Thursday, July 07, 2011

Q and A

In The Canberra Times Bob Douglas, a retired epidemiologist and environmentalist activist, makes a pertinent observation about our society.
"Our economic system is built not to serve the needs of people and the environment but around an artificial money system that serves the needs of the rich and powerful, entrenches inequality and drives manipulated consumerism to feed destructive economic growth. The future human economy needs to be developed with human and environmental wellbeing as its central purpose and with new economic recompense for caring, nurturing and collaboration. Its progress should be measured, not by the gross domestic product, but by genuine measures of human and environmental wellbeing."

He goes on to raise some important questions.

"...what is the feasibility that we can keep on with a ''business as usual'' approach as the world population continues to grow and as everyone in the world continues to aspire to a greater and greater material standard of living? What is the purpose of the human economy? Why do we tolerate the fact that it controls our lives, manipulates our needs and contributes to world inequity and environmental destruction rather than serve the real needs of all people and the health of the planet? Why do we persist in placing competition ahead of collaboration in the operation of the economy and in our daily lives when collaboration makes us feel better than winning or losing? How well is our current democracy serving the needs of people and the planet and to what extent is it being corrupted by special pleading and special interests, which are antithetical to public good? How can we exert greater local control over the issues, which impact on our daily lives? In redesigning our local, regional, national and international economies how can we best preserve and promote our natural ecosystems and the wellbeing of our entire society."

We in the World Socialist Movement claim to have the answers to those questions. We contend that the relationships and interactions between human society and the rest of nature would be able to continue on a long-term sustainable basis without harming or degrading the natural environment on which humans can be systematically applied only within the context of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources being the common heritage of all humanity under democratic control.

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