The Rich Stand Accused- Capitalism is the source of social and environmental crises

[Jcrowley]

The Rich Stand Accused
By Louis-Gilles Francoeur
Le Devoir

Saturday 06 January and Sunday 07 January 2007

Capitalism is the source of social and environmental crises.

What do global warming, pollution of the atmosphere, streams, rivers and oceans, the exhaustion of natural resources, the accelerated extinctions of species, deforestation, the liberation of GMO into the environment, and - coming soon - the infinitely small and practically undetectable pollution of nano-materials have in common? Capitalism and the oligarchy that profits from it, as first cause, answers Hervé Kempf in a bombshell book published in Paris by éditions du Seuil.

<snip>

First, he explained in a telephone interview yesterday, the planet's ecological situation is worsening at a rate that neutralizes all the efforts of millions of citizens and ecological militants, to the point that the planet is in danger of crossing a threshold of irreversibility "within the next 10 years," he believes, on the basis of the speed at which negative outcomes are piling up.

<snip>

"We cannot understand the simultaneity of the ecological and social crises if we do not analyze them as two facets of the same disaster. This disaster derives from a system piloted by a dominant social stratum that today has no drive but greed, no ideal but conservatism, no dream but technology. This predatory oligarchy is the principal agent of the global crisis," writes Kempf. "The present form of capitalism," he adds in an interview, "has lost its former historic ends, that is to say the creation of wealth and innovation, because it has become a financial capitalism, disparaged even by capitalist economists. This capitalism, which destroys jobs by rationalizations, new technologies and globalizations, overall and everywhere increases the disparities between rich and poor within each country and between different countries," the journalist observes.

<snip>

And the reporter, known for his rigor and level-headedness, nevertheless concludes: "It is still necessary for ecological concerns to be based on a radical political analysis of present relationships of domination. We will not be able to reduce global material consumption if the powerful are not brought down and if inequality is not combated. To the ecological principle so useful at the dawning of awareness - "Think globally, act locally" - we must add the principle that the present situation imposes: "Consume less, share better."

<snip>

That's why, he says, we must "bring down the rich" rather than pull up the poor, in order to begin to respect the thresholds of irreversible deterioration of the planet's resources.

<snip>

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807G.shtml

[shain from kane]

1. Mein Kempf.

[JNelson6563]

49. My Cough.

:shrug:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. bringing down the rich

is what has been done historically (see the French Revolution). But to truly remedy the malady, we must eradicate greed, which comes from the notion that there isn't enough.

[The2ndWheel]

4. We'll have to get rid of progress then

Agriculture will have to go. We'll have to live by nature's limits. Maybe fear a predator or two, just to keep us honest. Bring chance back into everyday life to a greater degree.

Not saying don't do it, but if you want to get rid of greed...

[magellan]

7. We can't rid ourselves of greed

But we can certainly stop enabling and rewarding it.

[The2ndWheel]

9. Only if we let go of what greed has given us

Which is everything we have today.

[magellan]

11. I think that's a bit extreme

Unless you really think that rooting for berries and living in mud huts is going to stop greed.

I'm talking about things like stopping the government from rewarding businesses for screwing the public, in the squillion ways they screw us. That would be a good place to start.

[The2ndWheel]

33. Trying to solve squillions of problems is extreme

Once we solve a squillion problems, we'll just end up with at least twice as many.

Either way we'll have problems. I agree though, I can be a bit crazy with some thoughts. But we got to this point by being extreme(on a squillion levels). We're either going to have a habitat, or an artificial machine pumping at maximum efficiency, can't have both.

[shance]

18. Yes we can. If the power abusers would stop glorifying it.

nt

[magellan]

20. Greed will still exist

It's part of the human condition. But we'd put a good dent in its ill effects if certain powers would stop rewarding and enabling it.

[shance]

44. Im beginning to believe that greed exists where there's an overabundant philosophy of competition.

Greed in no way whatsoever has to exist.

That is, in my opinion, a rather lazy philosophy wouldn't you say? Then we don't have to try to take action and change anything.

Change takes discipline and group effort.

We can do much better, and it begins by realizing we can all have our needs met, IF we learn as we hopefully did as children, to share and not hoard things.

Just my thoughts.

[northzax]

65. well, see there's the rub

if greed is not innate in nature (cue someone linking Bartolemew De Las Casas' piece on the native population of Hispaniola) Then why do we need to work so hard to combat it? Why do all the big five religions preach that greed is bad, if it is not natural? You'd think, if it was not in human nature to do so, that there would be no need to teach charity and sharing, right?

[shance]

72. I heard something yesterday about charity in contrast to actually sharing.

Charity in and of itself is a form of patronizing someone else, where sharing with someone is realizing that giving and receiving is an act where both people receive.

