Check out the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7M3dVnZVPc
Here's my blog:
International law (specifically, in this video, public international law) is not a common-sense system. It is more like a grab-all where states (countries) snatch up all natural resources without any consideration for the future implications of their actions. The customs, norms, treaties and public international ‘laws’ that are formed around this principle of greed can barely contain the overconsumption that capitalistic behavior constantly pushes on natural systems. Overconsumption has become normative and customary profit-creating behavior, and this behavior has accumulated over time to form the current condition of Life on earth- specifically the yawning gap between the rich and poor.
International law has its roots in maritime law because international, or ‘shared’ waters, are the first places states began to interact with each other on common grounds. Fisheries cases are those in which state’s fight over who has rights to which fishing areas. Conflict usually arises when over-fishing takes place, or when certain state’s simply want more than their fair share.
Seafood is a lucrative business, and the economy of many coastal states depends on the resources provided by the sea. No matter how bad the condition of the sea, the sea bed or the species living therein, the economy of a country is always placed above the health of the natural resource. Only when the resource is depleted, destroyed or almost destroyed do states begin to change their behavior- out of necessity- indicating that change IS in fact possible. There are alternatives, there are better ways to live, overconsumption is not necessary and the natural systems that provide for us need change to happen NOW.
In an Equal Money System, the economic system will be changed entirely to stop this endless pressure on the natural systems to meet our ever growing demand. As the minority of human beings profit off of this action, the majority is left starving, or close to it, and natural systems such as fisheries are being devastated.
The Equal Money System will take profit out of the equation, allowing for needed change to not only become ‘affordable’, but to become the focus of all human action. Soon enough, the consequences of our current behaviour will start becoming more apparent and affecting us more directly. Anyone who has any kind of common-sense knows that action is required NOW to reduce our future suffering, and the current and future suffering of the masses, the environment and of course, the suffering of generations to come.
We need only gain control over our own greed and self-interest, and investigate it to see and realize that consumerism is programmed into us from birth. We don’t have to be these programmed working robots that act as cogs in the profit machine, working our lives away to support a system that destroys Life and takes our freedom. We are not free- we are slaves to money. An Equal Money System will allow us to experience freedom for the first time, because we will no longer be the modern-day slaves that we are.
Only the wealthy will not agree with my statements, but I know that the middle-class is corroding. The dream of working hard your whole life to retire at 60 and sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labour are slowly fading as the illusion we were sold is proving to be nothing but smoke and mirrors- a lie that benefitted only very few. Middle-class income has only declined in the last three decades; while the cost of living has sky rocketed. I know there is more stress, more struggle and more hopelessness because if you look for the signs you can see it everywhere. What is the point of Life if all we’re doing is working our whole lives only to be able to scrape by, while those below us are starving and those above us are living in the lap of luxury. Only those who choose ignorance and who choose to put blinders on will continue to believe there is some kind of hope or light at the end of the tunnel. Life is not a lottery, we need to stop holding our breath and hoping for a break. Those who choose to open their eyes and see reality will see that the Equal Money Solution is really the only solution that has been put on the table that actually addresses the real problems we are facing.
We simply cannot continue as we are now living. On a domestic level and an international level- one is merely a reflection of the other- it needs to stop. Join the walk- support the cause. www.equalmoney.org.
Kim,
ReplyDeleteI think you are coming up just short of distinguishing between two concepts of "profit" here. On the one hand, just reward is regularly referred to as "profit," even as it represents only what we deserve from the pool of wealth we have contributed to. The "profit" I presume you're really advocating against could be said to be "unearned profit" -- that is, taking from the rest of us, beyond what has been contributed to the overall prosperity of the whole.
We need at least to distinguish between the two then, unless just reward too has to be dispensed with. While I agree with your object of arresting over-exploitation however, I don't think you can accomplish that object by eliminating just reward; and neither do I think you'd accomplish that object by eliminating unearned taking (exploitation).
