The Big Picture

Copyright 2020 Guido Roncallo

Hello.  Thank you for being here.  

I know that this is a long post so I have put key points in bold print.

Kindly humor me very briefly and picture a cloud of leaves being blown by an autumn wind.  If you were a leaf you would see all the other leaves around you moving freely and independently of you, seemingly enjoying the journey.  What you don’t feel, however, is the wind that is carrying all of you because it is a constant force, like background noise that you simply tune out.  Just like the leaves, there is a wind carrying all of humanity- the wind of the world’s political and economic elite.  It is an ill wind.  Our present destiny is to be left on the ground like so much leaf litter.

And who am I to declare this?  I am no one.  But I am everyone.  I am not alone with my disgust with what is happening in, and to, the world today. We need a revolution in thought and leaders who will act on it.  A revolution in thought requires us to think but most of us don’t have the time or won’t make the time to think, we just react, and that is a blessing for the great institutions of our societies – political, economic and religious – who need our support, which we unthinkingly give. These words are not meant to tear down our institutions, but it is a call to them to acknowledge that we are entering the most frightening time we have ever faced in our human history, and to refocus their priorities.  It is we- the no ones and everyones- who must make it happen.

Today there are great movements in self-empowerment, mindfulness and peace through meditation.  These are wonderful personal goals but they must be used to harness our energies to grapple with problems outside of ourselves, problems of global impact.  We must do it in peace and with quiet resolve, not in anger; rather, with tenderness and understanding for all of our fellow creatures.

What follows is a bitter pill to swallow and sugarcoating it will make it too much of a mouthful.  I ask you to step outside of yourself and your immediate needs, wants and prejudices- particularly your prejudices- and view the world from a distance, far enough to be detached but close enough to see what’s happening.  Take a god-like view, whatever you conceive God to be, and think about what you want humanity to do.

From my view, here is what I see: the three greatest problems of our world today are overpopulation, global warming, and governments who not only ignore the first but promote it, and who are not doing enough about the second.  The responsibility for our situation rests squarely on the shoulders of the world’s political and economic elite who are concerned with maintaining society as it is when they should be making changes necessary to plan for a future which feels – rightly so – increasingly bleak.

But we, the no ones and everyones, must share in the responsibility if we do nothing to make a change.  We have allowed ourselves to be divided into powerless minorities and we have been convinced that this is the way it has to be.  We have leaders throughout the world who think that they are the authors of history but they only write a page every now and then.  It is the people who write the book and we must dictate a new chapter.

The problem is that seemingly everyone is running around in a frenzy today, overstimulated and angry about something.  We are subjected to constant stress, headlines that polarize us and political spin that makes us dizzy; it’s easier to just react and not think.  But I repeat, we really need to think- it is our greatest asset (and liability) as a species but, either out of convenience or necessity, we have left the thinking to a very few people who are committed to maintaining a status quo which further enriches and/or empowers them.  Although that sounds like I’m accusing them of some sinister conspiracy, I’m not, but it is quite convenient for them.  They didn’t plan it this way, it’s just how it worked out- and they like it.  And we allow ourselves to be entertained with “bread and circus.”

I was taught about the Roman Empire’s days of bread and circus. Remember that from school?  Perhaps not, depending on your age.  There came a time during the Roman Empire that the leaders found it convenient to build entertainment venues and have subsidy programs for the poor in order to keep the population relatively docile.  Sound familiar?  The other side of that coin, however, is that the leaders also perceived that Roman citizens, who in the early days had been very involved in affairs of state, had become less interested in the process, and so they decided that pacifying the people was good enough.  Also, sound familiar?  This probably stemmed in great part from one overriding fact- the population had grown to such an extent that people were naturally further removed from the leaders, and any intermediaries had their own agendas which didn’t necessarily coincide with the best interests of the people; an unproductive situation, at least for the citizens who were busy trying to make a living. Also, sound familiar?  If we have learned nothing else from history, we should take a lesson from the Roman Empire- the status quo of our leaders may not be in our best interests.