Charity assumes that it is a one way action, where the act of sharing is the act of building a relationshiop with another person based on the various exchanges each individuals gives whether it be material, and/or experiential.

I thought it made sense. I think this is where our concept on giving has gotten derailed with the concept of charity versus sharing, which is prevalent in other cultures more than it seems to be in ours.

[Jcrowley]

8. Ah progress

It seems quite simple: beyond prosperity and longevity, and those limited to a minority, and each with seriously damaging environmental consequences, progress does not have a great deal going for it. For its adherents, of course, it is probably true that it doesn't have to; because it is sufficient that wealth is meritorious and affluence desirable and longer life positive. The terms of the game for them are simple: material betterment for as many as possible, as fast as possible, and nothing else, certainly not considerations of personal morality or social cohesion or spiritual depth or participatory government, seems much to matter.

Perhaps at this stage the terms are so loaded that we need new definitions of say, "progress", and we certainly need to ask a few questions as to which direction we are "progressing" and who's driving the vehicle.

[The2ndWheel]

12. And if there is a goal to it

If there isn't, then we're running around trying to catch up with nothing.

If there is a goal, what is it? When we reach the goal, will we know it? When we know it, can we stop? If you stop progressing, you fall back and die. So we can never stop, thus no end to it, so we can never catch up, so we need a goal, but we can't stop, so there's no goal, so we'll never catch up, so there has to be a goal, but if we stop....

[Jcrowley]

19. Good questions

and thoughts. These will be tumbling in my brain as I head out the door. Sure not to have an answer.

Well if you're heading towards the cliff's edge better to turn around and head backwards. And then what's the other one, "It's not am tter of going backwards or forwards but changing direction entirely", or something like that.

And of course those are just words.

Cheers.

[Jcrowley]

6. Learning from Ladakh

<snip>

Through Ladakh I came to realize that my passivity in the face of destructive change was, at least in part, due to the fact that I had confused culture with nature. I had not realized that many of the negative trends I saw were the result of my own industrial culture, rather than of some natural, evolutionary force beyond our control. Without really thinking about it, I also assumed that human beings were essentially selfish, struggling to compete and survive, and that more cooperative societies were nothing more than utopian dreams.

It was not strange that I thought the way I did. Even though I had lived in many different countries, they had all been industrial cultures. My travels in less "developed" parts of the world, though fairly extensive, had not been enough to afford me an inside view. Some intellectual travels, like reading Aldous Huxley and Erich Fromm, had opened a few doors, but I was essentially a product of industrial society; educated with the sort of blinders that every culture employs in order to perpetuate itself. My values, my understanding of history, my thought patterns all reflected the world view of homo industrialis.

Mainstream Western thinkers from Adam Smith to Freud and today's academics tend to universalize what is in fact Western or industrial experience. Explicitly or implicitly, they assume that the traits they describe are a manifestation of human nature, rather than a product of industrial culture. This tendency to generalize from Western experience becomes almost inevitable as Western culture reaches out from Europe and North America to influence all the earth's people.

Every society tends to place itself at the center of the universe and to view other cultures through its own colored lenses. What distinguishes Western culture is that it has grown so widespread and so powerful that it has lost a perspective on itself; there is no "other" with which to compare itself. It is assumed that everyone either is like us or wants to be.

http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/content/v10.4/norberg-hodge.html

What is greed? How is it fostered or dimished? What are the socializing processes involved?

It is often thought in our culture and promoted in our instiutions that people are "by nature" greedy. This is a mistake.

[RaleighNCDUer]

31. Wow. Fascinating little article.

Just glancing at it, my first impression was that there is something there - we all are victims of a bizarre culture which glorifies ownership and possessiveness, and I'm immediately given to think of Native American cultures which held all property in common, which ritualitally destroyed possessions to avoid undue attachment to them.

The core of western religious thought is based on possessiveness. The earliest stories in the bible are about relative quality of possessions (Cain and Abel's crops and livestock). Most the biblical laws are written for determining the value of possessions, whether it is slaves, wives, daughters, livestock, land or gold - not a lot of spirituality in all that. How much is our culture of greed is based on this pre-occupation with possessions? While hints of an older, less possessive culture permeate the texts, from the Judaic jubilee year where debts are forsworn, to Jesus' admonitions to sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, the primary lessons are all about material values, protecting your own properties by acknowledging the value of your neighbors' properties - thou shalt not steal, or covet your neighbor's wife, or his ass, or his ox; honor your parents, and the inheritance they leave you; you were yourselves once possessions, brought out of Egypt; etc.

Just a thought.

[piedmont]

32. Well, biologically we are all striving for the resources to survive.

99.9% of humans want to keep on living. The vast majority of them either conciously or instinctively (or both) want to reproduce. Just the basics of surviving and reproducing require some amount of resource use. So there's some level of "greed" built into living.

