise. Wages and bonuses in corporations must also be controlled and limited.
We need a new world order where war is a dirty word and no country is allowed to have weapons or armies. None. All armament factories must be used for making medical equipment. All soldiers must become park rangers or boy scout leaders.
We need a new political system. No person who is wealthy or religious should be allowed to hold political office and no politician should be allowed to fraternize with senior management of any corporations or religious fanatics and other fundamentalists. We need an information system where all MSM Empires are broken up and returned to being numerous small outlets who truly represent their communities.
Then we need to return to living in small sustainable communities again, move away from cities which tend to become high energy-consuming, polluted, traffic-snarled nightmares as well as safe havens for the depraved (as a walk down Oxford Street in Sydney will quickly attest) and drug dealers.
We need to find pleasure in a simple lifestyle, one that rewards simplicity, humbleness, caring, sharing, compassion, creativity, altruism, decency, morality, etc.
Let us, the people of the world, use this collapse to move forward, to get rid of the rotten apples in our barrel, to abandon failed, elitist systems, to create a Brave New World!
Our Leaders can’t be trusted. They and the Robber Barons will just give us more of the same!
More of the same is suicide!
The party is over indeed. I see the American right wing nuttery as already gone into “Lets blame the Demoncraps” Also Alan Keyes an x runner for the POTUS job himself, and who by any yard stick is barking mad has called Obama a ” dangerous communist ” Their little shell game is coming unstuck, and the reaction is palpable.
Keyes was even having a go at Obamba over the abortion debate,not bad eh Obama is still looking for the Whitehouse toilet.. Of course this is all to cosy up and get the right wingnuttery on board for the final victory, ha ha. and take the heat off the real criminals in all of this.I see that not only is it already Obama’s fault the world is going to end, the anti Jewish lobby is in full fettle.Oh yes the protocols of Zion and Rothchilds are away and running he he.And dig this the Doctors at Auschwitz weren’t experimenting on the inmates there, they were helping them.This type of asinine rubbish is sprinkled amongst comments on the economy at different web sites.You can’t make this stuff up!
And for mine I love it. I have a smile on my kisser that only plastic surgery itself could remove.Right wingers scream out to be ridiculed as the morons they all are.
Is all I can hope for is the retards that voted for Bush, Blair, and Howard get what they deserve. Oh yes I’m serious.But what’s next? um who knows, but there is going to be a lot of tears, that’s for sure.
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Great comment, Phill. Loved the ‘smile on the kisser’ line! I just heard some boffin from an American Enterprise Institute on the BBC opining that the U.S. wouldn’t allow E.U. regulation of its banks and financial institutions. No, they love the Ned Kelly option better!
Only the people can solve this mess but they…well, if they start to starve a bit, lose their homes, then perhaps they’ll rebel…
Then again, perhaps they won’t!
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Phill Reply:
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I wouldn’t hold my breath David waiting for any full on reaction from the chattering class.
Although! I did see the plebs coming out on the streets of Belfast, maybe the start of something? It’s funny, well not really I jest, a lot of people are going to be victims of their own greed.I know at least two family’s who have hocked up their houses to the hilt when they thought the mining boom was going to last forever. I was called an oaf for telling them it was all going to end in tears.Of course as you know a lot of purchases were made on the silly money that was made in the mining industry.Some little factory in the back waters of Australia can barely make it themselves, much less pay the sort of money some of these people have been making.And this is where a lot of the trouble is/will come from.
But what is the most irritating of all, the people you have told to be more prudent and hard times in your own opinion were coming, hate you more than those responsible for it, go figure.
Well you figure it David your the shrink.
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Yeah, I’ve been shrinking for years, Phill. Wonder I’m not a dwarf!
P.S. Can we really blame the sheeple for being led astray by politicians and Robber Barons?
