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Artificial Scarcity & The Baha’i Faith

The Problem

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ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY is a term used to describe the condition in which masses of people are deprived of their bare necessities, while wealth, resources, and infrastructure exist in sufficient proportion to provide for all. The amount of wealth and scientific technology available to humanity in the 21st century is more than at any previous time in human history. So why are the following statistics still true?
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-There are 1 billion children living in poverty today.  
-Twenty-two thousand children die each day from hunger/malnutrition.
-Two point two million children die from preventable illnesses annually, due to lack of immunization.
-120 million children are not in any school (60% of these are girls).
-Over 1 billion people lack access to clean water (millions of women spend hours each day collecting water).
-Two billion people lack basic sanitation.
-One billion people are illiterate.
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To put these statistics in perspective: it would take less than what the United States spends annually on dog food to solve any one of these global tragedies. Alternatively, it would take less than a tenth of 1% of what the US government spends on the military annually to do the same. 
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Scarcity & Modernity

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So with the increase in scientific technology and global wealth production, why is the number of people under poverty increasing, not decreasing? Humanity is richer and more technologically advanced than ever before, and yet the scale of suffering, and its proportion as a factor of global population is increasing. With the aid of science, agriculture industries produce more food than the entire species needs to survive, but hunger still persists. Millions of people die from preventable disease, for which vaccine immunizations have already been invented. The internet makes knowledge universally accessible, but education is still not universal. 
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Privation is a condition being exacerbated by modernity, not alleviated by it, despite an ironic time-warp advance in agricultural technology and global productivity in the 20th cenntury. A complex result of international disunity, outmoded economic theories, cultural slogans, corporate and government exploitation of indigenous peoples, and squandering of natural resources, has artificially imposed scarcity as a defining feature of modern civilization, crippling the abundance and global prosperity of human civilization that is its natural state, by orders of magnitude.
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It’s Origin

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A particular conception of human nature which is implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, promoted in popular narratives can be traced back and identified as the Archimedian point from which the lever of human history pivoted in the trajectory of artificial scarcity . With the post-dark ages rise of the state-type known as ‘western democracy’, an implicit claim of superiority regarding its cultural values, was exported along with its plastic goods, fast food corporations, and sexualized media. Economic hegemony of the globe implied at least three metaphysical presuppositions, to a world fixated on materialism as its religion and new standard of truth. Understood to be the basis upon which western prosperity was ostensibly achieved, three assumptions stood out about human nature.
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Human Nature is:
1) Material
2) Individualistic
3) Competitive
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We are learning that human nature is not material but spiritual, not individualistic but communal, and not competitive but cooperative.
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Science Devoid of Religion

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Much of science is only acknowledged as true science until such time as it is disproven to be the fancies of personal bias amongst the elite who control thought in ways that benefit them through mechanisms of power: private and public grant funding, editors of academic journals, television and internet news media moguls, and industry-sponsored misinformation. A classic example is the transition from Newtonian to Modern Physics, the ecstatic character of which resembles mass religious conversion, more than the sterile stereotype of science fancied in popular imagination (See Kuhn, On the Structure of Scientific Revolutions). In orthopaedic surgery, the controversy over research on drugs like rhBMP-2, procedures like kypho- and vertebroplasty, and implanting of metal-on-metal hip prostheses, bear similar semblance to the effect of profit-motive over elite decision makers who lampoon their whims downhill as the edicts of gods from Mount ‘Science’, only to realize in retrospect a lesson which humility could have taught prior to the the cost in human life and morbidity. It is not science, but hubris that is to be blamed. 
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Likewise, the  three assumptions of human nature popularized implicitly by materialism’s gospel of human betterment which was successfully exported along with US lifestyle’s addiction to instant gratification (salt, fat, sugar, sex, violence, and drugs), purported to be scientific as well. Again, not because of evidence, but because of arrogance.
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The Science of Economics

