Brenda Rosser
This ridiculous Get-Big-Or-Get-Out (GBOGO) agricultural and forestry policy of the Federal and State Governments is leading us to hell very quickly.
In Tasmania now there is an acknowledgement that we’re currently stuck with a feudal type of social system with the land ownership now dominated by one large corporation that refuses to innovate or protect the environment and people.
But where did this GBOGO policy come from? It looks like it’s a result of world economic instability caused by the fact that capital is now very mobile. It moves from one nation to another gobbling up the resources (natural and otherwise) of nations. Transnational corporations can move across the globe devastating forests and people in their wake and simply moving on when people and forests are exhausted or dead.
This ‘capital mobility’ has resulted in massive trade imbalances which, in turn, result in currency destabilisation. To nations have to try to boost export production in order to stabilise their economies. This is I believe why we now have industry being funded by compulsory superannuation contributions (boosting domestic savings to accelerate production).
International corporations have got bigger. So our corporations have to get bigger to compete with them. Meanwhile the accelerated capitalism has also resulted in huge profits with ridiculous incomes now being paid to corporate executives. Another offshoot of the extra profits is that the vast pools of money can’t be spent fast enough. So they’re being invested in hedge funds and swaps etc on the financial markets.
Those financial markets are now dangerously volatile and look set to bust.
What does this mean? Our future doesn’t lie in the alienation of land from ordinary families. There must be controls put on corporate land ownership. Controls put on the ability of corporations to up and move their capital to another country. Controls on environmental degradation.
We need to reexamine the current economic thought and paradigms that got us into this mess. Nature can no longer be treated as an unlimited resource for production.
And we need to redefine terms. For example:
Inflation — the erosion of REAL value (air, food, water, shelter, democracy, happiness etc). NOT simply a drop in purchasing power.
Poverty — the erosion of REAL value as defined above.
Productivity — the clever ways to increase REAL value. NOT the acceleration of the rape of the land.
Real income — money that will purchase REAL wealth instead of what we get at the moment — toxic food and other contaminated products, propaganda newspapers, overpriced homes and land.
and so on.