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Phill Reply:
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:55 pm
David, any blame I level at any time towards the sheeple and especially my own class of sheeple, is mostly exclusive to right wingers, who I have a pathological hatred for.I loath them not for having a different opinion, but for being greedy and self serving.Scratch a conservative you will nearly always find a red neck, large scale corruption, and you will find conservatives.They think they have been given a God given right to rule, and even the voting system is loaded up just for their advantage.They control the MSM and their stooges are in every conceivable position of government.Of course they are not all like this, as are lefty’s not Stalinists.
They are experts at playing on the fears of the plebs, the boat people,the Muslims are now under the beds with the reds,the union movement are all communists, and the greens. My God even the party that purports to represent me hates the greens.yada, yada, yada, yada, you are getting my drift I am sure.
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It’s time we gave up the left-right extremes, Phill, adopted a more middle course. What we need to do is to see ourselves as citizens of the world, all equal, all as important as each other, all entitled to share equally in the world’s resources, all responsible for the planet and all responsible for the other humans who we share it with.
Ideas of class, elitism, political ideologies, billionaire magnates, corporations, wars, empires, gods, etc, have all had their day. We need to move forward, set up a new world order.
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I have tried that David, the right is not interested.They see the planet as theirs to plunder at their will, they will not change. And hey David don’t misunderstand me mate, I am not an extreme left winger, I am like you looking for a middle road.Che Guevarra and all the other left wing heroes, well cemeteries are full of them.
The next few months will be interesting, the financial crash just may be the catalyst for some real change.Although listening to the Queensland Premier this morning with her comment to the media “who could have predicted the crash would come this quick and be so serious” I thought my God, these people DO really live on another planet.They haven’t a clue about what is going on.
Whether the ship stays buoyant or sinks, her ego tells her she must be at the helm.And my wife wants to know why I drink.
Still despairing.
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You people need to pay more attention to some of the quiet wise men that write comments here. If you were paying attention you would have seen the comment, if you drink slower you can drink more. That is a wiser comment than Luxury yachts cause poverty. Luxury yachts do not cause poverty. What these yachts may do is play a part in the use of resources in an unsustainable fashion.
The comment drink slower and you can drink more points out the ultimate root cause of our financial crises. The desire to have everything that you desire NOW. Also the list of desires that many people have has become insastiable due to advertising and a pressure created within our society, which may have biological roots, to at least keep up financially with your neighbors. I say that this may have biological roots because it may be connected with the desire to appear to be a more desirable mating partner because you have more wealth which would indicate to potential mates (No I do not mean that in an Australian way) that you can better provide for children.
Also there is in many countries a real need to not allow yourself to become part of the lower economic class of society because the crime rates in such neighborhoods are so high. But even that is related to the pressures created by society to appear to be wealthy. America has exported this virus of expectations to much of the world.
Furthermore if we adopt more of the idea that children are raised by a village then perhaps the need to try to “run faster” than your neighbor will be reduced.
I still think that advertising more than any other factor is responsible for getting us in to this mess. Advertising will have to be a big part of the solution.
Now to get back to the Yacht. Yachts can be made of wood. Wood is a renewable resource.
The production of the yacht provides jobs for many people. That reduces poverty. The only thing that one could criticize about the yacht it self is that it runs on fossil fuels. But if the people who use the yacht avoid taking trips from Amsterdam to Sofia by car or to the Canary Islands by plane they may use less fossil fuels than other people who travel a lot by car and plane.
So perhaps what is more reasonable is that someone should not be allowed to have a Yacht, a palace, a vacation home, and a Lear Jet to fly them around between the 3 all at the same time. Not only does such a person use way more fossil fuels than they should be allowed to, even if rumors of new fossil fuel finds in North Dakota and Montana are true, but it then creates a standard that other people will try to emulate.
Of course our world economy is not unsustainable primarily because there are a few hundred thousand rich people living like there is no tomorrow. It is primarily unsustainable because of the couple billion of the worlds middle class trying to achieve every thing that the couple hundred million of the worlds over middle class have and those couple hundred million trying to stay ahead of the couple billion and dreaming of making it to the top of the hill were the few million reside. Clever advertising will be needed to put the brakes on the run away train.
