Re: radical changes

In addition, I would suggest J.W. Smith's 'The World's Wasted Wealth 2'
and Jeremy Rifkin's 'End of Work.' although Smith's book uses the
conclusions of Rifkin in his work.  Smith's work analyzes both the
problems and solutions associated with what he calls the 'subtle
manipulation of land, technology, patent laws, and information through
financial power that result in waste.   

But one of the major problems today is that of 'overproduction' caused by
the continued employment of 75% of the world's available workforce
(currently leaving 1 billion unemployed) when 30% of the world's
workforce, due to recent technological advances,  is all that is
necessary to provide for the goods and services for the 6 billion plus
people on the planet.  The resultant overproduction, much of it to
produce luxury goods, results in the tremendous stress on the planet's
fragile ecosystems to the point where ecological collapse may be
inevitable within several decades as topsoil, which provides for food
production, along with water sources, run out.  

Reduction of the current workweek from 40 to 20 hours worldwide, coupled
with a guaranteed living wage would solve some of the problem; but these
actions must be coupled with an honest banking and financial system as
well. 

marguerite


Marguerite Hampton
Executive Director - Turtle Island Institute
EcoPilgrim@juno.com
http://tii-kokopellispirit.org
  

            


On Wed, 3 Oct 2001 20:37:02 EDT Threehegemons@aol.com writes:
> The Boswell/Chase Dunn work The Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism 
> has some 
> ideas, mixing world government and semi-peripheral revolutions....  
> they also 
> propose abolishing child labor worldwide. Hardt/Negri in Empire 
> suggest a 
> global minimum wage.  
> 
> Steven Sherman
> 
> In a message dated 10/3/01 2:57:55 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
> Shahijm2@aol.com 
> writes:
> 
> << Greetings, all:
>  
>  I have been assigned to write a paper arguing that globalization 
> has widened 
>  the gap between rich and poor countries (that's a given) and that a 
> radical 
>  structural change is required (as opposed to a moderate change).  
> I've read 
>  some very material on world systems theory but the authors are 
> strangely 
>  reluctant to go proposing any radical change.  Can anyone recommend 
> 
>  books/essays/journal articles that discuss radical solutions to the 
> 
> imbalance 
>  in the system?  I would be very grateful.
>  
>  Jane Shahi
>  P.S.  One solution that has been suggested is debt forgiveness.   I 
> would 
>  like to research that and compare it to a few others. >>
> 


Marguerite Hampton
Executive Director - Turtle Island Institute
EcoPilgrim@juno.com
http://tii-kokopellispirit.org
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