----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Great Depression of the 21st Century: Collapse of the Real Economy by Michel Chossudovsky | ||||
| Global Research, November 15, 2008 | ||||
| The financial crisis is deepening, with the risk of seriously disrupting the system of international payments. This crisis is far more serious than the Great Depression. All major sectors of the global economy are affected. Recent reports suggest that the system of Letters of Credit as well as international shipping, which constitute the lifeline of the international trading system, are potentially in jeopardy. The proposed bank "bailout" under the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is not a "solution" to the crisis but the "cause" of further collapse. The "bailout" contributes to a further process of destabilization of the financial architecture. It transfers large amounts of public money, at taxpayers expense, into the hands of private financiers. It leads to a spiraling public debt and an unprecedented centralization of banking power. Moreover, the bailout money is used by the financial giants to secure corporate acquisitions both in the financial sector and the real economy. In turn, this unprecedented concentration of financial power spearheads entire sectors of industry and the services economy into bankruptcy, leading to the layoff of tens of thousands of workers. The upper spheres of Wall Street overshadow the real economy. The accumulation of large amounts of money wealth by a handful of Wall Street conglomerates and their associated hedge funds is reinvested in the acquisition of real assets. Paper wealth is transformed into the ownership and control of real productive assets, including industry, services, natural resources, infrastructure, etc. Collapse of Consumer Demand The real economy is in crisis. The resulting increase in unemployment is conducive to a dramatic decline in consumer spending which in turn backlashes on the levels of production of goods and services. Exacerbated by neoliberal macro-economic policy, this downward spiral is cumulative, ultimately leading to an oversupply of commodities. Business enterprises cannot sell their products, because workers have been laid off. Consumers, namely working people, have been deprived of the purchasing power required to fuel economic growth. With their meager earnings, they cannot afford to acquire the goods produced. Overproduction Triggers a String of Bankruptcies Inventories of unsold goods pile up. Eventually, production collapses; the supply of commodities declines through the closing down of production facilities, including manufacturing assembly plants. In the process of plant closure, more workers become unemployed. Thousands of bankrupt firms are driven off the economic landscape, leading to a slump in production. Mass poverty and a Worldwide decline in living standards is the result of low wages and mass unemployment. It is the outcome of a preexisting global cheap labor economy, largely characterized by low wage assembly plants in Third World countries. The current crisis extends the geographic contours of the cheap labor economy, leading to the impoverishment of large sectors of the population in the so-called developed countries (including the middle classes). In the US, Canada and Western Europe, the entire industrial sector is potentially in jeopardy. We are dealing with a long-term process of economic and financial restructuring. In its earlier phase, starting in the 1980s during the Reagan Thatcher era, local and regional level enterprises, family farms and small businesses were displaced and destroyed. In turn, the merger and acquisition boom of the 1990s led to the concurrent consolidation of large corporate entities both in the real economy as well as in banking and financial services. In recent developments, however, the concentration of bank power has been at the expense of big business. Bankruptcies are occurring in all major sectors of activity: Manufacturing, telecoms, consumer retail outlets, shopping malls, airlines, hotels and tourism, not to mention real estate and the construction industry, victims of the subprime mortgage meltdown. General Motors has confirmed that "it could run out of cash within a few months, which could prompt one of the biggest bankruptcy filings in U.S. history". (USNews.com, November 11, 2008)) In turn this would backlash on a string of related industries. Estimates of job losses in the US auto industry range from 30,000 to as much as 100,000.(Ibid) [...snip....]
US factory orders have declined dramatically. Research firm Autodata reported in October that "sales of cars and light trucks in September had declined 27 percent compared with a year earlier."(Washington Post, October 3, 2008) Unemployment
The official figures do not describe the seriousness of the crisis and its devastating impact on the labor market, since many of the job losses are not reported. The situation in the European Union is equally disturbing. A recent British report points to the potential plight of mass unemployment in North Eastern England. In Germany, a report published in October, suggests that 10-15% of all automotive jobs in Germany could be lost. Job cuts have also been announced at General Motors and Nissan-Renault plants in Spain. Sales of new cars in Spain plummeted by 40 percent in October in relation to sales in the same month last year.