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The science of economics, taught in every school, has led humanity down a dark path,  because it is based on a flawed conception of human nature. According to the fathers of modern economic theory, which still holds sway in dominant market spheres today, actors in the marketplace can be characterized according to the following three principles. 
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1) Human actors express unlimited material wants
2) The quantity of  desirable resources and wealth is limited and finite
3) Markets operate in an efficient manner
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Principle one states that human beings are rationally self-interested actors in pursuit of maximizing hedonistic pursuit of insatiable material pleasure. Here, both self-interest and a materialistic conception of human nature are presupposed implicitly in the premise. Principle two states that resources and opportunities are limited. In the case of natural resources for example it holds them, implicitly to be non-renewable (viz a vis. fossil fuels but not solar power)  and in the case of educational opportunities (university admissions but not online courses, open-source code, Ruhi classes, or grass roots distance education) and employment opportunities (trickle down theory and not regulated, responsible, socially just policies). As such, it presupposes them to be scarce and insufficient. Principle three states that consumers will purchase good products more frequently than inferior products and as a result of Laissez-faire natural selection producers of poor products will fall out of business, leaving an increasingly superior quality of product available for sale in the marketplace (ignoring the effect of advertising, which is one of the biggest investments of corporate producers, designed explicitly to undermine rational self-interest and persuade consumers to purchase things that are not to their benefit. Also, ignoring negative externalities which lie beyond the purview of market actors, and are having a devastating effect on human society, viz a vis green-house induced climate change.)  Value ought to be determined by a commodity’s worth to human society, as opposed to its price, which in modern economic theory is left unregulated as the equilibrium point between supply and demand. To drive up price, supply is intentionally limited by providers, even in the case of necessities, to maximize their profit margin. As worth is divorced from price so to is universal prosperity impoverished by income inequality.
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Reform in Retrospect

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These “scientific” principles are more selfish, egocentric, philosophical beliefs, that are essentially metaphysical in character, with no amenability to scientific inquiry. More like Machiavellian or Nietzschean claims of human nature than empirical science. It should evoke the question in us all, “why has metaphysical speculation, personal conjectures, and supernatural philosophy been allowed to pass as science?” It makes science seem like prejudice, superstition, and ignorance, especially those branches of science that endorse these claims about human nature. The twilight of this conception of human nature is at hand, giving way under mounting evidence of success in ethical-collective-cooperative business models, but not before its effects had been baptized into law, dogmatized as inviolate, and employed in not only academic exercises, but also in application to global market operations, Geopolitical relations, ownership of natural resources, and even in the domestic policy arising in the wake of civil rights and social justice struggles.
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Notwithstanding this, the most tragic victim of the material-individualistic-competitive conception of human nature is the education system. The fundamental principles of pedagogy upon which K-12 and university models of education have been adopted endorse a zero-sum grading curve, in which the success of one student necessitates the failure of his classmates, interpersonal competition fostered for internal class ranks, extinguishing creativity through emphasis on standardized testing, and social hierarchies that rarely relate to inherent talent but more often reflect access to opportunities family finances that enable credentialing like MD and PhD, exclusively and artificially maintained, through insurmountable tuition barriers.
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Artificial Scarcity of Education

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How did the esotericization of knowledge come to replace what is the birthright of all humankind — universal education? The esotericization of knowledge is the single most grievous victim of the economic system that birthed artificial scarcity. Baha’u’llah writes, “What “oppression” is more grievous than that a soul seeking… knowledge…should know not where to go for it?” Knowledge has been artificially controlled by barriers to its generation, application, and diffusion. Barriers that include cultural myths about who has access to it, economic barriers about who can afford it, and popular barriers about what its usefulness and application can be. Furthermore, education suffers from internal corruption regarding its generation, and what kinds of subjects are investigated, reported and applied that are of specialized interest to wealthy urban technocrats and irrelevant to the majority of people.
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The internet and cyberspace has created the possibility of exploding knowledge at unprecedented rates across millions of miles to peoples and lands who would otherwise never be able to communicate. Tuition is used to keep people out of universities, while the curriculum is already online wholesale. Exorbitant tuitions purchase for the student only the numeric digits of the password to access gigabytes of lectures and audio-visual material that is already uploaded online. This material could be used to teach graduate curricula in every shack or shanty town with a wifi connection accross the villages and urban sprawls of Africa and Latin America. False scales of prestige are perpetuated by cultural narratives originating in the enlightenment by which knowledge is conserved as the elite purview of credentialed experts (MD, PhD, etc.) by which masses are excluded from contributing to knowledge, but also from participating in its application to their own life situations. In this way a passive, recipient class is created which depends upon the knowledge and expertise of gatekeepers, prior to their own use of knowledge to advance towards prosperity. The inherent potential, volition, and talent of the masses is subjugated and destroyed in exchange for the experts to acquire their profits.
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Disempowerment is profitable to the few. Yet prosperity for all demands that we enact the democratization of knowledge, revolutionizing the systems of pedagogy using modern day technology to achieve relevant and participatory education for all.
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Applicability of Curricula

