G20 London Summit > From the Forum

Hot talks about G20 (PART II)

(bbs.chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-03-27 15:33

From Robert Ezergailis Hamilton, Canada

NOTES TOWARDS A NEW SOCIETY - WHAT CAN G20 DO ? (Part Two)

NOTES TOWARDS A NEW SOCIETY - WHAT CAN G20 DO ?

WHAT SHOULD GOVERNMENTS DO ?

1. Establish infrastructure, housing and health standards and a clear plan and metrics for worldwide achievement.

The fact that those are extremely bad in many parts of the world does not eliminate the need for those common standards and a plan for achieving them. In fact the opposite, it necessitates that plan a metrics for measuring real, factual, progress. Money controlling bodies such as the IMF (International Monetary Fund), inter government lending and grants (charity), and private charities, need to reassess their provision of funds on that basis. We need to see an end to “crisis management”, and a return to ideals, inclusive of the ideal of planning, and reliable measurement of progress, with penalties and rewards tied to real achievement. The situation is currently more unregulated and “political” than ever and that in fact is a form of corruption that does not truly serve the future of humanity. Some of that corruption originates in the Cold War stand off between two equally false ideologies, locked in dialectic, unwilling to enter into dialogue as to the truth.

2. Establish a world body for R&D cooperation, eliminating wasted efforts and lack of means for researchers.

The levels of frustration and resignation to despair among scientists and researchers due to the way that funding is competed for, and due to the constraints that that imposes upon true cooperation among themselves for the sake of any greater good, are worse than ever before. In times of economic hardship that too becomes a tougher, more isolating battleground despite the superficial stress upon information sharing in seminars and conventions. The latter have become more oriented to disinformation, and misinformation due to the necessity to fight for scarce funding against all peers and organizations having similar subject interests. To reveal one’s secrets is death, because they will be stolen and no recognition given, in the fight for money to continue one’s work. Deprived of means, and deprived of facilities and equipment, even the best potential can be easily lost. In fact it is being lost. The illusion of progress is exactly that. For every gain there are a nearly infinite number of losses, in a system so wasteful that a chanced gain of knowledge and capability for the dollar spent is matched by many times that expenditure totally lost in addition to the loss of potential that comes from inadequate and total lack of means being prevalent in almost every area of subject interest. This worsens across increasingly competitive corporate and international lines.

3. Implement a population reduction plan to limit population to truly sustainable levels.

People are not a commodity to be mass produced and exported to wherever they chance to be able to be shipped to. They are not a product. We must end that historical tendency, which originated from the constant fact of violent conflict, its attrition, and the reliance on population numbers as being equivalent to both power and thus wealth. The times when reproduction of large numbers of people, to be kept largely in ignorance and trained to violence, for inter group conflict over scarce resources, was an effective strategy are gone. Technology has overcome that strategy even if some areas of the world remain in the darkness of that horrific past. Transcendence of that past has yet to be fully enough achieved, and progress is too slow. Setting locally sustainable population targets, taking into account a scientific comprehension of what constitutes a good standard of life for humanity to achieve sufficient potential and enjoyment of life, is a growing necessity. The world cannot continue to fund uncontrolled, violently competitive, local population growth, as its leading need for charity and its ever growing problem as to export of conflicting ideals and ideologies which are all primarily oriented towards invasion and pillaging of anywhere where scarce resources are less scarce and more attainable. That trend, if continued, would eventually reduce the standards of living of all of humanity to the lowest common denominator, without hope of escape from the ever worsening conflicts, the crisis and squalor permeating every area of life and society, and the growing trends to violence being experienced in the world’s most overpopulated areas. Population cannot be allowed to grow, anywhere in the world, unplanned, uncontrolled, and thoughtless as to the future of humanity and world conditions.

4. Largely eliminate income taxation by taxing borrowing within the interest rate structure.

Income taxes punish achievement and progress. They are essentially wrong. A better method is to tax borrowing at the interest rate level, largely eliminating the need for income taxation. This places a more equitable burden on the largest borrowers to pay an equitably larger portion of the needs for taxation. It would at least marginally encourage use of existing capital, reducing dependence on borrowing capital and hoarding existing capital, which is a much needed encouragement. Hoarding of capital has little if any disincentive in a system where borrowing is so easily achieved, regardless of any real assessment of needs or values. The more hoarded capital a borrower has the more capital can be borrowed, without any other concerns being involved, and least of all any furthering of larger ideals. Thus the hoarding of money would at least have a minimal penalty attached, to support the good of society.

5. Set new secular education standards for all, inclusive of ethics and citizenship.

Economic crisis, economic suffering, and the rise of organized and violent crimes, is a direct result of the failure of education. Where education is adequate and successful those problems would be in decline, not growing larger as they are. We have seen the facts played out in the world crisis that show clearly that education in accounting of costs and margins, and education in technical matters, as well as education in marketing or sales, is grossly inadequate education as to any real ethics or morality in regard to furthering the achieving of a better society, and meeting long term human needs more adequately. In fact the predominant modes of education, with their existing ideological components, have essentially failed in every nation in the world to achieve the necessary. Human behavior, individual habits, and clinging to irrational beliefs, also show an incredible deterioration, rather than improvement. Education thus can be shown to be deteriorating, not improving and massive, total, changes need to be immediately implemented. The alternative is the probability that at current levels of persistent deterioration there will one day be six people in jail for serious crimes, for every four people left outside to support them. Most of those jailed being victims of the poor quality of education, inadequate upbringing, a growing tolerance for irrational beliefs, mass drug addiction and social reliance on intoxication as the basis of most forms of social interaction, and a growing reliance on  ignorance and violence as the basis of “competition” and “character”, that derives from those mass failures. Most of all we must recognize that the achieving of advanced degrees, even MBAs or PhDs is not, in our society, any guarantee of the production of better people, in service of humanity’s long term needs and for the betterment of society. Some of those still suffer the failures of the inadequacies of their kindergarten experiences.  We live in societies where government and the education it runs and promotes, have largely failed to foster and nurture the maximal achievement of human potential for the sake of anything that is truly “good”.

6) Of course there is much more than needs to be thought and said, discussed and implemented, if a positive, progressive, human future is to be made available and realized, in contrast to social, cultural and economic struggle and decay into despair and mass  death. The spirit of humanity is being destroyed and that must change.

For More Talks, Please Click Here!

 
Photo Gallery