|
|
7 Aug 2006 @ 16:30, by armos. Economics, Financing, Banking
On August, 2, 2006 has started the project of creation of Power of the Sunlight as " patrimonial place " of the Absolut-Versions of the New Civilization which can be named the Absolut-Civilization, the Civilization of Spirit, the Civilization of Harmony - Freedom - Efficiency, the Civilization of the Open Society, the Open Civilization. To members NCN, probably, it will be interesting to observe of how this process is carried out, as we to ourselves see civilization prospects that we are going to do that by 2015 results of our initiative were felt on all Planet. This article} contains the most general structure of our approach to start civilization process More >
|
|
|
|
4 Aug 2006 @ 15:20, by shreepal. Economics, Financing, Banking
Capitalism is bad because this society intentionally inflates human beings’ desires in a calculated manner by resorting to advertisements etc. and ensures provision of means to satisfy them. This is nothing but gearing the society to the ideal of sensual enjoyment. Enjoying sensual pleasure is not the end-destination of life on its evolutionary path. In pursuit of its avowed objective of inflating desires and satisfying them, Capitalism resorts to the economic mechanism of earning profit – generating capital -, buying human work – the priceless exertion of life on matter -, selling product of that work at a premium and again earning profit – a vicious circle. To ensure the safe and smooth play of this mechanism, Capitalism evolves capitalist democracy and market culture. In turn, it gives birth to economic exploitation, dazzling wealth and abject poverty, societal injustice and repression. There is no way to escape these inevitable and unfortunate socio-economic byproducts in Capitalism. Capitalism brings about degeneration in human beings and their culture and Mankind is bound to reject Capitalism sooner or later.
Socialism, and its refined form – Communism - , is also a bad social system. This society in order to create abundance of material comforts for its citizens resorts to social engineering wherein chains are put on its citizens’ mind’s creativity. Socialism is comparatively better than Capitalism on the count that it ensures the provision of means to meet the essential needs and legitimate desires of its citizens. But the evil part of this system is that in order to ensure economic justice it creates the dictatorship of a few people – who are almost always merely ordinary human beings in all respects and controlled by their petty desires and animal instincts – over the vast number of common people. And, this dictatorship encompasses every sphere of human activity - the most agonizing part among them being the human mind and its creativity. In order to eliminate any chance of opposition that may eventually turn into challenge to the social system, this system as of necessity can not and does not permit human mind’s free thinking lest it may have remote semblance of incongruity with the established norms. It is slavery of thoughts and mind.
There is need of a social system better than Capitalism and Socialism that may allow the freedom of thought and mind to its citizens but at the same time impose on them the discipline of the light of higher consciousness. The discipline of higher light cannot be imposed on the society by enacting laws. Such a discipline is possible only when there is a majority of those people who have accomplished the higher light in their consciousness. If there are no people in that society who have experienced higher light of consciousness and the discipline is sought to be imposed by laws and rules, then such society would be reduced to that of religious priests, fathers and mullahs. The society and the state of religious priests, fathers and mullahs is not better than Socialism; it is worse than even Capitalism. More >
|
|
|
|
 3 Aug 2006 @ 20:16, by i2i. Economics, Financing, Banking
The above topic is an expansion on Koravya's comment about the International Banking System (from the following post) open to all who are interested in following through on that issue.
More >
|
|
|
|
30 Jul 2006 @ 08:09, by shreepal. Economics, Financing, Banking
Marx has admitted that he stumbled upon the concept of dialectics, on which his entire philosophy is founded, while he was a student of Hegelian Philosophy of History. He claimed that with Hegel this Dialectics was standing on its head and he simply made it stand on its feet. Hegel maintained that it is the Idea, the Spirit, that is real and there is conflict between two irreconcilable contradictions elements inherent in this Idea. This conflict is between thesis and antithesis, and their conflict is resolved by emerging synthesis. Out of this conflict, this contradiction, human history is evolved. Therefore, the history, with all its evolved institutions, is merely an unfolding of the Idea. Marx says that he retained the dialectical process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis as propounded by Hegel but made the historical conditions the real thing and the Idea a reflection of these material conditions in human mind, in his thoughts and culture. Hegelian invention was an accidental discovery by Marx and its correction was his genius. He also very frankly admitted that principles of capital working he discovered from the study of British economy and the revolutionary element he learnt from the French revolutionary Communes. It was his brilliant mind that integrated these three diverse elements into a harmonious philosophic edifice that logically explained human history, economics and culture, and gave hope to the exploited millions of salvation in impending Socialist and thereafter Communist society.
What are dialectical principles?
Engles says:
Outlines of the General Plan (for the application of dialectics to Nature): (1 )... (2).... (3) Dialectics as the science of universal inter-connection. Main laws: transformation of quantity and quality - mutual penetration of polar opposites and transformation into each other when carried to extremes - development through contradiction or negation of the negation - spiral form of development.
He further says:
And indeed they (laws of dialectics) can be reduced in the main to three: The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa; The law of the interpenetration of opposites; The law of the negation of the negation.
The founders of Marxism claimed that the dialectical process was a universal one, governing from material natural phenomena to the evolution of human society.
F. Angles says:
We are not concerned here with writing a handbook of dialectics, but only with showing that the dialectical laws are real laws of development of nature, and therefore are valid also for theoretical natural science.