Security-- the feeling that you and your offspring will be able to survive in the future-- is also a requirement for most humans, and I think that's the part that drives most of our "greed." Your money and possessions do several things for you:
They give you (and your potential mate) physical, tangible assurance that you've "made it" and that you will continue to achieve success
They provide "insurance" in that you believe you can either sell them or use them to get through hard times.
They help you acquire more wealth presently.

So how secure do we need to be? How big does a squirrel's nut pile have to be for him to say "well I got mine, now it's time to stop?" Dunno. But we each are instictively padding our larder against hard times in the future. I think the biggest contribution of today's fat-cat corporate-style capitalist system is that we each feel much less secure than we might in even another version of capitalism (like dad's or grand-dad's), and thus our larder has to be larger in order for us to feel secure. Kinda like how stress hormones make your body store fat.

But it's interesting that most of us don't handle the abstract concept of money very well, and these folks end up with physical possessions, but little money or even monstrous debt.

[northzax]

66. I know I have made this point before

but maybe you, or someone else, can address it this time. Why does Norberg-Hodge not mention the social and economic stratification of the Ladakh plateau? there were royalty and peasants, owners and workers. Why is that model, where people were happy to be, in essence, serfs, a good one? Should we all be happy working for our betters, and not aspire to social or economic movement?

If you can't address this question, seriously, please refrain totally.

[leftofthedial]

13. greed is the grease

on the dildo of capitalism

[porkrind]

45. OMG, that's the quote of the night!!!

Thanks, I needed a giggle. It's so true. :)

[AZBlue]

28. Exactly.

If we all realized (1) that it's not a matter of your having it OR my having it but that we can ALL have it (food, shelter, clothing, and yes, material possessions) and (2) there's plenty to go around, so no one needs to hoard anything, then think of the poverty, crime and hate that could be erased.

[Crandor]

35. There is enough to go around, but if you make it available to everyone, then there won't be for long

Fear of poverty is the only thing that gets most people out the door. Take that away and they will just play World of Warcraft all day.

[IndyOp]

54. Even FDR did not take away poverty - people who were on the "dole"

had just enough to eat and cloth and house themselves; people who worked for government programs like WPA or CCC made more than on the dole but less than minimum wage paid by private employers -- and minimum wage wasn't so great a living. People were motivated to do more than sit around on the dole and they were motivated to compete for jobs provided by businesses. Unregulated capitalism is ecologically, socially, and morally wrong. Regulated capitalism - with social supports that recognize that the economy exists for us, we don't exist to energize the economy - regulated capitalism works. FDR saved capitalism in this nation as Hitler destroyed his unions, persecuted Germans who were turning to communism or socialism as a way to relieve their suffering, and guaranteed the rise fascism.

We don't need fear of poverty to motivate us to work, we do need some security - food, clothing, housing - in order to be psychologically healthy as individuals and healthy as a society. The vast majority of people will work for better than they can get on the dole if jobs are available.

[The Straight Story]

37. Getting rid of greed is like getting rid of sex

It just ain't gonna happen :)

[Jcrowley]

40. Helena-Norberg Hodge

goes into Ladakh. She is the first Westerner to go there. Upon arrival she has a guide who shows her around. After a while she asks the guide to show her where the poor people live. The guide does not understand what she is talking about. This occurs in the early 70's. Western influences arrive through the initial invasion of tourism. Other things arise as well, poverty being one of them.

Read more:
Located in the remote trans-Himalayan region of Kashmir, Ladakh or “Little Tibet” has been an enclave of Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism since 200 B.C. In Ladakh it is polite to decline any offer several times before accepting. Sometimes it is necessary to cover your cup or even veer away from your hostess as she approaches wielding a warm teapot and a plate stacked with homemade bread. If you do not decisively refuse, a Ladakhi host or hostess will never stop showering you with gifts of food, tea and time. Even children know no other way.

In Ladakh, if a child whose allowance for an entire month is twenty rupees (approximately forty-three U.S. cents) spends five rupees on a small chocolate bar, she will instinctively share it with all the other children hovering around the candy stand, whether she knows them or not. It doesn’t matter if adults are watching. This practice has nothing to do with rules or punishments. It comes from a deeper place. Like most Americans, I had been raised to believe that the more I earned and achieved over and against my competitors, the more I would have, the more I would be. In Ladakh, however, this is not the case.

<snip>

“My,” she said, “you always say: my this, my that, but we say our---our bags, our food, our land…like that.” Perhaps noticing the tattling tint of my cheeks, she added, “I guess the languages are just different.”

