[Rod_Cloutier]

I went to see a documentary tonight called 'The end of Poverty'. The film portrayed the consequences of 500 years of colonialism on third world countries throughout the world. (A two minute video preview): link

The presentation makes a strong case that the worst of the poverty has been created and maintained by a system of dependancy. Created by European and American interests over hundreds of years, maintained by perpetual debt crisis, raw material trade, and recently forced privatization of public resources by the neoliberalism movement. The film portrays the trap of unrepayable third world debt, corporate greed, and extreme poverty and desperation that has occured as a result of these forced policies.

The film urges the end to private ownership and the return to economies of 'the common'. Shared resource use, local planning and local development, and a reduction in the demands that first world nations are putting on resource extraction from these regions. The film makes a case for the concept of 'sustainable retreat', to end economic growth as a social goal and return societies all over the world back to sustainable levels.

While I loved the film, and thought it was well planned and researched, I felt that it only showed one side of issues. The other side of the story, from the 'supply sider's' the 'free market advocates' and other 'bad guys' were not given a voice in this film. Its hard not to be critical of this flaw. Its hard to believe in the conclusions when only one side of the story has been presented.

All in all, as much as I believe in the necessity for 'sustainable retreat', relocalization and the like, I still think we are going to have to go through a collapse and much strife before this is obtainable, if ever. Those in power and control will not relinguish their lifestyles without a fight. I believe this will be a messy fight as this ideology winds down.

[timmac]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he film urges the end to private ownership and the return to economies of 'the common'. Shared resource use

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('timmac', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he film urges the end to private ownership and the return to economies of 'the common'. Shared resource use

[timmac]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')aiti and other south American capitalist nations continue to have economies well below communist Cuba and China

[Rod_Cloutier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his is not a new concept. Google economic democracy and follow the references there. This is a great starting point on how the world works. You can also review confessions of an economic hit man. Also Joseph Stiglitz former chief economist at the IMF got booted for saying essentially the same thing. Many others this should not be "shocking" news.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Both capitalism and socialism/communism are growth based systems and they are both bankrupt.
Communism gone bankrupt faster because on the top of being worker abusive (very much like capitalism) it was also extremely wasteful (common property managed on state level is something what no one give a slightest damn about).

In any case this avenue of development is over and depend of location we are heading towards tribalism, Mad Max or a feudal systems.

Initially we might get communist or fascist attempts to extend something resembling status quo but all of these will invariably fail as time pass.

[LVTfan (google it)]

One could make a good case that it is right and just to socialize the value of natural resources and of land, and to privatize the value of that which individuals or corporations create, once they've paid the rest of us for what has been taken from the commons (non-renewable natural resources, or exclusive occupancy/use rights to a particular piece of land for the current year).

While I am not a fan of Sarah Palin, during her administration in Alaska, she apparently increased the amount of royalties which Alaska receives on its natural resources. (Look for a story on Bill Moyers Journal website from July or August 2008.) Some of this was distributed to Alaska residents in the form of an additional ~$1,000 payment added to their annual Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, which they've been receiving for decades. I've not heard anyone suggest she is a socialist for doing so. Alaska's land, though is more in state hands, while Texas land is in private hands. Offshore sites seem to get effectively privatized. But of course we-the-people ought to be able to collect those royalties at will. If we ever mustered the will.

Countries which permit their own individual citizens or companies to privatize their natural resources, or their land, create poverty for their people. Countries which permit the citizens or corporations of other countries to privatize their natural resources, or their land, create poverty for their people. Nothing we do to try to alleviate the effects of poverty is going to have an effect on poverty itself until we correct that. That's the point of the title of this film, I think. None of the well-intended efforts promoted by the "Millennium Development Goals" are going to get to the ROOT of the problem. ("There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." -- Thoreau -- and he was writing about poverty.)

You might also look for two films by Fred Harrison titled Silver Bullet I and II. I think they're at theiu.org

[pablonite]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')onsider that 20% of the planet's population uses 80% of its resources and consumes 30% more than the planet can regenerate. At this rate, to maintain our lifestyle means more and more people will sink below the poverty line. Filmed in the slums of Africa and the barrios of Latin America, The End of Poverty? features expert insights from: Nobel Prize winners in Economics, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz; acclaimed authors Susan George, Eric Toussaint, John Perkins, Chalmers Johnson; university professors William Easterly and Michael Watts; government ministers such as Bolivia's Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera and the leaders of social movements in Brazil, Venezuela, Kenya and Tanzania.

[pablonite]

Here is a critical review of the film...
http://www.the-american-interest.com/ar ... ?piece=601
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')inema Libre Studios went all out to promote this film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2008. Release notices sent to editors described the film quoting Charles Masters from The Hollywood Reporter as “a sort of inconvenient truth for global economics.” The material claimed that the film has been “embraced” by Amnesty International, the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt, the Tax Justice Network and a host of other Hollywood-friendly left-wing organizations and causes.

Given the obvious intent that The End of Poverty should be a film version of a propaganda poster and a recruiting device for a new era of anti-capitalist protest, it verges on embarrassing that, when all is said and done, this film does exactly what it complains about: It exploits and markets poor individuals from the South for the purposes of wealthier people, in this case Western moviemakers, commentators and intellectuals. It is striking how many of the people involved in this film have done very well financially or reputationally by marketing their ideas about the global South.