Therefore, it was claimed that the predictions made by the application of these laws were accurate and scientific. By applying these "laws" to capitalist society, prediction was made that this society would transform, as of necessity under the natural process, into Socialist society and this view of Socialism was dubbed as scientific Socialism. It was claimed that in due course of time, when old habits of capitalist mentality die under the new social system, Socialism would transform into Communism and state would wither away. It was explained that in socialist society "each would work according to his capacity and get according to his work" while in communist society "each would work according to his capacity and get according to his needs."
'Dialectics' as conceived by Hegel and applied to 'material world' by Karl Marx is a 'mental construct' and it has all the limitations, which mind has.
When dialectics is applied to material world in general and history of mankind in particular, dialectician is faced with the problem of irreconcilable nature, that is, how to reconcile the 'human will' with the 'dialectical determinism'. To reconcile the irreconcilable 'will and determinism', it was proposed by F. Endless and K. Marx that dialectical principles operate in the 'general' way and not in 'specific individual' instances.
When this explanation is applied to social history of mankind, the time scale of operation of dialectics is extended to centuries, if not millenniums. In this situation, though the past (of human history) seems to be explained by dialectics in logical manner, the future changes predicted by dialectics may not be verifiable in decades or centuries.
The dialectical model has a peculiar component of spiral form of its (evolutionary) movement. When dialectics is applied to human history, it predicts that the 'primitive Communism', or the first stage of social evolution of history, would be repeated at higher level of the 'spiral' in the form of "scientific Communism'. Marx pointed out that in primitive Communism, there is 'direct' struggle of people with nature as there are two contradictory classes (nature and mankind), that there are no social class conflicts there and that owing to this absence of social class-conflicts there is no 'wastage' of human energy in the form of social class conflicts.
Likewise, in the 'modern' or 'scientific Communism' also there would be 'direct' struggle of people with nature as there are no two social conflicting classes and no wastage of human energy.
Then, how the 'modem Communism' would progress further in the dialectical terms? How the 'modern Communism' would become the 'thesis' and would give birth to the 'two contradictory' elements inherent in it? Would the 'modem Communism' embark on a new uncharted course of evolutionary life history? Would the 'direct' struggle of people with nature effect the very constitution of mankind, or in other words, would it change the human race into a new and higher race?
These are profound questions that are thrown open by the dialectics, if that be the working mechanism of nature.
|
|
|
|
 22 Jul 2006 @ 14:42, by ming. Economics, Financing, Banking
Yesterday I needed to make an important payment, with money I had in my U.S. account. Without thinking it through very well, I decided that the fastest way of getting the money over here was Western Union. "Money in Minutes", you know. Had I thought it through better, I'd have realized that the easiest thing is just to ask my bank to increase my cash advance limit, and then take them out in an ATM. As I'd have to use the same cash advance limit to make a Western Union payment. But I didn't think that through at first.
So, I got my bank to make $1000 available, and went to the Western Union website, and ordered the wiring of the money. And it said it had been ordered, but before the money would be available, I'd need to call them to answer some security questions.
Now, it has been a lot in the news recently that Western Union has blocked money transfers for anybody with an Arab name, in some misguided attempt of hindering the funding of terrorists. Which sucks if you're one of the millions of innocent people named Mohammed. But that doesn't really apply to me.
But it turned out that they've implemented a new elaborate security verification scheme. Which consists of asking me questions based on what they've found in the public record about me. They asked me about 10 different multiple-choice questions. They were basically two kinds: 1. giving me a list of domain names and asking if I've registered any of them, and if so which one, or whether I just don't recognize any of them. 2. giving me a list of addresses, and asking me whether I've had any relation to them, and if so what city they're in, chosen from multiple choices, or whether I don't recognize any of them.
I own lots of domains. But yet they gave me several lists of domains I'd never heard of, which I told them. And they gave me lists of addresses I didn't recognize. Except for one, which was an address I used to have a mailbox at, 15 years ago. And then they gave me a list of 5 cities, to identify which one would go with the address. The problem was that my address at East Broadway was in Glendale, California. But the choices were "Los Angeles", "Riverside", "San Bernardino", and a couple more. I explained that to the operator, that there must be some mistake, the address I recognized was in Glendale, and not in any of those, but if I had to choose one of them, the closest would be Los Angeles.
So, then after all 10 questions like that, he informs me that, sorry, but I don't pass the Western Union expanded security requirements. Which, obviously, are screwed up somehow. Essentially they take the kind of stuff that is in one's credit record, or in domain registrations, and if there's anything that happens to be a bit incorrect, or wrong, or one doesn't remember one's address of 15 years ago, one is out of luck.
Now, the problem is also that they already took my money. I.e. they charged a $1000 cash advance from my account when I ordered the money transfer, which registered on my account immediately. And now the guy says he'll cancel the transaction, but that it is no concern of his how and when my bank responds to that.
A call to my bank, after they opened a number of hours later, reveals that all they see is that I spent $1000 with Western Union, and if anything would be reversed, they'd estimate that it might take 2 or 3 business days. Which in itself is ridiculous, of course. If you can do an instant subtraction, you can of course just as easily do an instant addition. But that is often not how banks work. I can spend my money instantly, but if, say, I do a wire transfer between countries, it takes 5-7 business days. There's no good excuse for that, of course. Anyway, in this case the problem is that my $1000 instead of being transferred "in minutes" got locked up for a few days, and I've already spent my maximum cash advance limit for the day, and despite that there were more money in my account, there was no way of getting at them that day. Oh, I could have gone and bought a huge dinner with it, and VISA would have charged it instantly, but that's a different matter.