Yet people have become so cynical because they have been lied to for so long they may see any such attempt to put brakes on the train as just a trick devised by a new bunch of crooks out to stop them from achieving their dreams. The only people who would have a chance of pulling this off in the US would be a committee of Lt. Cols and Colonels but only after they have gotten rid of the generals who have played such an important role in this deception.
If some day our science becomes so advanced that we can create almost anything from sand or sea water, and we have abundant non polluting energy, and a stable population, then perhaps our material dreams could be almost limitless.
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Phill Reply:
February 24th, 2009 at 12:36 am
And if my auntie had balls she would be my uncle.
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Jeannie Reply:
February 24th, 2009 at 2:04 am
What if instead of building yachts for the rich the manufacturer built small fishing boats for starving people in a third world country so they could feed themselves and earn money to support their family and maybe buy a few things which would support more people. There would still be jobs building boats, but a lot more people would benefit from many boats instead of just one.
Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone had enough instead of just a few with way too much and way too many with almost nothing?
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I have been reading and listening to the “experts” here in the US tell all us worried consumers (not citizens) that if we just spend more money everything will be all right again. That if we give more money to the banks they will lend again and we can go back to the way things were. No one mentions that the way things were can’t work. As you said David we are destroying our enviroment. They don’t seem to understand that we live on a finite planet and that the only thing that grows forever is cancer.
On top of that the way things were was not making us very happy or healthy. We had a lot of stuff, but getting it, taking care of it, even keeping it was taking valued time and resources that could have been much better used. Added to that is the stress of trying to keep up in our increasingly faster and faster moving society.
So many people I talk to say that things are rough now, but that in a little, while it will all get better. They just don’t get it; what many be better for them/us will be terrible for people in much of the rest of the world now and for all of us much sooner than we can realize.
Life as we know it must change. If we don’t do it now by choice life will be changed for us, as it is being changed now, in ways that will be increasingly devastating.
Too many people are resisting the changes that are needed if we are to survive and thrive in the new world we must create. I fear for the future!
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bravhart Reply:
February 24th, 2009 at 4:58 am
Jeannie
I loved your comments, but one thing you said really stood out to me…”and that the only thing that grows forever is cancer”. If left alone I wonder if cancer would actually cure itself…by running its course. Maybe it is a tool in mother natures tool box with the purpose of fixing or extending the evolutionary march. Like many diseases though if one is too efficient they are also self defeating…If they sink the ship all aboard could drown.
Life as we know it must change…and it will and hopefully in the right direction. One of the benefits of our current situation is that maybe more and more of us can see the forrest now and hopefully move a bit more in the right direction.
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Jeannie, thanks for your sensible, constructive comment. That is what concerns me the most: that the status quo will be returned to favour the parasites that are bleeding the world and its people dry.
Bravhart, you’re right! Things must change. Dramatically!
PMQB, obviously you have no idea how the capitalist system works. It works on the premise that a few can be extravagantly rich while many are exploited. If you lived in the real world you would have noticed this.
I have deleted some of your comments because I don’t want my blog flooded with what are, most of the time, inanities! In future I will only publish your comments if they add to the discussion and make sense.
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I find the idea that, somehow out of the probable collapse of the capitalist system a better world might come about. I can’t see any reason for this optimistic outlook. Civilization has been run by and for the elites since its beginnings. For ten thousand years the masses have been there to be used and abused by the parasitic elites and the bulk of the population has accepted this state of affairs as the natural way of things. I wish I could see a reason to believe that whatever happens next in the world is going to be any different to what has been in the past. Most people are unable to think for themselves, they just follow orders from their betters and that is not going to change.
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Well, if we don’t change things, Loz, we won’t have a world left to rape and pillage. There is no choice and it’s the purpose of this blog (and others) to wake people up to the approaching catastrophic reality and to force changes to be made.
Shrugging one’s shoulders doesn’t achieve anything!
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