In time I realized that my pronoun use disclosed a profound distinction between my own culture and that of the people of Ladakh. The nun’s confusion at my constant division of all things into categories of “mine” and “not mine” begins to reveal her own radically relational concept of self; a concept so unlike my own that had I not seen it articulated in the language and lives of the Ladakhi people I would never have recognized it as a viable possibility.

<snip>

http://www.worldandi.com/subscribers/feature_detail.asp?num=25039

[porphyrian]

3. Capitalism isn't any more to blame than breathable air for allowing those responsible to live.

Unchecked corporatism, the bastard child of capitalism's rape by the greedy and unscrupulous, is to blame. The distinction needs to be made because the problem is real but the premise of blaming capitalism is wrong.

[piedmont]

16. I agree. It's hunger for power and money that's the root cause of environmental destruction.

[RaleighNCDUer]

21. And what is unchecked corporatism but excessive capitalism?

In our capitalist system greed is rewarded, and excessive greed is rewarded excessively. A socialist system is capable of putting in place the checks which can inhibit such "unchecked corporatism"; a capitalist system, by its nature, works to eliminate such checks.

[porphyrian]

23. Wrong. Corporatism is a subset of capitalism, not the logical extension of it.

All corporatists may be capitalists, but not all capitalists are corporatists. I don't know how to explain it more plainly. Greed is a human condition, not a capitalistic one, and it is rewarded world-wide, regardless of the economic system in place. A capitalist system is also capable of putting in place the checks which can inhibit unchecked corporatism, and only the corporatists (and fascists) are interested in eliminating such checks. Profits can be made responsibly without victimizing people and destroying the Earth.

[ProfessorGAC]

24. That's Very Close

Corporatism is an outgrowth of Austrian School dynamics and is really more a political endeavor than an economic system. It's capitalism run amok, and you're right, is not a logical extension of capitalistic theory.

Again, you're right in that greed creates it, and there is nothing in conventional capitalist theory that suggests the gov't has a place in making businesses MORE successful. Even Adam Smith didn't believe in that. In fact, Smith was one (like Keynes, later) who believed that the system needed to be regulated and checked by gov't. Corporatism requires that gov't actually do the bidding of industry as the expense of the citizenry. That requires POLITICAL capital, not money. The money is an outgrowth of the political activism inherent in the corporatist philosophy.

So, from a purist's POV, corportism isn't even economics. It's finance and politics.
The Professor

[porphyrian]

26. I knew that.

;)

[ProfessorGAC]

27. And I Knew You Did

Backatcha!
The Professor

[Mikey929]

30. Socialism?

Sorry, but socialism does not work. I read a great book by that Russian MIG pilot that defected in the early 80's. He tells story after story about how inept and absurd the economy is in the Soviet Union with its pretense of equality and one's fellow man, etc. It is a joke. The people live in poverty, there are long lines for simple things like bread and toilet paper. The meat in the markets is old and rotten. And the reason is -- more than anything else -- that the people just don't care about doing a good job. Their jobs are guaranteed, and they have no stake in the company's output. So why work hard? When you take away personal reward, the incentive to work hard slips.

It is human nature to accomplish things and succeed and seek reward. It just is. Even my 2-year-old, when I try to do things for him, stops me and says, "My do it." (please pardon his grammar). So it is human instinct to want to do things for oneself. The natural follow-up to that is the instinct for reward.

Capitalism has its faults, but it has no equal as a system to create the most wealth for the most people.

[Jcrowley]

36. If that's so

why is it that capitalism is the ruling mechanism for most of the planet and most of the planet is impoverished? Not to mention on the knife's edge as far as even being habitable by any organism larger than a pig.

In light of all the grotesque inequalities self-evident in our capitalistic society to say it has no equals as a system to create the most for the most is beyond understanding.

The models that people reflexive go to to disparage socialism are not even socialism, as the one you cited, and are mistakenly cited due to years of cultural conditioning and the most massive propaganda campaign in the history of history.

[Mikey929]

47. Response

1. Of course there are inequalities in capitalism, just as there are inequalities in life. That does not mean that the system is faulty.

2. As for your "why is the world impoverished then" argument, capitalism must be combined with the rule of law in order to succeed. The government must be there to enforce property rights and the law of contracts. Otherwise, anyone can just take anything. Many impoverished countries are infected with dictators and governmental corruption that prohibits free enterprise.

3. You say that the USSR was not socialist. Then what was it? I understand socialism to be when the government controls the means of production, as was the case there.

4. What system is better than capitalism for creating the most wealth for the most people? I'm curious to hear what your alternative would be.

[pampango]

70. Your third point is particularly appropriate.

I think that most socialists would have defended the USSR, while it still existed, as a socialist economy doing the best that it could. Now that its economy has been exposed as a failure, and its environmental catastrophes revealed as truly horrendous, most socialists will deny that it was really a socialist country.