Among the companies on the verge of bankruptcy are some highly lucrative and profitable operations. The important question: who takes over the ownership of bankrupt giant industrial corporations? Bankruptcies and foreclosures are a money-spinning operation. With the collapse in stock market values, listed companies experience a major collapse of the price of their stock, which immediately affects their creditworthiness and their ability to borrow and/ or to renegotiate debts ( which are based on the quoted value of their assets). The institutional speculators, the hedge funds, et al have cashed in on their windfall loot. They trigger the collapse of listed companies through short selling and other speculative operations. They then cash in on their large scale speculative gains. According to a report in the Financial Times, there is evidence that the plunge of the US automobile industry was in part the result of manipulation: "General Motors and Ford lost 31 per cent to $3.01 and 10.9 per cent to $1.80 despite hopes that Washington may save the industry from the brink of collapse. The fall came after Deutsche Bank set a price target of zero on GM." (FT, November 14, 2008, emphasis added) The financiers are on a shopping-spree. America's Forbes 400 billionaires are waiting in limbo. Once they have consolidated their position in the banking industry, the financial giants including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, et al will use their windfall money gains and bailout money provided under TARP, to further extend their control over the real economy. The next step consists in transforming liquid assets, namely money paper wealth, into the acquisition of real economy assets. In this regard, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is a major shareholder of General Motors. More recently, following the collapse in stock values in October and November, Buffett boosted his stake in oil producer ConocoPhillips, not to mention Eaton Corp, whose price on the NYSE tumbled by 62% in relation to its December 2007 high (Bloomberg). The target of these acquisitions are the numerous highly productive industrial and services sector companies, which are on the verge of bankruptcy and/or whose stock values have collapsed. The money managers are picking up the pieces. Ownership of the Real Economy As a result of these developments, which are directly related to the financial meltdown, the entire ownership structure of real economy assets is in turmoil. Paper wealth accumulated through insider trading and stock market manipulation is used to acquire control over real economic assets, displacing the preexisting ownership structures. What we are dealing with is an unsavory relationship between the real economy and the financial sector. The financial conglomerates do not produce commodities. They essentially make money through the conduct of financial transactions. They use the proceeds of these transactions to take over bona fide real economy corporations which produce goods and services for household consumption. In a bitter twist, the new owners of industry are the institutional speculators and financial manipulators. They are becoming the new captains of industry, displacing not only the preexisting structures of ownership but also instating their cronies in the seats of corporate management. No Reform Possible under the Washington-Wall Street Consensus The November 15 G-20 Financial Summit in Washington upholds the Washington-Wall Street consensus. While formally presenting a project to restore financial stability, in practice, the hegemony of Wall Street remains unscathed. The tendency is towards a unipolar monetary system dominated by the United States and upheld by US military superiority. The architects of financial disaster under the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA) have been entrusted with the task of mitigating the crisis, which they themselves created. They are the cause of financial collapse. The G20 Financial Summit doesn't question the legitimacy of the hedge funds and the various instruments of derivative trade. The final Communiqué includes an imprecise and blurred commitment "to better regulate hedge funds and create more transparency in mortgage-related securities in a bid to halt a global economic slide." A solution to this crisis can only be brought about through a process of "financial disarmament", which forcefully challenges the hegemony of the Wall Street financial institutions including their control over monetary policy. "Financial disarmament" would also require freezing the instruments of speculative trade, dismantling the hedge funds and democratizing monetary policy. The term "financial disarmament" was initially coined by John Maynard Keynes in the 1940s. Obama Endorses Financial Deregulation Barack Obama has embraced the Washington-Wall Street consensus. In a bitter twist, former Congressman Jim Leach, a Republican who sponsored the 1999 FSMA in the House of Representatives is now advising Obama on formulating a timely solution to the crisis.
Related Article
| ||||
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
A lucid outline of the sequence of events....
Monday, September 22, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Naomi Wolff and the 10 Steps to Fascism
Naomi Wolff interview about her new book on the 10 Steps to Fascism
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Game Over: Thirty-Six Sure-Fire Signs That Your Empire Is Crumbling
by David Michael Green
So. You've built yourself an empire, eh?
Well, bully for you!