So, what sucks? Well, Western Union is really cumbersome, has a dysfunctional set of security requirements, and operators who's job it seems to be to give you a hard time, rather than helping you. And if they don't want your transaction, they keep your money for several days more anyway. Which might well be because the banking system sucks. More >
|
|
|
|
14 Mar 2006 @ 23:31, by ming. Economics, Financing, Banking
Doc Searls wrote an essay about The Intention Economy. You know, that is in contrast to The Attention Economy. So, let's talk about that first. Like, one fine article is The Attention Economy and The Net by Michael Goldhaber. He says stuff like this:If the Web and the Net can be viewed as spaces in which we will increasingly live our lives, the economic laws we will live under have to be natural to this new space. These laws turn out to be quite different from what the old economics teaches, or what rubrics such as "the information age" suggest. What counts most is what is most scarce now, namely attention. The attention economy brings with it its own kind of wealth, its own class divisions - stars vs. fans - and its own forms of property, all of which make it incompatible with the industrial-money-market based economy it bids fair to replace. Success will come to those who best accommodate to this new reality. [...]
So, at last, what is this new economy about? Well if the Net exemplifies it, then you might guess it has less to do with material things than with the kinds of entity that can flow through the Net. We are told over and over just what that is: information. Information, however, would be an impossible basis for an economy, for one simple reason: economies are governed by what is scarce, and information, especially on the Net, is not only abundant, but overflowing. We are drowning in the stuff, and yet more and more comes at us daily. That is why terms like "information glut" have become commonplace, after all. Furthermore, if you have any particular piece of information on the Net, you can share it easily with anyone else who might want it. It is not in any way scarce, and therefore it is not an information economy towards which we are moving. What would be the incentive in organizing our lives around spewing out more information if there is already far too much?
Well, my title gives it away, of course. There is something else that moves through the Net, flowing in the opposite direction from information, namely attention. So seeking attention could be the very incentive we are looking for. Parenthetically, I have now rejected both parts of the conference title; no economics in the conventional sense, and not digital information either. You might conclude I am speaking at the wrong conference. I would rather say it has the wrong title. Except the title did serve its purpose. It did get your attention, and that was something, in fact a lot.
Attention, at least the kind we care about, is an intrinsically scarce resource [ 4 ]. Consider yours, right now. You are reading this paper, or more likely, since it is intended to be delivered at a conference, listening to me speaking it. You have a certain stock of attention at your disposal, and right now, a large proportion of the stock available to you is going to me, or to my words. Note that if I am standing in front of you it is difficult to distinguish between paying attention to me and paying attention to my words or thoughts; you can hardly do one without doing the other. If you are just reading this, assuming it gets printed in a book, the fact that your attention is going to me and not just to what I write may be slightly less obvious. So it is convenient to think of being in the audience at this conference in order to consider what attention economics is all about. A lot of people have talked about the Attention Economy, and written books. Now, Doc Searls says that he doesn't entirely understand all of it, and it all sounds a little too much like marketing and advertising guys talking about "eyeballs". Which I kind of think too. Anyway, Doc is quite a new-thinker in terms of markets and where things are going, in part as one of the authors of the monumental Cluetrain Manifesto, which said cool things like:we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. we are human beings and our reach exceeds your grasp.
deal with it. So, now, Doc thinks up the term "Intention Economy" as something more desirable than the "Attention Economy":The Intention Economy is about markets, not marketing. You don't need marketing to make Intention Markets.
The Intention Economy is built around truly open markets, not a collection of silos. In The Intention Economy, customers don't have to fly from silo to silo, like a bees from flower to flower, collecting deal info (and unavoidable hype) like so much pollen. In The Intention Economy, the buyer notifies the market of the intent to buy, and sellers compete for the buyer's purchase. Simple as that.
The Intention Economy is built around more than transactions. Conversations matter. So do relationships. So do reputation, authority and respect. Those virtues, however, are earned by sellers (as well as buyers) and not just "branded" by sellers on the minds of buyers like the symbols of ranchers burned on the hides of cattle.
The Intention Economy is about buyers finding sellers, not sellers finding (or "capturing") buyers.
So, like, I express what I want. I'm going to Tahoe, I need a hotel and a rental car. I don't need the insurance, and my budget is so and so. And then the potential vendors could go to work on trying to accommodate me, and they can give me an offer.
Now, I don't think "Intention Economy" is a very good term for it. Well, it is a great term in itself, but to me "Intention" is a more noble word I'd like to reserve for other things than just what I'm in the market for buying. Like, what I want to do in life, for example.
Various people comment that most of us don't really know exactly what we want up front, so it isn't a great thing to build an economy on.
As Goldhaber and others who talk about Attention Economy point out, economies are typically based on something that is scarce, which then is traded. But, aha, that sort of indicates how Doc is right. In practicality it easily becomes just another word for corporations trying to grab my attention so they can sell me something. Because who's going to trade my attention? Well, websites and marketers. Somebody's trying to grab my attention, and sell it to somebody who wants it. Attention Economy isn't really centered on me, and really it should be, like what Doc intends with the Intention Economy. It should be about me and what I want. As he points out, advertising is an enormous waste. 999 people need to waste their time looking at something they don't want for one person to maybe get what they want. Or worse.
Could my purchasing intention be a scarce item that one can exchange in an economy? Well, potentially. One can sell a "lead", and this is in a sense a superb lead. I want something, for sure, and I'm in all likelyhood going to buy it, the question is just from whom, and what the exact conditions are.
