To illustrate this point I'm using the example of the global food market. This market began at a local level where farmers would sell what they grew at a market price which was based on the system of supply and demand. More recently, this activity has reached a global scale with profits in the billions.
What happens is countries produce crops of, for example, rice, soy or cotton, and sell them in the global food market. As food is a basic requirement for human survival, it has gained much interest from the very wealthy in the word as a source for profit.
How does it work?
The global food market functions with its own language and set of complex rules and regulations understood for the most part only by experts and speculators. Speculators make educated guesses or predictions based on their unique understanding of this system, thus influencing buying and selling behavior. Corporations will buy up billions of dollars of these life sustaining resources based on these predictions, and they will hoard them until the price goes up and they can then sell them at a greater profit. These human actions are the major contributors to the movement of money and the fluctuation of prices within the global food market (more so than weather, global warming, drought, pests etc...).
These fluctuations within the food market can cause the prices of food to double and even triple. This can cause the cost of our groceries to go up (as it is the price of very basic foods which are a small portion of our diets), but it also causes tens of millions of people to be added to the list of starving people globally (whose diets consist mainly of these items). In 2008, one fluctuation added 75 million people to that list.
The problem within all this is that it is nothing but a game for the the very wealthy people who believe the stakes are only financial. They do not take a step back to see, or use common sense to realize that in the end those stakes translate in to human lives, including the lives of innocent children who were born into poverty and who never even had a chance at life in this system of money played like a lottery for the rich. The global food market is played very much like a lottery based on odds, where people with money can take as much risk as they can afford, and when they win, they win big. However, nowhere in this game of manufactured luck are there any rules with respect to the loss of life involved. While corporations are hoarding food, people are starving, and people are dying. The lives of the world's most vulnerable people are but collateral damage in the quest for profit, and the most messed up thing about this is that it's all viewed as normal and acceptable.
What I am saying is that THIS IS NOT NORMAL AND THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT ACCEPTABLE!!!!! And I think many people would agree with me, if they knew it was going on.
These wealthy people who play the food market are drunk on making profit and their sensibility and common sense are distorted because of it, There is no accountability and no responsibility being taken and it needs to stop now. But this behavior is not unique to giant corporations and very wealthy people, its being acted out by all of us. We're all 'drunk' on consumerism which is based in greed, and we're consumed by it and we too disregard the rest of the world as we over eat and over consume and live out our lives like mindless robots wanting more products, more experiences more savings, bigger things, better things, always looking at those who have more than us and never really thinking about those who are sacrificed so that we can live the way we do, whether they be the have-nots, the slave labourers, the animals, or the natural world.
I am a member of a group called Desteni. We are proposing an alternative economic system called the Equal Money System, which will entail all of us taking responsibility by changing the rules of the game from purely profiting, to rules which involve looking at the consequences of our actions. Such as: how can we be so detached from one another that we can allow such abuse to take place in this world? How can we be so blind to what we're doing? How is our human nature being manipulated by consumerism, by the fear of survival, by competition? How have we manipulated ourselves to believe we are not responsible and there's nothing we can do?
More Specifically:
We have the basics of this system worked out wherein the value of money is not backed by gold or by debt, but by life, inseparable from life. Herein, human beings will not be allowed to be in a situation of power where they can dangle the daily bread of the poor just out of reach, as they do in the global food market; where as the price of that bread sky-rockets because of the absolute desperation of the people, people die, and people profit. There will be no poor, only equality and equal opportunity, so for those who want to live simply and work very little, that is their choice, and those who want a life of possessions and entertainment - they will have to work for it, as many of us already experience. It is the already wealthy in our current reality who will experience the biggest change, because unlike this profit-based capitalist system we live in, the Equal Money system will not allow some to profit off the labor of others.
We as the masses who agree that this current system is unacceptable need to do so in an organized, unified and visible way. We at Desteni have created an outlet for this to be expressed and lived into reality by preparing to enter into politics where the rules are written, so that we can work within the legal boundaries which already exist by presenting a platform based on economic change and a system proposal that abides by the principle of what's best for all.
Taking responsibility and waking up to the abuse that's going on due to the current economic system we all participate in is every human being's job. You can do your part by finding out what the Equal Money System is all about by searching Youtube, Networked blogs, facebook, Netlog, Twitter, Branchout, or any other social media outlet. You can participate on the forums at www.Desteni.co.za, or visit the Equal Money site at www.equalmoney.org. We have an Equal Life non-profit set up and we are doing research into the abuse taking place in the world so that we are not ignorant to the workings of reality, such as the millions of deaths due to the gambling that takes place in the global food market. This is but one of literally countless examples of the absolute disregard for life and suffering in the world, and of the hopeless future we're leaving to the earth's children.
For further insight into the global food market I recommend the short documentary called "Dying in Abundance" on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsvqbNRq3Zk). If you agree that this is not acceptable, use your voice and say so. Support the Equal Life Party with your vote, speak for those who have no voice. Be a part of the group that is ready to do something real about the dire state of the world.
By 2012 there will be Equal Money books available, describing how the Equal Money System will work, and how it is the first feasible solution that has ever been proposed in all of time by all of humanity. Walk this solution with us,
One man- one vote - on all issues that affect the whole, because we are one whole, and we all have the right to live with dignity respect, within ourselves and towards others.
Here are some links for further perspective, a good place to get started:
The Equal Money Solution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fKIQltJR6MWorld Equality is Equal Money (4 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/user/MarlenLife?blend=7&ob=5
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