What's next, you ask? Well, now you've got to do what everybody does when they have an empire, of course. You've got to worry about it falling apart, mate!
But how to tell for sure? Let me see if I can be helpful. Here are some rules of thumb to keep in mind, thirty-six sure-fire indicators that your empire is falling apart:
You know your empire's crumbling when the folks who are gearing up their empire to replace yours start blowing up satellites in space. And then they don't bother to return your phone calls when you ring up to ask why.
You know your empire's crumbling when those same folks are cutting deals left, right and center across Asia, Latin America and Africa, while you, your lousy terms, and your arrogant attitude are no longer welcome.
You know your empire's crumbling when you're spending your grandchildren's money like a drunken sailor, and letting your soon-to-be rivals finance your little splurge (i.e., letting them own your country).
You know your empire's crumbling when it's considered an achievement to pretend that you've halved the rate at which you're adding to the massive mountain of debt you've already accumulated.
You know your empire's crumbling when you weaken your currency until it looks as anemic as a Paris runway model, and you're still setting record trade deficits. (Hint: Because you're not making anything anymore.)
You know your empire's crumbling when "the little brown ones" (thank you George H.W. Bush - certainly not me - for that lovely expression) in country after country of "your backyard" blow you off and proudly elect anti-imperialist leftist governments.
You know your empire's crumbling when you can't topple those governments and replace them with nice puppet regimes - like in the good old days - even if you wanted to. And you badly want to.
You know your empire's crumbling when one of their leaders comes to the United Nations and makes fun of your emperor, calling him the devil, and joking about smelling sulphur where he just stood. And though a few folks cringe, everybody laughs.
You know your empire's crumbling when just about your entire military land force is tied up in a worse-than-useless war launched on the basis of complete fabrications, that every day is actually making you less - not more - secure from external threat.
You know your empire's crumbling when almost half the soldiers in that war are high-paid mercenaries, and you don't dare institute a draft.
You know your empire's crumbling when you send soldiers into war with two weeks training and a lack of armor, and then you keep them there for three, four and five rotations.
You know your empire's crumbling when a member of the Axis of Evil can test missiles and explode nuclear warheads, and all you can do about it is mumble some pathetic warnings about how they better not do that again or there will be consequences.
You know your empire's crumbling when you even think that there is an Axis of Evil.
You know your empire's crumbling when a rag-tag military hodge-podge of irregulars has you pinned down in an endless fight you can't win, but also can't lose.
You know your empire's crumbling when you're too dumb to even ban Humvees as a first step toward ending your dependency on a foreign-owned crucial resource.
You know your empire's crumbling when you trade your prior moral leadership on human rights issues for global disgust at your torture, 'extraordinary rendition' (a.k.a. kidnaping for torture) and the dismantling of nine centuries worth of civil liberties progress.
You know your empire's crumbling when you blow off international law that you once helped create, and undermine the institutions of international governance that you once helped build.
You know your empire's crumbling when opinion polls confirm that every month you're more and more despised throughout the world.
You know your empire's crumbling when you can't even pull off the hanging of a tin-pot murderous former dictator without turning him into a hero.
You know your empire's crumbling when you're the richest country in the world, but nearly 50 million of your people don't have basic health care coverage.
You know your empire's crumbling when the World Health Organization ranks your healthcare system 37th 'best' in the world, just above Slovenia, and just below Costa Rica. (And far below Colombia, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia and Morocco.)
You know your empire's crumbling when instead of making it easier for citizens to obtain a higher education, you're making it harder and more expensive.
You know your empire's crumbling when your government gives tax breaks to industries as a reward for exporting your jobs elsewhere.
You know your empire's crumbling when the so-called 'opposition' party can't even turn that obscenity into a viable campaign theme and use it to clobber the worst emperor in your history.
You know your empire's crumbling when your middle class has been stagnant for three decades, while the wealth of the hyper-rich continues to climb through the roof.
You know your empire's crumbling when your reaction to that is to exacerbate the problem by enacting tax policies that massively increase further still the gap between the rich and the rest.
You know your empire's crumbling when the predatory class has taken over your government and is stripping the country of everything not bolted down to the floor. And then it sells the floor itself, as well, to your rivals.
