Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Iceland points to the future

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Iceland points to the future

By Julian Delasantellis at Asia Times website.

In the long run, those opposed to debt repudiation may have to answer a very difficult question. Just how much national wealth and treasure, how much future productive capacity, are going to be called on to right the policy wrongs of the past? Much as in the manner of the "debt holidays" mandated for every seven years by the Old Testament, debt repudiation may eventually come to be seen as the only real solution to the gross misallocation of national wealth and income that has attended the past three decades of world capitalist excess.