Forum Post: When the bottom line is money, we all lose.
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 12, 2011, 3:13 p.m. EST by DrShio
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This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Capitalism, as embodied by the United States, holds money to be of the most primary importance - not life nor progress. It has become a cultural institution to put money ahead of life.
Privatization is destructive to our core life systems. What is the grand concern in private healthcare and private education? Profit and finances, not genuine health and education. In fact, in our system, it is beneficial for the population to be unhealthy (more money and jobs for pharmaceutical, medical device, and hospital industry) and uneducated (easily manipulated, high propensity to go to prison and support another large industry).
Furthermore, the free market leads to stagnation as we have realized. Why are we still burning oil? Free market stagnation. It is not profitable to progress to cleaner energy, thus we haven't. Why is our internet slow? It is not profitable to re-vamp the infrastructure.
Capitalism and the free-market are killing the planet due to the fact that money is, by the very foundation of these systems, the only thing that has to be positive when it comes to the bottom line. Life and general well-being are cast aside in the name of profit.
Technology is the impetus for the dawning of the new era. For the first time all of humanity can instantaneously communicate on a global scale. We can control our birth rate with the use of safe effective birth control. We have the resources to feed and house the world’s population. Most all human suffering is manmade or worsened by greed and lack of empathy. Technology has also given us the ability choose our destiny. We can continue the current trajectory: depletion of resources, growing inequalities and war. Or, we can choose a new way.
The path to enlightenment, equality, and sustenance is attainable with a united movement. Part of that movement is time bank. Time bank is a network of humanity. Organized on line. Completely transparent. All inclusive. Hour in. Hour out. That’s it. No person’s hour is more or less valuable than another.
A worldwide time bank can be started now. With enough participation it can catalyze the transition from the current corrupt monetary system to a society where money is irrelevant and each person is valued. Fear and greed will paralyze this movement. Hope and imagination can propel it.
Time is the Substance from which I am made. – Jorge Luis Borges
Exactly.
Isn't the janitor just as valuable as the CEO? If the janitor didn't exist, the CEO would be shitting all over himself. Thus we are all inherently co-dependent and interconnected.
Time is an extraordinary equalizer.
I feel the same way. As long as our economy is focused on profits first and people second, the people will not benefit, because the needs of the people come second to money. We need to make the people our first priority. After the great depression, during the progressive era/the era of keynesian economics, we did exactly that, and the people flourished. During the era of reaganomics and the chicago school, we shifted the focus to profits by taking away regulations that protected the people. We need to re-regulate and remember that all profits that are made, are made from people, and if you push the people into the corner so that they don't have any money anymore, they can't give you profits. It's like expecting to get milk from a cow you're starving- it's just not gonna work.
The starving cow analogy is amazing.
Lets try to change the bottom line.
And, of course, the term "bottom line" comes from the finance sheet itself.