The status quo is as follows: we are living in socioeconomic systems, our priorities of the past, that are the product of how we developed as a world civilization- might makes right and more is better, no matter who we have to get it from.  We can no longer afford to think like that.  The world is too fragile, the bombs too big and the future too perilous.  If you think Earth is too big to be fragile, consider this: look at the damage we have done to our planet, and to each other, and understand that if you took all human beings, 7.5 billion of us, and squeezed us into a cube, it would be less than 1/2 mile on a side.  What an illness we have become to our home; we have always been our own worst enemy, and now we have become the Earth’s.

Humanity is threatened by potential catastrophes of two types, those that we can’t control and those we can.  What we can’t control are natural catastrophes of global proportions: a near-earth object hitting the bulls-eye, a giant caldera erupting, a new (or old) superbug causing a pandemic of monumental mortality, catastrophic global warming.

One catastrophe that is in our control is the only one which is guaranteed to happen.  It overshadows, and probably already contributes to, every problem we have, but like the leaves in the autumn wind we don’t feel it. We are on the brink of it and some might argue, as I do, that we are already there: overpopulation.  

There are two things we need to survive, food and shelter.  Let’s consider food.  In many parts of the world there is starvation or severe undernourishment, while in the parts of the world that do have access to food, the starvation is subtle.  We eat GMOs, nutrient-poor factory foods, chemicals that can’t be pronounced, sugar in massive quantities, toxins of every description, proteins from food-chains that are themselves accumulating toxins, microplastics, hormone-treated meats, and the list goes on, and soon we’ll be eating lab-grown meats.  If this is what we have to eat in order to have enough food, I am quite comfortable saying that we are already overpopulated.  I won’t even bring up the things that we have to breathe.

We didn’t evolve as a species eating this way and our bodies aren’t capable of adapting to it, particularly in the mere hundred years or so that we have exposed ourselves to this explosion of unnatural foods. Why? Because we have exempted ourselves, through medical science, from one of the primary laws of evolution: natural selection.  Actually, we have only temporarily exempted ourselves: our gene pool is being further compromised with each succeeding generation through heredity and our toxic environment.  How long do you think it will take for all of that to catch up with us?  Your guess is as good as mine.  250 years?  500 years?  

We don’t have that kind of time.  Even if none of the catastrophic events mentioned earlier occurs, there’s a problem.  At our present rate of world population growth (we’ve doubled in 46 years) there will be 15 billion of us in 46 years, 30 billion in 92 years and 60 billion in 138 years.  Since it is said that the first person to live to 150 has already been born, we’re talking eight times as many people in the span of one lifetime.  Think of the misery.  If medical science has its way, we’ll all be living to a hundred and twenty.  The physical and emotional toll this will take is staggering. Think about it. 

Given the food problems, imagine what it means for shelter- there won’t be a tree left on the planet, never mind the utter devastation caused by carving out all the other raw materials we will need to support our numbers.  Even if we start using nothing but synthetic materials, think of the power requirements to produce them and the heat generated by that power usage. And regarding power, even if we free ourselves of fossil-fuel energy, how much heat will be created by the requirements for simply living life?  Sixty-plus billion people in 138 years.  We all need to really think about it, a lot, and not for a few minutes followed by a shoulder shrug and “Oh well, at least I won’t be around for it” or “They’ll find a solution” or “There’s nothing I can do about it.”  We have to do something about it, and we have to start now.

We can hope for all manner of natural solutions but they’re awful.  Perhaps a near-earth object will become an in-earth object, perhaps a global epidemic will reduce our numbers significantly, or perhaps global warming will reorder our place in the world.

So, how is global warming going to solve a population crisis?  By destroying agricultural capacity throughout the world and by forcing human migration of a magnitude that creates world conflict.  Parts of southern Asia, South America, Africa, Australia and areas of the United States are on track to become too hot to live in and human beings are not going to just sit there and die, they’re going to move.  As our weather patterns change there is a growing threat of a higher humidity environment in some of the hottest places on earth and those two things together are not something that human beings can survive, and a lot of human beings live in those places.  I suggest that you research Wet Bulb Temperature.

