Greed is the poison in our global plight."Greed may have plunged the current economy into global crisis, for which both individual and increasingly materialistic culture are to blame," states a British Columbia university report.
"America has an economic system set up to create the kind of mess we've seen recently," said social psychologist Tim Kasser, Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois and to drag the rest of the world into it being the epicentre of the global economic earthquake, I should add.
And even Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has blamed "unbridled greed" in a speech he gave at an Islamic business conference in Jakarta recently.
But are they all telling us what we know? Is it easier to diagnose the sickness than prescribe the remedy? Perhaps even harder to get the patient to take the bitter medicine? And governments still treat the symptoms not the sickness.
They say greed caused the sub-prime mortgage bubble burst that started it all, and few will disagree. Now governments everywhere are frantically defending against the tsunamis of recession threatening their economies with stimulus packages. But not enough to stem the slide into the economic abyss the IMF now calls the Great Recession and sidestepping the real problem they blame for our economic woes.
The Americans lead with President Obama's US$787 billion stimulus package. And the skeptics think stimulus packages won't be enough as the dole and unemployment queues get longer. Past studies have shown tax rebates and free money to spend don't always generate the desired outcome. In relation to the U.S. GDP the stimulus package is negligible.
The recent G20 meeting failed to reach a consensus with the U.S. advocating more pump priming and the Europeans wanting better regulation.
The Malaysian government accused of playing politics and like a Nero fiddling as Rome burned, instead of tackling the economic crisis, has responded with a mind-boggling RM60 million stimulus package which some critics still say "too little too late" and to criticisms of bailing out crony corporations and ignoring the plight of ordinary folks. Many questions arise and Penang's Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng, was quick to ask,"Where will the money come from?"
When politicians resort to money politics and desperately cling to power because politics is no longer public service but the path to prosperity, the stakes are understandably high. Bribery is the modus operandus to create turncoats and destroy your opposition. Now that the office of the Tourism Minister is being investigated for vote-buying leading up to the forthcoming UMNO elections, it is not surprising, and some say only the "tip of the iceberg."
The prosecution of UMNO Supreme council member Norza Zakaria, a Badawi supporter, has shocked many but cynics believe it is all part of the strategy preceding the UMNO elections and an opportune time to eliminate your competition than any real desire to weed out corruption.
Efforts to stem corruption seems a charade because the enforcers are part of the problem and the recently formed Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission is accused of bias. The criticisms are not unfounded as police reports made by Opposition politicians are left to gather dust while those involving the government's critics are expeditiously pursued.
When you have a police force riddled with corruption as a royal commission exposed and another inquiry revealed evidence of judge-fixing, anything is possible, thus the saying, Malaysia Boleh, pervertedly means anything goes. Unconvicted charges appear mere window-dressing and perhaps the decoy.
Greed has destroyed the most sacred thing in human relationships - trust. A popular female politician in the Selangor state government held by the Opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, resigned after semi-nude photos of her were secretly and maliciously sent by yet unidentified parties to newspapers which were criticised for publishing them. When newspapers lose their moral compass and publish sleaze, they pander to sensationalism or are suspiciously complicit.
In a country where the sexual trysts of the rich, powerful and infamous are outrageously legendary, they only become a crime if you are targetted for political oblivion. Now the enemies of outspoken former Health Minister, Chua Soi Lek, want him charged for fellatio, a crime under Malaysia's laws. "Every religion is against oral sex," a propagandist wrote to an online newspaper to rub it in but the truth is stranger than fiction.
Every religion?
The truth is Christianity the strictest of religions against sexual impropriety hardly makes a mention of it, leaving such matters to personal considerate-ness and conscience. Hinduism does not object either, instead the Karma Sutra teaches oral sex techniques. Buddhism has no universal sexual code except against illicit sex, and only Tibetan Buddhism objects to oral sex but only among its adherents.
As for Islam, the country's official religion, it has no clear prohibition against oral sex in the Quran or the sunnah while some scholars consider it makrooh which makes it optional, not haram (forbidden).
When former U.S. President George Bush Senior gave his "New World Order" speech to a joint congress on September 11, 1990, it struck a chord with many but alarmed others. The idea was not original though in Bush's brave new world, quoting Winston Churchill, "the principles of justice and fair play ... protect the weak against the strong ..." all seemed altruistic. The Americans lead in good intentions. But the road to ruin is paved with good intentions.
Ten years later, coincidentally on 9/11, Al Qaida terrorists announced their new world disorder with the destruction of the World Trade Centre Twin Towers. The world did change. But the old world hunger remained. Billions were spent on the war on terror and Iraq War. Millions of poor people still go to bed hungry while the gluttonous rich fight their own battle of the bulge. So the IMF have just warned of unrest if the poor are further marginalized and appealed for rich nations to do more.
