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

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Could an economic collapse be in our near future?

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder.

Dolack features some recent research by climate scientists that dovetail astonishingly well with the forecasts contained in the 1972 book The Limits to Growth which received much criticism at the time even from people on the left.

While one climate scientist referred vaguely to "powerful societal forces" as inhibiting serious solutions to the climate crisis, Dolack becomes much more clarifyingly specific:
...those “powerful societal forces” [are] the biggest industrialists and financiers in the world capitalist system. As long as we have an economic system that allows private capital to accumulate without limit on a finite planet, and externalize the costs, in a system that requires endless growth, there is no real prospect of making the drastic changes necessary to head off a very painful future.

Just because a study was conducted decades in the past does not mean we can’t learn from it. If we reach still further back in time, Rosa Luxemburg’s words haunt us still: Socialism or barbarism.