Greed creates most problems!
Wealth and power at any price are the key driving forces of the worst evils of our society! They cause almost all wars, poverty, organized crime, modern slavery and other scourges of this world. Wealth and power can not be separated from each other. For wealth is first and foremost a form of power. On the one hand, wealth gives the rich the opportunity to fulfill themselves almost all wishes, also against the interests of the many poor and other people without much money. Power, on the other hand, opens up possibilities for gaining wealth. Both wealth and power generate numerous opportunities to further augment themselves and each other!
The increasingly materialistic human society, due to the loss of traditional values, is continuously paying homage to the model of the Homo oeconomicus, which always acts selfishly and seeks personal advantages. This explains the wide spread of the pursuit of wealth, as well as the greed for profits. Profit greed nowadays endangers many companies, even banks, governments and entire economies, but above all, innumerable poor up to the middle classes of several countries. In many places, this has led to outcries, mass rallies and subsequent lip services from politicians and to the founding of new parties and groups. Yet, little has changed, apart from some political castaways and minor power shifts, some pawn sacrifices, as well as skilful maneuvers to reduce popular frustration and distract angered citizens. The biggest changes were new politicians with new slogans, who remained undeterred and adopted patterns of thought outdated since long time. Usually, they contented themselves with filling key positions with their followers in order to stay in power as long as possible.
Profiteering also causes unacceptable tormenting in industrial farm animal husbandries, pollutions of the air, water and soils, the clearing of vast forest areas, global overfishing and other disastrous nature looting. It brings only very few people fat profits, but serious problems to many others. Often several generations have to suffer from catastrophic consequences of the exploitation of humans and of local natural resources, as well as from the reckless handling of their environment on the part of mostly non-local people. Greed, with all its negative effects on exploited humans, animals and natural habitats, must therefore be contained urgently and forever, to safeguard their and our own future as well as the integrity of the environment!
Asocial enrichment causes poverty
The sum of the world’s ten largest fortunes approximately equals the total of all assets of the poorer half of the world’s population, and the richest individuals, who together make up only one percent of the world’s population, unite more wealth than the remaining ninety-nine percent of people! This ever-worsening imbalance shows where human greed is leading the world, and proves huge social deficits of modern society, which acutely threaten its cohesion and survival.
One major reason for this worrying development is that those persons, who share among themselves most of the economic and political power, take advantage of their direct access to particularly lucrative businesses and thus profit greatly from the exhaustion of diverse resources. As a result from it, and for the better opportunities and conditions for powerful companies, the larger the assets are, the faster they usually grow, and their unjust distribution and their concentration inevitably increase.
This disastrous trend continuous unbraked, because the large majority retreats into its own comfort zone, allows itself voluntarily to be distracted and is all too happy, to fade out even the worst problems of others, such as poverty, starvation and their excessive exploitation.
The trend, which divides people primarily according to their incomes and possessions, but does not distribute the access to them equitably, is supported by an unleashed consumer society, which around the world feigns wealth and commercial success as the most important life goals to the masses. More and more people are just focusing on it and flout morality, social behavior and traditional values. This, even though one’s own wealth is inextricably linked to the corresponding impoverishment of others, and despite the risk that increasing inequity in the distribution of wealth inevitably can break the society. Indeed, billionaires can only exist, if there are either very many poor people, or enough very poor people, to benefit from. The danger of unrest, revolts and civil wars continues to increase without effective countermeasures against the worsening of social imbalances. Besides urgent measures, the rapidly aggravating situation requires totally new concepts for a society based on fairness, which could be the first being sustainable in the history of mankind. Such measures and concepts would have to control still active areas inside the human brain, which we inherited from our reptilian ancestors. Because there arise primitive human instincts, which follow the law of the fittest until today. Although demographic, economic, and technological developments in human society have already replaced the original predominance of physical strength, with that contemporary power. For a long time now, power has not been defined anymore by pure muscle power, but by the power of control over the most important resources. The challenge now is to tame the reptilian instinct underlying human greed and responsible for the worst maladjustments of society thanks to the human sense of justice and global solidarity, thus finally bringing empty concepts such as human rights, equality principles, sustainability etc. to life.
