Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Antoschka - Ekaterina Moshaeva: It’s a very interesting question because traditionally wealth has always been concentrated in hands of few people. It used to be this way times ago, because of a “law”, according to which the richest can control other people. This is a weapon of control, of the economic control. For example, when powerful countries want to change some political regime, or when they want to impose their views, principles and their political ways on other countries, then they create such an embargo as they did on Cuba or in other places trying to change a political regime. I believe that in this our century governmental systems of countries would change, because we would be forced to change our ways of thinking, otherwise we will get into a catastrophe. And after the change we would arrive at a point to distribute material treasures humanly and fairly. This doesn’t mean communism and that everybody should get the same quantity of goods, but people should get the necessary equivalent of food, medical care and education.

by Antoschka - Ekaterina Moshaeva

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Abbas Beydoun: That is unfortunately what is happening now in the world however it is unfair and illegal. It is important to study this issue humanly, but studying it practically is more important, so we should look for way or mechanism to stop this phenomenon.

by Abbas Beydoun

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Alvaro Restrepo: I have always said that in my country, Columbia, extreme wealth, extreme wealth is as immoral and as obscene as the extreme poverty or misery. I think our society has to fight excessive wealth the same as it have to fight excessive hunger or poorness. This I wouldn’t doubt to say that this is obscene or that this is immoral. It is not acceptable, maybe it is socially acceptable, but I think this has to change completely.

by Alvaro Restrepo

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Ana Lucy Bengochea: As was said before, the non-liberal economic model leads to the fact, that worldwide very few have power in their hands. For instance, in my country, Honduras, we fight against macro-companies, that have monopolised fuel industry, for fuel. We fight in order to achieve lower fuel prices and to get thus access to fuel, to have lower prices for public transport, something every community has the right for. These macro-companies have huge benefits, without sharing it with others. We seek to make macro-companies share their benefits with communities.

by Ana Lucy Bengochea

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Andries Botha: Power, sexiness, success, is all measured externally. Wealth is one of the most readily accessible vectors of measurement of success. The absence of the entrapments of material excess – poverty, is never measured as valuable in a society which is increasingly obsessed, preoccupied with materiality. Societies valorize people who conspicuously display the excess that they have. Societies fail to see the human value of those that are not visible in this manner.

by Andries Botha

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: Kent, I pray to the Great One that you don’t think so. But that’s how it seems to be and that’s how the reality is that people hold the wealth and then watch the rest being in absolute poverty. Why it is socially acceptable? Man has not grown up yet. One day Man will grow up and realize that the wealth belongs to everybody. Not just to me but to everybody. And that’s why we have the extreme wealth against the extreme poverty everywhere. When you look at Berlin today, or even in Milwaukee, you see the extreme wealth in one end of the city and in the other side extreme poverty in Milwaukee. Do you think it’s right? I sure hope not. Because it is not right that one should have extreme wealth against extreme poverty. There has to be created an equal balance to everywhere. So next time you ask the question I want you to answer that yourself and do something about it because it is not right that you and I should have the extreme wealth versus the next door neighbor being in extreme poverty. It does not matter where it is. The same thing goes for South Africa, Namibia, Greenland, Germany, anywhere in the world where you have that extreme wealth versus the extreme poverty imbalance. How can you ever soar to new heights if you don’t have the balance in the wealth, the distribution of the wealth you and I will have.

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Anthony Arnove: Capitalism has always had an ideology that's gone along with it. It doesn't just have an economic system. It has a set of ideas. It has a set of beliefs that justify it. So, it's been very important since the very beginning of capitalism to have an emphasis on the role of the individual, and in particular, to create a myth of social mobility; to create a myth of individual advancement; to create the idea that individuals are rewarded under capitalism for their labor. So therefore, if you're wealthy, if you're rich, it's because you have worked. It's because you have labored. You have taken opportunities that are presented to you under capitalism. And the corollary of that is that if you are poor, if you're not rich, if you lack benefits, it's because you have not worked. You have not taken opportunities. You have not pursued the opportunities that capitalism presents to you; and so, therefore, it's a question of your individual responsibility. You are to blame for your poverty. You are to blame for your conditions. And so, therefore, people who are rich can feel justified. Now, the reality, of course, is quite different. Some of the people who work hardest in our society; in fact, almost universally the people who work hardest are the least rewarded; are people who have the least benefits and privileges in our societies, and that's almost nearly universal. Whereas, some of the people who have the greatest power and privileges in society are the people who do the least work, the least labor. Then, often, people who are rich by virtue of their birth, rich by virtue of having been born into wealth, power and privilege, and their reproduction of that in inequality under capitalism is at the heart of the way it operates. But the ideology of capitalism, of course, has to cover that up; has to obscure that.

by Anthony Arnove

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Anuradha Koirala: I do not think [inaudible] we are self-centered and not thinking of others.

