Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Anuradha Mittal: Well, we will need to build an economic system that will not see nature as an obstacle to overcome or see nature to conquer. And it would really require [inaudible] economic system which breaks the enclosures of a human mind to be able to go beyond that, which can see us working in participation and in harmony with nature because that is where our survival lies and that will be the best economic system.

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Ashok Gangadean: I think this is an excellent question about an economic system being devised. And in line with my previous responses, again our economic reality is a reflection of our consciousness and technology of consciousness. And I must again look back to the great wisdom, tradition, and the collective wisdom of humanity including all of our great indigenous traditions that [have] see that we become truly human when we mature into an integral, connected - interconnected form of life together. And imagine what an economic system from that kind of consciousness, from holistic, compassionate, mutual care would be like. It would be one in which our economic production and ways of using resources would honor the sacredness of all creation and all life of a planet, of resources, of all species, and of all human beings. So that the economic forces that are ego-based would inevitably be exploitative of others, and of oneself ultimately, because if we cannot take care of ourselves truly, we cannot take care of the other and vice versa, which is [a] heart of moral consciousness and rational scientific consciousness. And I think this question comes down to whether economic forces from the consciousness, really if it's a consciousness of integrity and whole systems, compassion and care, we will have a kind of economic system that will inherently take care of all beings on this planet, which is the ethic of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hindu, Buddhist, all of our great traditions, Confucian, will all be realized, in that [way]. So that’s ancient wisdom.

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: The whole notion of rights really addresses the issue of what is ethical, what is moral, and therefore when we frame this question with respect to an economic system that is not in conflict with human and animal rights, we're really trying to address economic systems that really are well grounded in a moral, ethical foundation. The economic systems that we currently have, at least as we have witnessed within the last 50 years, has been what I would consider to be market fundamentalism, where there has been a deregulation of markets and allowing basically profit motives to really determine our behavior and our ability to have unlimited capacity to be consuming and to be acquiring wealth in ways that will not ultimately serve the common good, and therefore what we really should have is economic system that is well grounded within an ethical foundation that looks to supporting the common good not only of people but of animals as well as our environment. And so we would really need to reorient our whole thinking and our whole perspective as to how we can continue to live in the world together in a harmonious way not only with each other as human beings, but with our environment and with all forms of life, whether plant or animal.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: It lies in the overall design that is rooted with the art and practice of observation and in the ethical intention that takes care of the earth, takes care of the people in sets limits to consumption in order to allow for an abundance that can be returned to the first two. To create a feedback loop that will recreate a regenerative system that is opposed to that one that is in place that is degenerative. This is permaculture. It is a design that is based and exists on mutually beneficial relationships. So how should a economic system be devised that isn’t in conflict with human, animal or planet rights? It’s one that is designed with these ethics in mind. The first questions are what? What economic system. And why? Why should it take human, animal and planet rights into consideration? If we choose a permaculture design, then the how becomes apparent by using permaculture principles that we are given to use from the indigenous wisdom of previous cultures that lived in balance. The beauty in this is that permaculture bridges the gap between that wisdom and that, which is applicable of today. How? With these principles, we work with nature, we see problem as the opportunity, problem as a solution. We see that the design is theoretically unlimited, and that we have cyclical opportunities that will then feed upon themselves and add and contribute. Everything is connected. If we take some of these principles, plus others that can allow us to live up to the ethics, and if we are flexible and can design to change through this constant state of observations, first we must listen to each other and must listen to the animals, planets, the planet.

by Benjamin Fahrer

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Benson Venegas: This is a very good question. Development that doesn't go over the capacity of the environment to recover is good development. And what I'm trying to say with this is that unpleasantly, the truth is that our market put a premium for economic growth that tends to really create economically inequalities in our society. So we really need for it to be a development process that rely we can have a balance between economic growth and also values, the creations of values, for equity distributions of the economy in our society. Thank you.

by Benson Venegas

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Beverly Schwartz: We would have to look very, very far back into the past, and maybe never to see an economic system that does not conflict with human, animal or planet rights. And in fact, I think different people in different parts of the world are doing different pieces of this question so that people working on conflict resolution and peace, people working on animal rights and human rights, people working on environmental issues; all of them work on different issues, but the question is who works on them in concert with everyone else? And can you devise this system? I think it's worth thinking about, and in my lack of an answer, I'm not sure I've thought about it much before. I think again, what we lack is a values-based system for all three things and a will to work on them all at once, altogether, which is actually the biggest question I think I've heard and a long time. So we must find a solution to all three things together, and how they interact and how they weave in and out of each other; because we all know it, but we've never quite seen it work together. This would be a great goal to have.