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The content of research and educational curricula are set by intellectuals who are ironically distant from the life of the masses from which the most important questions of our generation arise. Academic content  is determined by individuals and systems with priorities alien to the communities and realities of the majority of people. Graduate curricula and research agendas are as irrelevant to the issues of privation and prosperity as they are to industry needs of employment markets. The education-to-employment market mismatch is an oversight which is staggering even from a materialist point of view. An unprecedented proportion of college graduates are working unskilled minimum wage jobs. The corporatization of the university has metastasized and is stealing nutrients from its parent-cancer, the broader unregulated capitalization of civilization. This is the nature of self-interest — it splinters until the tinniest atoms of existence are at war with each other.
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Culture of Contest

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Artificial scarcity squanders human and natural resources through conflict that is the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The narrative is sold that opportunities are scarce and competition between individuals needed to determine who deserves opportunity — inculcating a culture of contest, prescriptively. Similarly, this same logic is used to make economic decisions regarding the structural supply of goods and services in the form of policy and infrastructure that creates opportunity and education. The prevalent discourse about what is considered valuable opportunities for the actualization of human potential is likewise prescribed via education by the beneficiaries of a pacified and obedient labor force. As such, both the social structure and the minds of social actors, individuals and institutions, is handicapped in the reductionism of the prison of the scarcity mindset. A self-reinforcing cycle of human consciousness and social structures is established in which privation and inter-personal conflict are regarded as natural. Slowly, what should be a reprehensible externality is transmuted into a fact to be embraced by those functioning most virtuously within the system. Before any evil decision-making has entered, injustice is already prevalent, and no one is to blame.
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Consumerism as Opiate

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The material-individual-competitive conception of human nature exported by an imperialistic consumer culture has built scarcity into the economic paradigm as a means of maximizing profits but not prosperity for the world order. For the growing number of the oppressed, their economic situation is resembling more and more the feudal relationship that characterized wealthy land-owners and peasant farmers in medieval Europe. Instead of military force to induce compliance, the modern masters of social and economic control employ subtle mechanisms of consumerism and entertainment which act as opium to the human soul, lulling a satisfied and docile slave labor class into generational obedience. Myths of opportunity and the american dream maintain people in the belief that suffering and privation result from the failure of individuals and not from the nature of the socioeconomic system.Workplace specialization and a growing climate of worker insecurity drive laborers to increasingly monotonous occupations that necessitate increasing quantities of nightlife entertainment to cure and assuage the destruction of their God-given potential. Exploiting the bodies of the masses, unjust labor wages drain biological treasure, while consumerism and entertainment exploit financially, reabsorbing monetary treasure back into the system. In simple terms, the feudal lord owns the adjacent beer-hall, in which the peasants squander their family’s livelihood on substance addiction each pay-day. Like all opiates, tolerance to even the highest doses becomes inevitable. Income inequality and mass privation of an increasingly employed and impoverished majority cannot but lead to instability and a breakdown of law and order. As riches are increasingly concentrated in the hands of an elite minority, receptivity to alternative social orders grows amongst the populace.  Only those who question, and are attune to the searing of the Undying Flame of the Baha’i Revelation are awakening to alternative worlds.
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Market-Share Vs. Pie-Size

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Re-conceptualizing human nature as spiritual-communal-cooperative allows a transition from emphasizing an individual’s or business’s market-share as a proportion of profits, to emphasizing the total size of the pie available to everyone. Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith writes, “the advantage of the part is best to be reached by the advantage of the whole.” This revolution in economic theory and social policy implies a profound change at the level of culture, both as individuals and communities, and at the level of social structure and institutions. Unlike the pseudo-science of modern economics, a growing body of evidence is showing that when each individual or group works to further the productivity and usefulness of the entire market (ie: pie-size), it may entail that the group’s particular market-share decreases as a proportion, but notwithstanding this, their particular allotment actually increases in terms of its absolute quantity. This evidence flies in the face of the zero-sum conception of reality in which competitive and self-interested systems inculcate scarcity as a natural outgrowth of the economic paradigm. Ironically, selflessness conduces to prosperity. According to the Baha’i conception, scarcity is an aberration. The reality of the universe is abundance.
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De Beers is a well known manipulator of diamond supply (via its leverage over a majority of global diamond mines) to fix prices at a high level.
diamonds
Categories
- Governance - Oppression Development Discourse Health Care Justice