The reason is, that so long as the object of fishing is to take fish, even the pursuit of just reward compels exhaustive harvesting of fish. Of course, exploitation of a power to harvest compels even more taking (so you are right that eliminating unearned taking will at least reduce the compulsion to over-harvest).
But we can't dispense with the proposition of just reward, because it's the very premise for our due, from the sum of prosperity to which we have contributed.
Thus we can't solve the problem of over-harvesting until we recognize the limited effectiveness and impropriety of doing so "economically" or monetarily.
Largely, over-harvesting of natural resources is a consequence of a further impropriety (which we can resolve). We believe wrongly that we borrow money from purported banking systems which in fact only publish further representations of our promissory obligations. The further unwarranted fact that these representations are subject to interest, inherently multiplies a sum of falsified debt, as we are forced to borrow principal back into circulation as new debt, equal to any former sum of debt which might otherwise be presumed to be resolved; and as we are forced to borrow interest back into circulation -- perpetually increasing a sum of falsified indebtedness by so much as periodic interest on an ever greater and eventually terminal sum of falsified debt.
This perpetual escalation of indebtedness is what compels us to harvest and to produce more and ever more, just to tread water against the resultant escalation of debt. Fix that (by mathematically perfected economy™), and you relieve the extent to which we must harvest more and more — but you wouldn't necessarily prevent over-harvesting or over-consumption, either.
As monetary justice has to meet its requisites, we can hardly serve our purpose by compromising monetary justice (eliminating just reward for example). Thus to achieve your object, we need to recognize that we have to directly limit harvesting. It's as simple as that.
What's really important to understand therefore is how much the present exploitation of our money system compels us to our own destruction. We have two fronts here (also at least a third): 1) monetary justice; 2) just harvesting of resources (which owes an equal right to further generations; and 3) preservation of a rightful environment for all future generations.
We can only fix the latter two if we fix the first, because the first will make it impossible otherwise even to afford fixing the latter two.
You know, upon a further look at the "EqualMoney" site... I'm afraid I can only say these preposterous propositions are a dime-a-dozen now. EqualMoney.Org doesn't even articulate the artificial monetary problems of our time. Much less does it solve them. If we're all guaranteed an equal wage, you destroy the whole principle of just reward; but neither do you solve the impetus for over-consumption. You still have to regulate harvesting if you don't want to over-harvest, because after all, if everyone can afford a share of the harvest, you have all the more mouths to feed (better than they are).
ReplyDeleteHow do you reach monetary ideals, and how do you likewise meet the political requisites which accomplish these goals?
1. First of all, you remove undeserved profit and cost from food. These involve the artificial inflation of (all) costs by perpetual multiplication of falsified indebtedness. This is solved not by promising an equal income, but by eliminating exploitation from the currency. Thus, as I wrote, mathematically perfected economy alone solves these issues; and likewise provides for us to sustain the most cost-effective means of production and distribution.
2. Equal income therefore solves nothing -- if anything, it might encourage many (or at least some) not to contribute to our overall prosperity as much as they might otherwise. The just rewards of true free enterprise therefore are the only real impetus to maximal overall prosperity -- shared equitably according to contribution. If you are hungry and you pick a plum from a ripe tree, needing 5 to stave your hunger, is your problem solved by promising to give you 4 more, even without a way to warrant someone will pick them?
3. On the further hand, if there are 5 of us, and there are only 10 plums on the tree, we *do* recognize our right is to two apiece. Neither is that object accomplished by a guaranteed income -- especially if that income equates to possible consumption still of more than 2 plums apiece.
4. To solve the problem of just consumption therefore, we have to decide to limit consumption to a just share. This isn't to artificially increase the costs of plums beyond the regular cost of harvesting them. It just means we have to say each of us can only have two.
5. The only solution of all this then is mathematically perfected economy™, in conjunction with responsible regulation of rights to consume finite resources.
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