This article highlights the author Gus Speth, who once worked as a White House adviser to Jimmy Carter, led the largest UN program for international development, and served as dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The article also points towards an interview of Mr. Speth by Envision This!

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We listen to the pundits of the various news stations: CNN, Fox, MSNBC while reading our newspapers filled with advertisers of for-profit corporations that mesmerize people into buying everything in sight. And, in the meantime, we hear our politicians tell us we in the United States have the best country going! Yet, according to James Gustave Speth (Gus Speth for short) that comparing statistics on 20 developed nations our country now has:

• The highest poverty rate, both generally and for children

• The greatest inequality of income

• The lowest government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) on social programs for the disadvantaged

• The lowest score on the UN index on the material well being of children

• The lowest social mobility

• The highest public and private expenditure on health care as a percentage of GDP, and yet the highest infant mortality rate, prevalence of mental health problems, obesity rates, percentage of people without health care due to cost concerns, and consumption of antidepressants per capital, along with the shortest life expectancy at birth

• The third lowest scores for student performance in math and middling scores in science and reading

• The second highest high school drop out rate

• The highest homicide rate

• The largest prison population, both absolutely and per capital

• The highest water consumption per capital and the second highest carbon dioxide emissions per capital

• The highest rate of failing to ratify international agreements

• The third lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of GDP

• The largest international arms sales.

Sounds like we aren't as rosy posy as the media has us!

In addition to being an author, Speth has been active in American politics and the environmental movement. He has served as a White House adviser to President Jimmy Carter, led the largest UN program for international development, and served as dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Speth is now professor at the Vermont Law School, and is senior fellow at Demos and the United Nations Foundation.

Speth identifies the primary drivers to our current environmental, social and educational struggles in the United States as stemming from "The unleashing of a virulent, fast-growing strain of corporate-consumerist capitalism which rewards the pursuit of profit, growth, and power while doing little to encourage a concern for people, place or planet." The second primary driver to our struggles was the U.S. role in the Cold War. The Cold War and the rise of an American security state powerfully influenced our political economic system, which strengthened the priority given to economic growth. This growth then gave rise to the military-industrial complex, that President Eisenhower warned us against, while draining time and money away from domestic needs and many international challenges.

Speth identifies several critical features of our failing operating system.

1. Our system gives priority to economic growth while neglecting and deterring social and environmental needs.

2. The profit motive powerfully affects corporate behavior. Thus, wages and benefits are kept low while social, environmental and economic costs are externalized upon the culture at large and not the firm.

3. The constant spread of the market into new areas are costly for the environment and the society. Thus, we have surrendered education, mental health services for the poor (see this author's previous article which mentions the abuse by APS Health Care), and prisons.

Polyanyi apparently saw this kind of danger when she wrote that "to allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the Fate of human beings and their natural community ...would result in the demolition of society." Speth (2012), p. 6

According to a League of Women Voters article, this empowering of the corporation has led to abuse of the system as reflected in the following horror story:

On February 18, 2011, a federal jury convicted former Luzerne County Common Pleas Juvenile Court Judge Mark A. Ciavarella, Jr., on 12 of 39 counts of racketeering, money laundering and conspiracy in connection with the infamous "Kids for cash" scheme. Ciavarella and former J Judge Michael T. Conahan reportedly received $2.6 million in kickbacks for sending thousands of juveniles to two private detention centers.

Could the problem be any more clear?

What can we do about it?

Speth identifies the following transitions that can help bring us to a more just and sustainable community:

1. Economic Growth: From growth fetish to post growth society, from GDP growth to growth in human welfare and democratically determined priorities.

