The main problem here are the vague philosophical concepts and ideas, like the so called "social justice" that can not be defined, but can be infinitely distorted to suit the theories and demands of incredibly powerful would be rulers and pressure groups, who invented a new language and new meaning to many commonly used words to reach their goals, backed up with a strictly controlled media to mislead people.
For example, the often quoted past prophets, like Smith and Ricardo, have never said, or wrote the things attributed to them, now used to justify limitless greed and exploitation. Ricardo never advocated the free movement capital with his marginal advantage theory and the way Smith's "self interest" and "invisible hand" theories, both in the same short paragraph, have been distorted to come up with idiocies like "In competition individual ambition serves the common good" is outright fraud. (I have the book, so I know exactly what he wrote and also how Friedman et al have distorted his words). If we really want to solve growing global poverty, ideologies and faith based "isms" are dead and should be buried, because sooner, or later some would be rulers will distort them and use them for their own power trips as they have distorted every religion, ideology and philosophical theory through history. Then we come to the calculations used by neoclassical market economists today, like the totally meaningless and fraudulent GDP, "growth", "productivity" and even "inflation" and "unemployment" figures and we can only shake our heads in awe how they can get away with it and how the public and politicians can be gullible enough to tie the lives of billions of people to these transparent lies ? For example, the stated purpose of economics, in every textbook, is "The science for the management and distribution of scarce resources". At the same time economic efficiency is defined in several different ways, but basically with the same meaning as " The biggest monetary returns for the smallest monetary inputs", totally ignoring the "distribution" aspect, replacing it with pigs fighting at the trough, as the ideal economic model. To the best of my recollection, scientific laws and definitions are supposed to be sector neutral and apply equally to everybody, regardless of race, creed, or financial standing, while this aberration of decency, justice and logic gives a free hand to any sector to exploit others and the environment for their demands. Monetary values can not be used for any scientific, or economic calculations, because they do not represent realities, but often violence induced, temporary perceptions, therefore the presently used definition of economic efficiency is false and the cause of the biggest environmental destruction and human destitution on Earth. Neoclassical economics are not a science, but the biggest crime wave in history. With bank deregulation, money ceased to exist at a certain level and became a "Licence to control energy and resources, issued by a special interest sector for its own benefit". The present monetary system permits the creation of inflated, infinite amounts imaginary monetary capital by self appointed powers, who are then licenced by the perceived power of that non existing money to overcapitalize resource conversion systems and take control of whole countries to divert the benefits into the pockets of an international aristocracy, while the legal owners of the resources are disenfranchised and destituted. E.g., the population of oil producing countries, while their GDPs are flying high, in praise of the "wealth creating global marketplace" and tens of millions are starving. "Wealth and property are the temporary control of resources and energy". This also includes profits. Neither can be created, only taken from the environment, or from other sectors. Profits are a form of unilateral taxation without representation and although they are necessary for the survival of businesses, when they reach certain levels in the hands of multinational oligopolies and conglomerates, they become outright theft and the cause of daily growing global income gap. There's nothing wrong with private property, in fact it is necessary for human existence, I'm a property owner and and independent business owner/manager in BC since 1957, just as there's nothing wrong with the occasional glass of wine, or beer. But there's a lot wrong with drunkenness and alcoholism, just as there's a lot wrong with the fact that less than 400 people own and control half of the world's resources and wealth, CEOs taking home tens of millions every year, while firing and outsourcing thousands of jobs and raising prices in the name of so called "economic efficiency" . As JK Galbraith wrote many years ago "The purpose of economic competition is to eliminate competition". Today the main purpose is to raise incomes for a few and expropriate the lives of many with the perceived power of imaginary money. The key to poverty elimination is the promotion of self sufficiency and not specialization, as demanded by economists and politicians. A certain degree and percentage of specialization is necessary, but it causes incompetence and reliance on systems controlled by special interests. Whenever the words "self sufficiency" are mentioned, economists go frantic, claiming that it increases costs. Quite the opposite. They don't know what reals costs are, because they have no models to calculate them. Human labour doesn't cost anything to an economy. It only takes benefits, or if you like loot, from the pockets of special interests, who claim to be THE economy, because they managed to usurp the control of the strings of money creation and investment, in other words colonization and forced collectivization. I have spent a lifetime on the planning and running of self sufficient family and locally based production systems and know that they work and bring a lot of benefits to the practitioners. Total self sufficiency is an impossible dream, but even with limited self sufficiency people can live very well on very low incomes and use far less resources in the process. The reason economists oppose self sufficiency is that incompetent people must rely on the buying every item and service for their survival and this raises their phoney GDP, which also includes the tremendous waste and pollution of physically inefficient, but economically "efficient" production systems. I'm in daily contact and exchanging information with a well known and prominent scientist friend, well known by Al Hammond, working out of Winnipeg in the sustainability field. Just last week he was telling me of the plans for the dislocation of millions of farm families in China and jamming them into new cities. In the name of phoney "economic efficiency" of course, disregarding the fact that city dwellers use far more water, 1400 gallons per person per day in the USA and Canada, plus all other resources, but all that waste will raise China's GDP even more. In conclusion I would only like to add that there's no point in talking about poverty without going back to the basics on what the causing factors are. Technology, among other things, can indeed solve much of the problems, provided it is used in well planned doses and within limits, because in its present overcapitalized form it is one of the main reasons for the daily growing poverty and income gap statistics, which in turn also jack up the substance abuse, family violence, crime, accident and illness figures. Cheers, Ed Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC, Canada ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org provide more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html>
