Problems Facing the World Today

Today, in many countries, human society is plunged into grim people-debilitating societal problems, caused by (i) cheating of human society by vantage groups, and (ii) a defective socio-economic-political system.

There are many people-debilitating societal problems: (i) Poverty and hunger, (ii) Unemployment, (iii) Lack of the necessities of living. (iv) No state subsidized healthcare, (v) Discrimination and social out casting of groups (based on dogmas and prejudices), due to their race, caste, ethnic background and social status, (vi) Illiteracy due to inaccessibility to affordable education, (vii) Lack of community services: water supply and electric power, (viii) Migrant workers permanently displaced and homeless, (ix) Refugees and displaced people, (x) No social security, (xi) Lack of human rights, (xii) Victims of natural calamities.

Human society has been cheated and polluted in many counties (especially developing counties) by vantage groups: (i) ruthless government leaders forcing their citizens to become refugees, to avoid ethnic and racial killings, (ii) cruel noncaring government heads, ignoring their social obligations to provide equity-based healthcare delivery system, (iii) corporations using their capital to support the election campaigns of undeserving political leaders in return for public policies favorable to them but unfavorable to the public, (iv) capitalists inducing people (in the garb of free enterprise for providing opportunities to become rich) to make investments in unethically maneuvered over-inflated corporate stocks, (v) unethical business dealings and tactics on the part of capitalist banks, with disregard to protection of their clients bank accounts, (vi) political leaders infusing narrow sentimentality among people to maintain their popularity, and misusing people's trust to promote their self-interests and become super rich.

Root Cause of Societal Problems and Their Solutions

Defective Socio-Economic-Political Systems are: 1. Socio-religious sentimentality, causing polarization within society, 2. Social System, favoring upper socio-economic classes, 3. Financial Banking system, controlled by capitalists to benefit the rich people, 4. Capitalist Economic system, controlled by capitalists to nurture their money-making self-interests, 5. Political Democratic system controlled by Political parties to propagate their own prejudicial political agendas.

Solutions: Neohumanism Social Culture, Corporate Capitalism to Cooperative Capitalism, Political Democracy to Socio-Economic Democracy, and Enterprise Banking to People's Cooperative Banking.

Clearly, our disabled society needs rehabilitation. To address the above mentioned problems and causes, and to promote societal rehabilitation and renaissance, we are advocating: 1. Neohumanism as the basic social outlook and culture within a society, to transform narrow sentimentality into a universal outlook, 2. Formation of functionally sustainable communities (FSCs) with governance autonomy to shape their own destinies, 3. Economic empowerment of the people within FSC, in the form of cooperatives (based on Prout), socio-economic democracy (SED) and distributive justice, 4. Political party-less governance of FSCs, by competent persons elected by members of professional societies representing various sectors of the community, 5. People-controlled cooperative banking system (within FSCs), managed by the financial sector of the community, with emphasis on promoting and protecting people's assets, 6. Cooperative organization of all collective human activities involving work livelihood, so that all workers can be partners in a fair sharing of revenue, commensurate to their input in business development and/or revenue generation, 7. Enlightened living (in FSCs), to be provided by public policies conductive to constitutionally legislated human rights, so that all people have equal opportunities to share the glory of contributing to societal progress.

Alongside the high-rise buildings (housing wealthy people) are these slum dwellings in Mumbai, the financial capital of India. For solution, we need a paradigm shift from corporate capitalism to cooperative capitalism with civilian community sector's involvement in community governance.

Definitely, our People-centric democratic governance system will be more responsive to people's needs and sufferings. We need to educate these sweet smiling children, and to enable them to be a part of economic development and governance.

Social, Economic and

Political Reforms for Developing Countries

Problematic economic-political systems need to be replaced. What is the justification for a new economic-political system? What have been the drawbacks of this last century's political-economic systems? If we need a new system, how can it be based on the inherent basis, tendencies and needs of the people. The answers to these queries and issues are provided herein.

As regards corporate capitalism (involving subjugated cooperation), there is something inherently wrong and unethical about a system that promulgates a mundane materialist psychology to get richer, by competing for a living, by promoting strategies of annihilating competitions, and in which:

1. There is an incessant drive to over-promote products to create a deceptive consumer psychology of grossly inflated demand for products, to thereby augment staffing to cope with the heightened market demand, and then carry out massive retrenching when the consumer demand falls to realistic levels; 2. Bigger and bigger profits constitute a measure of performance and standing; 3. Big profits are faked by CEOs of corporations to induce people to buy their over-inflated shares, and risk getting bankrupted when the shares plummet to reflect the real worth of the corporation; 4. Real-estate prices are allowed to escalate far beyond the real value, and force people to generations of debt; 5. Manufacturing companies move from one country to another, to unabashedly take advantage of the cheaper labor force; 6. Gimmicks like globalization are conceived to enter and capture new markets of Third World countries; 7. Corporations can file for bankruptcy to avoid paying pensions to retired employees; 8. Recessions and depressions are intrinsic to capitalist economy dynamics; 9. Developing countries are resources feeders for developed countries and depend on them for their economy, so that Hegemonism is inevitable.

