NOTES TOWARDS A NEW SOCIETY - WHAT CAN G20 ACCOMPLISH ? WHAT SHOULD THE G20 ACHIEVE ?
1. Establish a needs based subsidy fund to provide hard pressed industries to modernize and meet environmental standards, with contributions based on ability to pay. This is a fundamental step towards values based economics. What is good and right for humanity’s future, most often in terms of the conditions of work and environmental achievements, is often in conflict with traditional cost and profit margin analysis. It is that conflict which must be eliminated. While some might argue that those economic entities unable to meet the costs of standards should be put out of business, the impact of following that line of thinking, has long been proven as highly damaging to maintaining a healthy economy, minimizing local economic impact, and avoiding the rise of a dangerous form of monopoly capitalism. We must remember that the viability of the subsidiaries of even the largest corporations tends to be independently assessed, in terms of cost and margin. The fact that that subsidiary can borrow capital more readily, and often exists in a more captive supplier and customer relation, does not eliminate the fact that if it becomes “unprofitable” it is typically closed down. This has stood in the way of many ideals in terms of working conditions, modernizations, productivity improvements, and environmental achievement. Cost cutting and maintenance of margins can be even more acute when large corporations are applying pressure on what are often deemed very expendable subsidiaries to maintain their existence by maintaining and increasing “bottom line” profits. To achieve social, environmental, cultural, long term values becomes difficult or impossible. Working conditions (including economic stability) and the environment tend to be the first victims. To achieve those values and maintain economic viability, there needs to be a source of money that is made available to corporations, small and large, which is made available according to the model of to each according to their real needs, and from each according to their ability to contribute. That type of values oriented fund, more fairly subsidizing good work and good economic activity, would achieve progress attainable by no other means other than complete nationalization and total government regulation of economic activity. The cost and profit accounting model has not proven its capability in regards to achieving long term values and adequate corporate ethics and citizenship. Clearly industry needs the help, rather than only the destructive pressures to conform to new and more stringent rules. While the rules are a necessity, in the long term, a means must be found to alleviate the problem of many being forced out of business, or forced to relocate, due to those pressures. The fund resolves that problem. 2. Establish a means to subsidize production where human needs and high costs are in conflict (eg. desert reclamation for agriculture). This is another step towards a values based economics, away from reliance on cost and profit margin analysis as the absolute standard for “right” economic action. It is a system where commodity prices are negotiated and set, within limits, and subsidies are utilized to assist economic production of commodities where human needs, in the broadest long term sense of needs, justify subsidization of that economic activity. Desert reclamation in Africa and China would be high priorities today, for that type of subsidization, due to the potential for serious food crisis situations and due to long term environmental needs. Nevertheless, the commodity pricing must be maintained for the commodities produced, within limits that do not allow the full attribution of all the costs of production to the price of the commodity produced. The values involved in producing that commodity stand above the actual cost and margin calculations, unable to rely on that calculation for economic decision making and also needing to avoid the damage that is brought about by price inflation. 3. Reduce world economy's reliance on consumer lending. There needs to be a return to economics based on living within actual means, rather than living on the basis of borrowing. However, that means that a new effort must be made to assure that those means are in fact adequate and that means adequately competitive within the society in which those means are to be achieved. Excessive borrowing is often the result of inadequate means within the society in which it occurs. We are referring to consumer borrowing, not business borrowing. Different criteria need to be applied in the two very different cases. 4. Establish R&D cooperation for goods of greater lasting value, reducing reliance on fads and obsolescence. Obsolescence and scrap of poorly made, of little or no lasting value, goods is one of the most damaging trends in modern societies. That trend must be reversed to one that supports the making of goods of lasting value, increasing the value attributed to quality materials used to make quality things. The human and environmental impact of this change in thinking is immense beyond measure. In fact how people are valued is largely tied to the changing value of the things that they produce and that they consume and use. Social and cultural value have been eroded by the destruction of material value in a society relying on poorly made, poorly designed, things without real craftsmanship and artisanship maintaining any significant role in their production. People become devalued as things become devalued. Few things today are made to be passed on from generation to generation. Few things are made to be truly valued and cherished. We must reassert a true materialism where things of value are once again