The Human Experiment:
Crisis & Denial (continued)

"Why has the obscene gap between rich and poor grown, since around 1980, to the widest imbalance in the history of money?" or "How does the exercise of such wealth impact human rights?" or "Does the conspicuous consumption of the super-rich have an environmental impact?" or "What's behind the compulsion to possess unimaginable wealth anyway?" or for that matter, "How did the mountain of private wealth get 'DISTRIBUTED' in the first place?" Rationally? Legally? Ethically? Morally? ... or even in a manner that could spawn new markets and technological innovation?

Those familiar with Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine will see the opportunity, even the necessity for a reverse shock. The U.S. has modeled progress, success, abundance, (read: imperialism, corruption and waste) for the world. The U.S. is obligated to model a fix for the unintended consequences of our "progress" and "prosperity." On one hand, radical cultural change can only occur if it trickles up from networked, grass-roots organizations.

But on the other, an equitable and comprehensive redistribution of wealth cannot be achieved without legislation and enforceable regulation, or ultimately without a global consensus. We will see the U.S. economy restructured on the organizing principles of efficiency, sustainability and the human right to a livable planet, or, still in denial, we'll blindly stumble into a New Dark Age.

The only issue to be determined, by democratic choice or by necessity, is how that wealth will be quickly reinvested: by the obvious dictate of shared human pragmatism and the image of an egalitarian civilization, by reframing the obligations and responsibilities inherent in held wealth, by persuasion, by choice, by regulation, by decree or by class war and revolution. Better to start with a quantum jump in mental perspective and keep the whole thing civilized. nth