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Anuradha Mittal: Good question. I don’t think it is socially acceptable to hoard wealth while so many go without basic needs; but we have been brainwashed where basically when you look at your television or you look at the media, it’s about selling which has changed us from being human beings into consumers buying more and it is okay. Your standards are judged by the car that you have, by the size of the television that you have, the number of rooms you have in your house. And that again is perhaps in some cultures, in some cultures still even today it is not socially acceptable for people to go without, for example, food. They are built into your customs, into cultural habits that you would share; and, I think, it’s about challenging those definitions of what is socially acceptable. Does the media, do the corporations get to define through the advertising that it is okay for people to go hungry; that if they are hungry, it’s because of their own fault; that they are not working hard enough? And we have to break those myths, to dismantle them, and to start looking at those cultures which is still promoting the idea of sharing knowledge, of sharing resources, of sharing food because that’s one of the big ways of having peace in this world.

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Ashok Gangadean: Again, I find this question to be symptomatic of these two different forms of consciousness and culture that I have been developing, the egocentric culture and the culture based upon integral, whole systems, holistic, the logos culture, let us say. And, it is not socially acceptable in this awakened culture to exploit others and to not tend to the basic needs of others. Basic human compassion, basic moral consciousness, require us to tend to one another as ourselves. So, what is socially acceptable in the awakened culture is -- may not be acceptable or social acceptable in an egocentric culture that may accept dominance and repression and hoarding and keeping from [inaudible] which goes against our human moral grain of mutual care and compassion. So, I would say it’s not socially acceptable in an awakened social order to hoard while others go without. That is highly immoral and unjust and inhuman. So, in a truly awakened human compassionate culture, it is acceptable to tend to the needs of all, to the poverty, to those who do not have and to tend to them, which is a kind of teaching that we get from a teacher like Jesus who said, “When I was poor, you fed me; when I was hungry you fed me, when I was in prison, you visited me.” That is the kind of consciousness of the awakened culture or of the culture of Buddha’s teaching of tending to the needs of all beings and sacredness of all beings including tending to nature. So, those are the two kinds of cultural forces that I think are vital in looking at this question.

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: It shouldn’t be socially acceptable, but our culture is, our system is setup in a way that awards those who are selfish, rewards those who consume more. In truth, it should not be acceptable. In an eightfold path of Raja yoga, the first step is one of five restraints; non-stealing is one of these. By taking more of your share, you’re stealing from others. By hoarding wealth, one is doing no service to any. From money moves like water if you hold it, if you retain it, if you stop the flow, you’re hoarding. You’re hoarding this money. It will not allow the cycle to continue, it will not allow the energy to flow. If we allow for the more free formed flow of wealth, it will be a more wealthy culture in society. That’s what should be socially acceptable, is to redistribute the surplus. So we need to reprioritize the way in which we look at wealth. Fair share should be the status quo; fair share with our brothers and our sisters and our friends, across the world, the countries, the boundaries.

by Benjamin Fahrer

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Benson Venegas: When a society is economically dominant, there is a growing feeling of superiority in their people. Then, it become socially acceptable to think that you're the chosen one. So the accumulation of wealth is a gift, or a premium, to your efforts to be more intelligent, or to be more wealthy, or because of your effort. And at the end a minority of people think that their wealth is first, without caring about others, or the consequence of their [overconsumption] or productive patterns. Promoting as a result, a non-equal distribution of income. So, I think we need to change this perception, trying to see how responsible we are in the way we grow in our economy. We need to create this sense that what happens in my country, in my home, in my neighborhood, could effect, or could be related, or linked to what happened in a neighborhood in Africa, or in [inaudible] of Brazil. So this interconnectedness is very important for us to be more responsible and to really sense that our economical decisions, our actions, can be really have a global wide impact in what is happening in other economies. So we need to build on this really broad and global understanding and perspective of our actions. tive of our actions.