Likewise, let’s not ignore the real potential for pathogens to be released into the environment as a result of the ice melting.  A group of 28 never-before-seen viruses was recently discovered in a glacier in China, which is not necessarily frightening since most viruses are harmless.  What is frightening is the threat of deadly viruses stored in the ice that we have already experienced, smallpox and the 1918 influenza virus as examples. The havoc created by the latest novel coronavirus is nothing compared to a truly deadly scourge set loose among us.  What will happen to mobility, equities, international mistrust?  Once again, think about it, it is a real possibility. What we are going through now is nothing compared to a true plague.

It almost doesn’t matter what the reasons are for global warming, it’s coming; so, a. If you believe that humans are responsible for it then apply that cause/effect to 60 billion of us (by the way, if carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and we all exhale carbon dioxide . . . well, you know), b. If you believe that we are, or are not, aggravating a natural cycle of nature, that outcome isn’t too appealing either since we’ll be either aggravating it or not, but nature’s cycle will in the end have its way with us, or c. If you don’t believe there is global warming, well, you’ll just have to keep your head in the sand until it’s too hot to stay there . . . unless you’re near a seacoast where the rising sea level will cool the sand down but unfortunately drown you in the process.

Our bread and circus addictions are our undoing.  They have created our bitter pill.  Our world’s societies are addicted to outdated mindsets that are no longer relevant and are destroying us physically and spiritually:

1. We operate as though more people is better; it is not.  
2. We operate as though the world was put here for our exclusive use and abuse and we are the masters of it; not so.
3. We act as though our economic systems of wealth accumulation are a great ideal to be exported to the universe, or at least to Mars for now, but these systems have created a cancer of wealth disparity.  This disparity is supported by governments throughout the world.
4. We encourage a medical industry that is bent on giving us the “gift” of longevity without our having prepared a social support system to carry us through the “new and improved” golden years.  Retire at 65 and live to 150!  Really?
5. Our world leaders are more interested in thumping their chests like the great apes and shaking their fists at each other to show that they’re the greater ape, both economically and militarily, than they are in actually addressing the most pressing problems of our time together, in peace.
6. We are devastating many of the species that we depend on.  One in particular is of vital importance to us – depending on your source, they directly and indirectly account for anywhere from 30 – 90% of our food: bees.  We’d better figure out how to save them, they are dying in masses.  Perhaps it’s all the crop control poisons that they are exposed to, perhaps they just can’t evolve quickly enough to the nectars that are produced by all the GMO crops that they pollinate, perhaps we’re just overworking them.  Whatever it is, we need to fix it.

We are beyond the need for more people; the only argument presented in defense of population growth is the economy: we need more people to sustain economic expansion.  Tommyrot, poppycock, balderdash and bunkum!  With the right systems in place there is plenty of “money” out there.  Why the quotes?  Simple- governments throughout the world have created “money” by the digital railroad car-full.  The United States has close to 75 trillion dollars of public and private debt but only about 1.5 trillion dollars in circulation.  It’s funny money, and the problem is that because of how our present economic systems work, the money continues to accumulate in a limited number of pockets and they simply can’t spend enough of it to support an economy, so the government keeps creating more.

In the United States from the end of World War II until 1980, the relative share of wealth of the economic top 10% and the lower 90% grew on a fairly even basis.  Beginning in 1981 a wealth disparity has grown almost every year. It has reached the point that 10% of our population owns 78% of everything. These are facts that the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve are fully acquainted with.  Please see the “Federal Reserve Bulletin of September 2017 titled Changes in Family Finances 2013 to 2016” by Jesse Bricker and others.  

We’ve been throwing money created out of thin air at every burp in the economy, and every real and perceived emergency.  Who knows how much more will be created in our battle with COVID-19! The idea has been that if you create more money it will work in a “trickle down” effect and create jobs.  It’s a nice theory which may have met with some success – “may have” because we can’t know for sure since we have nothing to compare it to.  No matter how many jobs it may have helped to create, the vast majority of jobs created in the last 40 years, and always, have been for the lower 90%, and they have to spend it to survive and thrive.  So where does all that money wind up?  Exactly . . . it winds its way up, up to the top 10% who don’t have to spend it.  And the more people added to our population and the more burps in the economy and the more emergencies and the more deficits funded, the more money the government creates and the more money that winds its way up.  It is simply how it works.  We need to correct this disparity before it becomes despair-ity; the lower economic tiers of any society will not tolerate a future with no prospects, and a future of mere survival is not a “prospect.”  Today, in particular, when almost everyone has instant access to the world around them, this disparity looms larger and larger.