“Concentrations of Wealth” by Michael Karlberg

A recent study by Oxfam provided some striking data regarding growing disparities of wealth and poverty within and between countries around the globe:

50% of the world’s wealth is now owned by 1% of the population.

This richest 1% has 65 times as much combined wealth as the bottom 50% of the population.

The world’s richest 85 people control the same amount of wealth as the bottom 50% of the population.

10% of the population controls 86% of all the assets in the world, while the poorest 70% control only 3% of assets.

The amount of wealth hidden in secret tax shelters is estimated to be $18.5 trillion, which exceeds the entire GDP of the richest country on earth (US GDP = $15.8 trillion).

In the US, the richest 1% of the population captured 95% of new wealth generated after the 2007 financial crisis, while the bottom 90% became poorer.

The combined wealth of Europe’s 10 richest people exceeds the total cost of stimulus measures implemented across the EU between 2008 and 2010.

The report goes on to show that these growing income disparities are being seen in most democratic countries today and it attributes this trend to “political capture” – or the control of political institutions by the wealthiest segments of society, who are re-writing national and international laws and policies in ways that serve only their narrow self-interests.

Which raises an important question: what can be done to reverse these trends?

The Oxfam report suggest that “popular politics” – or the political mobilization or poor and working classes in support of progressive taxation as well as investments in education, health, and other public services – will be needed to reverse such trends.

I fully agree that progressive taxation as well as investments in education, health, and other public services are essential. But achieving and sustaining these kinds of advances will require much more than “popular politics.” This is because the underlying problem is, in part, structural.

Western liberal democracies are structured according to the logic of interest-group competition. When governance is organized in this way – as a contest for power – it will always be divisive and dysfunctional at best, oppressive at worst.

For reasons I’ve outlined elsewhere, electoral contests invariably invite the corrupting influence of money; they diminish the inclusion and participation of historically marginalized individuals or groups; they reduce complex issues down to manipulative slogans; and they ignore the well-being of the masses of humanity.

Stated another way, when governance is organized as a contest for power, it will inevitably result in political capture.

Popular political mobilization will, in exceptional historical circumstances, result in temporary advances for the cause of social justice and economic equity. But the long-term trends will continue to be characterized by the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of fewer and fewer people – as the history of the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries abundantly demonstrates.

These trends cannot be reversed merely through popular mobilization within current political structures.  They will only be truly reversed when the organizing logic of interest-group competition is replaced with a new structural logic, derived from consciousness of the oneness of humanity — or recognition of the organic unity and interdependence of the entire social body.

It is, therefore, toward the cultivation of this consciousness, and the construction of new models of governance that are coherent with it, that we need to bend our energies in the long-term, if we hope to truly reverse the deeply troubling trends identified in the Oxfam report.

http://agencyandchange.com/2014/01/24/concentrations-of-wealth/

one of a kind

Categories
- Governance Development Justice Oneness Power

Unity, Communism, and Change: The Principle, the Boogie-Man, and the Future

Today it seems that the message for change is articulated by people who believe in the unity of races, equality of genders, and institutional intervention on behalf of social and economic justice. These people also hold that the unity of mankind is a valuable principle. Alternative views originate from camps where self-reliance, individualism, and the centrality of ownership over risk and productivity is central to economic growth. These two camps are not necessarily opposing, although they set themselves up in a way to compete in a zero-sum situation, mutually excluding each other from voters allegiance, and financial and ideological support. There may be principles of merit at the heart of both camps, however the conflict appears to be designedly partisan, ideologically embodying the structure of conflict. They equate success with the failure of the opposing camp. As such, unity and consensus cannot be built.