I'd say the battle isn't really between whether it is attention or intention, but rather between whether it is a buyer's market or a seller's market. Or, better, it is whether we focus on what is needed or what is offered. An industrial age capitalistic market mass produces a lot of cheap stuff and convinces people that they need it and that they should buy it, and it doesn't really matter if they really actually needed it, as long as they buy it. Doesn't matter if they'd rather have had something else. Now, new technology could now well allow for that everybody could get something different. Mass customization. In a lot of areas it is no longer inherently necessary that I get the exact same thing as a million other people. A computer manufacturer can be geared for assembling a computer just for me, to my specifications. A travel agency can construct a travel plan particularly for me.
It is still largely a market controlled by the BigCo's, so at first these things are just a gimmick to persuade me to buy from them, whether their product actually really is what I need.
What would change it would be if I and most other people were sufficiently well informed, and there were a sufficient amount of alternatives. And a sufficient amount of organization on the buyer side.
Imagine I had a website that aggregated needs. We could concentrate first on needs for buying stuff. What products or services people want to buy, and exactly how they want them. So, what if there were a way of assembling these in a systematic way, quickly and in large volume. So, let's say I could represent 100,000 people who wanted to buy computers, and I had the specs each one was looking for. Could I, or rather this aggregated buyer association, present this massive list of needs and wants and specs and requirements to a series of vendors in a meaningful way? Hey, we need 100,000 individually customized PCs, can you deliver? You could imagine that you could both act as a large volume purchaser, who needs a really really good deal because of the volume, and still ask for individual requirements for each item. That would be new.
There are computer manufacturers that let you customize the PC you order. There are websites that will let you set the price you want to pay for something, like a plane ticket. Reverse auctions. But as far as I know, you're dealing with the service individually, and it is run by a BigCo travel agency outfit that doesn't really have to care a lot about you individually. It is just another way for them to sell some tickets they might not have sold otherwise.
But what if our reach actually went farther than their grasp? If we, formerly known as the "consumers", were big enough in numbers to spell out our terms, or we'll take our business elsewhere.
If our information was well enough organized, it might go some steps further, into what is not just simple buying/selling transactions. Like, here we are, 10 million people, and we spend 10 billion dollars per year on electricity. We'd like to offer 50 billion dollars to anybody who'll come up with an energy source that means we'll never have to buy metered electricity again. You get the idea. If the masses are organized in a way so they know what they want altogether, there's leverage to be able to ask for something quite different from what they'd get if they were just individual consumers with no real choice. Like, asking never to have to buy another one of those products again.
You could imagine a market that was completely upside down. Or downside up, really. Where buyers suddenly were the scarce commodity, rather than the products. OK, companies have to compete for customers today. But imagine the customers were the big guys, and the vendors had to bend over backwards to meet their demands.
I'm not sure I can come up with a better cool name fo it. The Demand Economy, the Request Economy, the Buyer Economy, the Need Economy. I give up.
If enough people easily could get enough information about what is possible and available to know what they want in some detail, and they were able to notice if they got it or not, and they were able to coordinate that information better and faster than the vendors can manage to mislead and confuse them, and they were able to band together to carry out large aggregated transactions, then the market would certainly have changed, whatever that would end up being called.
It is something about a distributed market being aggregated. You know, like anybody can have a blog, and any blog can have a syndicated feed, and anybody can have an aggregator that shows the total content of lots of blogs very easily. And, together, this becomes something that competes quite well with mass media. We could imagine a similar thing for economic activity. More >
|
|
|
|
5 Dec 2005 @ 20:37, by rishi. Economics, Financing, Banking
So far this is only a collection of important quotes and article pieces, plus my poem at the end whose title is;
"The Only Good Consumer is a Very Dumb Consumer".
I will refine it as an article series on spirituality in time, explaining that you can't be a willing part of consumerism, sharing it's values and methods, and still claim to be spiritual. The two can't and never did mix, just as greed and egotism, (the hallmarks of consumerism) cannot effectively function alongside love, clarity and social responsibility. Anyone who says they can is either grossly naive and misinformed, or just plain evil.
To prove this assertion, read the following material which will show you beyond a doubt that materialism/consumerism is indeed evil, and will be the death of most if not all of humanity....
*********
From the CNN article of October 3rd 2003,
Spending Our Way to Disaster
By Justin Lahart
CNN/Money Senior Writer
The consumer debt bubble in the United States could make the stock bubble seem like nothing.
The American consumer has become deeply addicted to spending, running up even higher levels of debt in order to live in a fashion that is beyond his means. And the world has become equally addicted to the consumer continuing to burn through cash.
It’s a dangerous situation—potentially a bubble that dwarfs even the US asset bubble that burst in 2000… The perseverance of consumer spending over the past several years is credited with keeping the economy afloat…
“If there’s a bubble, it’s in this four letter word; Debt,” said Merrill Lynch Chief North American Economist Dave Rosenberg. “The US economy is just awash in it”.
Indeed, consumer credit and mortgage debt are both a higher percentage of disposable income now than they’ve ever been before.
US consumer spending accounts for around 70% of US gross domestic product.
But rather than using such rate reductions as an opportunity to save money, consumers have, as a whole, used them as an opportunity to spend more.
“We’re a what’s-my-monthly-payment nation,” said northern trust chief US economist Paul Kasriel. “The idea is to have my monthly payments as high as I can take. If you cut the interest rates, I’ll get a bigger car.”
US consumer spending accounts for around 20% of world gross domestic product.
But here is another situation where the United States is spending more than it makes. The current account deficit—the gap in the United States’ trade in goods and services with the rest of the world—has risen to about 5% of the total economy.
So the world economy is leveraged to the US consumer. And the US consumer is leveraged to the hilt. There are now more registered cars on the road in the United States then there are licensed drivers.
