Water, oil, food--will humankind cooperate together or fight to the death?

I saw this headline last evening and it rather concerns me:

Global Fight for Natural Resources 'Has Only Just Begun,' say Experts

From the article:

"Better economic incentives, rather than ethical considerations and appeals to human morality, are needed to encourage investment in a more sustainable economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen.

Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen told the conference that governments would need to step in, to ensure resources were best distributed.

Speaking at the Re|source 2012 Conference in Oxford, Sen said that so-called 'free markets' could not be counted on to meet all fundamental human needs nor could the private sector be trusted to efficiently allocate the world's natural resources.

“The way to make the financial sector respond is not through moral exhortation, but by increasing incentives,” said Sen. 'The market will respond to price increases,' but world governments are required to intervene and address 'inequality and iniquity' that the market inherently generates."

The way our Capitalism is set up and the way the Republican Party, the Libertarians and far too many Right Wingers and Americans in general see the world and the world economy at present, they wouldn't get this.

Far too many of us wouldn't understand, at least at present, that whether you're talking about water or oil or corn or virtually any other commodity, once there are shortages, the item in concern can't be left to "free markets" alone unless we are willing to literally let people go without and that can, in fact, mean going without food.

Morally, we just can't let it end up being "every man--person--for themselves." We can't.

Besides being immoral, it would inevitably mean the deaths of at least thousands of us, if not millions, nation- and world-wide.

Surely we owe our fellow human beings more than that.

Rather naturally, it reminded me of this quote from the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr:

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

And the thing is, we'll have to agree to that cooperation across all nations, worldwide.

This will not be easy, ladies and gentlemen.

Link to original article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/12-5

An education and warning

I hope you--and lots of people, nationwide--watched the "Frontline" special on PBS last evening named "The Warning."

It was about how our unregulated markets were allowed to be created, first, but then, further, how they were allowed to propagate, complete with rules that allowed out-and-out fraud and manipulation of the markets, with the thought that completely, utterly free markets were important and good and that they could and would regulate themselves.

They did and, because of the lack of regulation, they also collapsed.

Last evening's one-hour report told of one woman's attempt to regulate the quantity of trades--so we know how much or our economy was tied up in it--as well as regulating, again, possible manipulation and fraud.

So now, here we are in 2009 after two collapses in our markets and where are we?

After seeing it, I had to ask: How could you not come to the conclusion that we are in very much the same place, without having learned any lessons?

Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and all these people are still in power, the bonuses are still being paid out, there were no penalties, we still allow fraud and manipulation in commodity futures, we still don't regulate the trillions of dollars in hedge funds, etc.

It's hard to be optimistic about either what happened in the 1990's and its collapse, the recent collapse, now, in the 2000's and into the future.

If you didn't see "The Warning", you need to.

Links: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/25/AR2009052502108.html
http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/2009/10/20/brooksley-born-on-frontline-tuesday/