The association of change and progress with unity and inclusiveness has not always existed. Progress has become increasingly linked with unity in popular discourse. However, the language of unity recalls certain associations with historical precedents. Certain movements invoked similar justifications for tyrannical processes in the past, such as the emphasis of national unity under communism in the USSR. This recalls tragic associations with 10 million deaths and relocations in genocides under Stalin.

Progressivism is associated with the political left, and conservativism with the political right. Leftism is associated with unity as a principle because of the language employed historically in communism. The right is associated with individualism, which it regards as the driver of economic activity. The right regards laissez faire markets as the source of economic prosperity. Whatever the etiology, the right has come to be associated with capitalism, and the left with communism. The division has been made highly controversial by manipulating public perceptions, reducing the discussion oftentimes to caricatures. The current matrix of associations is as follows:

The LEFT:
Economic theory: communism
Social theory: unity and equality
Direction: progressive

The RIGHT:
Economic theory: capitalism
Social theory: individualism
Direction: conservative

What is the origin of the association between the principle of human unity and communist economic systems? Why has a moral principle become bound up in political lingo and public perception with something so destructive and so outdated as communism? The largest and most well-remembered historical example of communism’s practical failures was Soviet Russia and the cold war arms race. In American perception, the USSR was demonized and held to be an ideological antithesis to the United States of America. But is this association between communism and an appeal for greater unity so tight knit? Moreover, is the fear of communism and all things related to it rational or even useful for our society? More specifically, does the principle of human unity imply communist economic practices?

First we will have to identify the elements of communist economics that led to its failure. Second we will have to look at the principle of human unity and identify its elements, moral appeal, and its implications. Finally we will look at these two, and determine if there exists any essential overlap that confounds the language of human unity with the knee-jerk reaction against communism. We will show that the aforementioned association is partly the result of historical experiences, irrational fear, and prejudices of language; we will also show that the principle of the unity of humankind is good, sound, and moral; and we will conclude by demonstrating that there is no essential connection between the economic system of communism and the moral appeal of the principle of oneness.

According to Karl Marx, when left to their own devices, power structures within free markets will set up systems that normalize a culture of exploitation of the masses of common laborers. Without a medium for expression of their wants and without voice to their needs, the proletariat, as they were called, would feel progressively dissatisfied. The discontent of the masses would well up into revolution eventually which would shift the balance of power in favor of the working class with the instatement of a communist government. This analysis also produced the categories of class theory that saw the organizers of the system of exploitation as a rich, powerful, minority that enjoyed disproportionate privilege. Whilst the working class was constituted of a poor, hard-working, majority that suffered in silent determination until the advent of revolution.

Whilst communism has multiple elements, the economic theory is of greatest concern here. One of the tenets of a communist economics is the absence of private property and ownership and that the means of production and subsistence belong to the community as a whole. So, communism believes that people should not be allowed to own things, and that the resources funneled into industry as well as the products of work belong to the society as a whole to be distributed as it sees fit for the satisfaction of its subject’s needs. These tenets can summarized as follows:

1) No private property

2) Resources and Products belong to the community

Although it is not entirely obvious that these are bad ideals as stated, it does pan out to be the case that societies do not prosper with the implementation of communist economic theory and these beliefs. No one has to remind the west of the dangers of communist economic practices, and with the evidence of history at our disposal in the 21st century, not many entertain the idea that communism in its pure ideology is tenable as a model of governance in economic spheres. Notable cases of the collapse of the Soviet Union testify to this fact, and the reality that the People’s Republic of China has actually prospered in recent times due to its distancing itself from communist economic regulations, and the implementation of a de facto free-market system under a nominally communist government, has led to widespread acceptance that pure communist economic theory is not a practical possibility.

Finally, we note that the episode of McCarthyism in the United States in the 1950’s roused public fears and prejudices to a level of irrationality and hysteria. As a result, communism ceased to occupy a rational pole in public considerations of governmental and economic options available, and started to become a weapon of defamation commensurate to a culture of witch hunting, demon-exercising, or other superstitions. The combination of these influences produced the current psychological milieu, in which it may be difficult for the public to speak or think rationally on topics that have a historical association with something so tragic and devastating in the collective national memory.