So, enough complaining, how about some solutions?  Well, they won’t take you to a happy place.  They’re the digestive turmoil we must have after swallowing the bitter pill- that we are caught in a very awkward and unpleasant time in our human history and that any solutions will only come with changes of focus and priority, and how tough it is depends on how hard we fight having to change, but change we must.  After all, many of us have lived long enough to understand the truth that our lives are guided ten percent by what happens to us and ninety percent by how we react to it.

First, overpopulation.  Given that we won’t rely on starvation, disease, global warming or some other natural catastrophe, and also relying on governments to exercise restraint in engaging in a war in which there are no winners, the solutions are still tough.  In fact, unless we all stop making babies right now, there’s no solution, only ways to reduce the rate of growth.  Hopefully, it buys us time:

1. Education is one of the key components to lessening this catastrophe: we must educate all people on the perils which face us if we continue to procreate at present rates, easily done if governments and religions buy into it.
2. We must educate our children on the realities of sex.  Making it taboo hasn’t worked and will never work; hormones will conquer any prohibition, so let’s teach children to understand their bodies and the responsibilities of sex.  
3. We must make birth control available to all people everywhere.  If you don’t like the idea, and you’re completely entitled to, then you and those who share your thoughts should create the means to care for the unwanted children because society at large should not foot the bill.  
4. We must change the seemingly universally embedded belief system that the next generation of children will be our salvation.  There are immense numbers of children already out there on every continent, under-educated and undernourished, many of whom could have the neural wiring to solve all our problems, but they’ll never get the chance. 
5. We must control our own emotional needs regarding future generations and spare them the indignities that the future will bring. As responsible humans we must put that future, and the needs of all, ahead of our own limited needs.  
6. We must create an environment wherein people’s lives will find more fulfillment.  How about using your energies to save our planet?  
7. We must get past the addiction of population increase for the sake of economic growth.  There are plenty of people who are more than capable of continuing on in their careers rather than being replaced by a younger generation, which does nothing but increase corporate profits- my, how convenient.  Think of the mental health effects of our present retirement systems coupled with increased longevity, plus the financial effects of so many retirement years.
8. We must stop pressuring those who choose to have no children.
9. If social responsibility fails, we must implement disincentives to reproduction, a particularly thorny problem to arrive at a solution that does not favor the economically advantaged.

Second, global warming.  Wow.  If it happens quickly enough, maybe there will be a couple of good things to come out of it- it’ll be too hot in the Amazon basin and Central Africa to sustain human life, so some of the trees may survive after all.

We must plan for our changing environment and stop simply hoping that it will take a long time and future generations will deal with it. Mother Nature is on a roll and we haven’t been able to influence the path of a hurricane, never mind global conditions.  Let’s consider the world’s ice covering: it’s melting.  What else needs to be said?  Just the Thwaites Glacier alone can raise sea levels a foot and a half in the next century, never mind the rest of Antarctica, the Arctic ice, Greenland, Himalayan glaciers, etc., and a century is the blink of an eye.  Of course, by then, there will only be 30 billion of us. There is no science which provides a pending natural solution.  If all ice melts, sea level will rise by 200-plus feet. Retaining walls to keep the sea out?  Let me know how that turns out. (I would point out that governments are salivating over the potential for gas, oil and mineral exploitation when they don’t have all that nasty Arctic ice in the way.)

Now throw in global temperatures: couple coastal flooding with the unlivable temperatures developing in parts of the world.  The human migration will be staggering, and their destination will be countries that don’t want them and can’t handle them.  For goodness’ sake, look at all the hullabaloo about the relatively small amount of unwanted migration going on now in some parts of the world.  What will happen in a catastrophic scenario?

Europe, Russia, China, the Americas: what are you going to do when the migration starts?  Kill them all?  And where will you go if that big rock from the sky lands in your lap?  Perhaps that may cool down those hot spots significantly enough to make your move to their patch of ground look inviting. With your country in complete disarray, do you propose to just take theirs? Australia- where are you going to go with a desert too hot to live in and a seacoast being swallowed up by the oceans around you?