Clearly something has to give. “Nobody can pinpoint when this process will come to an end,” said Carlos Asilis, a portfolio manager with the hedge fund Vega Capital management. “But it is very clear that it can’t go on forever.”
From the article;
Mechanisms of Inequality
Cash Crops
Although the impoverished nations seldom lack agricultural resources, these resources are rarely used for their won benefit, or even basic needs. Much of the fertile land in Third World countries is used to grow export or “cash crops”, the profits from which do not go to those who toil to; produce them. Coffee, cotton, tea, animal feed, tobacco/sugar, vegetables, fruit, heroin, rape seed, soy, cocoa…the list is endless and is closely linked to the long legacy of colonialism. The farmers and laborers who produce these crops have little or no control over what is grown, or who it is sold to. They are usually paid poverty or even starvation wages and so they remain poor.
“The global consumer society casts a particularly long shadow over forest and soil. El Salvador and Costa Rica, for example, grow export crops such as bananas, coffee and sugar on more than one fifth of their crop land.” From the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, cited by Allan Thein Durning.
Unfair Trade
The prices for global trade are controlled by the rich nations, through the commodity markets, the stock exchanges, international trade agreements, tariffs and quotas…impoverished countries, let alone individuals, do not have the economic leverage to influence these systems to their benefit. Simply opting out is not a practicality- whole social systems are reliant on the import of Western technology, which poor countries lack the industrial infrastructure to manufacture for themselves, because they have been kept poor by unfair trade. Turning their backs on the West has almost always been followed by boycotts and vast international pressure. How then do you re-organize a society to produce for local need unless it can be done overnight? And if it can’t be done overnight, how do you escape from this vicious circle?
Debt
Almost all Third World nations owe money to the rich nations, who enthusiastically and irresponsibly encouraged them to borrow during the 1970’s. interest rates rose dramatically, and as a result, those countries have been left paying interest bills that in many case have now exceeded the value of the original loan. Little of this money reached the poor, (except perhaps in the form of bullets from a dictators internal security forces) but it is now they who are having to pay. Countries unable to meet their debts have had economic structural adjustment programs forced upon them by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, both of which are controlled by, and have their headquarters in, the USA. (ESAP is euphemistic acronym translated by African campaigners as, “Eat Shit and Perish”…) ESAP’s require the debtor nations to “tighten their belts”, and cut back on social and welfare programs, education, healthcare and food subsidies, with disasterous consequences to the poor. Emphasis is then placed on earning foreign exchange for debt repayments by- you guessed it- yet more cash crop production, and the dropping of trade protection barriers.
In 1993, for ever $1 given in aid, rich nations took back three dollars in debt payments” (from the World Development Movement).
The net effect of all this is that economic power flows from the poor to the rich…and we end up in a situation where the richest fifth of the worlds’ population is able to monopolize 83% of its’ wealth, while the poorest fifth is left to subsist on only 1.5%. The gap continues to rise, and the consequences of this appalling situation regularly appear on our TV screen in the form of famine reports, wedged in the middle of adverts telling us that nothing is ever enough.
From the article;
How Should We Then Live
The following were compiled by a Canadian-based group called, “Global Awareness in Action”. They are provided by the Native American Sunbear in his important book; Black Dawn/Bright Day. These statistics date from 1990.
Each Minute
51 acres of tropical rainforest are destroyed
35000 barrels of oil are consumed
50 tons are fertile soil are washed or blown off cropland
12000 tons of carbon dioxide are added to the atmosphere
Each Hour
1692 acres of productive dry land become desert
1800 children die of malnutrition and hunger (15 million per year)
120 million dollars are spent for military expenditures (1 trillion dollars per year)
55 people are poisoned by pesticides; 5 die.
Each Day
230000+ babies are born
25000 people die of water shortage or contamination
10 tons of nuclear waste are generated by 350 nuclear plants
25000 tons of sulfuric acid fall as acid rain in the northern hemisphere
60 tons of plastic packaging and 372 tons of fishing net are dumped into the sea by commercial fishermen
5 species per day become extinct
American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports 2002 statistics
Arlington Heights Illinois-
Nearly 6.6 million people had cosmetic plastic surgery in 2002, according to statistics released today by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, (ASPS)
A Variety of Relevant Quotes by prominent authors, political figures and social revolutionaries;
Consumerism is a term used to describe the effects of equating personal happiness with purchasing material possessions and consumption. Happiness through consumption is largely an illusion, but don’t tell that to the advertising industry. Advertisers spend 200 billion dollars annually…that’s right, $200 billion trying to convince us to buy.
In Canada, advertisers spend an average of $370 a year on every person trying to get them to buy stuff. In the US American consumers get hit with three times that amount.”
It’s no wonder then that by the time the average North American turns 70 years old, they will have spent 3 years of their life, listening to or reading, or watching advertisements—an average of 60 minutes per day”
“Give the public the ‘image’ of what it thinks it ought to be, or what television commercials or glossy magazine ads have convinced us we ought to be, and we will buy more of the product, become closer to the image, and further from reality”
Madeline L. Engle
“Over-consumption is the mother of all environmental problems,” says Kallie Lasn, the founder of the Vancouver based Media Foundation. “For the first time in the history of capitalism, consumption itself has become controversial,” Lasn told Time Magazine in 1997.
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” Socrates
By some estimates, Graydon says, a young North American may see between 20,000 and 40,000 TV commercials a year and, when all forms of advertising from various media are factored in, as many as 16000 advertisements a day.
