The World Today - The State of the Economy
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Tariq Ali talks to James Meadway, radical economist, about the global economy, the failure of world leaders to effectively resolve the financial crisis in 2008, and the probability of another crisis occurring in the future. teleSUR http://multimedia.telesurtv.net/v/the-world-today-473919/
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The far left has been criticizing the EU since it was founded, it's not only the right that wants it gone.
Look at CUP in Catalunya -
The only alternative to existing socio-political arrangements and institutions is what I describe as cooperative individualism. This form of systemic organizations is based on one essential principle: that the earth is the birthright of all persons equally. From this perspective, the existence of nation-states with sovereign claims over any portion of the planet is a fundamental violation of human rights.
The elimination of borders, the free migration of people from one part of the globe to any other, is impractical in a world where scarcity is the norm. Largescale migration was only possible during earlier periods in history because there were still fertile and resource-rich parts of the world where there were few people or where those who then occupied the territory could be easily overwhelmed by superior numbers and the technology of warfare. There are no such frontier lands remaining on the planet. There are empty places, but these regions do not easily support human life.
Mr. Meadway touches on the measures that could mitigate the problem of scarcity by doing what is necessary to achieve a more just distribution of income and wealth. How governments raise revenue is a large part of the solution. The most appropriate source for revenue is "rents" associated with the control of land (in all its forms) and land-like assets. As has been understood by political economists going back to Adam Smith and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, the value of land is societally-created, arising because of aggregate demand and the differential advantages to locations. Understanding this, efforts to monopolize land and natural resources has been part of the history of every society. In societies where the rule of law is effectively present, this translates into strategies of land acquisition for purely speculative gains rather than to produce goods or provide services. The public collection of the rent of land essentially eliminates the potential to profit by land speculation. The world's governments (the United States in opposition) came close to adoption of this principle with adoption of the Law of the Sea Treaty, which anticipated a sharing of the rents attached to exploitation of natural resources from the oceans.
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