So the Developing countries need to come out of this depressing spiral of “third world” label, and collectively operate and trade as regional economic blocs. We want to discard the political party based democratic (governance and electoral) infrastructure and machinery, in which: (i) the aspiring politicians are not interested in providing good governance for societal advancement, but to merely get re-elected at any cost, (ii) incompetent and incapable, ignorant and insolent, unscrupulous and incorrigible people get to be in charge of governance portfolios.

We are hence proposing People's participatory economic system (PPES) in which corporations are structured as cooperatives, Socio-economic democratic system (SEDS) and Professional governance system (PGS) system, entailing: (i) collective capitalism or cooperatives capitalism, (ii) democracy sans political parties and their self-interests (above people's welfare), (iii) professional governance system by the most qualified people in their respective fields (in place of loyal incompetent party members being given governance of various portfolios), and (iv) political structuring of FSCs into self-reliant economic blocs and federations (to provide economic buffer and parity to the G-7 nations).

This combined PPES, SEDS, and PGS can constitute the only viable way for all nations, and especially the developing countries, to develop and function with dignity, while inculcating a universal outlook and a spirit of one for all and all for one.

Third World Development and Indigenous People's Empowerment (through FSCs & Master Units)

The primary lesson for the economic development of Third World communities is to never allow your natural resources and industries (such as oil, electric power, minerals and forest resources) to be privatized, because this is verily the shortcut to economic bankruptcy of the country.

The second lesson is to resist being forced to take loans from (so-called) international agencies who are themselves friends of capitalist cartels. It must be recognized that pressure for privatization is a backdoor attempt at piracy of resource-rich developing countries by capitalist cartels, which can plunge the developing country into bigger debt.

The third lesson is recognition of the primary rights of the native people of the land to ownership of their land resources. If these resources have to be cultivated and developed, then the community (FSC) governance should form cooperative industries in which the native people can be employed. For maximum benefit to the indigenous people, all natural resources should be converted into industrial products locally, and then only exported out of the community.

The basic need and concept of Third World development is not just sustainable development but also grassroots socio-economic development and governance by and for the local people within the FSCs. For this purpose, within each FSC, a number of Master Units (MAUs) can be formed to function as model mini communities of cooperative living and working. Master units will have (i) cooperatively managed farms, industries, small business enterprises and banking, as well as (ii) schools and medical centers. They will thus be designed to provide security to the residents in all realms of living; housing and food security, social and healthcare security, employment and financial security.

Union of Developing Countries—a new concept. For Third-World development, we are also proposing a unique Union of progressive Developing countries (to be labeled as UD-20 developing nations), by which (i) the developing countries will form a free-trade union; (ii) interact and assist one another, to develop their natural resources, educational and healthcare systems, scientific and technological base, and agricultural and industrial capacities; (iii) develop their own monetary fund; (iv) the developing countries can progress to be able to compete on par with developed countries.

This Union of Developing countries will: (i) free them from dependency on developed countries; (ii) prevent developing countries from being economically colonized; (iii) will enable several developing countries to form an economically self-reliant bloc, which will buffer them from exploitation by the developed countries and from being affected by economic downturns in the industrial capitalist bloc of developed countries; and (iv) will enable developing countries to become on par with the industrialized nations.

From Master Units for Dignified

Cooperative Living to Global Cooperative.

It is more dignified (and akin to natural phenomena) for human beings to live and work in coordinated cooperation than in competition. Our economic system of work and living cooperatives will elevate both work and living conditions. 2. The concept of having a salaried job in a corporation (as practiced under today's capitalism) is not as satisfying and dignified as working in a cooperatively organized corporation, and being remunerated for the level and importance of one's services under our proposed collective capitalism system.

In such a work setup, the welfare of all people is interlinked. 3. They are “smart” persons who can corner and accumulate a lot of capital. However, wiser persons can accumulate a lot of friends and goodwill by practicing “collective capitalism,” which is the basis of economic democracy.

In this system, sectorial representation in the legislative assembly leads to professional governance and democratic political system. 4. Neohumanists can even go a step further, while walking on the road to a progressive society. They can in fact stay to give a helping hand to those in distress, wait for them to recover, and only then move forward collectively. This concept of moving forward in unison constitutes the spirit of an enlightened society. 5. It is good for people and nations to be engaged in business, but more elevating to be engaged in providing services to one another. In fact, trading services and know-how can also be financially remunerative, but in a more dignified way.

Master Units can constitute model Proutist and neohumanist communities, for living and working cooperatively. Further, Master units will interact with one another to provide social, food, work, healthcare, financial and living security to all residents of Master units. This spirit of Collective Welfare will permeate into the society. Then, in this spirit of concern for mutual welfare, all the nations and regions of the world can constitute one Global Cooperative! l

COVER STORY

SOCIO-ECONOMIC-POLITICAL Problems and Reforms For