But now the global crisis has made the U.S. more protectionist, with the stimulus package insisting a 'Buy American' clause and that only American steel can be used in stimulus projects. Suddenly the world's champion of free trade is doing the opposite of what it preaches, but that's understandable, it's just America Boleh, and anything is possible in their national interests. American politicians are human after all.
Greed that spawns corruption and self-interests is the "cancer".
Famines, wars , strife and dictatorships that kill millions of people are caused by covetous human nature. Since Cain killed Abel his brother out of jealousy, the human race has inherited a poisoned legacy. It's not about past original sin, but present human greed and no one is immune. But there is a solution and it won't be politically correct so people avoid talking about it.
We are mostly spurred on by envy in the race to become the best, biggest and tallest even if our achievements were built on the blood, sweat and tears of foreign labour and overseas expertise. You only need to look at Dubai, and the phenomenon of fleeing unemployed, debt-ridden expatriates, and thousands of abandoned cars at the airport, to realise that when the going gets tough, the debtors start fleeing - from unemployment, unpaid car loans and unservicable mortgages - rather than meet their obligations.
Greed makes governments abuse their powers, collude with criminals, turns law-enforcers into murderers, protect their unscrupulous politicians from prosecution, and so on. Above all it betrays the people who entrusted their welfare and future to them. It is treachery of the highest order. Yet criminal governments have the chutzpah to charge their own patriotic citizens for sedition. How can you be seditious for trying to serve and save your country?
The global air reeks of cruelty as the push for globalization also sees the evil crime of human trafficking or modern-day slavery, worth billions of dollars, victimizing 2.5 million people, 1.2 million of them children and mostly women smuggled from developing countries to rich nations, and used for marriage, prostitution, and harvesting of body parts and organs, said a UN report.
When hillstribes young girls are lured or tricked into prostitution or sexual slavery, when Africans living in wild traditional lands can't find wild game to survive because the safari tourists kill them for fun, you know that greed is global and has infected even the remotest areas. When law enforcers collude with criminals to engage in human trafficking, you know that greed has tainted governments that sell out their own citizens' welfare for filthy lucre.
Yet all the economic bailouts I know have failed to attack the heart of the malaise.
They treat the symptoms not the cause. Perhaps they can't or don't know how. They are better at curing diseases than a sick and deceitful human heart. But throwing money at the crisis is like giving drugs to an addict. There is no end to it. And it only feeds the addiction and exacerbates the curse. It is easier to stimulate greed than curing it and simpler to solve economic problems than human ones.
The problem I have with bailouts is they create a further problem of management and accountability. What makes one enterprise more important than another? Was it fair to salvage Citibank and let Lehman Brothers go to the docks? Or to pay a Malaysian toll company hundreds of millions of dollars that won't create jobs? Some say it is cronyism. And they would not be entirely wrong.
When emergency public spending is not properly accounted it is a double blow for a country's taxpayers. Bailouts become another opportunity for more corruption in countries that lack transparency.
In a country where the police, judiciary and just about anyone with a price tag takes sides, the rule of law is perverted, it is a frustrating and uphill battle to bring the corrupt to book or expect justice. There is always the excuse - lack of evidence. Of all those investigated for money politics which big fish in Malaysia has been convicted?
But ascending the moral heights has always been a tough and risky challenge, but crucial in our desire to obtain better governance. And that is why if people want real change, they can't rely on the leopard to change its spots - they have to replace the animal. That is why real change comes from a change of government and the same cry echoes around the globe and the world saw how it was done in the U.S. last year. There were no sore losers who created trouble but only winners. It is democracy at work.
The fundamental rule of capitalism is the survival of the fit.
When you have to bail out a sick big business that's socialism. But in a world where money rules do governments really care about political ideology anymore? We know that unfit state-run companies were the reason for China's economic backwardness until the cat that does the job was allowed to do it. And now this cat is threatened everywhere as governments rescue companies that may not deserve taxpayers' support. But let's hope they turn a profit when sold later because governments have no business in running companies that compete in the private sector.
And future generations of taxpayers will have to pay for their government's folly while those leaders merely retire into their tax-funded lifestyles and write their memoirs which must include a chapter on How I Destroyed Lives While Saving Bad Companies. Governments become bigger taking on bigger debts when they failed to regulate the greed that caused the plight in the first place. They didnt do their job and now they want to take on somebody else's. The world can't be safe from big business and big governments. They can only expect bigger problems.