It is important to recognize that behind the razzmatazz of consumerism, we all remain dependant on basic natural resources-land, air, water, and biodiversity-for every product and service. There can be no free lunch on the environment.” Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environmental Program.
According to United Nations statistics, the average North American consumes 14 times more than a Mexican and 35 times more than a person living in India does. The UN’s Human Development Reports indicate that 86% of the purchases for personal consumption are made by 20% of the worlds’ population. These reports show that unrestrained consumption broadens the gap between the poor and the rich.
The Dutch National Institute of Public Health and Environmental protection, (RIVM) , which publishes the Annual National Environmental Outlook, says that “the purchase of more and more products makes it impossible to achieve environmental objectives”.
“Our world has enough for each persons’ need, but not for his greed,”
Mahatma Ghandi
“You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.”
Eric Hoffer
“Christmas is a school for consumerism-in it we learn to equate delight with materialism. We celebrate the birth of One who told us to give everything to the poor by giving each other motorized tie racks.”
Bill McKibben
“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”
Will Rogers
“He who knows that enough is enough will have enough”
Lao Tzu
There are two ways to be rich-one in the abundance of your possessions and the other in the fewness of your wants. “
E. Stanley Jones
“That I live every hour of every day in an environmental crisis I know from all my senses. Why then is not my first duty to reduce, so far as I can, my own consumption?”
Wendell Berry
“Do not accumulate wealth while millions are hungry. Do not take as the aim of your life fame, wealth, or sensual pleasure. Live simply and share time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.”
Thich Naht Hanh
“Human beings in the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental change are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.”
World Scientists’ warning to humanity, 1992
“The ‘environmental crisis’ has happened because the human household or economy is in conflict at almost every point with the household of nature. We have built our household on the assumption that the natural household is simple and can be simply used. We have assumed increasingly over the last 500 years that nature is merely a supply of ‘raw materials’, and that we may safely possess these material by taking them…and so we will be wrong if we attempt to correct what we perceive as ‘environmental’ problems without correcting the economic over simplification which caused them”.
Wendell Berry
“Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its’ lifestyle.”
Pope John Paul II
“With each passing day, it is becoming increasingly clear that the strategy of environmental exploitation that characterized the 20th century is reaching the end of its’ natural life. We are in the early stages of a transition from an attitude that, in Herman Daly’s felicitous phrase, ‘treats the Earth like a business in liquidation’ to one that is committed to preserving the plants’ natural capital.” The Principle underlying this shift is really quite simple: if we want a high quality of life for ourselves and future generations- a high quality of life in all its’ senses-we cannot continue to degrade the quality opf the natural systems of which we are a part.”
Carl Frankel
“Above all, we should question the consumer ethic, which uses up non-renewable resources, creates inequality and injustice, generates pollution, destroys other species and upsets the balance of nature. The consumer ethic not only defiles the environment by creating undesirable change in the biosphere but also corrupts the mind and body by defining pleasure in terms of ownership and absorption. Waste Itself is a human concept; everything in nature is eventually used. If human beings carry on in their present ways, they will one day be recycled along with the dinosaurs,”
Peter Marshal
“Having more and newer things each year has become not just something we want, but something we need. The idea of more, of increasing wealth, has become the center of our identity and security, and we are caught up by it, as the addict by his drugs.”
Paul Wachtel
“The level of consumption that we identify with success is utterly unsustainable. We’re gobbling up the world.”
John Robbins
“We must convince each generation that they are transient passengers on this planet earth. It does not belong to them. They are not free to doom generations yet unborn, they are not at liberty to erase humanity’s past nor dim its’ future”.
Bernard Lown and Evjueni Chazov
“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect”.
Aldo Leopold
“Since after extinction no one will be present to take responsibility, we have to take full responsibility now”.
Jonathan Schell
“Yet to me it’s always seemed that when you have an economic system whose major tenets are planned obsolescence and conspicuous consumption, which is American climax capitalisms’ major litany, you are basically dealing with an economic system that’s run on a formulae for planetary suicide”.
John Nichols
“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 make capitalism a mental, as well as physical pathology.”
David Korten
“We must go through a natural revolution if we are to survive on earth. We need to change peoples’ perceptions. If there’s no environment there’s no human race. We are in state of global denial.”
Ted Turner
“The major problems in the world are the result of the differences between the way nature works and the way people think.”
Gregory Bateson
“There are two laws that we had better take to be absolute. The first is that we cannot exempt ourselves from living in this world, then if we wish to live, we cannot exempt ourselves from using the world. If we cannot exempt ourselves from use, then we must deal with the issues raised by use. And so the second law is that if we want to continue living, we cannot exempt use from car.”
Wendell Berry
“In the past, it was possible to destroy a village, a town, a region, even a country. Now it is the whole planet which has come under threat. This fact should compel everyone to face a basic moral consideration; from now on, it is only through a conscious choice and then through deliberate policy, that humanity will survive.”
Pope John Paul II
“A renewal of economic life depends on the conscious choices and commitments of individual believers who practice their faith in the world…we cannot separate what we believe from how we act in the marketplace and in broader community”.
Pastoral Letter on the US Economy, National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington DC
“To create a world in which life can prosper we must replace the values and institutions of capitalism with values and institutions which honor life, serve life’s needs, and restore money as it’s 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”.
David Koten
“We are forced to choose, for the processes we have initiated in our lifetime cannot continue in the lifetime of our children. Whatever we do either creates the framework for continuing the supreme adventure of life and consciousness on this planet or sets the stage for its’ termination. The choice before us is urgent and important; it can neither be postponed or ignored. “
Ervin Laszlo
From a book by Noam Chomsky entitled;
Manufacturing Consent
“Malls have replaced parks, churches and community gatherings for many who no longer even take the trouble to meet their neighbors or care to know their names. People move frequently as though neighborhoods and cities were products to be tried out like brands of deodorant.
