Thanks Bruce for sharing this video. Ive been trying to understand this guy. He really needs to find a way to make this more concise. Granted he is talking about the biggest problems in the world and nobody as yet has a solution that Ive heard easily explained! He says given the market requires consumption. He suggests that the problem is the market based system itself. Personally I believe we consume because we are unhappy and think consumption will bring happiness. The advertisers on TV have told us for decades what we need to buy to become happy, pretty, handsome, desirable and successful. I believe we need to eliminate the idea that scarcity exists and we all have to get more because there wont be enough. There is enough, but the rich get richer off of convincing us otherwise and in turn they accept that there is never enough so they keep taking and taking and taking. We take so much we must keep burning energy to drive the market and that is literally cooking our planet. The Lakotas called the white man wasichu which translates to fat takers because they saw them taking more than they could ever use, killing Buffalos for their robes and fat only or for sport. We must move to a sharing based economy that sees that nobody has more than they could ever use until everyone has at least what they need. Needs: Food Shelter Human Connections Purposeful pursuits Access to health care Access to information/education 1) I think we need to teach resilience and mindfulness. To teach people that happiness comes not from things and getting more but from meaningful connections to each other and a purpose in life. The happier we are the less we waste and feel we need to fill our empty space where we thought happiness would be when we got more. We need to learn the happiness of enough, of sharing, of creating versus taking and extracting. I think productivity must be redefined as producing a healthy, personally rewarding, sustainable life in harmony with our co-inhabitants and Earth. To do that we must inform and educate everyone about the true costs of consumption, extraction etc such as loss of biodiversity, loss of personal health, loss of life. Those costs must be shown in the price labels of everything we buy. Conversely the gains to ourselves and our world should be displayed on every good and service we buy such as living wage jobs created. We must be the ones who reward things that enrich all of the worlds people with our dollars rather than the ones who reward the worlds greediest most powerful people with them. 2) Those who profit from automation must compensate the labor force with higher wages to fairly share the gains of that automation. When the dockworkers union accepted modernization of the shipping dock that would reduce jobs they demanded much higher wages for those remaining to get a fair share of the gains of that modernization. As those middle class workers earn more they spend more into the economy and help more local businesses and workers spreading the growth. Those who profit from extraction must compensate the inhabitants of the places they extract for the damage done to peoples health often expressed economically as externalities. This could happen with a Carbon Tax that goes towards renewable energy with energy extractors. With pharmaceutical companies that kill people with medications and take subsidies from governments, they must make medicines free to the poorest people in the world. I believe we need a basic income that provides for the basic human rights of food and shelter. A tax on those who take too much ie the billionaires and millionaires must be created to reallocate the wealth to the masses. That would be a good start.
Posted on: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 22:04:40 +0000
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