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Sustainable Alternatives to the Current System

If reforming the financial system isn't enough, we need to dig more deeply and come up with more radical changes. Many thoughtful and inventive minds have worked on possible changes, including changes to our social and cultural systems and how we handle resources. Here are some of their ideas.

Talk by Peter Bohmer: This is an outline of Peter Bohmer's talk on Creating A Sustainable Society, given April 7 at Traditions. It contains the elements that any truly sustainable society must have. Also Q and A from the audience, and further readings. Click here.

Local Currencies: based on community needs and resources rather than fiat by a central bank, spendable only in the community, these dollars are a possible solution to much that ails the U.S. economy. The following article is from Wikipedia.
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Re-Ordering Our Priorities: "Inverting the Economic Order," by Wendell Berry, The Progressive, September 2009

Dr Berry puts nature first, the economies of land use second, the manufacturing economy third, and the consumer economy fourth.

Cooperation Trumps Competition: "Capitalism Short Circuits Our Moral Hard-Wiring," by Gary Olson, published in CommonDreams.org on Thursday, December 18, 2008

Capitalism accepts the urge to compete as a driving force behind our productivity. Maybe there's a different force that would work equally well but synchronize better with our basic wiring. In the words of famed primate scientist Frans B.M. de Waal, "You need to indoctrinate empathy out of people in order to arrive at extreme capitalist positions."

A Better Legal Basis for Our Protections: "Forgive us our (chemical) trespasses", by Carolyn Raffensperger, posted on Science & Environmental Health Network, Jan 10, 2009

Property rights are the basis for many of our protections, but only because property rights are such an integral part of the capitalist system. There might be a more secure basis. If so, it's up to us to shift us over.

Funding Public Health Care With a Publicly Owned Bank: How Canada Did It. by Ellen Hodgson Brown J.D., Truthout/Feature, Saturday 23 January 2010

In studying Topic Two, we read that money is created by banks, rather than by the government, and that giving the banks so much control was not good for our economy. This article recounts how Canada successfully created a publicly owned bank for funding health care costs.

The Guaranteed Annual Income Idea, prepared for the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network Annual Conference New York , N.Y. , February 27-March 1, 2009, and submitted by Richard C. Cook

"This system [our current economic system] is not free enterprise, and it is not capitalism. It is a cancer that is destroying the world."

Speaking Up For the Commons -- "Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons" -- a review of the book by Peter Barnes, c 2006

Peter Barnes identifies a fundamental flaw in our "operating system" -- no representation for the large commons that we all depend on, such as the air and water, genetic codes, oceans, forests. Barnes would assign representatives for this pool of resources which we all need yet tend to degrade.

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