You know your empire's crumbling when you're spending tens of billions of dollars you don't own on new nuclear warheads and space weapons that don't work, to be used against an enemy you don't have.
You know your empire's crumbling when one of your cities drowns and your government does next to nothing before, during and after.
You know your empire's crumbling when a massive environmental nightmare is looming around the corner, and your emperor not only ignores it, but claims it isn't real while taking steps to exacerbate it.
You know your empire's crumbling when your emperor is warned by a CIA briefer of an imminent terrorist attack of vast proportions, and responds by remaining on vacation and dismissing the briefer with the words: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."
You know your empire's crumbling when the same emperor drops everything to fly across the country from his vacation home in order to sign a bill intervening on the wrong side of a personal medical drama involving a single family.
You know your empire's crumbling when gays and immigrants are used as diversionary issues to keep people from thinking about the pillaging of their country and their wallets actually taking place. And it works.
You know your empire's crumbling when people are getting more religious and less scientific, not the other way around.
You know your empire's crumbling when your political leaders start to be chosen by dynastic rules of succession.
And you especially know your empire's crumbling when the most idiotic child of one of the least accomplished leaders in its history is not only crowned as the next emperor, but is even revered for a time by most of the public as a great one.
Rome? Britain? Spain?
At this rate we'll be lucky to end up like Belgium.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/gameover.php
http://snipurl.com/2x5t2
So. You've built yourself an empire, eh?
Well, bully for you!
What's next, you ask? Well, now you've got to do what everybody does when they have an empire, of course. You've got to worry about it falling apart, mate!
But how to tell for sure? Let me see if I can be helpful. Here are some rules of thumb to keep in mind, thirty-six sure-fire indicators that your empire is falling apart:
You know your empire's crumbling when the folks who are gearing up their empire to replace yours start blowing up satellites in space. And then they don't bother to return your phone calls when you ring up to ask why.
You know your empire's crumbling when those same folks are cutting deals left, right and center across Asia, Latin America and Africa, while you, your lousy terms, and your arrogant attitude are no longer welcome.
You know your empire's crumbling when you're spending your grandchildren's money like a drunken sailor, and letting your soon-to-be rivals finance your little splurge (i.e., letting them own your country).
You know your empire's crumbling when it's considered an achievement to pretend that you've halved the rate at which you're adding to the massive mountain of debt you've already accumulated.
You know your empire's crumbling when you weaken your currency until it looks as anemic as a Paris runway model, and you're still setting record trade deficits. (Hint: Because you're not making anything anymore.)
You know your empire's crumbling when "the little brown ones" (thank you George H.W. Bush - certainly not me - for that lovely expression) in country after country of "your backyard" blow you off and proudly elect anti-imperialist leftist governments.
You know your empire's crumbling when you can't topple those governments and replace them with nice puppet regimes - like in the good old days - even if you wanted to. And you badly want to.
You know your empire's crumbling when one of their leaders comes to the United Nations and makes fun of your emperor, calling him the devil, and joking about smelling sulphur where he just stood. And though a few folks cringe, everybody laughs.
You know your empire's crumbling when just about your entire military land force is tied up in a worse-than-useless war launched on the basis of complete fabrications, that every day is actually making you less - not more - secure from external threat.
You know your empire's crumbling when almost half the soldiers in that war are high-paid mercenaries, and you don't dare institute a draft.
You know your empire's crumbling when you send soldiers into war with two weeks training and a lack of armor, and then you keep them there for three, four and five rotations.
You know your empire's crumbling when a member of the Axis of Evil can test missiles and explode nuclear warheads, and all you can do about it is mumble some pathetic warnings about how they better not do that again or there will be consequences.
You know your empire's crumbling when you even think that there is an Axis of Evil.
You know your empire's crumbling when a rag-tag military hodge-podge of irregulars has you pinned down in an endless fight you can't win, but also can't lose.
You know your empire's crumbling when you're too dumb to even ban Humvees as a first step toward ending your dependency on a foreign-owned crucial resource.
You know your empire's crumbling when you trade your prior moral leadership on human rights issues for global disgust at your torture, 'extraordinary rendition' (a.k.a. kidnaping for torture) and the dismantling of nine centuries worth of civil liberties progress.