It is important to differentiate communist economic systems, from the benefits of the principle of the oneness of humankind, which it is the position of this forum, constitutes the single most important factor in the realization of world peace, global security, and future prosperity for the species. The principle of the oneness of humankind is no outburst of ignorant emotionalism or a vague hope, it is not even just a reawakening of the spirit of brotherhood and charity among humans. It determines the nature of the structures and relationships that bind institutions within states, policies to people, and nations into members of a single human family. It is not merely an ideal. Institutions are responsible and committed to the task of spreading its message, and embodying its truth. It cannot engender a mechanical change in society, but a natural and organic one. It challenges old belief systems, that inculcate or encourage a loyalty to smaller or outdated sects, and challenges all values to recognize the infinite authority of the value of the entire human family.

The principle of the oneness of mankind necessitates the demilitarization of the globe, as large militaries have been one of the most crucial elements enabling divisiveness, disparities, and war. We require a unified planetary model that melds our political machinery into a single global federation of nation-states, with a representative parliament, and a single global executive branch.

Unity must materialize in our spiritual aspirations, our trade and finance systems, and our script and language. Nevertheless, we must safeguard the local cultures and diversity of national and regional heritage. This is similar to how a human body centralizes control over many functions through the operation of the central nervous system, but also relegates certain functionaries to local administration and entrusts certain decision-making to regional nervous circuits or even paracellular communication. Unity in a planetary federation does not therefore imply uniformity any more than national federalism (vis. the USA) implies destruction of state distinctiveness or regional rights and cultures.

Human unity represents the consummation of our evolution that began with the birth of family life, subsequent development of tribal solidarity, leading to construction of the city-state, coming to rest finally in the system of sovereign nation-states that we have today. As you can see the circle of unity has been expanding continuously over humanity’s long history from the caveman to the space-station, and our final stage of evolution is now imminent: global unity. This final stage is necessary, inevitable, and soon at hand.

To meld so many disparate factions into a cohesive unity will require another impetus from that Source that has impelled the evolution of our species through all of its successive stages into greater circles of unity throughout the past. It is prophesied in religious scriptures and tribal faiths as well. A gradual diffusion of the spirit of world solidarity is arising out of the chaos on the internet, in the financial system, in health scares, in tourism and travel, in international trade and debt, in sports and culture, and in charity and development work.

Human unity increasingly captures the attention of the leaders and presidents of nations. Only selfish and backwards forms of nationalism would regard the call to international unity as a threat to the power and resources of the national government. Just as colonial powers resisted the inevitable rise of national sovereignty for the sake of selfish power, so too will national powers resist the rise of a global unity that stands equally inevitable and equally beneficial to the interests of the people and the governments. Absolute autonomy of the arm is no special boon when the brain is willing and able to coordinate whole-body motion.

The fierce opposition which greeted the Geneva Protocol, the proposal for a United States of Europe, and the restriction of President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points into a smaller version, the League of Nations, all rank as among the prejudices faced by the forces of global unity at the hands of national power-mongering. Nevertheless the testimony of the prosperity of the United States of America with its system of federalism represents a credible and persuasive guide for the future of our world when it overcomes its prejudices against planetary society. Indeed, the United Nations demonstrate a significant advance in this direction, with some well-known shortcomings that illustrate the importance of more powerful and less nominal government structures at the global level.

The establishment of the European Union has taken steps in securing the monetary unity of that continent, however we still see the challenges associated with surgically enacting monetary unity in the absence of greater fiscal unity, vis. the current debt crisis in Greece. With Greece wanting to maintain its own national sovereignty in the context of increasing debt, their eventual fiscal merger with the rest of Europe is inevitable. As it is now, without fiscal unity, Greece maintains its control over fiscal budget setting. This sets the stage for increasing debt because they are not able to manipulate their currency, now the Euro (set by central European control) in response to economic shortages. This predicament will continue, and will worsen, until Greece and other countries like it are forced to sacrifice their national sovereignty in favor of continental governance. European control has already begun asserting Greek civil servants must comply with austerity measures before further loans from the European Union will be granted. The signs of centralized european government are already therefore being demonstrated. Inevitably, Europe is heading toward both monetary and fiscal unity – A reliable guide to the economic future of our planet.

Trouble and travail meld the warring factions of the world into a single united homeland. Stirring struggles and fierce controversies that forged the unity of the United States, are liable to play themselves out on the world stage to forge a global unity that will endure as long as mankind itself.