EBOOK
About
This book is my commentary on socio-economics, education, and politics, as well as what I see as the best possible path forward for my home country, the United States, and any other nations which care to sign on. If we can get our act together around the issues of constitutional rights and responsibilities, effective climate and environmental action, appropriate financial reform, in addition to rational, fair public health measures, we might have an ethos truly worthy of exporting to the rest of the world. Capitalism and neoliberalism have given rise to much we appreciate in modern life, but they are also responsible for many of our current problems. This includes the ecological pressures we are now facing, the present challenges to the viability of our already flawed democracy, and the prevalence of misinformation and disinformation -aimed at keeping us from addressing the above-mentioned problems adequately. We speak of liberty and democracy, but the financial system and both our foreign and domestic policy have been oppressive, cruel and catastrophic to Indigenous/Aboriginal people, working class families, single parent families, disabled people, heck, everyone not born with the right advantages, and those in more traditional societies. Not to mention all the other species on Earth, too many of whom are now extinct or nearing extinction because of our absurd paradigm of exponential economic growth, to the exclusion of any and all other values. The list of casualties is outrageously long and continues to grow: it's estimated that dozens of species go extinct every single day due to human activities, and 30 to 50% of all species could be extinct by 2050. This can't continue, a major reckoning is due. Aside from that, our economic system is also making us very unhappy. Since the U.S. is more rabidly capitalistic at this point than much of the world -though our related pathologies ramify across the planet- our successful moderation of its excesses might yet mitigate some of the damage it's doing elsewhere too. This is a critique of the way free market capitalism functions -or doesn't, and a new framework for implementing solutions to the problems the market has created. I'm proposing an evolved structure that could be called fair market entrepreneurism, which opens possibilities for a sustainable service economy that would nourish -rather than ruthlessly exploit- human beings and ecosystems.There are more options than most people seem to think possible, if we can be creative and flexible about finance, currencies, and regulation. History shows us just how adaptive humanity can be when under certain kinds of pressures. I feel confident that we can rise to the challenges our economic and industrial activities have created, by coming together to compromise and collaborate across political and national lines to secure our future together. It's time we took responsibility for this state of affairs, to prevent what many refer to as the polycrisis from getting much worse. We have a moral obligation to future generations and to the life-system itself.These ideas together form the platform of a new post-partisan paradigm: Regenerative Economics, which seeks to establish a real middle ground between our polarized points of view.