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

5. Gore's Platform?

LOL

[Warren DeMontague]

60. Where, precisely, do you get that? nt

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

61. Just Kidding A Bit...

But isn't the article basically saying that because of capitalism and greed, we're destroying the environment? Connection to global warming, etc.

This seems a bit extreme for Gore, so I was kidding around I suppose, but it is certainly a valid contention by the article's author.

[Warren DeMontague]

69. I disagree with the fundamental premise of the article, and I also think that's a misrepresentation

of what most environmentalists- and Al Gore- stand for. It's not a question of being a "bit extreme", it's a completely different philosophy. Gore is hardly a back-to-the-caves Communist. The gist of this screed seems to be taking environmentalism as an excuse to rehash the past hundred years of failed Dialectical Materialism Marxist Blah Blah. Failing to note, of course, that Communist countries historically have been just as capable- if not more- of fucking up their environments as we have.

If you listen to what Al Gore is actually saying (as opposed to the blather of right wingers who pee in their pants about how he wants to "ban the internal combustion engine"- even as they work to ban the birth control pill) he makes a very cogent point about how capitalism, free enterprise and progress aren't inimically opposed to environmental protection and sustainable, renewable approaches to our societal needs- if anything, they're complementary. First off, we're not going back to the caves-- and capitalism isn't going away. The old-school, crusty, neo-luddite approach to things is to keep doing them the way we have been, letting the petroleum industry crony-ponies write laws in their own favor, etc. etc. The way out of our problems IS the way forward, and there are tremendous opportunities available to the folks who solve these problems. The Chinese understand this, that's why they're sinking billions into photovoltaics right now.

And the author's arguments about what, precisely, standard of living is "unsustainable" are more zero-sum game thinking. What we need are rational, sane approaches to a very real problem. While I think that corporations need much stronger oversight, particularly in this country, and I would be the first to argue that the Uber-Rich need to carry their share in terms of the societal contract, this kind of Class Warfare bitching isn't going to accomplish diddly.

[jhrobbins]

10. I also think it is fallacious to say that there are no rich liberals...

Hollywood is only a small example that wealthy people can also be liberal. My family is loaded and everyone (almost) is liberal.

"no ideal but conservatism"

[piedmont]

14. Right. The USSR and Soviet-bloc eastern europe were an ecotopia!

Well, except for the pollution of the air, land, and water, the destruction of the Aral Sea, etc. etc.

[alcibiades_mystery]

17. THose being the only possible alternative to unrestricted global capitalism?

:shrug:

The command economies of the USSR were indeed destructive. Here's the secret though. Ssssh: They were capitalist entities in essence.

[piedmont]

22. The OP railed against "Capitalism," not "unrestricted global capitalism"

The soviet-style economies sprang to mind as the most un-capitalistic real-world tested economies I could think of.
I am certainly not in favor of the unrestricted, unregulated, non-sustainable "growth, growth, growth" system we have now. What alternative to capitalism (not just the brand of it we both abhor) are you thinking of? Has it been put into effect by any modern nation?

[alcibiades_mystery]

25. Well

I see the Soviet economies - while being control economies to be sure - as neo-capitalist economies in the way that they viewed production (efficiency, growth, exchange value, etc.). I am, of course, not alone in this assessment; many European and American leftists broke with the Soviet Union for just this reason. Now, this isn't to say that the Soviet economies weren't awful, terrifying, and destructive. Of course they were. Then again, so is free market capitalism.

As for whether any modern nation has successfully deployed any alternative to capitalism, the answer is no. But, then again, capitalism isn't a successful social form either (see awful, terrifying, and destructive, above). It's also a flimsy cover for status quo thinking. Prior to the emergence of free market capitalist systems (which arose in league with the modern nation state), nobody had seen THOSE economic or governmental forms (the economies of ancient Greece were slave and war economies, whatever small scale craft production and trading went on: in Marx's famous formulation, these were Commodity-Money-Commodity operations, not Money - Commodity - Money' operations like the industrial capitalism Marx was analyzing). Finally, there hasn't been ONE capitalism, but many. Even staunch capitalist economists would distinguish between various forms of industrial, monopoly, neo-imperial, and post-industrial capitalist forms: there is no single Capitalism in history, just variations, and each variation introduced new forms of social organization, etc. The question, as I see it, is not "What have we seen before?" but "What are we liable to see next?"

Cheers.

[piedmont]

43. I don't exactly disagree with you--

I won't call the Soviet economies capitalist per se but I see where you're coming from.
The OP basically is saying capitalism (meaning ALL capitalism) is responsible for environmental destruction, and I can't agree with that because like you, I see many flavors of capitalism possible-- some which would be less destructive than others.