by Beverly Schwartz

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon.

by Bianca Jagger

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Bill Joy: For an economic system to be more ethical it would have to account for ethics. Our system is based on profit and loss and investment and in trying to harness people’s creative activities largely to the formation of companies and other organizations like NGOs. All those organizations need money to operate. So if behavior that is conflict with human rights or behavior that’s in conflict with the environment doesn’t show up on the balance sheet, doesn’t show up as a cost then the system doesn’t know how fully to account for it. People sit in meetings, they make discussions, they say shall we do this or shall we do that, but they don’t see the human cost, the social cost, the cost to other species, the impact of that on the numbers that they’re looking at and they can be well-intentioned but it’s very difficult for it to make it through a system which is so focused on numbers. So I think what we need to do is we need to internalize these costs, we need to find ways of reflecting through the economy in numbers what we value. We value human rights, we need to find an economic way to put that as a cost for a company that is misbehaving. If a particular product harms the environment in some way or there’s a finite resource which a bunch of companies are sharing we need to provide an economic feedback into the system so that that resource can be managed and sustained. Without this kind of economic feedback and with the kind of discounting of the future that we normally do because money has an imperative to make more money so things that are going to be saved for the future don’t look at as valuable through the lens of economics. It’s better to cut down a tree today than tomorrow because you get the money now and can put it in the bank and get interest. Interest rate and the desire for return is a very strong asset against ethical behavior.

by Bill Joy

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Bora Cosic: I'm not specialist in economy, so I'm not really suitable for this question. But probably by some economic handling of the human environment, by handling of the animal environment and everything around us, we can achieve something. However to answer your question properly a specialist (economic mind) is needed.

by Bora Cosic

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Brian J. Weller: Wow! This is a very important question. Think about the word “eco-nomic.” It actually comes from the [oik hus], the Greek word for house. Eco-nomic, house or home management. And if you think about ecology, which is really the study of relationship between plants and animals with their natural world, including man. This is the study of ecology. So, I feel that the answer to this question is through something called ecological economics, where we realize that human beings and the human economy sits inside the natural ecology. Human beings take from the natural world all the resource material; that’s water, minerals, plants, sunlight energy stored in fossil fuels. We take that resource, that material, and we drive our economy. It’s inside the natural world and through the use of human ingenuity and creativity we basically create products. We have this sort of you could say “a feedback loop” of using the natural resources to drive the human economy. Unfortunately, of course, the byproduct of human economy is what we call waste, and this is like the sources, the sinks; this is like the waste material that comes out of the human economy. This has a negative impact back on the human culture and also the natural world. Actually, nature does not have a concept of waste. Every byproduct of every process is actually the input for every new process. Nature is an interdependent reality. So, in summary, maybe the answer to this question is to build our economics based on our ecological footprint, our ecological situation. I believe that we can create that by again returning to the theme of a true local economics, true home management, and that’s a big imperative. If we don’t do that, I don’t believe we’re going to survive as a race, or even as a planet.

by Brian J. Weller

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Catherine David:

by Catherine David

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

China Keitetsi: We shouldn't only be concentrating on money, money making. I think if we do that we are really robbing and raping our very world that we live in, and we seem to forget that actually this world is the world we wish for our children to stay. Leaders, I think, should stop being corrupt and people's will, every human being, I think, should be responsible. Don't want to much, don't want things that you can't even use. Just, for example, in this developing machines where your mobile phone can do a lot. But yet you want all kind of machine you want it all and you don't use; think less for others. I think we should learn to share. Then we will not be raping and stealing too much from our world.