2. The Market: from near laissez-faire to powerful market governance in the public interest; from dishonest prices to honest ones

3. The Corporation: From shareholder primacy to stakeholder primacy; from one ownership and motivation model to new business models and the democratization of capital

4. Money and Finance: From Wall Street to Main Street, from money created through bank debt to money created by the government (of the people, author's addition)

5. Social Conditions: From economic insecurity to security from inequities to fundamental fairness

6. Indicators: From GDP (gross domestic product) to accurate measures of social and environmental health and quality of life

7. Consumerism: From consumerism and "affluenza" to sufficiency and mindful consumption, from more to enough

8. Communities: From runaway enterprises and throwaway consummerism, to vibrant local economies, from social rootlessness to rootedness and solidarity

9. Dominant Cultural Values: From having to being, from getting to giving, from richer to better, from separate to connected, from apart from Nature to part of Nature, from transcendent to interdependent, from near term to long term

10. Foreign Policy and the Military: From American exceptionalism to America as a normal nation, from hard power to soft, from military prowness to real security.

Changing these dynamics is imperative to the survival of our species. If we fail to save the environment, we will end up with food and water shortages, rising sea levels, more heat waves, fires, floods, storm, droughts and other disasters. We have to radically change our behaviors, for as Chaos Theory states, everything affects everything else. Thus, even how we go to the bathroom, the types of foods we eat (e.g., local and sustainably raised vs corporate farming), as well as what we buy with our dollars makes a difference.

We cannot continue to support corporations in their current form. They are killing us! Our buying into their ways through our consumerism, is killing us and the planet that will support our future generations. In this author's opinion, if we deem corporations as people, then we need to be treating them as such. If they violate the law, then they need to serve a sentence in line with the law on the books. To make this real, the corporate cells must be identified as the board of directors, stockholders and upper level management. Thus, if a corporation is guilty of murder, then they should receive the same sentence as any individual. With such a system, we would identify stockholders and upper management as being cells in that system and they would be the ones to serve sentencing requirements.

Perhaps knowledge of criminal activities would result in stockholders not investing while making upper management think twice? Could it also provide better oversight to what corporations are doing? If sociopathic companies such as Monsanto began being held accountable, instead of reinforced by holding Cabinet positions, would they change their ways? Being held accountable by the courts and their shareholders may indeed help to curb the criminal activities of the upper elites. If the common woman and man watch their behaviors, knowing there is a consequence, then why shouldn't corporations?

Yet, perhaps Speth's transitional ideas are more realistic than my own. I hope so, for even I find my ideas absurd. Indeed, Speth's ways help corporations become better citizens in line with the public and planetary good.

Speth believes so deeply in the urgent need to change, even though the change-back forces have all the current might and money, that he was arrested for his participation in the Keystone Pipeline protest that circled the White House. He puts his actions where his mouth is.

My wife and I were given the honor of interviewing Gus Speth for our Envision This! Radio show (link below). His depth of caring about the future of humanity shines through in this interview. Speth deserves to be identified as one of the great men of our time. Read his book; listen to our episode.

Thanks for all the work you do, Gus!

References and Links

Interview with Gus Speth: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/envision-this/2012/10/25/gus-speth-an-economy-to-sustain-people-and-the-planet

Speth, James Gustave, America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2012

For more information on the book, and to view some reviews, visit http://www.amazon.com/America-Possible-Manifesto-Economy-American/dp/0300180764/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351467195&sr=8-1&keywords=Speth%2C+America+the+Possible

Privatization of Prisons: http://www.lwv.org/content/privatization-prisons

From Corporation to Cooperation: http://www.opednews.com/articles/From-Corporation-to-Cooper-by-Burl-Hall-121027-552.html

Authors Bio:
Burl Hall is a retired counselor who is living in a Senior Citizen Housing apartment. Burl has one book to his credit, titled "Sophia's Web: A Passionate Call to Heal our Wounded Nature." For more information, search the book on Amazon.

Burl's philosophy entails the idea that "everything effects and causes everything thing else." His spirituality of Sophia i.e., Wisdom is universal as well as within each of us. He also sees the idea of Chaos as not being "all over the place" but as infinite relationships.

The question I present in my articles speak not so much towards the politicians, but how WE the people can empower ourselves within a planet that is healthy, wealthy and wise.