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13 Very Good Reasons to Give A Damn
Even in the face of nearly unprecedented corporate and government corruption, the American public appears to remain woefully apathetic. Perhaps this is because most Americans believe they are safely bunkered within the “middle-class” and thus largely insulated from the horrors they see around the world, and even around their local communities. Or perhaps they simply feel powerless to affect change. This behavior is akin to the legendary flaw of frogs, which can be boiled alive, without a struggle, IF the water they are in is brought slowly to a boil. What we Americans seem to need right now is a good, old fashioned, motivating kick in the pants! So, before we are boiled in our own juices, here are 13 very good reasons for Americans (plus our allies and other humanitarians) to give a damn.
First, consider these facts:
1. Many of history’s greatest civilizations have fallen due NOT to external forces (such as military invasion) but rather due to complacency and corruption from within. Consider Imperial Rome as a defining example .
2. Today, corruption and complacency are in evidence everywhere in the world, but perhaps especially in America where living can be quite cushy. For example, more Americans can name celebrities and accurately cite sport statistics than can name their elected officials and ballot initiatives, and few seem to protest when a new scandal demonstrates the public is being robbed of billion$ by a small cast of usual suspects.
3. The “American middle-class”, especially that version sold to the public for the past 60 years, is consistently shrinking at an ever-accelerating pace. Consider that a 1950's college graduate expected to afford a home, two cars, a spouse, several children, 2 annual vacations, perhaps even a vacation home, full health care and a “guaranteed” livable pension, all on a single salary with excellent job security. Today, new college graduates working full time are barely able to afford a home (especially without a subsidy from their older relatives), their two cars are used for lengthy his and her commutes, their children have become a day-care challenge, their health care coverage is limited and increasingly expensive, they will be lucky to remain consistently employed, and (except for government employees) they can forget guaranteed pensions or even the mathematical ability to retire before the end of their life expectancy. (Check the math!)
4. The “American Dream” of democracy, freedom and opportunity is now largely obsolete propaganda. Wages, benefits, freedoms, security, education, and quality of life are declining steadily. Taxes, governmental control, corporate hegemony, warfare, and prison populations and are all steadily rising.
5. The “water temperature” bathing the human condition, even in the ultra-wealthy U.S., has been heating up for 20 - 30 years now, and seems headed to a boil.
This ViewPoint is a call for an end to apathy, complacency, rationalization and willful ignorance. Presented here is a concise list of 13 good reasons that most Americans should give a damn about where our nation is leading the world, why we should change direction, and how we can accomplish this imperative task.The information is presented in a brief and simplified style in order to reach the broadest audience in the most digestible form. Readers wishing to explore in depth examples, facts, arguments and proofs should refer to related essays within the Alter-Nation archives.
We hope to inspire everyone to give a damn about the future of our nation, our world, and our humanity... and then to do something positive about it!
Reason 1: Our Children
Problem - The disarray we will leave to our children and future generations. If we Americans fail to force substantial reforms within our own system (and to then lead the entire world toward acceptance of such reforms), our children will inherit an impossible array of problems such as unbridled corporate power, oligarchic control of life resources, nuclear waste, energy and petroleum shortages, environmental degradation, persistent warfare, and dramatic loss of freedoms (physical, economic and political).
Solution - Become aware of the most important issues, and ruthlessly demand immediate and substantial changes to our system. Refuse to elect any party not making dramatic reforms happen. Congratulations! By simply reading this essay you prove that you care and that our increased awareness has already begun!
Reason 2: Our Health
Problem - Cost spiral and lack of health coverage. Science has done its job so well that the world's most devastating health problems are now caused by politics and greed. It is simply inhumane to hold health care hostage to private profit. Moreover, the government and medical industry artificially limit the numbers of doctors and hospital beds to ensure an ever-present lack of competition, and the taxpayers fund all basic medical and scientific research anyway.
Solution - Universal health care. We need extensive universal health care for everyone, operated as a quasi-governmental national service and funded through taxes on commerce. We need to deregulate the training of medical professionals to create an abundance of care providers. Remember, there is no possibility of a "free market" when the product is "life or death" and the ability to negotiate is often non-existent. No person should ever be denied basic care, treatment and medication.
Reason 3: Our Water Supply
Problem - Privatization is increasing costs and decreasing quality and user control. The holy crusade to "privatize" everything is a disaster unfolding worldwide. Now, control over more and more drinking water systems is being sold to private monopolies which, in turn, manage this precious resource for maximum profit, not for public health and safety.