We need to make nice, all of us, with each other.  We need each other. Environmental disasters are becoming more common and getting worse. Nobody is immune; Mother Nature doesn’t care what your glorious history is. Since I’ve already brought it up, let’s consider one disaster in particular. I grant you that the odds are small, but . . . a near-earth object can happen with little notice anywhere in the world (check out nasa.gov’s website; look at the planetary defense pages).  The unwilling recipient is going to need friends, lots of them, to help out.  What isn’t needed are lots of enemies to pour in and stake their claim on the remnants.  And it could happen to any country at any time.  Of course, it could land in the ocean, in which case all the coastal cities surrounding it could be wiped from the face of the earth by the wall of water that hits them and then pulls the debris back into the depths with the receding waves.  This isn’t science fiction or an apocalyptic screenplay.  This is a real possibility.

Unfortunately, all we can do about global warming right now, just like overpopulation, is to try to slow it down and reduce its effects; in other words, prepare for it.  We must plan for it and, more importantly, commit resources to it.  We need to find solutions that mimic Mother Nature but all we can manage to do is supply pathetic numbers of dollars to scientists to study solutions (4 million dollars to NOAA to study mimicking volcanic activity!  Pathetic.)  With the failure of governments everywhere to aggressively deal with emissions we must elect leaders who will aggressively promote alternative energy sources, and we must look to science to find answers, and we need to fund it.  Who knows, maybe we should paint all man-made surfaces white, all over the world, to reflect solar radiation back into space. It certainly couldn’t hurt.  But for goodness’ sake let us end our dependence on fossil fuels as it is a major contributor to our problems, and rather than allowing governments to fail in dealing with emissions, we must make it happen.  It will take work.  As an aside- the U.S. Navy has been operating small- and medium-size nuclear reactors for half of a century with no accidents; let’s put them in charge of installing them offshore and guarding them.

In order to truly prepare for the effects of global warming, we need a cooperative effort of the world’s governments, but the governments have adopted an attitude that they’ll fix the problems as they arise.  No they won’t; they can’t.  You can’t fix 60 or 30 or 15 billion people who are suffering the effects of lack of foresight on everyone’s part.  Perhaps you should research climate change summits.  There are many forums/summits/conferences being held but to what avail?  If countries are going to spend the money to do the research and send people to these meetings, we should demand that they actually make things happen. Maybe they do, but Davos, the World Economic Forum, gets all the press. Naturally.  The wealthy get the front page while science is relegated to the comics page.

While I’m on the subject, here’s a single idea of a global cooperative effort, realigned from chest thumping and fist shaking.  Russia has had several nuclear accidents in the past few years, one of them reportedly involving the development of nuclear-powered missiles.  Well, why don’t all the superpowers get together and develop nuclear missiles and send a fleet of them out into the solar system and maybe, just maybe, we can use them to interfere with the path of a near-earth object and save our collective hides?  It may be rocket science, but the idea itself isn’t, and imagine what we could learn by sending experiments on board!  There would still be plenty of money made by the good old military-industrial complex.

Speaking of the military-industrial complex, I suggest that you read Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell speech of January 17, 1961 and be warned.  The United States spends considerably more on defense than the next ten countries combined; are they all coming to get us?  No.  It’s about money.

The problem with almost all forms of government today, whether they’re cooperating with each other or not, isn’t the form itself but how it is administered.  Leaders need to prioritize their focus to reflect the most important problems facing people today and they must be made accountable for their actions, which they are not.  

So, part three- governments.  People throughout the world are becoming weary of irresponsible, out of control leadership.  There’s unrest almost everywhere but in the democratic and quasi-democratic nations the resolve is deflected by bread and circus, exasperation, perceived political impotency and a lack of common focus , and in the not-so-democratic nations by subjugation and outright tyranny.  By the way, in many of the countries which fall into the latter category the birth rate is twice that of the rest of the world.  