As for what we are likely to see next, I shudder at the possibility of what the present corporatist-heaven could evolve into. Peak oil could shut that whole "globalism" thing pretty quickly once we come to that.

[alcibiades_mystery]

15. Capitalism has nothing to do with the rich

The rich are as much an effect of capitalism as the poor.

Capitalism is a complex system - of thought, of action, or processes, of organization, of language. Until we start looking at capitalism as a systemic process and stop trying to find the Evil Villain (TM) behind All Our Problems (TM), then we will remain as stupid and destructive as ever. Now, this isn't to say that capitalism (as a system) isn't a major factor in the problems you name: of course it is. Perhaps even THE major factor. But "bringing down the rich" or any other such nonsenses won't change the system (as the capitalist control economies of the old Soviet Union, still hooked into production and the universal equivalent, made plain). That's a fucking fairy tale for children.

[rman]

52. "Changing capitalism so that it won't produce ridiculously rich individuals"

- imo just a rephrasing of "bring down the rich"

Communism never brought down the rich, so from that you can't conclude that "bringing down the rich" doesn't work.

[NashVegas]

63. Global Capitalism - The Cost of Bringing the Goods to Market

Is the reason the petro-chemical industry always gets what it wants, and although you don't hear about them so much, the shipping industry.

Those who bring the goods to market make the world turn because it must turn, for them.

[AZBlue]

29. I have a problem with targeting "The Rich"

First of all, it makes him sound petty, jealous and childish.

Secondly, and more importantly, just because a person is rich does not mean they are a bad person. There are many rich people who give back, very very generously and who do not abuse resources or other people. This generalization is so wrong. I'm not saying that Candy Spelling sitting in a 64,500 foot mansion in her gift-wrap room or Howard Stern receiving an $83 million dollar bonus isn't also wrong and just absurd, but not every rich person is like that.

Thirdly, and even more importantly, blaming the rich for all of capitalism's wrongs shows an incomplete lack of understanding of capitalism. The rich are a small minority - they are hardly enough to keep this huge machine humming along. It's the lower and middle classes that participate the most, out of greed and materialism.

I think a more appropriate target is corporations (and by targeting corporations you will thereby eliminate some of the rich - or at least eliminate some of their money). And a goal of greater equality, whereby you raise the poor and lower the rich and meet more in the middle, makes more sense to me.

Nonetheless, I am intrigued by a lot of the other things he has to say and am hoping there's an English translation of this book published.

[Jcrowley]

38. Richest 2% hold half the world’s assets

Richest 2% hold half the world’s assets
By Chris Giles, Economics Editor in London

Personal wealth is distributed so unevenly across the world that the richest two per cent of adults own more than 50 per cent of the world’s assets while the poorest half hold only 1 per cent of wealth.

A survey released on Tuesday shows that middle-income countries with high growth rates still have a long way to go before they have a hope of catching up with the levels of prosperity of the richest.

Adults with more than $2,200 of assets were in the top half of the global wealth league table, while those with more than $61,000 were in the top 10 per cent, according to the data from the World Institute fpr Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-Wider).

To belong to the top 1 per cent of the world’s wealthiest adults you would need more than $500,000, something that 37m adults have achieved.

So much of the world’s wealth is concentrated in few hands that if all the world’s wealth was distributed evenly, each person would have $20,500 of assets to use.

Almost 90 per cent of the world’s wealth is held in North America, Europe and high-income Asian and Pacific countries, such as Japan and Australia.

While North America has 6 per cent of the world’s adult population, it accounts for 34 per cent of household wealth.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/41470ec0-845b-11db-87e0-0000779e2340.html

What if a "good person" is using so many energy units so as to be robbing from the future but the real mean bastard who lives frugally only uses one lifetime's worth? The next generation may see that "good" person as more of an evil than the mean bastard.

They are a small minority in number but not in power.

I tend to agree that focusing on just the rich does not take us to the root of the problem and to focus on capitalism is also not taking our analysis as far as it can, and possibly should, go.

[rman]

53. Am i being jealous when i want back the money that someone stole from me?

[GliderGuider]

34. I disagree utterly with this analysis.

The root cause of all the ills Kempf describes (and more besides) is purely and simply the convergence of our geometric population growth with our genetically mediated competitiveness and our naturally selected drive to maximize our own comfort.

It matters not a whit what economic system we choose to mediate our exchanges of goods and services. While capitalism may be a bit better at permitting the concentration of wealth, this has happened since time immemorial under socialist, communist, monarchic and feudal systems as well. No, the problem is rooted much deeper than that, and chopping off the heads of the oligarchs will not pull up those roots.