raised up to a more traditional role, against the destructive garbage culture of fads and obsolescence. Motor vehicles are a prime example. I can envision a completely redesigned vehicle, designed for a life expectancy of more than 20 years, of economically serviceable life, eliminating more than half of the costly waste that current vehicle production creates, and improving environmental achievement. It would take a total redesign, involving new concepts, previously unimplemented and perhaps unthought of within the automotive industry. It does mean that those vehicles can be financed over a ten year period, making them more accessible to a larger portion of the population. They would be more economically serviceable due to factors in the redesign that would revolutionize how we design complex things that we regularly rely on and use, setting new ideals and principles into place that would become applicable to a wide range of products, to meet new long term environmental standards and to revolutionize values. Due to the fact that the automobile is at the core of many major economies, and is an object of envy for economies that have not yet achieved the same levels of growth, it is necessarily at the core of revolutionized values. It’s total redesign in terms of those values is essential. 5. Funds for cultural resurgence. Culture has been steadily reduced down to an ever growing stress on the “rewards” that come manifest as the material acquisition and consumption of goods that are poorly made and of little or no lasting worth. The arts have been suffering as much as the sciences. People are increasingly reduced to being spectators, barely able to participate culturally and not really knowing how or able to question what is at the root of the growing mass discontent. Dramatic theatre, opera, orchestras, the real worth of film making of real artistic merit (rather than pandering to technical prowess and the declining quality of mass tastes that are increasingly craving for sensation), are all in decline as to means and ways. They are increasingly unsupported. The work in art galleries is in similar decline discouraged from competing with mass culture of poorly made things which are destined for the garbage heap that society is itself rapidly turning into. In some regards it is the lack of money, experienced by the average person, that is eroding and eliminating what is potentially “good”, and as that happens we see a deterioration of appreciations and “tastes” seen as a natural evolution of social trends, but in fact it is the rapid destruction of society itself. Standards of quality, and understanding and appreciation of true cultural values is in decline. Education in cultural values and aesthetics is in decline. Some are increasingly comparing our modern urban cultures to primitive tribalism and a “jungle”. It is tending towards that type of decay with much of architecture and cultural life, deteriorating along with it, furthering that same persistence of decay into total cultural nihilism. There is a growing need for greatly increased funding for education, achievement, and promotion of a resurgence of true cultural values. This must include education in the arts, in music, and in theater. The trend to thoughtless consumption of poorly crafted, disposable, media product, as the predominant standard of participation, needs to be countered with a resurgence of real values. WHAT SHOULD GOVERNMENTS DO ? 1. Establish infrastructure, housing and health standards and a clear plan and metrics for worldwide achievement. The fact that those are extremely bad in many parts of the world does not eliminate the need for those common standards and a plan for achieving them. In fact the opposite, it necessitates that plan a metrics for measuring real, factual, progress. Money controlling bodies such as the IMF (International Monetary Fund), inter government lending and grants (charity), and private charities, need to reassess their provision of funds on that basis. We need to see an end to “crisis management”, and a return to ideals, inclusive of the ideal of planning, and reliable measurement of progress, with penalties and rewards tied to real achievement. The situation is currently more unregulated and “political” than ever and that in fact is a form of corruption that does not truly serve the future of humanity. Some of that corruption originates in the Cold War stand off between two equally false ideologies, locked in dialectic, unwilling to enter into dialogue as to the truth. 2. Establish a world body for R&D cooperation, eliminating wasted efforts and lack of means for researchers. The levels of frustration and resignation to despair among scientists and researchers due to the way that funding is competed for, and due to the constraints that that imposes upon true cooperation among themselves for the sake of any greater good, are worse than ever before. In times of economic hardship that too becomes a tougher, more isolating battleground despite the superficial stress upon information sharing in seminars and conventions. The latter have become more oriented to disinformation, and misinformation due to the necessity to fight for scarce funding against all peers and organizations having similar subject interests. To reveal one’s secrets is death, because they will be stolen and no recognition given, in the fight for money to continue one’s work. Deprived of means, and deprived of facilities and equipment, even the best potential can be easily lost. In fact it is being lost. The illusion of progress is exactly that. For every gain there are a nearly infinite number of losses, in a system so wasteful that a chanced gain of knowledge and capability for the dollar spent is matched by many times that expenditure totally lost in addition to the loss of potential that comes from inadequate and total lack of means being prevalent in almost every area of subject interest. This worsens across increasingly competitive corporate and international lines. 