You know your empire's crumbling when you blow off international law that you once helped create, and undermine the institutions of international governance that you once helped build.
You know your empire's crumbling when opinion polls confirm that every month you're more and more despised throughout the world.
You know your empire's crumbling when you can't even pull off the hanging of a tin-pot murderous former dictator without turning him into a hero.
You know your empire's crumbling when you're the richest country in the world, but nearly 50 million of your people don't have basic health care coverage.
You know your empire's crumbling when the World Health Organization ranks your healthcare system 37th 'best' in the world, just above Slovenia, and just below Costa Rica. (And far below Colombia, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia and Morocco.)
You know your empire's crumbling when instead of making it easier for citizens to obtain a higher education, you're making it harder and more expensive.
You know your empire's crumbling when your government gives tax breaks to industries as a reward for exporting your jobs elsewhere.
You know your empire's crumbling when the so-called 'opposition' party can't even turn that obscenity into a viable campaign theme and use it to clobber the worst emperor in your history.
You know your empire's crumbling when your middle class has been stagnant for three decades, while the wealth of the hyper-rich continues to climb through the roof.
You know your empire's crumbling when your reaction to that is to exacerbate the problem by enacting tax policies that massively increase further still the gap between the rich and the rest.
You know your empire's crumbling when the predatory class has taken over your government and is stripping the country of everything not bolted down to the floor. And then it sells the floor itself, as well, to your rivals.
You know your empire's crumbling when you're spending tens of billions of dollars you don't own on new nuclear warheads and space weapons that don't work, to be used against an enemy you don't have.
You know your empire's crumbling when one of your cities drowns and your government does next to nothing before, during and after.
You know your empire's crumbling when a massive environmental nightmare is looming around the corner, and your emperor not only ignores it, but claims it isn't real while taking steps to exacerbate it.
You know your empire's crumbling when your emperor is warned by a CIA briefer of an imminent terrorist attack of vast proportions, and responds by remaining on vacation and dismissing the briefer with the words: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."
You know your empire's crumbling when the same emperor drops everything to fly across the country from his vacation home in order to sign a bill intervening on the wrong side of a personal medical drama involving a single family.
You know your empire's crumbling when gays and immigrants are used as diversionary issues to keep people from thinking about the pillaging of their country and their wallets actually taking place. And it works.
You know your empire's crumbling when people are getting more religious and less scientific, not the other way around.
You know your empire's crumbling when your political leaders start to be chosen by dynastic rules of succession.
And you especially know your empire's crumbling when the most idiotic child of one of the least accomplished leaders in its history is not only crowned as the next emperor, but is even revered for a time by most of the public as a great one.
Rome? Britain? Spain?
At this rate we'll be lucky to end up like Belgium.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/gameover.php
http://snipurl.com/2x5t2
Friday, July 11, 2008
American Capitalism: The Murder Culture vs The Gift Culture
By Justin Frambes
7/11/08
"Centuries ago they came to the "New World", the masses of European settlers escaping political and religious oppression, war, corrupt landlordism, etc. for freer, much greener pastures, but unknowing pawns as they were and slaves to a system so omnipresent they never saw it, let alone questioned it, they brought with them the monetary control system and systematically conquered the entire North American continent, ultimately resulting in the deaths of anywhere from 8 to 145 million American Indians through disease, dispossession of their land (most often illegal), and outright genocide, all in the name of [American] "progress" and profit. Along with the American Indians, the Gift Culture" passed into the pages of history.
As the United States established itself, so did capitalism and the modern corporate world under the monetary control system. Viewing the continent as a vast source of future wealth and American Indians and their way of life (Gift Culture, sustainability) as "savage," "antiquated," and standing directly in its way atop "waste and unappropriated lands" 1, it set upon its mission of removing them and plundering the land for every resource it had. Blinded by greed for the money and power to be obtained through acquisition of all the natural resources and growth of a taxpaying population, it never questioned its predatory way of service to self (where one serves self) at the expense of others — e.g. their disrespect, disregard, and brutality toward other peoples, other customs, animals, and nature itself (indeed, it lived completely out of touch with nature, where its only relationship to it was to prey upon it). Today, 232 years after its inception, the American empire having influenced almost every corner of the world (and led almost all other nations by example), its pursuit of material and financial wealth through capitalism has left the Earth's air, land, rivers and sea polluted beyond human repair and humanity in a state of misery and disarray.
