DAVOS AND WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW: 1). Economic leadership must come to grips with a most fundamental distinction between paper value and real value of material and services actually meeting real needs.
2). We have seen failure of winner gained the most paper economics. We must begin to recognize this brutal fact and the savage, intrinsically harmful, and irrational competition that is behind it.. 3). Economic pond skimming threatens to skim out new stimulus in the quest for greater paper value. We must realize that any economic “bail out” or “stimulus” program will be skimmed as it rises to the top of the economic pond, and will effectively disappear from the system in terms of any benefit to the lower two thirds in any economy. It vanishes from the lowest third even more quickly as it rises. Eventually it disappears entirely. So the formula that is necessary must necessarily tax the top third, and particularly the top 10 percent, in the economic system, to return the money to the bottom, at the same rate as it would have been skimmed. It must become a perpetual cycle of return to the bottom, rather than the prevalent system of skim off the top. No nation has yet to implement an effective system to remedy this fundamental issue. 4). In addition paper value stood as obstacle to necessary projects and progress as "lack of paper" (money). If you lack enough paper value you cannot do it, no matter how much it needs to be done has been the typical argument for as long as anyone can remember. Clearly that is dangerous and wrong. What needs to be done needs to be done, and the economic system must always be subject to change to enable it to be done effectively and expeditiously. Most of the world’s most urgent problems are suffering from this issue, and the failure to resolve it. I always like to turn to the example of China and its desertification. Vast areas of China are turning into desert. Can that be changed ? It can in fact all be changed, but not in a Capitalist free enterprise system where the rules of profitability, cost and margins, are placed at a higher value than any social, environmental, and long term (not immediately profitable) benefits. China’s desert lands can become a habitation, agricultural, and environmental remediation “wonder of the world” but definitely not within American style capitalism which would never choose to do it, based on the required accounting studies of economic feasibility. In that system the devilry of profit would eventually destroy the world and annihilate the species. No wonder America was the greatest proponent of apocalyptic, end of the world, thinking in the 20th century. 5). That (point 4) has added to all the many forms of suffering caused by lack of price and wage regulation. Price and wage competition is not the good thing that it is promoted as being. This first of all answers the problems of inflation and deflation which are seen as the two devils that must always be appeased before all else. That in effect becoming another obstacle to progress due to the methods that then need to be utilized to control inflation and deflation when there is no effective regulation of prices and wages,. Additionally social upheaval and many forms of undesirable instability, come from the resulting competitive pursuit of lower prices and higher wages. This is worsened by the attempt to implement other controls. When prices and wages are fixed, by regulation, at a reasonable level, the work that needs to be done can proceed much more successfully, eliminating a vast number of destructive and damaging licit and illicit processes, and reducing a large amount of the complexity of ever changing “rules” which really serve to disadvantage. If work has value in terms of meeting some real human needs, it is deserving of being paid for, and in terms of what provides an average standard of living, gaining adequate material goods and services, for life within a society. We also must begin to see stringent regulation of prices and wages as the correct and only truly effective road to elimination of “job loss” patterns that now plague the economy. More people can be employed in a regulated system, doing more needed work. In a free market system that can never be realized in fact. We have to consider intellectual stimulation, entertainment, social needs as well as material needs in the needs equation. Artificial reduction of human needs to the level of wild animals has been practiced in many societies, including some developed nations, and it cannot be condoned or accepted. Needs reduction by psychological programming, essentially mental abuse, in the guise of religion, is not a valid method of meeting real human needs. 6). The realization that government regulation and scrutiny is a necessity, not an option, due to the failed education and the fact that human nature is not good or evil by nature, but is in fact the product of both the quality of education and of proper and adequate leadership. Economics gone wrong is significantly the result of that failure of education and leadership, as much as it is the failure of a system which places short term profits ahead of the long term meeting of real human needs, and thus the production of real and lasting value. FORMER PRESIDENTS ESCAPE RESPONSIBILITY FAR TOO EASILY: Former presidents such as John Kufuor (of Ghana) and George W. Bush (of the United States) deserve only one thing, besides an average pension no different from other retired workers. They deserve to spend the rest of their lives experiencing what their regimes did to people whom they made into victims of their decision making. I would sentence them all to mandatory social service work, in aid of the countless poor, and unfortunates that they so severely, irreparably, harmed in the course of their responsibilities. It appears that only former President Jimmy Carter has done the right thing, devoting the remainder of his life to programs that he believes can improve the human condition, in ways that his Cold War presidency, in many ways, found to be obstructed by the political machinery. AGGRESSIVE AND DANGEROUS IS ON THE INCREASE: Aggressive driving is on the increase. So is social aggression. Social violence is on the increase. We see it every day in the news. In part the failure of education to adequately teach appropriateness and discipline. In part the failure of some prevalent psychological and therapeutic methods, tainted by false beliefs and irrational ideological assumptions. The increase in aggressions always parallels the increase in social frustrations and increased economic competition, in the more aggressive personality types, which also increase in numbers in a similar pattern. The old distinction between type A and type B personalities is not simply a matter of born by nature into one type or the other. Circumstances in life can have a profound effect on modifying the personality type and in society as it is becoming, aggressive competition and all of its negative effects, are on the upswing, creating far more aggressive personality types than ever before, but without changes in education sufficient and effective enough to remedy the negative impact of that social transformation. The results will continue to worsen. On the roads we see increased aggression. Patterns that are seen are far more “road rage” oriented than ten or twenty years ago. More people are expressing their anger, frustration, aggression, while driving. There are few immediate remedies to that. One is that driving too closely, cutting in, and other aggressive patterns should be considered "dangerous driving" and fined and demerited as such. Making such potentially deadly actions more acceptable by lower fines and imposing no demerit has made those patterns accepted as "necessary" and "normal". In fact many people nowadays believe that following closely is required, not wrongful. They believe that too much space between vehicles, and not driving fast enough, are the greatest sins of the road ! UNDERAGE DRINKING AND PUBLIC HEALTH IN BRITAIN: Sir Liam Donaldson, the top doctor in the UK public health system, is obviously not well trained in psychology. He has suggested that children under 15 should never be allowed any alcohol. Fact is that total prohibition of the young has the same effects of stimulating interest and illicit activity as prohibition among adults was proven to effect. By the time of puberty many "children" function in a very adult way, but without enough adult experience. They find their way to what is illicit and forbidden, relatively quickly and readily, shortly after that time. Traditionally many cultures allow a taste to children, on special social occasions to teach them the right way to indulge, in the right circumstances, and to take away the mystery and special attraction that otherwise tends to predominate. Younger children typically curious more often dislike the taste and lose all interest. It does not suit their taste buds. It is an adult taste and it tastes aweful to them. Most spit it out and experience significant displeasure. That experience in itself is both valid and valuable. It is also a fact that binge drinking is often the result of prohibition and its sudden end. It is sudden total release, often creating a wrong pattern, of behavior. Children from total prohibition homes are more likely to become binge drinkers subsequently to coming of legal age. Robert Morpheal --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "World-thread" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/world-thread?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
