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How should an economic system be devised that isn't in conflict with human, animal or planet rights? by Jens Vosch |
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by Abbas Beydoun | 0 votes | 
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by Alvaro Restrepo | 0 votes |
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by Ana Lucy Bengochea | 0 votes |
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Andries Botha: The basic principle would be that all other living things aren’t necessarily simply assumed to be a resource out of which profit could be made. The principle of all systems, the basic principle of the system in order for it to survive needs to be defined on the basis that all other resources that are integral to that system need to be sustainable and renewable and not just usable; used, not just use; cannot be renewed. I think that is the problem. The system needs to be devised in such a manner that it has deep and profound consideration for the living nature of all things on this earth. Those principles definitely need to be renewable and sustainable. Conspicuous consumption seems to be integral to all economic systems that I know of. |
Angaangaq Lyberth: You know, the answer, I was thinking about it a lot. The economies who are not in conflict with you and me and the animals around us and the planet herself, the Mother Earth. The way we have set up the system today is not working. Very few people are in control of the economy of exchanges. And they make the money every single moment of our life. Every single moment people are making money on our economy. And in the meantime it’s destroying you and me and the animal world and the planet herself. So until we have one monetary system, one equal monetary system for the Earth will we be able to lift up the spirit above depression. Imagine a monetary system between Sweden and Canada and Greenland and Germany and England and the United States with the same money system. Exactly the same. It does not matter where you are. You’ll be able to use your coins. And then exchange goods, purchase and sell. Then, and only then, will be able to develop a system that is not in conflict of humans, animals and planet rights. |
Anthony Arnove: Well, really, I think this is one of the most important questions that may be asked today, and the question really begins to answer itself. We live in a world today that has an economic system that is in conflict with human, that is in conflict with animal, that is in conflict with environmental rights. And so, we have to raise this question, because the matter of fact is if we don't begin to answer this question soon, we may not have the luxury of being able to discuss this question. The kinds of environmental damage that capitalism is doing in the world today, the kinds of risks that its creating in terms of the possibility of nuclear warfare which could eliminate humankind, really is beginning to raise various concrete questions about the length of the human experiment on this planet. We face, in the words of Noam Chomsky, "a choice between hegemony or survival" in the direction things are going. The leaders of our planet are choosing hegemony over survival; are choosing the calculations of short-term profit over survival. So really, I think we have to say that we reject this system and we do need a new economic system. We do need a new way of organizing ourselves; organizing the way in which we meet our needs that is based on human need and not based on profit. To do that, I think we have experiments in history that we can learn from; moments when people have come together and shown collectively, collaboratively, democratically they can make the kinds of decisions that respect the right of the environment; respect the right of people; respect the needs of their brothers and sisters. In those moments, we've shown the possibility of a different kind of world than the one that we confront today, which we're told is the only possible world; which we're told is the necessary order of things; but which we know from moments like the Paris Commune of 1871, the workers' communes that were set up in the Spanish Civil War, and in other moments of revolutionary change, that it's possible to organize things differently. |
Anuradha Koirala: [inaudible] economic system [inaudible] animal rights [inaudible]. Different [inaudible] issues so I think that there should be no economic system. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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Currently video only.
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by Bianca Jagger | 0 votes |
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Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon. |
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 |
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 |
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. |
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by Catherine David | 0 votes |
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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. |
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