Consumerism sets each person against themselves in an endless quest for the attainment of material things or the imaginary world conjured up and made possible by things yet to be purchased. Weight training, diet centers, breast reduction, breast enhancement, cosmetic surgery, permanent eye make-up, liposuction, collagen injections, these are some examples of people turning themselves into human consumer goods more suited for the “marketplace” than living in a healthy, balanced society.
“Each year an estimated 1.5 million Americans choose to have nose jobs, tummy tucks or breast enlargements. Many of these people would be unable to afford these vital surgical procedures if it were not for the public spirited efforts of loan companies like Jayhawk Acceptance Corporation, a used car lender that has turned to covering the booming demand for elective surgery. Lenders in this field face an unusual challenge”, explains the Wall Street Journal; “a lender can take a used car but can hardly repossess a facelift”. Consequently, lenders like Jayhawk have to charge a slightly higher interest rate, up to 22.5% to be exact, says Michael Smartt, Jayhawks’ CEO, “We’re capitalizing on America’s vanity”.
It is impossible to win a war against yourself or your uncontrolled desires. A good example of this is the simplistic materialist psychosis of the bumper sticker: “he who dies with the most toys wins”.
Is “psychosis” too strong a word to use here? Appreciate the following line of reasoning:
“I can imagine it, therefore I want it. I want it, therefore I should have it. Because I should have it, I need it. Because I need it, I deserve it. Because I deserve it, I will do anything necessary to get it”.
This is the artificial internal drive that the advertisers tap into. You, ‘imagine it’ because they bombard your consciousness with its’ image until you move to step 2, ‘I want it…etc’. This is one of the things which allows people to surrender to consumerism. As a society we have gone from self sufficiency based on our internal common sense of reasonable limits to the ridiculous goal of keeping up with the Jones’ then to stampeding to the lifestyles of the rich and famous, or at least as far as our credit limit allows us to go.
“Sports is another crucial example of the indoctrination system…it offers something for people to pay attention to which is of no importance…it keeps them from worrying about things which matter to their lives that they might have an idea of something about…people have the most exotic information and understand of all sorts of arcane issues…it’s a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority, and group cohesion behind leadership elements, in fact it’s training in irrational jingoism…that’s why energy is devoted to supporting them…and advertisers are willing to pay for them”
The Only Good Consumer is a Very Dumb Consumer
When does the sowing of selfish evil lead,
From endless greed
to makeshift prayers growing,
and owing themselves to a life better lived?
At what point does ignorance plead,
throwing its pride with platitudes flowing
upon the mercy of the Court?
The judgment of Nature shall be made without mercy.
Flaws of modern thought
do compel and mould
That youth ought to do as its’ told,
like us, uncaring.
Yet the fact remains, glaring
regardless of social stature
or facades maintained..
In our madness we imagine,
our honesty strained,
that our own self-made laws
are higher than those of nature.
Neither ignorance nor denial are bliss…
They are both amiss,
They define irrelevance.
Whereas truth does not hang
upon the whim of human conception.
Refusal to understand this,
is the ultimate recipe
for death and destruction.
Here lies the once and glorious
naked ape,
denying wisdom with mouth agape
would-be God and Sage, turned user,
evolutionary loser, spurned and despised
by way of dollar-clad presumption.
Destroyed by ideas of their own invention;
consumerism, materialism, dogma-traditionalism,
nationalism, patriotism, militarism,
and last but not least,
egotism in mad convention.
No value to life but rape,
Red tape, materialists on the take
people as pawns, trees as lumber,
dam the river, drain the lake.
Lies as truth…sincerity faked,
Planet as profit in televised slumber.
Giving nothing, taking all
until the inevitable Fall
Suicidal Empire of rage and lust
Without care, certain that they were better
than all that lived,
Short of sight, calling that fair and just,
did they assume it was their right,
without thought, unable to gauge
where greed would lead,
in a mental cage, a Prozac Hive.
When we are exhumed by alien hands,
in a once and future age,
so the epitaph will read.
Can “consumers” truly claim to give
a defense unknowing,
while yearning for more, ignoring the Rules,
all the universe a tool for personal gain,
deny your brothers’ pain.
Playing victims and fools while Rome burns
While the people fiddle, forests to ashes turn.
Scoffing at the wise, they say;
“It is none of our concern”,
“bother us not with the petty details
of our imminent demise”.
Could it be the saying, “they know not what they do”
is wearing all too thin?
Or is ignorance of the Natural Law in truth
no defense to prosecution?
Our collective deeds, jury and trial,
where death is twin of nature defiled!
Where fame and money are ever the style,
and the higher the cost the better?
Where the mass claim to fame
is to maintain, that there is no truth,
where honesty is considered rude, uncouth,
but is in fact better described,
as the convenience of denial!
Dear consumer,
do you really imagine
that this fickle and folly-whim
called fashion
and brand-name attraction,
to be the meaning of life well lived?
Is this truly “success” or the ultimate failure
of both intelligence and wisdom?
Do you really imagine
this gold plated, cancer-strewn
road you walk,
filled with gossip and idle talk,
leads anywhere
but hype,
and a type of slow agony in pointless effort,
to a poisoned mind, a tortured soul
strolling blindly, without worthwhile goal
into pre-mature death?
