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Can We Make The World A Better Place?
The question has been asked "What would you do to make the world a better place?". The world is certainly a big and diverse place, and making it a significantly better place is therefore no mean feat. Still, in times such as these when not only corporations but the world's governments themselves, even those such as the United States that supposedly represent beacons of democracy, are deeply and universally corrupt, it is a question worthy of consideration. We live in a time and an international society that is utterly lacking in accountability. Our reckless use of technology is overheating our planet to such an extent that life is becoming unsustainable for many species, and little is being done to reverse this process. Wealthy nations and the aristocracy of those nations walk over the rights of the underprivileged not only in their own countries but also of the poor in nations throughout the world. Despite unprecedented advances in medicine, agriculture and alternative power technology, untold millions throughout the world are dying for lack of available healthcare, food, water and energy. At the behest of corporate control, the governments of large and powerful nations employ armed force to invade and occupy smaller nations to wrest control of the mineral resources of those nations. The political leaders of these governments acquiesce to the demands of corporations with a vested interest in such gains precisely because corporate wealth made it possible for these politicians to assume power.
Corporations Call The Shots
Corporations have in fact become the government and are thus able to abrogate any sort of regulatory oversight governments once exercised over the corporate pursuit of profit. In this perfect storm of deregulation, accountability is nonexistent. Accountable to whom? In the democratic ideal of "We The People" the citizenry was the government. If laws were violated, the people's elected representatives dealt with the offenders according to the rule of law. Enter the corporatocracy, where the concept of "We The People" is nothing more than an archaic curiosity. In such a world, big business answers to no one. They make their own rules subject to one and only one overriding principle - the pursuit at all costs of unbridled profit.
And We Are In Their Crosshairs
Consequently, ever more powerful hurricanes, fueled by overheated oceans, reek havoc on our coastal cities whose citizens are then displaced and their properties scooped up by rich developers. Oil that might have been used to heat our homes in winter, to produce electricity to cool them during summer's intense heat and to power the machines of our society now gushes unchecked from a hole punched in the ocean floor and instead pollutes our coastal ecosystem beyond any ability to repair the damage. A corrupt banking industry has wrecked our economy, wiped out people's savings, destroyed their lives and left them homeless. Big Pharma greed and a for profit healthcare system that arguably costs more to run than it takes in have resulted in a broken healthcare system that has left millions uninsured and without access to medical care. Our soldiers are dying in wars waged over mineral rights, and our civil rights are being trampled in an effort to cover up all these ugly truths. To insure that it all got done, our elections were rigged when necessary to place the appropriate corporate shill in power. When that approach ultimately became untenable, a sort of electoral null hypothesis or "no difference" strategy was invoked. In this scenario, voters are still given a choice, albeit a mock choice, between a conservative big business party and a liberal populace party, but in fact once elected the candidates for both parties represent the exact same interests; not the people who elected them but rather the corporate interests whose money put them in power. The coup d'etat is thus complete.
Democratic Socialism: A New Beginning
Again then, the question is how to fix it and thus make the world a better place. The United States is big enough and influential enough that just fixing this country's "it" would help the entire world. The "it" referred to here is capitalism run amuck. Naomi Klein discusses it at length in her book "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism." In my view, the only effective way to deal with this situation is to begin nationalizing the big corporations to force them into control. Government itself would ultimately benefit from a complete shift to a platform of democratic socialism and an abandonment of the capitalist ideology that has proven itself unsustainable.
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