Consumption as a religion and money as a drug
The consumer society already has the control over the decisive majority of the population and is fueling the boundless greed of many people. Because money is the fuel for consumption and advertising its lubricant! This is the basis of the prevailing economic system, which is always creating new lures for the masses. In addition, the consumer society secures sales for the future with the help of built-in obsolescence into important, though now short-lived items of frequent use. Thus, it accumulates garbage and feeds those sectors of the economy dealing with it, which became increasingly lucrative with the progressing scarcity of raw materials. Households in rich countries accumulate vast amounts of largely redundant products, while much of the population in poor nations is lacking in essentials, and the resources of succeeding generations are being plundered. The economy, which focuses entirely on increasing profits, boosts the demand for its products with all the means at its disposal, thus fueling competition for the highest possible income, to be able to eventually buy all the wanted products. The quest of businesspeople for profits, and that of their employees for sales premiums, increase the flooding of markets with various consumer goods. Such large offer and the resulting striving for the necessary funds for buying part of it, led to establish intensive consumption and financially optimized employments for allowing it, as the most important goals in life for more and more people. In professional life, it becomes less important, that one carries out an activity which is meaningful to him, but increasingly desirable to attain well-endowed and respected positions. As a result, especially in developed countries, more and more people already define themselves primarily by their respective status symbols and particularly lucrative professions.
It does not really matter who and how you are, but rather what you are and what you have! The new, increasingly materially weighted values are replacing those that have determined people’s lives for ages, such as the cohesion of large families and other communities in difficult times, as well as long-established and dominant rules, notably those of religions. In accordance with its purpose of achieving the highest possible profits, the economy had nevertheless discovered the potential of their traditional celebrations. It developed special ranges of goods for these occasions and regularily floods these festivals in many places with orgies of rampant consumerism bordering on obscenity. In fact, profit-hungry businessmen capitalize on any of the opportunities offered to them for additional profits. The unpleasant reality teaches us, that many of them won´t be deterred from their determined pursuit of profits by any ethical or moral objections, however important they are, and often even ignore legal barriers.
Wealth can be harmful to health
As with medically recognized addictions, the excessive accumulation of wealth is a compulsion against all common sense. Indeed, a lot of very rich people waste a lot of their lifetime right up to the end, for increasing their already substantial personal wealth, rather than spending their remaining time with beloved and cherished people or in other meaningful ways. The endless pursuit of more wealth and power, that manifests itself as a form of addiction, spreads almost like a pandemic. It seems as if only poverty, lived modesty and a strong sense of justice can effectively protect exposed persons from it. Worldwide, the vast majority of people wants for themselves material wealth far above the average fortune. However, they overlook the withdrawal symptoms that may afflict rich persons, which are comparable to those of addicts, as well as the potential stress and dissatisfaction, which go along with great fortune. On the one hand, sorrows and concerns about losing own wealth, or just seeing it diminishing, increase with its growing. In many cases, completely absurd fears are added, not to have enough in case of emergency. On the other hand, the ongoing monitoring, and even more the profitable management of own assets have become increasingly difficult and burdensome undertakings of the wealthy, who compete globally among themselves for profits. This can trigger discomforts that go far beyond occasional headaches, nightmares, sweats and insomnia, and even drove some rich individuals to suicide.
In addition to oppressive fear of loss, very wealthy persons may often be plagued by creeping suspicions both about the loyalty of staff, and the sincerity of their close acquaintances. Such mistrust of wealthy people of their human environment, which is naturally attractive for persons to be assessed as “parasitic”, may often be justified, but considerably reduces the quality of life of the rich and of all others affected. All the more, the larger their staff and private entourages are. In extreme cases, the suspicions of the wealthy and their surveillance of their surroundings may degenerate, cause them paranoia and push them into self-imposed isolation. Some of them would seal themselves totally off from other people. They are doing so, not only to protect themselves against increasing property crimes following the onset of widespread poverty, but also for fear of disloyal behavior of persons around them. Some of the rich affected by such forms of anxiety and social deprivation would go into a real decline.
Similar to drug addicts, very rich people are barely able to handle their uncontrolled greed for more and more personal possessions. For this reason, they depend on help from outside! Most of them can not even realize, that they are always running after money, and thus waste much of their lifetime. The incapacity of such insight already shows, that they rely on state assistance, public motivation and supportive legal frameworks in the very difficult fight against their material addiction.
With the healing of several super-rich of their insatiable and momentous longing for wealth and power, countless poor people in the world would be freed within short from their chronic suffering and real existential fears. In addition to these socially disadvantaged, countless creatures that endure great problems because of lacking animal, nature and environmental protection, would be relieved of their struggles in one fell swoop by the successful healing of very rich people from their disastrous greed!
Exaggerated personal wealth needs worlwide limits!
