FORWARDED MESSAGE........ Date: Fri, 2 Jan 1998 01:40:04 -0800 To: Recipient List Suppressed:; From: David Weston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Global Brain No.147: Billionaires and the Cancer of Affluence THE RECORD, a remarkable, independent, progessive, regional newspaper from Nootka Sound & Canada's West Coast. http://www.goldrvr.island.net/~record/ FROM OVER HERE by ALGY There has been a lot of wonderful things said about the struggle of our world's millionaires trying to become billionaires. Almost all of the observations have been in the most uncomplimentary terms. There is a growing awareness and uneasiness in the public over the unending focus on money and power. We have to have some sense of meaning and belonging in our lives based on family, mutual support and ethical and spiritual values, and those are disappearing. The moneymen have been the "movers and shakers" of the world during the last 25 years or more. Unfortunately greed has been their only motivation and the rest of us are suffering accordingly. If you don't believe that just compare your buying power of just 10 years ago to that of today. It is well documented that the gap between the poor and the rich is continually getting wider and at an accelerating pace. The wealthy are a very difficult force to try and control. To say the top 20 per cent own 40 per cent of the wealth and resources of a country is somewhat misleading because if you own 20 per cent you in truth control far more than that. Money equates into power and power tends to create fuzzy principles. William Blum, author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since WW II, tells us that "Capitalism is the theory that the worst people, acting from their worst motives, will somehow produce the most good." Fuzzy thinking by those who, we are told, have all the answers produces some strange statements. On June 24, 1997 Mr. Samuel Hinds, President of Guyana, pointed out to a meeting hosted by Ambassador Razali Ismail, President of the UN General Assembly and Mr. Bjorn Stigson, Executive Director of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, that if he did not cut down his country's forests someone might grow marijuana in them. At that same meeting the US representative was Larry Summers, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and former Chief Economist of the World Bank, who had advocated the shipping of toxic wastes to low income countries because people there die early anyway and they have less income earning potential so their lives are less valuable. Closer to home our Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, who is clearly a wannabee Capitalist (SEE Note 1.), stated at the recently held APEC conferences that the agenda is solely about trade and commerce and issues such as the environment, labour and human rights have no relevance there. This is the same guy who said the Canadian government could not tell a Canadian company how it should conduct its business in a foreign country. He was referring, of course, to the monstrous environmental tragedy of Placer Dome Inc.'s in the Philippines which caused the evacuation of some 27 villages. Our NDP Government in British Columbia seems to be afflicted with blurred vision. For the last few months it has been cuddling up to the multinational companies and joining them in a feeding frenzy at the dollar table. The Forestry Minister, Mr. Zirnhelt, has admitted the government has allowed the forest industry to cut in excess of a sustainable rate as ".... we did not want to miss an economic opportunity." Premier Glen Clark must have had similar thoughts when he turned down a request from the Peace River farmers to declare the area a disaster area due to severe crop failures in the last two years by stating "I don't believe in supporting industries that are not viable." These are the kinds of people we have chosen to lead us into the good life. They are also the people who seem to have forgotten what they were either elected or hired for. There isn't any commitment to principle about them. Alex Carey, the Australian social scientist, wrote, "The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." Obviously the solution to the present threats to our society have to be met within the parameters of democratic principles. I don't know what a real wake up call for the public will look like. It was encouraging to see the students out demonstrating during the APEC conferences in Vancouver and it was no surprise that officialdom reacted the way it did. Remember the brutality directed by Mayor Daly in Chicago against demonstrators or that of the authorities in Selma, Alabama. Remember the killing of students at Kent University. We don't have to look all the way to Tiananmen Square to see and feel repression. The media - newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and television - are tightly under the control of large corporations. Uncensored articles are still available on the net. There is a fine bunch of writers creating a growing awareness in the public of the juggernaut that is engulfing us. Governments still have the power if they can be convinced to get back on track. The real power is in the people. That was demonstrated by the gains made in the Civil Rights Movement under Martin Luther King Jr., the ending of the Vietnam War and the revolution in the environment by the efforts of a host of writers and the activism of organizations like Greenpeace. The evidence is that the forces arraigned against the "New Global Order" are gaining strength and we can be successful if we just keep the pressure growing. Whatever our talents we have to stay consistent and active. END Note 1. actually Chretian's daughter is married to the Chairman of one of the world's largest corporations, the Power Corporation, and Chretian's wife is a multi-millionaire, so he's hardly a 'wannabee' capitalist - David J. W EDITOR's CORNER Growth, its one of the items most frequently discussed whenever the topic of economics pops up. Everyday the media is full of stories on how indicators show that this place is slipping because the growth rate is down, or that place is desirable because growth is, well, growing. If one gave much credence to economists (a bunch of witch doctors, really) then one would soon adopt the belief that economic growth is the best possible thing that can happen to society. They are wrong. Economists should pay more attention to the real world, the world of biology in particular. In nature growth is only good when it is occurring in things that are immature and moving to maturity. Babies need to grow, seedlings need to grow, and communities need to grow to the point that they are in balance with their environment. Beyond that growth becomes a problem. When communities grow beyond the means of their environment and pull more from it than they can put back they eventually destroy it and themselves in the end. When a living thing begins to grow out of control we call it cancer, and again the product is destruction. The same rules hold true for economic systems. There is a point where beneficial growth crosses a line and becomes a deadly disease. It may feel good when you are on a binge, consuming everything in sight and expanding like there is no tomorrow, but there is a tomorrow. Eventually the bill will come due. Instead of gauging a society on indicators of economic growth we should be evaluating it on whether or not it has reached economic maturity, and if so we should then gauge it on how well it maintains a healthy stasis. In an economy that is in balance with the carrying capacity of its environment there will be lower limits on exploitation and fewer new opportunities for expansion. But, social and economic stability will be stronger, and the quality of life for everyone will be closer to the average. Growth is as often bad as it is good, and it is time that economists and politicians stopped viewing it from the perspective of freebooters and buccaneers. More than growth, we need stability. Jerry West Bob Olsen Toronto [EMAIL PROTECTED] (:-) | |To unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], no subject, with the |following message (and no other text): unsubscribe c4ldemoc-l