Solution - User ownership ONLY! Private companies competing against each other can provide great innovations and increased efficiencies when there are lots of competitors, ease of entry, a level playing field and theoretically infinite resources. However, when we are dealing with a mature industry, limited and/or crucial resources, and/or few possible competitors, "free markets" is an oxymoron... only democratically controlled institutions can serve the public good. Water resources and systems should ONLY be owned and managed by the local stakeholders who must buy and consume that water.
Reason 4: Our Food Supply
Problem - Factory farming, centralized control & distribution, mono-culture and genetically modified crops. Modern farming techniques have increased yields and lowered prices, but at a tremendous cost of soil salting and degradation, poisoning consumers, toxifying the environment, and eliminating genetic diversity. Moreover, billion$ in government subsidies (mostly paid to massive agri-corporations) pervert markets and destroy small farmers worldwide: It is ridiculous that a tomato grown in South America can be sold in Oregon for a lower price than a locally grown tomato. Nearly no American family can feed itself today, making us totally dependant on a handful of massive multinational corporations and disconnecting us from our natural relationship with our homelands. In essence, agribusiness' focus on short term profits have lead to theft of our future in order to pretend we are more efficient today. A true food production crisis is looming on the horizon.
Solution - Local production and distribution, sustainable practices.To enable a renaissance of local, small-to-medium scale food production and distribution, we must end all forms of subsidized farming, require full product life cycle accounting responsibility (including replenishment of depleted soils), and enforce strict organic production standards. Food production is an area where true market competition can and will work if anti-competitive industry practices are ended. Where necessary, we must forbid importing of goods from any countries which do not join in these reforms. While these changes will not necessarily mean the end of Kraft, Procter & Gamble, or Archer-Daniels-Midland, those and similar companies will certainly face severe challenges within a balanced, responsible and truly competitive environment.
Reason 5: Our Energy Supply
Problem - Privatization and Centralization. There is simply no way to maintain "free market competition" while providing electric or natural gas production or distribution, or even production of petroleum-based fuels. One set of pipes or wires is available for delivery. Billions are required to build needed production facilities and infrastructure. In the case of non-renewable fossil fuels, there are limited and finite resources which also have national security implications. Indeed, private petroleum corporations would be quickly bankrupted if they were required to pay the cost of Middle East military campaigns which secure their major sources of oil. Further, private corporations have proved incapable of managing these monopoly and oligopoly industries for the public benefit, and have a long track record of collusion, corruption, mismanagement, price gouging, taxpayer subsidies, and environmental damage.
Solution - Distributed networks based on renewable energy and user ownership. Just as the internet was designed to prevent sabotage by using a broadly distributed network, our energy infrastructure must be similarly re-organized. Electricity must be the energy source of overwhelming choice, and its production should be accomplished through solar panels atop every building (homes, factories, stores, etc.) yielding a net surplus of power during all daylight conditions. Traditional generation plants would still be used for night power and system balance, and would remain connected to all existing distribution lines, although ownership and management should be non-profit, quasi-national and/or consumer based. Re-chargable electric cars and bikes should become the dominant mode of personal transportation. Petroleum products should be available only at or above their true and full cost (including waste clean-up, health mitigation, and related military/diplomatic expenses), and generally reserved for unique applications (medicine, high-density portable power, synthetics, etc.).
Reason 6: Our Housing
Problem - Subsidies, irresponsibility and corruption destroy rights, affordability and community. Typically, local taxpayers are forced to heavily subsidize land sub-division and development profits through bond obligations and other forms of "externalization" of public infrastructure costs necessitated by those developments. This leads to a perennial shortage of funds for local governments, and an impossible task of fiscal 'catch-up', causing tax burdens to grow continuously while services are simultaneously cut further and further. There is no provision for keeping housing affordable for the working classes, and thus a community's economic success quickly leads to housing price spikes which disenfranchise the work force. Ultimately, such growth practices are unsustainable, leading to stagnation, flight, and urban decay with its array of attendant social woes.
Solution - Development must pay its own way, must be sustainable and must provide a stock of affordable housing. First and foremost, all forms of development subsidies must be ended: Development must be made to pay 100% of the public infrastructure costs associated with such projects. This will provide a natural economic curb to limit sprawl and prevent boom and bust cycles. Finally, the only way to maintain a stock of housing perpetually afforable to the working classes is through deed restrictions on a percentage of land subdivisions (i.e., designated tracts) which limit resale prices to indexed increases in the median income of local residents.