I say let the troubled companies sink. Let the people be jobless. Punish the crooks. But let the money be spent in productive use that create new jobs instead and help the people not give them false hope. What is the point of salvaging a company that produces cars that nobody wants and are left to rust in the docks and that will eventually fold up?
If we believe in capitalism and a free market how can we tamper with the cardinal law of supply and demand? Bailouts inflate the artificial demand that caused the problem with unaffordable credit in the first place. Perhaps that was what a minister at the G20 meant when he suggested that the world should be 'shocked' into making improvements in the system.
Let the fittest companies survive and prosper and once more let real productivity rejuvenate the economies not the ideas of instant wealth motivated by greed, and achieved through corruption, manipulation of the markets, and dubious schemes. That was how the world prospered by producing useful goods that benefitted people. Why should we be afraid of hardships when billions of poor people have lived with them for generations?
Or has the developed world been spoilt by prosperity that they have forgotten how to cope in times of hardships and still look for the cushioned landing? Whatever happened to "the school of hard knocks" and "when things get tough the tough get going"? The many tent cities of the new poor in the West are a reminder that greed creates poverty. But poverty is what most people in the world have to cope with day in day out.
The human race is more resilient than some governments think. Necessity is the mother of invention and the human race will adapt and survive. Most unemployed people will find other jobs and if we have food and shelter we will survive. But people desperately need to stop and take stock of where they are heading, and decide if all that materialism is good for them.
Perhaps if the rich (they are found in every country) have less to spend it may solve their obesity and other lifestyle problems. The present crisis may yet be the blessing in disguise. While the politicians pontificate, governments continue to deal in death. How do those nations justify selling weapons of destruction to countries with cruel dictators that see children die from hunger? And give kickbacks to corrupt politicians? Again greed is the curse.
Zimbabwe, North Korea and Burma have dictators that live lavishly while their citizens starve. Who is selling them the weapons to repress their citizens? And the world is desensitized into living with brutal neighbours because it is easier to turn a blind eye than confront a government over human rights. If the African Union stands behind a dictator accused of genocide by the International Criminal Court and ASEAN ignores abuses of human rights in their backyard, what does it say about them?
The global crisis is not purely economic in case we forget.
Yet governments everywhere pretend they can solve problems with money. No one seriously talks about alternatives other than the money solution and so called stimulus packages. Those who advocate reform do much better. Should not governments and those who blame greed stop feeding the serpent?
Surely we can't avoid the coming Apocalypse if we go on this way. The poor are getting more numerous and even the rich are getting poorer, still we scramble to produce goods nobody wants. When supermarket shelves are stocked with twenty brands of a similar item and our addiction to consumerism is unabated, and our planet's scare resources are depleted in the production of waste, there can't be a bright future for the planet.
The global crisis offers a silver lining if we destroy the system of greed that spawns corruption and undermines regulation and enforcement. Someone like Bill Gates knows that after the chase we are still 'our brother's keeper.' He has poured billions of his money back into charity and ironically has regained his position as the world's richest man according to Forbes magazine.
Our world must be built around sharing, not dominating and grabbing everything for ourselves. Capitalism excels when it is benevelont because we know that socialism is inferior. Perhaps we need less to define ourselves but refine the system becacuse it is untenable and the world is headed for disaster. And it is fair that the world's greatest philantrophist should also be the richest. We reap what we sow.
Already President Barrack Obama has made enemies by funding abortion overseas when what poor foreigners need is better governance. Oratory is no substitute for sound policies that affirm life not fund overseas countries to destroy their unborn children.
The world faces a crisis with a declining world population and many countries are unable to fund their social security system due to an aging and declining working population yet millions of healthy unborn children are killed without conscience in the duplicity of family planning. We are to be 'fruitful and multiply' and the world has enough to go around if only we weren't so selfish.
The cultural overlay of greed which spawns corruption and perverts justice and destroys good governance can only be erased by a spiritual and moral renaissance. We all need to realise that on this small blue planet we call our home, we all have an obligation to be our brother's keeper which includes the unborn child, the future of the human race.
We need to counter greed with generosity and compassion and above all agape love - the love that seeks not only our own good but that of others and which every human being seeks and can't survive without. No religion has exclusivity to the Golden Rule yet no government includes it in its policies.
"Love your neighbour as yourself," that oft-quoted but ignored words of wisdom, may yet be our last hope , as our troubled world rendered asunder by terror, hedonism, divisiveness and greed flounder.
Our real problem is not purely economic, and economic solutions are not the panacea. Man does not live on bread alone. He is not simply 'homo economicus' but human. This is why stimulus packages fail. They ignore the wellspring of our plight - greed, and fail to tackle it, and forget the antidote.
Source: CPIasia.net
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