American Indians were (and had always been) free from the monetary control system, living under their humble Gift Culture, but efforts during the 18th and 19th centuries to force them into accepting "civilization", being American citizens, and ultimately taxpayers subject to the jurisdiction (control) of the United States were relentless and unyielding, and eventually succeeded. What the world largely has today, as a result of the historically costly success of America and capitalism and abandonment of the Gift Culture (excluding the digital world where it still lives), is that of a convenient but ultimately regressive, debt-based, fast-paced, stressful, egocentric, self-important, individualistic, isolationist, unsustainable, anti-communal / anti-tribal, fear-based (fear of losing money, power, importance, normalcy, services, materialism, of death, and so on) way of life disconnected from nature and almost completely devoid of meaning and realism.
It is very revealing that most people cannot imagine what life would be like without money. The problem however is not necessarily money itself, it is humanity's belief in and use of it (via the ego). Unfortunately it demands that life is a perpetual state of debt to someone or something other than oneself, something to be continuously earned until the end ("the cost of living"), and places an arbitrary numerical value on life itself, when in actuality all life is equal and sacred. Furthermore it gives only the illusion of balance; its very existence creates imbalance and poverty, the opposite of its purpose, which is to obtain security. And when accompanied by greed, hatred, or self-centeredness it becomes the tool of corruption, control (through ownership), and leads to destruction and disregard for others and loss of quality and integrity in its pursuit, namely that of profits.
Such things are incapable of existing under a Gift Culture, a free system that is not derived from the ego and based on pure self-interest, but one of codependence, coexistence, and care for others — where wealth is not in how much one acquires, as it is under capitalism, but how much one can give away freely. With no universal currency to acquire, there is no controllable economy or outlet for greed and hatred through ownership to be had. The American Indians, for instance, had not even a definition of private property:
"The Indians had no concept of "private property," as applied to the land. Only among the Delawares was it customary for families, during certain times of the year, to be assigned specific hunting territories. Apparently this was an unusual practice, not found among other Indians. Certainly, the idea of an individual having exclusive use of a particular piece of land was completely strange to Native Americans.
The Indians practiced communal land ownership. That is, the entire community owned the land upon which it lived." 2
Ownership of land is now at an all-time high and how much global corporations own is staggering. The capitalist system, having operated at full speed for over 200 years, has exhausted the world extensively, and is at this point showing blatant signs of impending failure, all due to its unsustainability and careless disregard for everything except itself. People are now, more than ever, finding themselves with less and less money and are becoming disillusioned with the monetary control system as a whole as the trillions of dollars of unpaid debt come full circle, causing prices to skyrocket due to the plummeting purchasing power of the dollar and the stock market to threaten a disastrous collapse.
With nothing being manufactured in the country anymore thanks to rampant outsourcing by corporations for higher profits and the Federal Reserve Corporation as usual looking out for its own interests and those of the banks, there is no solution in sight to the problem except to brace oneself for the impending great wave of changes.
In order to survive what seems to be coming, compassion (with discernment) for others, the slow formation of localized, self-sustaining communities, and free exchange of goods will become inevitable necessities, and perhaps with those, as the money itself and the belief in it collapses, will arrive a gradual return to the Gift Culture, where such selflessness, while at first provided out of necessity, will eventually be done so voluntarily as humanity realizes a better way of living.
http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=785
http://snipurl.com/2x5ck
7/11/08
"Centuries ago they came to the "New World", the masses of European settlers escaping political and religious oppression, war, corrupt landlordism, etc. for freer, much greener pastures, but unknowing pawns as they were and slaves to a system so omnipresent they never saw it, let alone questioned it, they brought with them the monetary control system and systematically conquered the entire North American continent, ultimately resulting in the deaths of anywhere from 8 to 145 million American Indians through disease, dispossession of their land (most often illegal), and outright genocide, all in the name of [American] "progress" and profit. Along with the American Indians, the Gift Culture" passed into the pages of history.