I have only lived in the United States of America so I can’t speak intelligently about what living elsewhere is like, but I can take lessons from other countries.  One of the most in-your-face lessons to be learned lately, one which has been ignored, is the end to the lack of direction in Great Britain regarding Brexit.  I’m not saying everyone is happy about it, but the national policy has been clarified.  The people got fed up with the posturing, bickering and divisiveness of Parliament which went on for three years and they spoke, loudly and clearly.  Of course it remains to be seen if the new government gets all the negotiations done without lapsing into a stalemate again, but what a victory for the people!  What an example to follow!

In the U.S. our two party system isn’t really a two party system.  It has the appearance of such because two parties make all the noise and they can afford to make all the noise because they get all the money.  There’s money available to any party but they need to have enough votes to get it, a Catch-22.  We as citizens have all the power we need to accomplish our goals within the system as it stands but it will take organization and work and lots of dogged persistence because bad habits take a long time to break, both on the government’s part and on ours.

The greatest injustice that we suffer as a result of bread and circus is that we allow politicians to tell us what their platform is.  We are the people, as in “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” who should be telling them what to do.  Period.  The means are available to us in our present system and we have the time and energy to do it if only we would make them a continuing priority.  The important element is that we the people send the message that we will not tolerate a lack of responsible action for the future of humanity.

We have accepted the idea that greatness comes from economic power but economic power can evaporate very quickly.  As long as we in the United States equate greatness with economic power we will be at odds with almost everyone else for two reasons: a. nobody likes having that thrown in their face, and b. almost everyone understands the difference between right and wrong, and that good leadership is based on high ideals and leading by example and not brute power, whether it’s economic or military.

We need to assume a position of real leadership, moral leadership, based on a concern for all of humanity, and we need to share that position with the other great powers of the world as a united force, for there are many undeveloped and underdeveloped nations which may not see the wisdom of planning for the future.  Yes, I said share that position: as I said, we almost all know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad.  We have to act on it.  The problem is that we are intent on justifying the wrongs we have inflicted on each other in the name of the flags we wave, the gods we believe in, the petroleum we allow ourselves to be dependent on, and greed, and it has kept us apart.  We all know that we can’t change the past; for humanity’s sake, let’s make a better future.

Make no mistake, I’m not preaching hair shirts and self-flagellation, or a turn-the-other-cheek philosophy.  I’m advocating true moral leadership- as in the Golden Rule- and enforcing it.  Yes, enforcing the Golden Rule: if I truly wish to live my life by the Golden Rule but I stray from it, I should and would be grateful to those who put me back on the right path.  If I don’t wish to live by that rule, I must be persuaded to see the wisdom of it. Likewise for countries.  Think about it.

We must elect only those leaders who will:

– agree to make the issues of overpopulation and global warming their primary focus and we must make existing elected officials accountable to that ideal; if they don’t they’re out in the next election;

– allow only open-door meetings between themselves and lobbyists and corporate representatives, there is no justification for anything else. Lobbying has lots of regulations but like everything else in our land of the “Rule of Law” in which terrible injustices are committed in its name, enforcement is lacking;

– commit to high ethical standards which won’t allow the excuse that there’s no law against it;

– simplify the recall process by which we can remove politicians from office. Our lack of tenacity will be our undoing because “the law’s delay, the insolence of office” (“Hamlet”, William Shakespeare) will wear us out;  

– close the loopholes that allow ridiculous contributions to their substitute entities.  Inaugural committee indeed; nothing more than paid influence!

– fund education and action programs regarding overpopulation;  

– fund incentive programs to foster development inland, away from the coasts;

– fund and promote education in general so we have future scientists and leaders, and regulate “universities” that are pumping out worthless degrees while saddling the young with outrageous debt;

– fund science to find a solution to global warming;  

– fund science to find natural solutions to health problems.  New strains of bacteria have been discovered in the soil in Ireland which have shown promise to effectively control superbugs.  There’s a fungus in Chernobyl that eats radiation- how about using it to dispose of nuclear waste?  There are more potential solutions out there if we don’t destroy them first;  

– save the species that share this planet with us.  Many have wonderful gifts to give us but it would be nice to have them anyway, just to keep us company;

– commit to a vast expansion of wind, solar, hydro and small- and medium-reactor nuclear energy, and rid us of our reliance on fossil fuels; geothermal should be used only where heat sources already exist on the earth’s surface;

