Vision: 8 Reasons Global Capitalism Makes Our Lives Worse

[Joanne98]

To many of us, a world where no one goes hungry, where there is no unemployment, where people are happy and they have spacious homes and lots of leisure time seems like fantasy. But it's not a fantasy for Helena Norberg-Hodge -- she saw it firsthand in the tiny Himalayan region of Ladakh, a remote mountain community that borders Tibet.

During the course of 35 years there, she also saw what happened when Ladakh was suddenly thrown open to the outside world in the 1970s and subsidized roads brought subsidized goods to the region. The local economy was undermined, the cultural fabric was torn apart. Unemployment, pollution and divisiveness emerged for the first time.

"This was Ladakh's introduction to globalization," says Norberg-Hodge. The "story of Ladakh can shed light on the root causes of the crises now facing the planet."

The account of Ladakh's transformation opens the new film, The Economics of Happiness, created by Steven Gorelick, John Page and Norberg-Hodge, the founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture. As Bill McKibben says early on in the film, according to a poll conducted every year since the end of World World II, happiness in the U.S. peaked in 1956. "It's been slowly downhill ever since," he says. "But in that time we've gotten immeasurably richer, we have three times as much stuff. Somehow it hasn't worked because that same affluence tends to undermine community."

http://www.alternet.org/environment/149552/vision%3A_8_reasons_global_capitalism_makes_our_lives_worse_--_and_how_we_can_create_a_new_kind_of_economy_/

[maryf]

1. The film End of Poverty

also explains how this has worked in many places...and by extension how it is creating a third world country here...wish I could rec more than once...

[dkf]

2. Ignorance is bliss too.

Does our understanding of what goes on in the world make us any happier? By this account living at a subsistence level growing your own food, with no TV or Internet in a small hut in Hawaii is probably the happiest life. Also, people don't know they are poor til they see what others have. Envy is probably the greatest source of unhappiness.

[TBF]

4. "Envy" is not the greatest source of unhappiness - it is the capitalism.

It is not envy, greed, or any other subjective feeling that we need to worry about here. The FACT is that capitalism destroys everything it touches, only making a profit for a very few. It's a pyramid scheme in it's glory - promises of riches for all but that never happens. At best the top .5% own most everything, another 3-5% serve as protectors to the masters, and everyone else is on their own.

[dkf]

5. Who care who owns what if you have your little happy commune that

Produces it's own food.

Is that not the point of the article, that isolated communities free from mass media and the excesses of capitalism are happier?

[TBF]

6. You need to read the entire article and not simply the title -

These the 8 points of the article (with supportive text, I deleted that because I didn't want to post the entire article):

1. Globalization makes us unhappy.

2. Globalization breeds insecurity.

3. Globalization wastes natural resources.

4. Globalization accelerates climate change.

5. Globalization destroys livelihoods.

6. Globalization increases conflict.

7. Globalization is built on handouts to big business.

8. Globalization is based on false accounting.

The author says it is time for a new way, and concludes it with 3 points: "First, we simply cannot continue to follow the trajectory we're on. Local economies are being decimated and the global economy hangs by a thread that will snap, likely in short time. Our planet cannot support our hunger for resources, our disregard for sustainability and our shortsightedness", "there are alternatives to globalization and suicidal capitalism" and third, "Which brings up the third point: It's time to get going."

That is what the article says.

[Demeter]

7. Globalism Rewards Fraud and Abuse

[pottersvilleusa]

12. Unregulated capitalism destroys

I think all forms of economics and gov't must be regulated. Otherwise greed wins out.

[blindpig]

3. Capitalism is a bad trade for humanity. n/t

[Locrian]

8. economic system

Any economic system that is:

1) designed to measure EVERYTHING only in $$
2) concentrate wealth
3) remove any "local" responsibility

is fatally flawed for the vast majority of people (and animals).
However, SOME make out like bandits.

[txlibdem]

9. The article: Big Capitalism is killing us, Small Capitalism will save us

The only problem with that logic is that every small capitalist wants to become a big capitalist. Then the whole thing starts all over again.

Money is the root of all evil. This has never been more true than today.

[fatbuckel]

10. Globalization would sting less if we contributed a little. We make almost nothing in this country.

Now we`re just fat and lazy. We consume. All take and no give. If we made stuff people wanted,we`d be better off. We could lead the way in newtech but it`s easier to whine and complain about how bad it is.

[Catherina]

11. The victims of global capitalism will put an end to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drlpkQTPr0Y

Rec'd