As the United States established itself, so did capitalism and the modern corporate world under the monetary control system. Viewing the continent as a vast source of future wealth and American Indians and their way of life (Gift Culture, sustainability) as "savage," "antiquated," and standing directly in its way atop "waste and unappropriated lands" 1, it set upon its mission of removing them and plundering the land for every resource it had. Blinded by greed for the money and power to be obtained through acquisition of all the natural resources and growth of a taxpaying population, it never questioned its predatory way of service to self (where one serves self) at the expense of others — e.g. their disrespect, disregard, and brutality toward other peoples, other customs, animals, and nature itself (indeed, it lived completely out of touch with nature, where its only relationship to it was to prey upon it). Today, 232 years after its inception, the American empire having influenced almost every corner of the world (and led almost all other nations by example), its pursuit of material and financial wealth through capitalism has left the Earth's air, land, rivers and sea polluted beyond human repair and humanity in a state of misery and disarray.
American Indians were (and had always been) free from the monetary control system, living under their humble Gift Culture, but efforts during the 18th and 19th centuries to force them into accepting "civilization", being American citizens, and ultimately taxpayers subject to the jurisdiction (control) of the United States were relentless and unyielding, and eventually succeeded. What the world largely has today, as a result of the historically costly success of America and capitalism and abandonment of the Gift Culture (excluding the digital world where it still lives), is that of a convenient but ultimately regressive, debt-based, fast-paced, stressful, egocentric, self-important, individualistic, isolationist, unsustainable, anti-communal / anti-tribal, fear-based (fear of losing money, power, importance, normalcy, services, materialism, of death, and so on) way of life disconnected from nature and almost completely devoid of meaning and realism.
It is very revealing that most people cannot imagine what life would be like without money. The problem however is not necessarily money itself, it is humanity's belief in and use of it (via the ego). Unfortunately it demands that life is a perpetual state of debt to someone or something other than oneself, something to be continuously earned until the end ("the cost of living"), and places an arbitrary numerical value on life itself, when in actuality all life is equal and sacred. Furthermore it gives only the illusion of balance; its very existence creates imbalance and poverty, the opposite of its purpose, which is to obtain security. And when accompanied by greed, hatred, or self-centeredness it becomes the tool of corruption, control (through ownership), and leads to destruction and disregard for others and loss of quality and integrity in its pursuit, namely that of profits.
Such things are incapable of existing under a Gift Culture, a free system that is not derived from the ego and based on pure self-interest, but one of codependence, coexistence, and care for others — where wealth is not in how much one acquires, as it is under capitalism, but how much one can give away freely. With no universal currency to acquire, there is no controllable economy or outlet for greed and hatred through ownership to be had. The American Indians, for instance, had not even a definition of private property:
"The Indians had no concept of "private property," as applied to the land. Only among the Delawares was it customary for families, during certain times of the year, to be assigned specific hunting territories. Apparently this was an unusual practice, not found among other Indians. Certainly, the idea of an individual having exclusive use of a particular piece of land was completely strange to Native Americans.
The Indians practiced communal land ownership. That is, the entire community owned the land upon which it lived." 2
Ownership of land is now at an all-time high and how much global corporations own is staggering. The capitalist system, having operated at full speed for over 200 years, has exhausted the world extensively, and is at this point showing blatant signs of impending failure, all due to its unsustainability and careless disregard for everything except itself. People are now, more than ever, finding themselves with less and less money and are becoming disillusioned with the monetary control system as a whole as the trillions of dollars of unpaid debt come full circle, causing prices to skyrocket due to the plummeting purchasing power of the dollar and the stock market to threaten a disastrous collapse.
With nothing being manufactured in the country anymore thanks to rampant outsourcing by corporations for higher profits and the Federal Reserve Corporation as usual looking out for its own interests and those of the banks, there is no solution in sight to the problem except to brace oneself for the impending great wave of changes.
In order to survive what seems to be coming, compassion (with discernment) for others, the slow formation of localized, self-sustaining communities, and free exchange of goods will become inevitable necessities, and perhaps with those, as the money itself and the belief in it collapses, will arrive a gradual return to the Gift Culture, where such selflessness, while at first provided out of necessity, will eventually be done so voluntarily as humanity realizes a better way of living.
http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=785
http://snipurl.com/2x5ck
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