– commit to a realignment of our energy exports and imports, keeping more at home;

– create a separate Diplomatic Peace Corps to interact with other nations to determine where we can best consolidate our efforts and tear down all the walls, not just the one torn down in Berlin. Alternatively, transform the United Nations into a true problem-solving body that is action-oriented;

– create an era of global cooperation;

– prepare for our increase in longevity by developing enterprises dedicated to environmental improvement which can utilize the abilities of those wanting to work past “retirement” age, as well as other workplace incentives for existing industries;

– improve our expectations of the future by creating a society which can believe in an old age that guarantees reasonable medical care, food and shelter; what a comfort that would be.

And so you ask- where’s the money going to come from?  Two places: a refocus of priorities- you can translate that as budget cuts in other areas- and redistribution of wealth.  Regarding redistribution of wealth, let’s accomplish two good things with one action, shall we?  I apologize in advance for the generalization which follows because there are numbers of wealthy people sincerely trying to make a difference in the world, as well as people from every economic level.   

Thomas Paine wrote a work on the injustice and inadvisability of power by succession called The Rights of Man; perhaps there is an equivalent work about the injustice and inadvisability of money by succession, but I haven’t seen it.  Money is power, but in our present systems accumulated wealth either sits idle, meaning does no social good, or is put to work advancing the cause of those who already have it.  

The simple truth: the governments of the world are feeding the wealth disparity because it is the money that puts them into office; it is money that feeds the RNC and the DNC and all other political machines throughout the world.  

The simple solution: a parallel that most of us recognize- the government giveth and the government taketh away.  It is just that simple.  You can make as much money as you can in your lifetime but when you pass away, the majority of it comes back to the government to fund other programs which will keep many people employed, rather than depending on population expansion.  The money gets put to work doing social good, which is the reason it was created out of thin air in the first place.

So here’s an important addition to the list of what we want from our political leaders- a major alteration to the tax code.  If all-at-once death taxes are objectionable then a combination of income taxes/death taxes needs to be implemented.  It must happen.

Who is to carry the banner?  Good question.  In the U.S. there are five national political parties- Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, Green and Constitution- as well as a number of minor parties registered at the State level.  The Republicans and Democrats have gotten us where we are today and the flow of money and power is incredibly entrenched.  The Libertarians want less government and more individual liberty but that simply won’t work in concert with the solutions to overpopulation and the social changes necessary for future economic sustainability.  The Greens take some positions too far and those positions are institutionalized within the party.  The Constitutions- their environmental platform says it all, so they won’t work.

I said earlier that we have the means available to us to make a change, and regardless of my comments above about Republicans and Democrats, the fact is that they are there and we are the ones who cast the votes.  The problem is that there is too much Red and Blue, and not enough Purple. Neither side has all the answers, we are just settling for one side or the other based on some subset of our beliefs; please don’t ever forget that the Red and the Blue want us to be divided or else they’ll be out of a job.  We must be heard; our common desires as part of an increasingly smaller world must be addressed.

We need a separate national committee funded and supported by the citizens, and answerable to the citizens, which will demand the actions set forth above.  If it has to run its own candidates as Independents, so be it; there’s no better message than electing a government that is beholden to no one but the people.

Whether it is a new movement or one that builds on an existing one, the organization’s principles must be clear:

–commitment to involvement of the people.  

That last one- involvement of the people- needs a few words.  We the people, the no ones and everyones, must get involved and stay involved and take pride in whatever hand we have in it, no matter what the level of effort.  It is the only force which can truly propel those who carry the banner.  Without it, we are lost.  Unless you are very old you will witness the further decline of humankind if we don’t require action from our governments.  

Regardless of your age, what kind of world do you want to live in, a world dominated by leaders who are addicted to the money that puts them in power, or by leaders who understand that we’re all in this together and are willing to prepare for a better future along with us?  I say again: our present leaders think that they are the authors of history but it is the people who write the book; we must begin to dictate a fresh chapter and make future leaders read it, over and over again.

Think about it.  Thank you for your time.

If you agree, please use the letter to Congress on this site to communicate your wishes.

Copyright © 2020 Guido Roncallo