Forum Post: Feedback please: "Do Stock Markets Make Sustainability Impossible?"

Feedback needed for: "Do Stock Markets Make Sustainability Impossible?" http://Stocknectar.Org/sustainability

Subheadings:

1. Unless stocks are deemphasized and bonds emphasized, it is ludicrous to assume that solar energy—or anything else—can create sustainability.
2. Protesting stock markets is as important as protesting air pollution—but nobody is doing so.
3. The New York Stock Exchange is not an original or necessary institution for capitalism, democracy, Christianity, America or free enterprise.
4. There is no magical law that requires stock markets to have happy endings.
5. Overpopulation is not mandated by religion so much as by stock markets.
6. No movement is making the essential moves against Wall Street to make sustainability possible.

Anyone please reply here with your agreements, disagreements, comments, questions, suggestions, etc. Thank you. This is needed for this new perspective. Apparently--in spite of much random ire against "Wall Street" and "unsustainable growth-reliance"--the stock market, obvious elephant of growth-reliance, seems never to have been precisely fingered before. And it seems next-to-impossible to get any hearing from major progressive figures, environmental groups and news outlets.

Exerpts which mention OWS:

2. Protesting stock markets is as important as protesting air pollution—but nobody is doing so.

Of course, there has been an "Occupy Wall Street" movement. However, the Wikipedia article on OWS mainly lists protests against some of the inevitable consequences of overemphasis on stock markets: "wealth inequality, political corruption, corporate influence of government." There seems to be no clear suggestion to deemphasize stock market investing.

6. No movement is making the essential moves against Wall Street to make sustainability possible.

• There is what I call the “High Plains Drifter” initiative. This means firstly, for one reputable economist to write one book arguing that capitalism has a future if and only if stock markets are deemphasized. Secondly, for the leaders of one underdeveloped or “outsider” nation to read said book...

• Or, a “Newman Age” could be upon us if some new promotional strategy somehow enabled stock market corporations in every sphere to be eclipsed by for-charity corporations à la Newman’s Own—with a similar ferocity as My Space was eclipsed by Facebook...

• Or, a “Fight Fire With Fire” initiative might mean for some nonprofit foundation to manage “socially responsible” brokerages, autotrading systems, trust funds and mutual funds. If 1/3 of the foundation’s resulting income were used to finance pro-environmental politicians and organizations—while 2/3 were hoarded and reinvested—this eventually might build up a war chest with which to enable environmentalists to cross swords with billionaires and corporations. Currently however, environmentalists must forever act like the Dutch boy with a finger in a dyke.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been a vital first step. Just as it is often vital for the victims of child abuse to meet in group therapy. Thus to nurture the courage to vocalize violations by people who they were taught to awe and revere.

However, group therapy cannot fully be successful until the abusers are meaningfully confronted. Occupy Wall Street has produced little attempt to blueprint a non-abusive financial system.

Ebay, Google and Facebook all had humble beginnings—and yet, soon eclipsed stock market giants, even before joining the stock market. For the first time in history, it is no longer necessary to own steel mills in order to challenge the likes of Carnegie and Mellon. What is lacking today is only the will, not the capability. Each of the above “non-Wall Street initiatives” obviously could be accomplished within fewer than a dozen years by fewer than a dozen inspired individuals. This is probably a narrow window of opportunity and to which almost nobody is yet responding.