On August 28, 2013, Robert De Filippis writes on OpEdNews.com:
I recently watched the documentary, I Am, by director Tom Shadyac. Lots of thought provoking ideas. One in particular caught my attention: In nature, with the exception of a cancer cell, only a human takes more than it needs. And this is a recent development that came with capitalism. Aboriginal peoples lived in balance with their environment and some still do where they haven’t been touched by modernity: Meaning they take what they need to live and nothing more.
Not us! Especially those who already have enormous wealth. And the then I read Paul Buchheit’s article, 6 Filthy Facts About the Rich on Alternet.org.
This excerpt suggests the result of a system run amuck: “As evidence of the extremes between the very rich and the rest of us, the average household net worth for the top 1% in 2009 was almost $14 million, while the average household net worth for the bottom 47% was almost ZERO. For nearly half of America, average debt is about the same as average asset ownership.
The extremes are just as filthy at the global level. The richest 300 persons on earth (about a third of them in the U.S.) have more money than the poorest 3 billion people. Out of all developed and undeveloped countries with at least a quarter-million adults, the U.S. has the 4th-highest degree of wealth inequality in the world, trailing only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon.”
What system is running amuck you ask? Mr. Buchheit goes on to write, “It’s not the obligation of any one of these individuals to feed the world. The disgrace is in the fact that our unregulated capitalist system allows such outrageous extremes to exist.
Here’s more to provoke outrage. The 400 richest Americans made $200 billion in just one year. That’s equivalent to the combined total of the federal food stamp, education, and housing budgets.”
This system of unfettered capitalism is devouring our souls, including the souls of those who benefit most. It justifies our quest for our own security by creating the illusion of separation and scarcity. It teaches that the natural order is competition and cooperation is for the weak and unable. It allows us to blame the victims for their plight.
The wealthy are the very people who own, operate and direct congress to further reduce funding to social programs to keep taxes low, loopholes in place, subsidies coming and the money flowing into their own coffers.
So the question occurred to me, how can any moral person believe a system that allows 300 people to own more wealth than 3 billion is anything but dysfunctional?
Abraham Lincoln said that the purpose of government is to do for people what they cannot do for themselves. Government also should serve to keep people from hurting themselves and to restrain man’s greed, which otherwise cannot be self-controlled. Anyone who seeks to own productive power that they cannot or won’t use for consumption are beggaring their neighbor––the equivalency of mass murder––the impact of concentrated capital ownership.
The capitalism practiced today is what, for a long time, I have termed “Hoggism,” propelled by greed and the sheer love of power over others. “Hoggism” institutionalizes greed (creating concentrated capital ownership, monopolies, and special privileges). “Hoggism” is about the ability of greedy rich people to manipulate the lives of people who struggle with declining labor worker earnings and job opportunities, and then accumulate the bulk of the money through monopolized productive capital ownership. Our scientists, engineers, and executive managers who are not owners themselves, except for those in the highest employed positions, are encouraged to work to destroy employment by making the capital worker more productive. How much employment can be destroyed by substituting machines for people is a measure of their success––always focused on producing at the lowest cost. Only the people who already own productive capital are the beneficiaries of their work, as they systematically concentrate more and more capital ownership in their stationary 1 percent ranks. Yet the 1 percent are not the people who do the overwhelming consuming. The result is the consumer populous is not able to get the money to buy the products and services produced as a result of substituting machines for people. And yet you can’t have mass production without mass human consumption. It is the exponential disassociation of production and consumption that is the problem in the United States economy, and the reason that ordinary citizens must gain access to productive capital ownership to improve their economic well-being.
The solutions are outlined in “Financing Economic Growth With ‘FUTURE SAVINGS’: Solutions To Protect America From Economic Decline” at NationOfChange.org http://www.nationofchange.org/financing-future-economic-growth-future-savings-solutions-protect-america-economic-decline-137450624