Reason 7: Our Income
Problem - Multinational/Transnational corporations chase the lowest labor costs, leading to a worldwide 'Grapes of Wrath' scenario. Mesmerized by the mantra of "free trade", we have forgotten the lessons of history: Rich and powerful people will use and abuse less capable (or simply less fortunate) humans to the fullest extent possible. While the role of a democratic government is to ensure protection against such abuses, the World Trade Organization, World Bank, et al, have made corporations more powerful than the governments under which (in theory) they operate. Capital now flows freely to those countries willing to look away from abuse of people, the environment, or even international law, while humans are prohibited from moving freely around the world. Wages, working and living conditions are thus in a downward spiral worldwide, and now even American workers are feeling the slow, steady and perpetual decline. With an abundance of near-slave labor throughout many parts of the globe, the path to our collective future is anything but bright.
Solution - Living wages and NO corporate subsidies. The time has come to demand an end to ALL forms of corporate 'welfare': Subsidies which corporation receive through special tax breaks, direct payments by competing governments, and especially externalization of costs. Beyond failing to pay for the clean-up of the wastes and toxics they produce, or engineering taxpayer-funded infrastructure development or military enforcement, the largest externalized cost is failure to pay a living wage to workers. Just as in Steinbeck's famous "Grapes of Wrath", such practices leave workers a little weaker each day, until they are finally discarded in favor of fresh new workers clamoring at the factory gates for their own chance to earn ANY wage at all. Such profit is NOT fairly earned in a free market, it is stolen from a societies which struggle to catch, save and heal the wounded. A living wage must be required globally, and all imports must be banned for products where living wages were not paid.
Reason 8: Our Education
Problem - increasing cost, decreasing quality and availability of education. Public education, once properly valued as the great democratic equalizer, has been corrupted by giving too much money and power to administrators and text publishers, and too little money, authority and incentives to real teachers. Since a highly educated populace actually threatens the power of the elite, they have absolutely no motivation to solve this problem for the masses (especially since they no longer face the threat of competition from socialist states).
Solution - standardized multimedia teaching library. Modern computer and DVD/CD technology provide a method for ensuring a high-quality educational for everyone who is interested and motivated. In short, 4 or 5 different teaching styles can be recorded for every K - 12 class (as selected by teachers themselves from among their peers) plus most undergraduate courses in EVERY discipline, in full multimedia including video, audio, white illustrations, transcribed text, and accompanying texts and study guides, all fully computer searchable and displayable... at a cost of less than $5 billion! Spend another $20 billion and we would have it all in 5 languages! (That is, a comprehensive lifetime of learning for everyone ever interested, in several distinct styles and most major languages, for less than what the U.S. was prepared to pay as a bribe to the Turkish government during the 2003 "Showdown with Iraq".) Combine that with recurring royalties for teachers whose courses were selected by their peers, and a doubling of teacher salaries (paid for through increased taxes on commerce) and we have chance to revolutionize and revitalize both education AND our democracy.
Reason 9: Our Physical Freedom
Problem - Growth of Military-Industrial and Prison-Industrial complexes, especially as a percentage of GDP, whihc leads to increased taxes and government control, limits on freedom, and increases in corporate control and subsidies. Military and prison are massive black holes in our economy, swallowing ever-increasing percentages of GDP while returning NOTHING of value. Roads, electric plants, and universities all provide a tangible product which can be re-used for many years and which increases productivity. In contrast, prison and military expenditures are a drain on resources which actually destroy the productivity of a society. Worse still, when operated in a for-profit context, these self-perpetuating bureaucracies actually work against the goals of society through relentless growth demands typical of all bureaucracies.
Solution - Minimize “non-violent” and “victimless” crimes, contain costs as % GDP, and force transnational corporations to bear most of burden for foreign policy, aid and actions. When commerce and transnational corporations are forced to bear the cost of military expenditures, the world will see an immediate reduction in armed conflict in favor of cooperative resolution of disputes. When we decriminalize the many victimless activities which are no legislated against based upon moral pretense and cultural bias (gambling, prostitution and especially responsible, private drug use) we will witness a dramatic reduction in prison occupancy and costs. Oh, by the way, we will also enjoy an incredible expansion of personal freedoms and reduction in crime rates (e.g., by taking the profit out of the drug trade).
Reason 10: Our Financial Freedom
Problem - Debt (personal, corporate, governmental) is enslaving the population. According to the Christian Bible, the injustice and immorality of usury was recognized by Christ and his followers more than 2,000 years ago, so it is particularly strange that the U.S. currency boasts "In God We Trust" while the Federal Reserve manipulates interest rates on a daily basis. Charging interest for the use of money (as opposed to receiving equity ownership in return for investment) is the core injustice within our economic system. This practice creates an unnatural schism between the interests of the money supplier and the entrepreneur who puts that money to work, and generally leads to an ever-greater consolidation of wealth and ever lower levels of productive competition. Now, after 225 years under such a system, most Americans are hopelessly indebted, indentured, certain to die without ever escaping the paper chains that bind them to their masters.