I know that the argument is seductive, especially on an egalitarian, progressive political forum such as this. The temptation to revolution is very strong, especially when the problems are so severe and the disparities are so great and so visible. But if we're to have a revolution, let's not just guillotine the nearest aristocrat. Let's make sure they are part of the problem, and not just another (rich, powerful) bystander. In fact, I suspect that the rich are just as much victims of those root causes as the rest of us - just as driven by their genetic heritage and the intrinsic nature of reproductive life itself.

Killing Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and George Soros won't help if Shakespeare was right: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves..."

[Jcrowley]

41. Good points

The Economic Man and the Pursuit of Happiness

As was mentioned earlier, in the free-market capitalism, it is the interest of the individual that is paramount. Everything revolves around the individual and his/her desires. The question is, what is it that an individual, be it the amoral Economic Man or not, REALLY desires? Is it education; money; sex; youth: a palace: two palaces: private jets; servants and slaves….what? None of these things is an end in itself but rather the mean to achieving something else. One studies to gain knowledge, to get a better job, to earn more money, to buy a better house, to eat better food, to…. and it continues. You see behind every desire, lurks another. If you examine all desires, you’ll see that they all eventually lead to one ultimate desire: happiness.

<snip>

In other words we are happy when we dream of achieving/possessing that which we desire, but as soon as we get it, we cease to want it. To sustain that feeling of happiness, we have to move on to satisfying new desires. This means that in order to be even modestly happy, one must continually satisfy one’s desires. Desire comes in all forms and shapes from small ones such as satisfying hunger to large ones such as dominating the whole world. But as we go about satisfying our desires, we find that the rush of happiness is harder and harder to come by. And consequently our long periods of contentment, interspersed by small periods of happiness are replaced with long periods of frustration and discontentment interspersed with smaller and smaller periods of happiness; this despite the amassment of all sorts of titles, possessions and experiences. In 2000, Robert E. Lane of Yale University published the results of his investigation into the state of people’s happiness in the market democracies. This is what he found out:

“Amidst the satisfaction people feel with their material progress, there is a spirit of unhappiness and depression haunting advanced market democracies throughout the world, a spirit that mocks the idea that markets maximise well-being and the eighteen-century promise of a right to the pursuit of happiness under benign governments of people’s own choosing. The haunting spirit is manifold; a post-war decline in the United States in people who report themselves as happy, a rising tide in all advanced societies of clinical depression and dysphoria (especially among the young), increasing distrust of each other and of political and other institutions, declining belief that the lot of average man is getting better, a tragic erosion of family solidarity and community integration together with an apparent decline in warm, intimate relations among friends.” <6>

You see, a society that is built around the self-interest of the individual can not provide anything except material things. The free-market economy, especially consumerism equates happiness with possession of material things. It seeks maximum economic growth to generate maximum corporate profit, fuelled by mass consumption and provided by mass production,. In this system it is the promise of happiness that is sold rather than the product. That ownership of material things brings happiness is a big lie that has been around for thousands of years. It is just that in those days they didn’t have TVs and Internet to propagate it effectively.

“I said to myself, "Come now, I will make a test of pleasure; enjoy yourself." But behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, "It is mad," and of pleasure, "What use is it?" I searched with my mind how to cheer my body with wine -- my mind still guiding me with wisdom -- and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven during the few days of their life. I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself; I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house; I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, man's delight. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”<7>

<snip>


http://www.uruknet.biz/?p=m27579

[The2ndWheel]

55. We're a tribal species

"a tragic erosion of family solidarity and community integration together with an apparent decline in warm, intimate relations among friends.” "

But we're attempting to to live on too large of a scale.

The reason for that being:

"one must continually satisfy one’s desires"

Even though...

"But as we go about satisfying our desires, we find that the rush of happiness is harder and harder to come by. And consequently our long periods of contentment, interspersed by small periods of happiness are replaced with long periods of frustration and discontentment interspersed with smaller and smaller periods of happiness"

This is why the pursuit of happiness couldn't have been a worse phrase to grant onto humanity. There is no such thing as a perfect state, yet we continue to attempt to find it.

[rman]

57. Don't you think pursuing happiness increases the chance to find happiness

even though we won't find a perfect state of happiness?

You're not saying that pursuing happiness isn't worth it because one can never be perfectly happy, are you?

[The2ndWheel]

62. Whatever happiness is, I don't think you find it

It doesn't find you either.

It goes back to our whole way of being and seeing the world. It's the need for control. We have to pursue and find this idea/moment/whatever called happiness. Then we mold it to fit our needs. We seem to think we lost it.

I'm not sure what we're doing as a society/culture/civilization if we(the royal one) don't feel that there is some perfect state to humanity. Why else would we do what we do? Isn't that the endgame of progress? If it isn't, why do we make such a big deal about it?

