..cut.. > In my view, the wealthy use their wealth in the wrong ways. If they > they spent their resources buying jewelry, yachts and works of art, > things would work out fine. > > BTW, this is just what existed in the US about 30 years ago! What do > we think of that! > So in your opinion 30 years ago everything was just fine?? No, capitalism cannot accommodate sustainability if it is not profit/growth friendly - by definition, not because it is "evil". As it happens, it is also rather nasty and idioticly outdated system... With today's technological, economical and manpower capacity we could produce enough sustainable and environmentally acceptable goods to satisfy human needs globally on the present "middle class" standard - ofcourse doing it rationally, cutting the enourmous waste we have now producing superfluous products such as marketing, military, car and coloured/bleached toiletpaper... If the decisions on what to produce are made collectively, you have a better democracy than the marketing decisions made now in boardrooms It is also a fallacy, that only capitalism produces technological advances. There were such advanced all through history, and the curve of development was always exponential, just that the exponential curve was in the initial near the axis state reflecting lower number of people. In the USSR there was no democracy - people did not have the "owner" feeling towards their working/living environment as they were not taking part in decisionmaking. In the sciences even there there was outstanding development - see the number of scientific papers from Eastern Europe pre-1989. Figure it now if a system worked democratically, based on a never before seen capacity for production of abundance and the IT to make information and decisionmaking instantly and directly available to everyone. Eva > Dennis Paull > Los Altos, CA (Silicon Valley) > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