Have you not learned this lesson
from the bitter confession of history,
after the procession of centuries of wasted youth
to learn what life is really about?
Or will you continue to pretend, even as you doubt,
to defend your role in humanity’s end,
even with tears in your eyes,
that such a life will last forever?
Have you not noticed that the goals
set for you by your televisions
are filled with pretty lies?
Matthew Webb visionquest@eoni.com
The World Mind Society [link] More >
|
|
|
|
9 Nov 2005 @ 15:24, by oasiian. Economics, Financing, Banking
Supply Economy existed once in the Feudal Ages of Europe and for an even longer time in the Asian cultures.
We Switched to a Demand Economy, but was that such a good thing? More in the article following... More >
|
|
|
|
21 Oct 2005 @ 23:16, by ming. Economics, Financing, Banking
Hey, I'm one of the top 50,000,000 richest people in the world. Then why do I feel so poor? Check it out. Puts things in some kind of perspective, I guess. More >
|
|
|
|
 21 Jun 2005 @ 15:19, by rishi. Economics, Financing, Banking
What will YOU do, when the dollar is regarded as worthless, or next to worthless? What will that new suit or new dress, that new car or big house/appartment matter then?
More importantly, what good will it do to continue to "play the game" of a society whose very existence is irrational, and whose norms are not only world-destructive but SELF DESTRUCTIVE as well?
***********
US deficit hits a new record
By Nick Beams
21 June 2005
The US balance of payments deficit hit an all-time high for the first quarter of the year, rising to $195.1 billion, up 3.6 percent from the previous record of $188.4 billion for the final three months of 2004 and well above market predictions of $190 billion. The latest figure means that the US payments deficit is running at an annual rate of $780 billion, requiring $2 billion a day from the rest of the world—mainly provided by Japan, China and other Asian nations—to finance it.
The current account deficit for 2004 was a record $668.1 billion, up 28.6 percent from the previous record of $519.7 billion in 2003. But if present trends continue, this year’s deficit will be even larger.
The record payments gap is certain to fuel demands for the Bush administration to take action against US trade rivals. The Congress has already passed a resolution calling for the revaluation of the Chinese currency within six months and protectionist sentiment is growing.
Democrat Senator Byron Dorgan said the latest figures showed the current account deficit had reached “dangerously high levels” and that the administration had to change course on trade.
The trade figures appeared to bring to an end the recent rally enjoyed by the dollar in international currency markets—following the No vote on the proposed European constitution in France and the Netherlands and the row over the European Union budget. After sliding by 6.7 percent since early May, the euro rose by 1.1 percent last week, with much of the gain coming after the announcement of the US deficit.
The relative movements of the euro and the dollar—reflecting the growing economic weaknesses of both the United States and the eurozone economies—point to underlying problems at the heart of the world financial system.
On the one hand, the general rise of the euro over the past three years has been caused in the main by the growing debts of the US—both the ever-widening balance of payments gap and the federal budget deficit. With US imports now around 50 percent higher than exports, no serious observer believes that there is a “quick fix”—such as a revaluation of the Chinese yuan or the introduction of protectionist measures—that can reduce the US payments deficit. Even with a decline in the value of the dollar of more than 25 percent against the euro since the start of 2002, the current account deficit has continued to rise, growing by 1.6 percentage points of gross domestic product since the start of 2003.
On the other hand, the recent fall in the euro and the rebound of the dollar has been caused by the rejection of the European constitution and the doubts this has raised about the future of the euro and even the European Union. In other words, the strength or weakness of each of the world’s two major currencies is determined by the relative position of the other.
Last April, the Financial Times noted in an editorial comment that the euro did not have a great deal going for it except that it was not the US dollar. “In truth, there are good reasons for selling all three of the world’s main currencies (the dollar, the euro and the yen). But could they all fall? Yes, against either gold or the Chinese renminbi (yuan),” it stated.
This conclusion points to deep problems in the global monetary system. For the past 34 years, since the decision by US president Nixon to remove its gold backing, the US dollar has functioned as a global fiat currency. Its position in international markets has depended on the relative strength of the US economy vis-à-vis the other major capitalist powers.
That position has steadily eroded over the past decade and a half. Up until the end of the 1980s, the position of the dollar was sustained by the fact that, even though its trade and balance of payments situation was worsening, the US was still a net international creditor—a status it first attained in the aftermath of World War I. From the mid-1990s, even as US international debts steadily grew, the “strong dollar” was sustained by an inflow of capital into the US, attracted by the higher returns on investment and in the stock market.
But since the collapse of the share market bubble in 2000, the US has come to increasingly depend on an inflow of capital from the central banks of Asia to cover its debts—so much so that more than 75 percent of all the balance of payments surpluses of the rest of the world are used to finance the US deficit. The danger to the stability of the global financial system lies in the fact that, at a certain point, this inflow may cease, sparking a rapid fall in the dollar’s value, a rise in interest rates and the onset of a US and global recession.
Were such an economic scenario to develop, it would by no means necessarily follow that the euro would come to replace the dollar as the chief international currency. The present crisis of the European Union, and the doubt it casts on the long-term future of the euro, means that a major dollar crisis could bring a crisis of confidence in all major currencies, and a turn to gold as the only secure store of value. The steady rise of the price of gold over the past four weeks amid the political turmoil surrounding the European Union could well be a sign of things to come.
See Also:
Global interest rate "conundrum" recalls the 1930s
[14 June 2005]
US indebtedness a growing threat to global stability
[23 May 2005] More >
|
|
<< Newer entries Page: 1 2 3 4 5 Older entries >> |
|