3. Implement a population reduction plan to limit population to truly sustainable levels. People are not a commodity to be mass produced and exported to wherever they chance to be able to be shipped to. They are not a product. We must end that historical tendency, which originated from the constant fact of violent conflict, its attrition, and the reliance on population numbers as being equivalent to both power and thus wealth. The times when reproduction of large numbers of people, to be kept largely in ignorance and trained to violence, for inter group conflict over scarce resources, was an effective strategy are gone. Technology has overcome that strategy even if some areas of the world remain in the darkness of that horrific past. Transcendence of that past has yet to be fully enough achieved, and progress is too slow. Setting locally sustainable population targets, taking into account a scientific comprehension of what constitutes a good standard of life for humanity to achieve sufficient potential and enjoyment of life, is a growing necessity. The world cannot continue to fund uncontrolled, violently competitive, local population growth, as its leading need for charity and its ever growing problem as to export of conflicting ideals and ideologies which are all primarily oriented towards invasion and pillaging of anywhere where scarce resources are less scarce and more attainable. That trend, if continued, would eventually reduce the standards of living of all of humanity to the lowest common denominator, without hope of escape from the ever worsening conflicts, the crisis and squalor permeating every area of life and society, and the growing trends to violence being experienced in the world’s most overpopulated areas. Population cannot be allowed to grow, anywhere in the world, unplanned, uncontrolled, and thoughtless as to the future of humanity and world conditions. 4. Largely eliminate income taxation by taxing borrowing within the interest rate structure. Income taxes punish achievement and progress. They are essentially wrong. A better method is to tax borrowing at the interest rate level, largely eliminating the need for income taxation. This places a more equitable burden on the largest borrowers to pay an equitably larger portion of the needs for taxation. It would at least marginally encourage use of existing capital, reducing dependence on borrowing capital and hoarding existing capital, which is a much needed encouragement. Hoarding of capital has little if any disincentive in a system where borrowing is so easily achieved, regardless of any real assessment of needs or values. The more hoarded capital a borrower has the more capital can be borrowed, without any other concerns being involved, and least of all any furthering of larger ideals. Thus the hoarding of money would at least have a minimal penalty attached, to support the good of society. 5. Set new secular education standards for all, inclusive of ethics and citizenship. Economic crisis, economic suffering, and the rise of organized and violent crimes, is a direct result of the failure of education. Where education is adequate and successful those problems would be in decline, not growing larger as they are. We have seen the facts played out in the world crisis that show clearly that education in accounting of costs and margins, and education in technical matters, as well as education in marketing or sales, is grossly inadequate education as to any real ethics or morality in regard to furthering the achieving of a better society, and meeting long term human needs more adequately. In fact the predominant modes of education, with their existing ideological components, have essentially failed in every nation in the world to achieve the necessary. Human behavior, individual habits, and clinging to irrational beliefs, also show an incredible deterioration, rather than improvement. Education thus can be shown to be deteriorating, not improving and massive, total, changes need to be immediately implemented. The alternative is the probability that at current levels of persistent deterioration there will one day be six people in jail for serious crimes, for every four people left outside to support them. Most of those jailed being victims of the poor quality of education, inadequate upbringing, a growing tolerance for irrational beliefs, mass drug addiction and social reliance on intoxication as the basis of most forms of social interaction, and a growing reliance on ignorance and violence as the basis of “competition” and “character”, that derives from those mass failures. Most of all we must recognize that the achieving of advanced degrees, even MBAs or PhDs is not, in our society, any guarantee of the production of better people, in service of humanity’s long term needs and for the betterment of society. Some of those still suffer the failures of the inadequacies of their kindergarten experiences. We live in societies where government and the education it runs and promotes, have largely failed to foster and nurture the maximal achievement of human potential for the sake of anything that is truly “good”. 6) Of course there is much more than needs to be thought and said, discussed and implemented, if a positive, progressive, human future is to be made available and realized, in contrast to social, cultural and economic struggle and decay into despair and mass death. The spirit of humanity is being destroyed and that must change. Robert Ezergailis Hamilton, Canada --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
