Homer, Alaska

I agree with Mr. Moyers and am glad to see someone addressing the root of our problems.

The United States can lead the world to a just economic system. At the heart of our global problems are the sins of greed and gluttony that our global economic system supports and encourages. No religious doctrine supports the greed and gluttony that our business and political leaders practice. Our current economic system has destroyed, or is destroying our basic necessities, our equality, our democracy and our local sovereignty. If there is any hope of us existing in harmony with each other, we are going to have to change our economic system.

It is time to bring the economic discussion front and center and have a real debate about why a few people feel it is justified to make several hundred thousands, millions, or billions of dollars a year in order to live comfortably. This money is being made at the expense of other people and places. And to add insult to injury, those few who make such riches are totally dependent on these people and places to keep them alive. The contention that needs immediate debate is that some people think that obtaining extreme wealth using the world's resources is their right and that they deserve the wealth that the free market produces for their efforts. They argue that everyone is free to make such wealth.

Yet we know everyone is not free to make this extreme wealth, regardless of their intelligence and work effort. In order for society to exist, large fractions of the population are needed to bring food to market, and we know these people can't charge prices that would provide them yearly incomes of millions or billions of dollars. These people work just as hard, if not harder, and are just as intelligent, if not more intelligent, as our rich business and political leaders who claim it is there right to make millions or billions of dollars a year. We are all dependent on the people who bring food to market, including the extremely wealthy. It is not possible for all people to make such riches, so why do we allow a select few to do so?

I have worked in the environmental sciences for the past twenty-five years collecting data on our water quality and quantity, air quality, soil quality, and flora and fauna populations. In this time, I made one vitally important observation: that most people have lost touch of what is actually a basic necessity, regardless of religion or political party. We think that maintaining the current economic structure takes precedent and is a justification to destroy our lands, seas, lakes and rivers, or chronically pollute the air, water and soil.

An example is the Pebble Mine in Southwest Alaska. Let's face it, it is not in the best interest of the state of Alaska, the United States or the world to put the world's largest gold and copper mine in the heart of the world's richest salmon habitat. The reason this proposal is before us is because wealthy people are seeking to maintain their immoral riches through the economic structure of stocks and corporations. Providing gold and copper to society and jobs to the local communities is just a byproduct. Our collective intelligence knows we should be working to completely recycle these metals and mining our landfills before starting new mines. If a new mine is started, it can't be scaled to maintain excessive incomes.

And if we want to solve the problem of unemployment, we need to address the component in the economic system that creates it. This false notion that economic competition is necessary and good for the economy is absurd. Economic competition creates unemployment and forces society to demand cheap goods and services which results in people being paid unlivable wages and our basic necessities polluted and destroyed. We need to change our economy to have a full employment ideal that pays livable wages, is not dependent on unemployment, and extracts and uses resources without causing harm to people, land, flora, fauna, air and water.

So many of today's problems can be solved if we chose to cooperate economically rather than compete. Consider Alaska's Railbelt, where even Alaska Governor Sarah Palin writes that cooperation is key to its power's future. If Alaskans chose to cooperate we could have electricity that pays good livable wages to the people who maintain the system and use best available technologies instead of mining and burning coal, practices we know the air cannot handle. As users of this power, we will all have to cooperate by paying the true cost of power production. Our reward: a reliable power source that is not responsible for pumping mercury and coal dust into the atmosphere.

Society needs to shift the topic of discussion to changing our economic system. We have an engaged citizenry. All we have to do is cooperate, and the first place to start is to come to consensus that greed is immoral and needs to be eliminated from our economy and our democracy.

It is possible. The United States can lead the world in this change.

Joel Cooper
11/23/2007 @ 4:23pm