Re: Conclusions

12/31/2000, Paul Riesz wrote:
    > 1. First of all we must become aware, that the planets
    carrying capacity has almost reached and perhaps already
    surpassed, the breaking point...

Dear Paul,

Yes indeed, the urgency is great and we must seek the most
rapid available means of addressing the global crisis.
    
    
    > Now you feel, that the capitalist system must be
    overthrown - a clean slate - before such tasks can be
    considered and addressed, while I am convinced that any new
    and untried system shall need a long time just to get
    organized for carrying out the most basic functions of a
    working society and much more time before it can even start
    considering these tasks, TIME WE SIMPLY DO NOT HAVE.

No, I don't particularly think we need a 'clean slate'. 
Rather, I see no way to address any of our problems until
the stranglehold of the current regime is removed.  When we
remove that stranglehold, we will still have our existing
societies and infrastructures to work from.  Our 'clean
slate' will be our ability to re-invent the future
unhampered - it will not be a 'clean slate' in the sense
that everything must be built from scratch.

As for 'considering these tasks', that has been underway for
some time, by many writers and investigators, and that is
what we are doing, in part, on this list.

---

    > What I propose is to PEACEFULLY REFORM the current
    NEO-LIBERAL capitalism, That would mean to reverse the
    tendencies, you have pointed out in your latest posting; an
    enormously difficult, but hopefully not impossible task. You
    must remember that the protest movements that started in
    Seattle, have already convinced the powers that be, that
    their scheme of globalization with benefits almost
    exclusively FOR THE WEALTHY, has little chance to succeed.

Seattle convinced them of no such thing.  I have yet to see
one shred of evidence for such a view.  You might want to
pick up the latest issue of "Third World Resurgence"
magazine (website: http://www.twnside.org.sg), whose cover
says "Seattle: One Year After - The Situtation is Worse". 
One article, entitled "Liberalisation goes on, even without
multilateral talks", is headed by this statement by UNCTAD
Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero:
    "Since the collapse of WTO talk in Seattle in 1999, the
    industrialised countries have gbeen pushing through their
    trade liberalisation agenda outside of the framework of the
    WTO."

The anti-WTO demonstrations, and the earlier anti-MAI
movement in Canada, are like stones thrown in the way of a
rushing river.  They don't stop it; the flow just goes
around them.

--- 

    > What we must offer them is a regime, capable of convincing
    1. the consuming public, that the party is over and that all
    of us must adjust to the realities of our world and 2. the
    wealthy, that they must give up SOME of their privileges, if
    they want to preserve a reasonable part.

    > Our next task would be an outline of strategies for
    achieving such a regime. I am willing to participate; are
    you?

If you think the regime can be persuaded to give up power
simply by arguments, then more power to you.  You can join
the ranks of NGO's and others who are currently purusing
that strategy.  Those efforts, far from making progress, are
steadily losing ground. It's not that I don't _like such an
approach, I simply see no practical or theoretical reason to
see any hope for its success.

rkm