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

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Elisabet Sahtouris: Thank you, Jens. I like this question of how an economic system should be devised that isn't in conflict with human, animal or planet rights because I am an evolution biologist. And I study living systems. It’s very easy to see nature as an economy, because in nature the different species take raw materials and they create things from them, they produce products. They consume them of course, they trade them with each other, there’s a lot of cooperation of feeding each other and providing homes for each other in the plant and animal world and the microbial world, and the fungal world. And so, healthy living economies are very cooperative in their economics. But there is a learning curve in nature where young species are actually quite hostile in their competition the way we young humans are at present on the planet. And they take as much territory and resources as they can get, they multiply as fast as possible. That’s the juvenile mode of species behavior in evolution. However, eventually, they meet up with other species and either they have to bump each other off, or they start setting up some cooperative schemes. And then they discover how well those cooperative schemes work. You get more and more cooperation going, so that in a very mature species kind of ecosystems such as the rain forest or a prairie, you have the species feeding each other, taking care of each other, providing for each other, and it’s economically much, much more efficient. And you can see that, if you look for inside the United States Pentagon budget, it's much, much more expensive to destroy countries and then rebuild them than it would be to build them from where they were in the first place. We have to make friends in this world if we are going to stop terrorism, if we are going to stop hostilities. It’s the only way forward for our species, is to get through this evolutionary maturation cycle to take globalization as an opportunity, to build global family, to help each other. And with the coming climate change ahead of us, we are going to really have to cooperate. I hope that it will drive us to do that.

by Elisabet Sahtouris

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Ervin Laszlo: Economic systems today are based on profit and on the generation of profit for the shareholders. However, it could also be based on sustainability and on self-reliance. It is entirely possible and these ideas are known, they require to be put to work. They do exist. We have all the theoretical basis. They are nothing implemented because those who make the profit still insist on continuing in the system that makes profit for them.

by Ervin Laszlo

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Esther Mwaura-Muiru: This question allows us to start thinking about the basic. We must start going back to our own traditions. And I think our communities have a wealth of knowledge to be able to give us the answers to these questions. Grassroots communities, those who are living in their own communities, they are gaining livelihoods from their own communities. They believe in the future of their generations. They are doing exactly the same. They are protecting the environment. They are protecting the animals. They are protecting the planet. And they have no conflict. But we have. Many of us want to go and exploit the environment for our individual gain without thinking about the global world, without thinking about the future. Then of course, we will have the conflict. But the conflict, the answers to these questions can only be gotten if you want to go back to the communities. Let’s go to our basics, let’s learn how communities actually deal with their own environment, how they’ve been able to protect for ages, their own environment. Unless we are able to learn from community actions and see how they’ve been able to protect the riverbeds, how they’ve been able to protect the forests, how they’ve been able to live in harmony with the animals around them - then we would realize that we don't have to be in conflict with the nature. We are only in conflict in nature if we do have external supreme beings coming over and exploiting what the internal people do have. But if you allow people to control their own environment, and we are not thirst for power, then we will not be in conflict with the environment, the humans, and the animals that live with us.

by Esther Mwaura-Muiru

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Fernando Solanas:

by Fernando Solanas

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Fred Matser: Well, let's first consider we are all part of nature. We, the human beings are one of the billions of form or creation of this planet. And as we can see, we are part of nature. The only thing is in a way it looks like we have aborted ourselves from nature, from our environment with all its consequence as we see in global warming, a lot of pollution, a lot of violence. The thing is, I think that in all our actions, our productions, the creation of surfaces, there's nature that can serve us for input to see how in nature, the cyclical evolutionary laws of nature or creation are at work. As long as we respect such, as long as we see how it works and we mimic such in the products and services that we create, I think everything is okay. I give you an example. If we would take an alfalfa seed and we put it in the windowsill, it could become to a wonderful nutritious product with the use of light, water, earth and heat. And after two, three weeks or ever earlier, when we can eat it and it can nurture us, and through the [inaudible] we could nurture the next seed. So, that's an example of a very short cycle, and an example of a very long cycle is, for example, the creation of nuclear energy, where we create a huge blast with an enormous level of pollution and demolition with perhaps a cycle of several thousand years to come back into the natural balance. So, if we are aware of what we really do, when we take elements away from nature and make them into new creation, we always have to think in what way can we bring it back into the cycle. For example, we have those bulbs, lamps that we can create, they often are created in -- with a maximum time space, so that they burn only say 200 hours. But, there is technology for example to add with $0.01 or $0.02 and that can burn 1,000 hours. But, the thing is, are we really willing to make goods durable? Do we have the intention and what is our real [audio ends].

by Fred Matser

Sep 9, 2006 10:20:00 AM cite

Galsan Tschinag: Very simple in its structure but at the same time well-grounded and intelligent. Copied from nature's law and created after it. That this is possible shows the example of the Austrian farmer Sepp Holzer who revolted with courage against law and habits and who finally won.

by Galsan Tschinag