QUOTES
In
a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence
to the property rights of "the Haves" over the human rights of "the Have Nots"
is inevitably called into serious question.
Demilitarization
presents a particularly obvious opportunity to eliminate significant waste of
financial and physical resources while simultaneously eliminating one, perhaps
the greatest, single cause of human suffering in our modern world. An estimated
ten to thirty percent of all global environmental degradation is due to military
related activities.
We
politely use the term investor when we speak of the speculators whose gambling
destabilizes the global market and then because they are investors we favor them
with tax breaks and special protection.
Money
is not wealth. Money is a number we agree to exchange for things with real value.
The very vocabulary of finance and economics is a world of doublespeak that obscures
such essential distinctions and in part explains why economists have such a hard
time understanding either money or the economy.
Ironically
we must conclude that the victory of global capitalism is not a victory of the
market as much as it is a victory for central planning. Capitalism has simply
shifted the planning function from governments which at least in theory are accountable
to all citizens to corporations which are even in theory accountable only to their
shareholders.
To
achieve true sustainability, we must reduce our 'garbage index" - that which we
permanently throw away into the environment that will not be naturally recycled
for reuse - to near zero. Productive activities must be organized as closed systems.
Minerals and other nonbiodegradable resources, once taken from the ground, must
become a part of society's permanent capital stock and be recycled in perpetuity.
Organic materials may be disposed into the natural ecosystems, but only in ways
that assure that they are absorbed back into the natural production system.
Living
capital, which has the special capacity to continuously regenerate itself, is
ultimately the source of all real wealth. To destroy it for money, a simple number
with no intrinsic value, is an act of collective insanity -- which makes capitalism
a mental, as well as physical pathology.
To
create a world in which life can flourish and prosper we must replace the values
and institutions of capitalism with values and institutions that honor life, serve
life's needs, and restore money to its proper role as servant. I believe we are
in fact being called to take a step to a new level of species consciousness and
function.
The
proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is to replace the global suicide economy
ruled by rapacious and unaccountable global corporations with a planetary system
of local living economies comprised of human-scale enterprise rooted in the communities
they serve and locally owned by the people whose wellbeing depends on them.
