Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: The current economic system favors the consolidation of wealth into the hands of a few, and therefore you're going to have some wealthy people who are also very powerful people. To the extent that our economic system allows this disparity of wealth and distribution of wealth and resources into fewer and fewer hands, then we can say that the current economic system favors the wealthy and favors the sustenance and maintenance of their positions of domination, control, and wealth. And that these wealthy people would not be supportive of dismantling the system that allowed them to achieve that state. So we really need to look at the reformation of our market fundamentalism that has really deregulated the free market and see how we can reform as well the financial institutions that also support the distribution of wealth into the consolidation of fewer and fewer hands at the expense of the many. So we need to look at reform so that the distribution of the world's resources and the wealth that is generated from it become more balanced.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: It is more those within the system who corrupt it. However the systems based of ownership of marketing of products. It functions well but can go corrupt, extremely corrupt. Because of the intentions of the people within it, the intentions of those people within this economic system is to gain more wealth, to hoard that wealth, to control the resources that they can profit off of these. So, in some way, it is very hard to separate those that are within the system and the system itself. And if those that are operating within the system are corrupting it then it could be looked at that the system is corrupt. To dismantle the corporation, the corporate rule, is not to dismantle necessarily economic system but put back in place the checks and balances of corporations. To revoke the status of personhood that they’re claiming, you’re not taking responsibility for. This type of change comes in many different forms, yet the main power lies in those who make the choices to support the corporations by purchasing their products. In the beginning, corporations were setup as a way to benefit the whole. But systematically, through different laws and riders in different governments, they have removed this checks and balances to a now they have full freedom and actually are controlling a lot of the laws and they can benefit from this way. So we need to return back to its original intention and get the people who are corrupting the system accountable. And remember to breath deep.

by Benjamin Fahrer

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Benson Venegas: The economic system is not inherently corrupt, but it's carried out by people. People are easily corrupt, if they're driven by their financial interests and not by values. So the point here is that what we really need to change is not the system. What we really need to change or what we really need to improve, is people values. The way people perceive their responsibility of their actions, into the current economic situation. For instance, if everyone would follow the law, probably everything would be easier. If everyone would be - have values around the things that they're doing regarding to their economic - in their economy, probably would have a fair, or equitable, more democratic, and transparent situation that would allow a broader, and just development around the world.

by Benson Venegas

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Beverly Schwartz: Again an economic system in itself cannot be corrupt. It's the way an economic system is used. And there are multiple economic systems. There is not one that does all, that takes care of all, that is single around the world. So it is up to the people to see economics differently. What I think here in this question is an economic system might mean the earning of money and the taking of wealth. And so it is not that you dismantle a system, it is that you change the way a system works or what you do with a system. And again, if you have a values-based economic system, then in fact it is not corrupt, if it's based on human values and human needs. And so maybe it is the way we use it and the solution to inserting values in economic systems that is the answer, not the system itself.

by Beverly Schwartz

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon.

by Bianca Jagger

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Bill Joy: The current economic system is based on the idea of harnessing human energy by essentially harnessing greed so that people will be incented to create things. And in the political world today we see a lot of people using fear to motivate people, identifying with their group and demonizing the others. But systems that use greed and use fear as their motivating factors tend to have moral hazards in them, tend to have difficulty treating everyone well. So I think we need a look towards having more hope in our system where people can talk not about what they fear but about what they hope for. So we can hope for a more just world, we can hope for innovations so that diseases will be cured, we can hope for people to be more self-sufficient to be able to grow their own food. These kinds of hopes can give us a chance of relocalizing our economy. There are still big things that we have to do, things like curing AIDS which need to be done in a very large scale, the kind of scale that you get from the current economic system. But much more of what we need to do can be done locally on a smaller scale which is much more in line with people’s values.

by Bill Joy

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Bora Cosic: Every system is corrupt in some sense, especially economic systems, primarily nowadays, when big economic happenings take place. Off course this increases the profit in an appealing way and simulates people in to the corruption. Breaking down those systems with force brings no good, we already know to what this leads. It could be possible to reform those systems with some genial idea, even that genial ideas are rare. I believe it’s better to force reform through increscent of conscience. This also might be a romantic idea. But I believe that, conscience as global position of human race should slowly increase.

