Charles posted these stats,
. 495 deaths from cirrhosis of the liver
. 648 homicides
. 920 suicides
. 3,349 admissions to state prisons
. 4,227 admissions to mental hospitals
. 20,240 fatal heart attacks or strokes
If you put a decimal point into these stats, for example 49.5, then these
stats are probably accurate for Canada as we have 10% of your population.
As our current unemployment rate is officially at 9.1% or approximately 5
points above the American rate, and an unofficial rate of unemployed,
underemployed, misemployed or part time employed, to reach an estimated
total of 16 -20%, then we can take Charles figures as being the roughly the
cost being paid by the Canadian society at the present time, given its
lower population and higher unemployment. And Charles, you are right, all
those people are casualties of involuntary simplicity conveniently arranged
by a government that will not adjust its fiscal policies and a business
community who will not seriously look at sharing more work by reducing the
work week or finding another way to redistribute goods and services other
than labour wages.
Again, I'd be very much interested in how the group proposes to
arrange the posited 10% (or larger) reduction in the country's consumer
spending without simultaneously imposing some very harsh costs on a lot of
people who haven't volunteered to become martyrs.
The answer from my prospective is to realize that goods and services are
increasingly being produced with less and less people to the point where we
now have "overcapacity" and "high unemployment". This appears to be the
reality in every country in the world except the US. The question begs to
asked, why? Is it because the American business and government communities
have exercised their power over the last 60 years to impoverish everyone
else while building Pax America? The British did it before the First World
War so there's precedent. The question really has to get down to some
basics such as Jay Hanson's observations about energy or the question of
population control or environmental protection. We cannot continue to keep
making decisions based on economics, we must start asking other questions
other than those that can be answered by GDP and profit. If, in asking
these questions, we collectively decide that this situation cannot
continue, then we as a world, as people, may have to decide to chuck the
current system out the window or as Jay has pointed out suffer the fate of
the Reindeer.
Barry Brooks wrote,
There are ways to have sustainable luxury, but they require breaking the
dilemma between growth and conservation. That's why we need deeper
changes, going down to the false assumption that labor is limiting our
wealth.
My answer is that we should use simplicity, durability, efficiency, and
population control to maximize both personal security and group
sustainability. We should not try to stop the loss of jobs and income.
When we no longer need much human labor in production, income can't be
based on wages. Dividends could serve to distribute income if we had
capitalism for more than the few.
I tend to agree with the thinking put forward by Jay and Barry while
finding the thinking of Charles and Harry out of touch with real reality
while reinforcing artificial reality. We can pretend as the nobility of
Europe did for centuries, that birth determines social class, in our case,
it is the free market determines wealth. These to me are false premises.
The real premise is to devise a system for a world of human beings with
their children to have health, freedom to be what they want to be, without
being exploited by those who would deprive them for their own personal
gain, whether that be business or government. If we cannot do that, them I
fear that the planet Earth in 2050 will look much like St. Mathew Island.
The world must seriously start to consider and change towards
sustainability - no matter what the cost, because the cost of not doing it
is so atrocious.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