by Benson Venegas

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Beverly Schwartz: I think it's socially acceptable to have money and it always has been. I don't think it's socially acceptable to hoard wealth. And I think it's less socially acceptable not to be socially responsible. So that I see now in this century and more so in the last decade, more people with more wealth giving more money to social causes, to people who have less, to people who need more, people who need help. But not so just to give money for basic needs, but to make people sustainable in their basic needs; to make programs sustainable. And so I think more and more things change. And more and more equality and more people are doing more good things with their money. And if it's a system of capitalism or monarchy or socialism or communism, there's always people who have more and people who have less; and there always probably will be. But more and more of the people who have, that haves, are giving more to the have-nots, but in a very different way, and that is good because it's not just giving money or giving charity. It's giving skills. It's giving self empowerment. It's giving self identity. It's giving a means, a skills, to help yourself or help your children so that you don't need to keep on taking money, but you, in the end, can provide for yourself. So I think things are going in the right direction as more people with more money are seeing that their money can do much good in a social way, and in fact they feel better about that.

by Beverly Schwartz

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon.

by Bianca Jagger

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Bill Joy: Well it shouldn’t be acceptable that people go without basic needs. But what are the basic needs? Clearly everyone should have basic human rights, should have access to food, water, security for their family, should have ability to get an education and to try to seek a job and to participate in the world economy and use their creativity. So we need to give everyone a chance to do this, to be educated and do worthy work and to recognize that they can contribute and that the world would be a much more peaceful place if we bring to everyone those basic material needs so that the sources of conflict in the world can be reduced. I don’t think it would cost very much. We simply have to find the will to provide people the ability to be sustainable and to do these things locally. And it’s not just a matter of feeding people. We have to give them true opportunity to participate and feel self-worth. And I think this is something that with all the great problems that we face, engaging everyone in the world and addressing those problems is a must, and this should be the century where go and really try to end poverty and make sure everyone’s basic needs are met. It should be a moral imperative.

by Bill Joy

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Bora Cosic: Sense when it’s socially acceptable to hoard wealth? It is just necessary evil! However there are many faces to the whole complex of enrichment. I understand that some people impulse to create, a new fabric, a new industrial drivetrain (engine), or a whole new way of production. Without it there wouldn’t be European civilization and American by no means. However in this complex of enrichment there is a psychological moment, when someone who is starting from a small workshop grows into the chain of glamorous fabrics where 1 million of people work, it becomes a whole imperia. I guess that that person goes crazy of hoards, not only of hoards of wealth, but of hoards of ideas. I believe in every work there should be only one idea and not a lot of them.

by Bora Cosic

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Brian J. Weller: If you think about this question, particularly its origination in the U.S., it is socially unacceptable to hoard wealth. Let’s look at maybe one of the root causes why this happens. I believe that it’s due to a misunderstanding of the nature of money and currency. If you think about it, money is really a medium of exchange and it should be continuously spent. This is opposed to thinking of money as a store of value. When you think about storing value, you think about hoarding it. What happens then is money is no longer flowing. It’s no longer being spent. It’s no longer being created out of exchange. It’s now being hoarded as some kind of entity and that, I believe, is a misunderstanding and a misuse of the nature of money. If you think about it, since money is an IOU of a government or central bank, its value is really determined more by monetary management policies than by market forces. This confusion causes huge disruptions in the rightful exchange of real things. So, we need to realign and re-understand what money is, and when we’ve done that, I believe, then we’ll have a real return to economic and fiscal justice. Thank you.

by Brian J. Weller

Sep 9, 2006 10:35:00 AM cite

Catherine David: I do not know if it is socially acceptable. On a purely personal level, it seems to me as a prove of mental health not to wallow in consumption and to refrain from all the things that we do not really need. I think before looking at society, we should begin to deal with ourselves and I think that, in deed, it is not forcefully wanted and appropriate as far as the individual is concerned to devour oneself. I believe that we can symbolically resist, we can resist but we would resist symbolically. Sometimes, it is good to start by resisting a bit more practically and not to string together and to destroy oneself by purely useless consumption. I think that it is not even a question of discipline but a question of hygiene.

by Catherine David