by Bora Cosic

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Brian J. Weller: Great question. Yes, I believe it is fundamentally corrupt, and we can dismantle it by returning the economy to its roots through economic localization. That means by producing what we – by consuming what we produce and producing what we consume locally. This should be for our basic needs like food, water, energy, shelter and so on. Re-localizing our economy is the way to dismantle this. We do this, of course, by shifting to renewable forms of energy, local agriculture and local democracy that’s decoupled from corporate influence. In a nutshell, we’ve got to achieve local self-reliance and then have interdependence between communities living together for their mutual needs. The problem, of course, is that the current system is so embedded and so resistant to change that by opposing it, it fights back, and this is a very important idea. When we try to resist something, it tends to persist. So, how do we dismantle it? Not by trying to change it, but by creating something new that we can shift to. There are many different approaches now being experimented with around the world. One of those is called BALLE, and BALLE is the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) originated in the United States and it’s been adopted by many communities around America. Where I come from in Willits, Northern California, we’ve adopted that. In fact, our Chamber of Commerce has adopted that and I’m very proud of our town for doing that. So basically, when decisions are made by those who will bear the consequences of those decisions, then we will return to a true sense of scale. Maybe that’s the heart of this question, is how do we return back to a sense of scale, a sense of locality? In a sense, we need to re-engineer our economies and I believe we do that best through economic localization. Thank you.

by Brian J. Weller

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Catherine David: More precisly corruption is the result of a disfonction of the system, as it escalates it becomes a reason of a disfonction of the system and I think we should not confuse these two ways but we have to analyse that in some cases corruption becomes a reason for a disfonction but it is not the one and only reason of all the disfonctions which is a way to present things which is always easy and seductive for some officials but which is irresponsable.

by Catherine David

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

China Keitetsi: I think the more voice, the more you would win. But those fighting set on such a case is - You should make it personal. You should have passion and you should do everything with love, then you will win. For example, in the world or in poor countries again, there is a big corruption. If you don't know the other person, you can't be this person, or you can't get to this site. Even in politics today, in some countries it's corrupted. There is no pure leaders. It's about politics of the pocket. It's about politics of being rich. It's about politics of being - with power it's no more clean politics, so such a thing should be fought before you win it, before its dismantled, you shouldn't stop.

by China Keitetsi

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Cornel West: There is no doubt that the corporate globalization of the world is shot through with levels of corruption and graft. There is no doubt about that. So many of our governments are systems of legalized bribery, normalized corruption in terms of those politically elite being beholden to corporate economic elite. The question for me is not so much dismantling it; it’s a matter of trying to restructure it, to recast it, to both reform and in the end revolutionize and, of course, corruption is something that can go hand in hand with any movement, with any group, with any institution. It’s precisely why strong mechanisms of accountability and answerability have to be in place to keep track of all of us who often have proclivities toward corruption. It is, of course, the corruption of individuals that had to do with the kinds of choices, the quality of character, the kind of virtues that we have and are willing to act on. Then there’s corruption of systems that make it highly tempting, that make it seductive till we individuals become part of ways of life that somehow sidestep accountability. So, corruption is always a challenge. It’s always something to keep track of; but without those strong mechanisms of accountability that ought to go hand in hand with democratic globalization from below, that corruption will become more and more a part and become more and more integral to our corporate globalization that is now wrecking such havoc on too many, even as some of our mainstream intellectuals are singing the praises of such corporate globalization.

by Cornel West

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Dedi Baron: Answertext will be available soon.

by Dedi Baron

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas: In the point of view as an indigenous person, economic system are not inherently corrupt, but it’s the people who are making the economic system who are in their own way very corrupt. So, the question really is, how do we dismantle the system? The question is really hard because for me it’s not the system which is corrupt; it’s the people. And, therefore, we have to address the problem according to the source, according to the roots. And the people who are making the economic system are the ones who’s corrupt. And, for me, there is really a need to give value orientation especially to our economic planners who are making the systems and perhaps try to encourage a system that promotes good values on our leaders. So, for me, I still have 18 percent left on the confidence that our economic system still has hope to work and not much in a corrupt way so that if our political leaders, our economic planners will design in a way that it will benefit their constituents, then it will become favorable to everybody. And sometimes if it’s systemic and the problem is systemic, it’s really hard to dismantle it.

by Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Dritëro Kasapi: I don’t believe, Mr. Glenn, that we can ever create an economic system which is resistant to corruption, and dismantling a system would mean creating another system which is just as resistant to corruption because each economic system is maintained, created and imagined by human beings and we, as human beings, have our weaknesses. I am born in a communist country where the idea of creating this system, which was not going to be corrupt, which will be equal, which would give equal opportunities and equal distribution of wealth to everyone and that would be a fair game all the way, turned out to be one of the most corrupt system ever being imagined and not because the idea was wrong because it was susceptible to human individual weaknesses--greed, lust for power, nepotism, fear, which I think is a big factor. I think the ethics in each economic system, whatever it is, has to be stronger and how, yeah I don’t think it’s about dismantling it. I think its about raising the consciousness of all the actors that create the economic system that we have today or that we’ll have tomorrow about the ethics of the whole game. And how do we do that? I don’t have an answer, but that need is really important about creating a consciousness about the ethical aspect of the economy and the global relationships we are facing today.

by Dritëro Kasapi

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Eliane Potiguara: The economic system as it has been for the ones who have the power, which typically is the government, is a unilateral system. By being unilateral the governments brawl with the people. They struggle and fight, it’s an individual form of living, competitive, egoistic and in the end they become corrupt. This is why we see governments all over the world which are 90% corrupt. On top of this corruption there a discussions about to build up a public policy for the people, for the working men, the opressed people for example. Well, this kind of policy doesn’t exist anymore, it is dismantled, it’s broken. The people themselves have to change this political system and to be motivated so that they would have the will to participate more in this governmental politics. The people should partecipate in governmental politics and not just observate that the government dominates. Honestly, in my opinion, the dictatorship goes on, it just changed clothes, it puts on new colors, new musics, new goods but it continues, it just changed clothes. The dictatorship continues, just that nowadays we know that to kill people is to violate human rights and this is not the right track but they keep violating human rights in another form.

by Eliane Potiguara

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Eliot Weinberger: Corruption is perennial and one will never have exchange of money without there being some levels of corruption. So, the question is controlling corruption. I think that in the United States, we are in a moment where the corruption in politics is something that’s unprecedented. The problem really in the US and in a few other countries now is television advertising and that, in order to be elected to any office, no matter how minor, you need millions and millions of dollars in television advertising. So, that money has to come from somewhere, and of course, the people who are giving the politicians money expect something in return. So, we have created a sort of strange situation where the only honest politician in the US is the billionaire because he’s spending his own money and you feel like he doesn’t owe favors to anyone, doesn’t have to pay them back in that sense and it has been a mistake of other countries. Many countries do not allow television advertising, but it has been a mistake of certain other countries, most recently in Mexico that they are now running their election campaigns in this way, so that these campaigns now costs a US presidential campaign close to a billion dollars to run. So, I think we’ve created an incredibly corrupt system of lobbyists that are basically setting the agenda in Washington and this is being replicated in certain other countries. So, while this is more a question of political corruption than economic corruption, I think this is one of our major questions.

by Eliot Weinberger

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Elisabet Sahtouris: Thank you Glen from Capetown for your question about whether our current economic system is inherently corrupt and if so, how we should go about dismantling it. Our current economic system in the world is, yes corrupt and certainly highly inequitable. Not all people in the economic system are corrupt, but the system itself is corrupted in the sense that it is an unnatural system for a mature species. I talk like an evolution biologist because I am one. I watch humanity as a species. I watch human economics in relationship to natural economics such as the body economics, your body’s economics or a rain forest economics. And, what I find is that a mature economics system in nature is one that is very equitable and an immature one is one that is greedy for some and very much a win-lose system. Young species tend to go out and grab all the resources and territory they can get in order to multiply as rapidly as possible and takeover. So, they are highly competitive, they try to drive other species out. But, in a mature economic ecology, these species have discovered that cooperating is economically more efficient than competing in hostile ways. And so they set up all kinds of cooperative ways of feeding each other, of making product available to each other more equally. So, the human species right now is behaving like an immature species with an economic system that works for someone at the expense of others. But as we mature, as we grow up into mature economics, we will develop economics that work for everyone trying to run the world the way the World Trade Organization does is often at the expense of local economies. And, what we need is to work more like the body because you couldn’t run your own body at the expense of yourselves, could you? And, our bodies are mature economic systems, while our global economy is not yet a mature economic system.

by Elisabet Sahtouris

Sep 9, 2006 10:40:00 AM cite

Ervin Laszlo: The economic system is corrupt because the people who benefit from it are corrupt. The way to dismantle it is to create a new mentality that is more genuine, more sincere and tries to avoid corruption at all levels. It is up to people, it is up to people to all they consume, what they buy, what they support and how they decide to produce. It’s upto civil society.

by Ervin Laszlo