I appreciate your responding to my post and not writing me off as a loon. It's true that I don't know a whole lot about economics, but I think I know enough about the basics to know that more thinking out of the box to make the existing status quo work better for everyone might do us all a lot of good.Originally Posted by Yossarian
I'm going to use David Korten's words to answer most of your questions. In short, I think that our current system, which everyone takes for granted, served us for a time, but given the specific problems we face it's time to move on. The real issue is, we're so ingrained in the status quo that changing how we think is understandably difficult to imagine.
Here's what Korten says:
http://livingeconomiesforum.org/site...%20version.pdf
The theme of this University of Oregon inquiry, “From Wall Street to Main Street:Capitalism and the Common Good,” makes an essential distinction between Wall Street and Main Street. These terms refer to two economies with dramatically differentstructures and dedicated to the service of very different values and interests. The fate of America turns on the outcome of a contest between proponents of these two very different economic systems. The greed-driven, money-serving, corporate-ruled Wall Street Economy measures its success exclusively by the financial profits it generates for the already rich. It neither acknowledges nor accepts responsibility for the economic, social, environmental, and political devastation it leaves in its wake. The democratic, community-rooted, market-based, life-serving Main Street economies that ordinary people are rebuilding across the nation and around the world measure success by their contribution to securing adequate and meaningful livelihoods for everyone in a balanced relationship to nature.
The differences between these two economies trace directly to their contrasting ownership models. The Wall Street economy features the absentee ownership of global publicly-traded, limited-liability corporations for which short-term financial profit is the sole measure of performance. It is a system designed to distribute wealth upward and risks downward and to facilitate reckless speculation and rampant fraud. Economic and political failure starts with Wall Street.
The Main Street economy features the responsible living ownership of locally rooted businesses by people who care about the health and vitality of their community and its natural environment. Real prosperity starts with Main Street.
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