[rman]

64. There's always room for improvement even if

- or perhaps because - perfection is not possible.
I think that's what 'society' is doing: improve on the situation.

[The2ndWheel]

67. So it's just endless improvement?

No destination? Can we stop, or is it improvment, at any cost? Is there a point where we can say enough, or do we make an artificial world to replace the one that was real and needed improving? Can we go too far, or is that impossible with no end point?

[piedmont]

42. I was thinking along these lines when I wrote post #32

I like your analysis.

[porkrind]

46. OK, how about saying that

rich people are too dangerous to have around a decent society?

Concentration of wealth creates extremely powerful and disproportionate influence in rich individuals. Just about any history shows that this influence leaves the society in which it exists worse off. A healthy society, IMHO, has an active immune system to this sort of thing, and promotes economic equality. Once wealth disparity gets too out of control, the society is totalitarian. At that point, terms like oligarchy or plutocracy are academic but the results are similar.

[nam78_two]

39. K&R.nt

[porkrind]

48. K&R

[The Backlash Cometh]

50. I wouldn't quite call it bringing them down.

I'm just saying, give us poor and middle class the power to go after them in the civil courts. Many of the rich are getting rich by abusing their public positions, or private office in private organizations. Give us the power to sue them and bring restitution to the community.

Before you know it, people will learn to cooperate with one another in order to get respect, rather than to arrogantly believe you have the power to screw them over, because in a corrupt society, there is always a way.

[WinkyDink]

51. Who needed to be told this, about capitalism? I used to tell students that

the Industrial Revolution was the worst thing that ever happened to the planet.

[Yavin4]

56. Greed Still Exists in Socialist and Communist Nations

It will take other forms, but it's still greed. Party bosses and the well connected in China, the former Soviet Union live lavish lifestyles.

The answer is that you have to harness and control the greed for good rather than bad. For example, individuals and corporations that are environmentally-positive should be rewarded, and those that are not should be punished severely.

Drive a hybrid car, get a tax break. Drive a SUV, get a tax hike.

Pollute a river, go to jail.

Greed can be a primary motivator for innovation and progress. The problem is that the incentives are mis-placed.

[earth mom]

58. The problem is that most everyone in the U.S. thinks they're gonna be rich someday...

it's the American Dream right? The only thing is that the majority of us aren't gonna be rich-EVER-no way, no how. If the majority of people in this country woke up to this simple fact and started working toward making their own lives better-as in demanding that the government support living wages, universal health care, the creation of more Unions as well as demanding that Corporations & the rich pay their fair share of taxes, as well as make Corporations stop all the damn poluting they are doing or fine the hell out of them, then most people in this country would be living WELL. It's all just common sense, yet here we are! :banghead:

[cascadiance]

59. It's more about finding a system that worships a "cycle" rather than "growth"....

Corporatism is a bastardized outgrowth of capitalistic theory that rewards the elite at the expense of the masses.

In the same way communism also was a bastardized outgrowth of socialist theory that rewarded the elite at the expense of the masses too.

Capitalism by itself isn't a system of governance. It is a system that if done in a more pure and simple form works at a local level between individuals and provides a system of allowing two sets of individuals through their own motivations and resources undertake useful and mutually productive relationships. The key is that it needs governance and rules to work under that can be as practically enforced and desired at a local level instead of just high level rules for bean counters to follow.

If people want to make and buy stuff that helps themselves but hurts the environment around them that costs others, the others need to have a part of those transactions to keep the cost from being pushed onto them. If such rules are done so that all parties aren't affected overly adversely by having the third party (government) come in to keep the costs from being pushed onto society, that to me is the system that we should work towards.

Capitalism worships growth, which worships utilizing external resources that through their usage puts upon society externalized costs that at some point damage the rest of society, even though those engaged in these transactions feel very successfully rewarded through the growth born by their production and consumption of such resources if they don't have to feel any adverse affects that the society bears.

We need a system that allows people's local greed and quest for economic advantage to work towards building a cycle rather than unchecked growth. Hopefully a system of governance that puts these sort of rules in place that everyone feels encouraged to follow since it directly helps or not following them directly hurts them and that it isn't too expensive to enforce at a local level too. Planned economies like communism don't work, since at a local level, it is just seen as getting in the way, and the capitalistic system of barter itself is being interfered with when you have things like "global property".

We need to find a system of governance that doesn't rely on those in charge of corporations to call the shots, but provides us as citizens to have the ability to effectively put in place rules that corporations follow, and are motivated to follow to have our society work towards a healthy "cycle" of living, rather than a pattern of "growth" of living that in many cases may not be sustainable over time.

[GeorgeGist]

68. Do I hear maximum wage ...

anyone?

[swag]

71. One could say as much for procreation.