Since greed for profit is the most important cause of the greatest problems of human society, it should be stopped as soon as possible. The means of choice for this would be globally valid and unitary ceilings for all private fortunes as well as national upper limits for salaries and wages, including premiums, which are in reasonable relation to the local minimum earnings. Given the global mobility of capital, any breaches of these fortune limits would have to be punished by the same fines worldwide. The key question about limiting private fortunes, is how high the cap should be. A reasonable proposal acceptable for democratic majorities would be to introduce a worldwide upper limit for private fortunes corresponding to five hundred times the sum of average full-time wages in the poorest country during a full working life over the averaged life expectancy there. This internationnally valid fortune cap should be maintained, as long as people still die somewhere because of poverty. Such variable upper limits on private fortunes would best suit the changing wealth distribution and also provide additional benefits. The reference to incomes in the poorest country and its average life expectancy, would suddenly bring the gap between poor and rich countries with hard data into the public consciousness. In addition, this will ensure closer monitoring of global poverty development, which will produce ongoing updated reports. Their exact findings would facilitate targeted relief efforts and the balancing of extreme disparities between countries with regard to the distribution of wealth, wage levels and average life expectancy. Moreover, such an approach could speed up the establishment of essential, although often missing pension systems for old and disabled persons in many countries.
Even private development aid for the poorest countries from well-funded companies or associations that usually never act charitably, such as the giant asset manager Blackrock, would be conceivable as positive effects of internationally binding fortune ceilings. Through targeted large-scale investments that significantly increase many low incomes in the most needy nations, such powerful asset managers could gradually increase the average wages there, and thus also the worldwide cap on private wealth. Such investments would benefit their clients and promote the necessary international redistribution of wealth at the same time. This, too, would be in line with this socially balancing concept, with the cap on private wealth rising, as poverty in the world diminishes and, hopefully, someday disappears together with it.
The proposed limit on private wealth would only bring benefits and also be fair. Indeed, it is possible to buy and maintain a representative villa in top location and a nice city apartment in addition to a car fleet or a small aircraft with the recommended fortune cap of a few million dollars per person. Beside this exist various possibilities to override other possessions such as further residences, valuable collections and art objects as well as the luxury yacht, etc. to descendants, partners or other closely related persons. Even such transfers of private wealth in the immediate entourage would contribute a little bit to a more balanced distribution of wealth and power.
Greed is a failure to provide needed assistance!
As long as people have to die somewhere from malnutrition or lack of medical care due to poverty, excessive accumulation of wealth goes against any morality! Apart from that, exist problematic imbalances, such as rich people usually consuming much more of the commons, such as water, energy and other resources, taking more land, producing more pollutants and causing other environmental burdens in excess compared to the rest of the world´s population. Besides this ethical concern, there is probably also a need for legal action for achieving a fairer distribution of assets. Indeed, rampant enrichment in the face of the threat of starvation and other, acute dangers to life for the poor, is nothing else than deliberately omitted assistance! In many countries, such irresponsible behavior ignoring vital needs of other humans exposed to imminent peril, notably those in mortal danger after road accidents, is considered a serious offense punished with draconian penalties. These are regularly imposed without indulgence to offenders, though their omitted personal assistance generally prejudiced a few victims at most. In contrast to this, excessive enrichment often jeopardizes the health and lives of numerous fellow human beings and of future generations, not counting all other affected creatures, populations and whole species. In terms of justice and morality, it is totally unacceptable, that such reckless and momentous greed, putting at risk many humans´ and diverse other beings´ lives, is not only tolerated and remaining unpunished, but is frequently portrayed in public as a desirable goal in allegedly enlightened societies committed to human rights!
LIFE UNION wants to initiate a profound discussion on social responsibilities and, thanks also to your help, may contribute significantly in realizing a more just social and ecological balance, instead of the material discrepancies, that divide human society both within and between countries. One of the first steps in this difficult endeavor is to assess and evaluate the legal possibilities of overdue adjustments of extremely gaping private fortunes and wildly divergent professional incomes by means of adequate upper limits for them. Thereafter, concrete and realistic concepts for this compensation will be elaborated in detail. This requires worldwide cooperation, with insights and experiences from such diverse disciplines as ecology, sociology, economics and political sciences, as well as psychology and theology. Based on well-founded facts, the mobilization of dedicated individuals and groups can be tackled and their forces coordinated and effectively deployed to finally limit scandalous private fortunes and salaries to ethical proportions. This is the only realistic key for the simultaneous solution of many problems affecting people, diverse creatures and natural habitats as well as the global environment!
Help us to eliminate forever the many obstacles preventing a fair, just and sustainable society!
