1 Comment

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  Professor George F. Hart - 14 years ago

  What I have observed in the 60 years prior to 2000 and the 10 years since 2000 that makes me believe the last ten years have been nothing special can be summarised as follows. The social environment has taken a downward trend on the back of the media and corporate interests. The media continues to promote the idea that the purpose of life is 'the satisfaction of personal pleasure' instead of 'to be useful and relevant'. Corporations have used the mantra 'personal pleasure' to boost sales to, and make profit from, uncritical teen-ages and adults. The government has failed to carry out its role as the prime regulatory body of our society. As society advances it needs more regulatory oversight to control corporate excesses - that do real harm by diminishing personal wealth of the population as a whole, whereas they should be increasing personal wealth of the people.

  Politically the United States failed it's people in both education and wealth creation. It has allowed its Universities to become business centres and students to become customers rather people who are seeking knowledge. Our politicians have allowed Capitalism to divert from it's great roll, as the generator of personal wealth and innovation through the intelligent use of resources, to a system of manipulatory theft and greed. Capitalism, and the generation of personal wealth, is the driving force of our Cultural Gamodeme [inter-breeding population]: even Marx propounded that concept. Capitalism without regulation led to the Great Depression and the Bush Depression. Politically we have failed to develop a method of controlling and utilising corporate profit for the benefit of the people. Our politicians overly tax the people and not the corporate profits. If we removed all Federal taxes and forcibly acquired 40% of all Public Corporations, placing government regulators on the board of all Public Corporations as non-voting members, we could control not only corporate greed but also have sufficient profit to run our Nation i.e. we tie our nation to the profit made by our industry. Similarly, if we banned ALL State taxes and replaced it with a single 20% VAT each State should have sufficient funds to run their necessary service activities. Such a single VAT tax puts the support of the State on the local population [consumer]. Both of these methods provide a translucent mode for understanding how the peoples money is spent because we can easily compare the Federal/State budget with what we will know was generated. If a State cannot run on 20% of what the people spend then change in the running of government is necessary. Linking the Federal budget directly to corporate profit allows the true health of our society to be seen.

  Finally, the last decade [actually commencing around 1973] there has been a critical increase in population pressure on our Earth's resources: indeed population pressure may be now uncontrollable in most regions of our World. This has eroded our social system. Population density and numbers are the major cause of the global problems facing our Earth. Neither religion nor the corporate world want a reduced population [workers/consumers/flock].

  Our society is under increasing stress and can only be fixed by recognising the need for a 'peoples ethic' rather than a 'corporate ethic' as the underlying rules for our political system.