In this light it is entirely appropriate that the producer of The End of Poverty, Beth Portello, previously worked for Nike and Adidas. I see nothing wrong with her having done so, but one would think Diaz and company would, given these companies’ well-known reputations for running sweatshops in poorer countries. I’m willing to state that those sweatshop jobs are better than the “natural economy” jobs they displaced, but are Diaz or Sheen? The Cinema Libre website tells us that Portello is “making amends” for her past, but in reality she is repeating it—except that now she is no longer giving poor people stable jobs at higher wages than they had before.

[mos6507]

"The film urges the end to private ownership"

Um, good luck with that.

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '&')quot;The film urges the end to private ownership"

Um, good luck with that.

[Sixstrings]

It is true that capitalist Big Corp globalism is tantamount to global slavery. This practice ruins nations, hollowing them out and making serfs of the people. One after another we've seen previously food self-sufficient countries become dependent on imports (Haiti was one, Mexico is another, and even the US is no longer a net exporter).

But what is really the enemy of the common good are big organizations in general -- whether they're capitalist, communist, or socialist. A free market is a beautiful thing and the most efficient method of social organization. What we forget though is that when monopolies develop you have something closer to communism than capitalism (you see, over-centralization of any kind is the enemy here).

So no, communal sharing of resources is not the answer. The best social system is a TRUE free market, with government providing a robust social safety net but otherwise never favoring one business over another, and never bailing them out. What it really comes down to is that every sphere of business must have a lot of competitors, and when one or a few gain too much market share then that's when centralization has kicked in and society suffers.

[TreeFarmer]

When it comes to private ownershipi of "land" there is a lot of diffference from country to country. In the U.S. if you own the surface, and you or some previous owner has not separated and sold it off, you own everything below the surface as well. This means and oil, gas, coal, gold, ..., is yours.

However, in many countries you only "own" the right to use the surface of the land. Someone else, or a company, can come in and prospect for oil and if they find it, they can file a claim or purchase the rights to the oil from the government leaving the "owner" with nothing but the right to keep on farming. This is why many landowners in other countries stay poor and why they don't in the USA.

TF

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('timmac', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Sounds like a socialist film maker to me, always blaming the westerner capalist for the poor of the world, most of the countries in the film have had years of bad mismanagement leaders that only lined their pockets and left their people poor, North Korea is a great example of this and you can't blame the capalist for this problem.

[Rod_Cloutier]

Not to harp on this film much more, (it was really powerful and moving), but there has to be a limit to what can be privatized vs. what belongs to the 'commons'.

The film, as I mentioned, documented the privatization of water rights in Bolivia. After the (foreign) company came in and took over the water rights and distribution, they even had the audacity to claim ownership of rain water that fell naturally from the sky. They claimed that they had exclusive ownership of all water in Bolivia, and that the rain was by default their property. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to see why the population rioted and sent them packing.

In the modern age, who has the absolute rights to the air, the water, the soil, land, minerals? Surely some limit must be drawn to absurdities of private property and investment laws. The film also presented a case where an foreign agricultural company ventured into Kenya promising investment money and jobs. They took over peasant farmlands, evicted the residents, or flooded them out with a dam they built. Then afterwards all the food grown on the land was produced for export only, NONE WAS SOLD LOCALLY! Is this sane? Is this Justice? Where does the line get drawn?

[Googolplex]

This kind of stuff has been tried before, and it always fails.

It only works if you can either remove all human ambition and individuality and turn us all into slaves of the "community" with little real choice, or in an environment of so much excess resources that everyone can pretty much take whatever they want without depriving others.

The first way is possible, but immoral and unsustainable. The second way was once the rule when our population was vastly lower, but would require a massive and horrifying policy of human extermination to accomplish today.

Good luck though!

[Cloud9]

Stalin found a solution to his surplus labor problem. So did Mao.

[LVTfan (google it)]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Googolplex', 'T')his kind of stuff has been tried before, and it always fails.

It only works if you can either remove all human ambition and individuality and turn us all into slaves of the "community" with little real choice, or in an environment of so much excess resources that everyone can pretty much take whatever they want without depriving others.

The first way is possible, but immoral and unsustainable. The second way was once the rule when our population was vastly lower, but would require a massive and horrifying policy of human extermination to accomplish today.

Good luck though!

[mos6507]

Al Bartlett said it best. As the population goes up, the value of the individual goes down. Life becomes cheap. I find it surprising that there is so much doe-eyed idealism within doomerism, as though in the wake of collapse we might see a more egalitarian society rise up rather than a new dark age of warlordism.

I'm not trying to defend wealth disparities, but you've got to keep your feet firmly planted in the real world. The fact that any of you here can post on the internet is due to the billion+ people who are forgoing running water and electricity in the third world. We are already in "modernity overshoot" in which the planet can not service everyone at anywhere close to the standard of living that you or I would feel is a minimum necessary to preserve basic human dignity. That's how tapped out the planet is already, but we're largely blind to the degree in which we partake in the spoils unequally and the amount of sacrifice everyone would have to make to equalize standard of living to some squalid level.

The time to go "eenie meenie miney moe" with the planet's resources has long past.

[Cloud9]

Anyone can be taken unawares. That being said, if a man shows up to rob me or to enslave me he runs a better than even chance of dying. I am armed and I am relatively vigilant. If the government on the other hand decides to take either my life or my property the outcome is a forgone conclusion. No man can stand alone in armed defiance of the state.

In your perfect world, there must be some authority that determines how the world’s resources are divvied up. That authority will always seize the best for himself and those that support him. In your egalitarian world, the important people will ride in air-conditioned cars. The rest of us will walk along the side of the road.

Those that determine who gets what are always corruptible. Look at the United States Congress.