Solution - Restructure capital formation... equity for profit risks, debt-free “internal” money for governmental projects and social promotions such as housing. Outlaw all forms of interest on borrowed money, replacing it instead with debt-free issuance of money for governmental infrastructure projects, and reliance only on common equity shares for private investments. Such a change will put all of our oars in the water together and pulling in the same direction.
Reason 11: Our Democracy
Problem - Corporate hegemony, legal personage and money in politics. Corporations want their cake, and they want to eat it too, plus they want to use it to subvert our democracy. They want to be considered as a 'person' so they can enjoy the protections of our Bill of Rights, but they do not want to be subject to criminal penalties such as 'three strikes' or the death penalty (which would quickly put them out of business), but they still want an unlimited ability to bribe and corrupt legislators through campaign contributions. A noble man stands no chance against the combined resources of a corporation, thus men lose and corporation gain ever more power to mold the rules to their own favor.
Solution - Increase liability and punitive responses, eliminate personage. Revoke the preposterous theory of corporate personage and make corporations ALWAYS subservient to real people. Install penalties for corporate wrong doing commensurate with those for people, so that corproations which commit 3 "felonies" will forfeit their assets and have their business charters permanently revoked (thus forcing shareholders to keep and vigilant eye on the boards and officers controlling their investments). Make shareholder liable, in proportion to their percentage holdings for deficiencies and liabilities arising from the actions of the corporation (again, forcing shareholders to be duly concerned with the actions of the corporation). Eliminate all lobbying efforts and campaign donation for companies, corporations and organizations in favor of "one person, one vote" policies which empower individuals rather than fictitious legal constructs.
Reason 12: Our Environment
Problem - Increasing degradation due to lack of personal responsibility and accountability. Each step a person is removed from the consequences of his actions, the greater the probability that person will make a poor choice regarding his own actions. Thus, a plant manager is more likely to dumps toxic chemicals into a river from which he and his family do NOT drink. Imagine then the attitude of distant shareholders regarding the potential to 'externalize' the costs of pollution in favor of higher profits and larger dividends.
Solution - Full product life cycle costs We have the technology, science and cost accounting methods necessary to force each person and entity to bear all directs cost for each decision made, including expected costs of cleaninng or recycling after a product has left the factory. By calculating and matching these costs with the decisions surrounding them we will create an environment where people will naturally make the best choice for society because they are simply making the best choice for themselves.
Reason 13: Our Humanity
Problem - Over-population and over-consumption, the tragedy of the commons. Silly humans, wishing for immortality, yet living like there is no tomorrow. The Earth (and its vast yet finite resources, such as fresh water, fossil fuels, breathable air, forests, ocean stock) being 'the commons', 'the tragedy' being our pretense that we can over fish, clear cut, pollute, over drill, and waste resources as through we will be the last people to ever want to live here. At the core, the problem is one of over-population, but equally as devastating is the tendency of Americans to consume 20 - 30 times the per capita resources of other societies. The Union of Concerned Scientists has projected that, using optimistic assumptions, humanity will hit a logistical wall not later than 2070 (and perhaps as early as 2030) where a wide array of once available resources will simply be outstripped by demand leading to catastrohpic shortages and accompanying social upheaval.
Solution - Incentives and disincentives tied to personal responsibility.Recent statistics seem to indicate that many cultures are beginning to slow their reproductive rates, some have even reached zero population growth (ZPG) or negative growth (decreasing populations), thus providing a ray of hope for our collective humanity. The key correlation is that the more educated and more affluent the population is, the more self-regulated their birth rate is. Unfortunately, these more educated and affluent populations also tend toward American-style gross consumption, hinting that a global culture readjustment will be needed. Therefore, we can conclude that if we get serious about Reasons 1 - 12 above, we may indeed find the way to achieve a stable population and sustainable human culture.
Summary & Conclusion
There you have it, 13 reasons to give a damn, plus 13 ways we can actually create a peaceful revolution. Please think about it, do more research where needed to satisfy yourself regarding the best course of action, and then ACT!
The hour is late and we have already slept too long. A new age of caring and rationality is dawning. Pray we work together to become a powerful force of positive change; change which historians will respectfully note one hundred years from now; change which our great-great-grandchildren will proudly recount then just as we now proudly recount the first American revolution.
Thank you for your attention, interest and concern.
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