by China Keitetsi

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Constantin von Barloewen: Economic systems, created by the industrial society, have the disadvantage that they pillage, I would say in a exploitative way, in an unusual way, natural resources of the Planet Earth. I think that China, for the moment with a high economic growth, only in terms of which however it wins the medal, has today about 3 per cent, one estimates, up to 10 per cent of the gross national product under damage by environmental problems. That's about 51 billion dollars in one year. Discredit was brought completely on animal and ecological resources thereby. The same involves India, Brazil, but China is the most obvious factor, a complete discredit of ecological demands. I can repeat it one more time, that up to 10 per cent of the gross national product of China today are used or are wasted, one can say, it is threatening for ecological structure. That's 50-51 billion dollars. That involves also the states of the industrial world. Only in the latest ecological processes of rethinking, an awareness begins to crystallize, what the states of the periphery, which have a strong economic growth today, the leading position of the economy, uniquely recorded in the history, completely neglect. That is a great threat to the security and the policy of peace.

by Constantin von Barloewen

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Cornel West: Well, we have to begin where we are. We have a capitalist mode of production around the world that must be reshaped, reconceived and revisioned in such a way that voices from below are heard. I am not sure it helps to talk about abstract Utopian systems. Take Antonio Gram. She is right in terms of his focus on our concrete historical situations and see what are the imminent possibilities for recasting and reshaping, reforming and revolutionizing our present capitalist system in such a way that we don’t know exactly what the “newism” is. But, it has to be one that puts people’s needs, people’s dignity, everyday people, especially the least of these are most vulnerable at the very center of whatever economic system we do in fact forge, so that the abstract ideological level of the isms that do not exist are less important than trying to reshape and recast this present inegalitarian capitalist mode of production which is now in place. It’s a major challenge; and it’s a challenge that, I think, we can make if we put at the center the kind of human rights and those of centia beings, of animals who deserve much better treatment, and of course a concern for the ecology and the so called planet rights in the question.

by Cornel West

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Dedi Baron: Answertext will be available soon.

by Dedi Baron

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas: The only way to design an economic system favorable and not violating the rights of human, animals and planet is to design in a way that it responds to the needs of human beings. The problem now is economic systems are created in such a way that it promotes commercialization and it is money oriented and once economic system is a money-oriented and commercially motivated because of greediness of those people who are planning it, they tend to implement such systems even if they know very well that it violates the rights of other human beings, of animals, and the planet Earth. And therefore, as I say, economic systems should really be designed in such a way that it responds to the needs of the people without going away from that towards greediness for economic profits and greediness to maintain their power. In that way, that very de-humanizing economic system will be minimized. And those are, of course, on/in the perspective of indigenous peoples. We see in this world that lack of economic systems are not really responding to the needs but rather respond to the interests of few people in this world.

by Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Dritëro Kasapi: Answertext will be available soon.

by Dritëro Kasapi

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Eliane Potiguara: Economic Systems are... Even the mere word “economic system” has the connotation of power in it. The power of money, the power of the one who has the money to buy himself whatever he needs. We, indigineous, don’t have this view, we have the view of an economic system where everything is shared. Whenever we produce flour in our indigenous community, flour that is made by all women, that flour in the end becomes distributed in the whole community, so everyone produces, everyone consumes the same. This is not the case within the capitalistic system, one produces, pushes the production and forces and enslaves his workers since those people don’t get as much as they deserve for their labor. Therefore, one produces, others enslave themselves for this production, this economic system produces luxuries but not for the people, for the community but only for the one who invested in the first place. It is different again in the indigenous system, as all of us produce and all of us earn, all of us nourish ourselves the same way, even if we face, within our community, poverty. Everything we make is thought for sharing, hence, the keywords in our society are “sharing” and “cooperation”. In a capitalistic system, however, the keywords are “investing” and “making profits”. Therefore all other economic systems fail to meet the bare necessities of human beings, which is the dignity of life.

by Eliane Potiguara

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Eliot Weinberger: I think that an economic system, if you start with a – I don’t think that an economic system has never been imagined that includes the idea of human, animal, or planet rights. The economic systems have always been based on their market forces or on correcting economic inequalities. And the idea of imagining one that would include a planetary consciousness and a consciousness setting that includes the rights of all the species on Earth is something that we haven’t even begun to think about. Is a beaver a Marxist or a capitalist? So, once again, I think it’s the question of, by beginning to formulate the question, you have a kind of paradigm shift in how you even think about the idea of an economic system, that an economic system is something that has to go beyond merely the market, merely the rights of workers, and merely the profit motive.

by Eliot Weinberger