We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, December 24, 2010

Economics Is Simple ... The Fat Cats Just Want You to Think It's Complicated So That You Won't Demand Change

from Washington's Blog.

His analogy with water supplies works very well to understand the banking industries' venture into gambling and the resulting economic chaos. 

However, capitalism's periodic busts are caused by other factors also: over production of profitable items whether useful or not, reducing the pay of working people as much as possible, after each economic bust we have more concentration of industries (monopolies) that accelerates the harm the system can cause, and extracting profits from the environment while destroying it. 

In the future we will see the exhaustion of resources, extreme weather patterns, and more economic crises. If we allow the system to continue, at some point in time the capitalist system will cause so much ecological instability that it will threaten the very survival of the human race and other life forms.
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