Kauai Occupied

SUBHEAD: The Occupy Wall Street movement is seeking an alternative to crushing debt and taking it out on nature. By Juan Wilson on 16 October 2011 for Island Breath - (http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2011/10/kauai-occupied.html) Image above: Hundreds of people demonstrated along the Highway in Waipouli in front of Safeway. Photo by Juan Wilson. Kauai had a joyous, colorful and musical demonstration along the Kuhio Highway mid Saturday along the Kuhio Highway in Waipouli near Kapaa. There were signs, drumming, singing and chanting in the air that was punctuated by car horns in agreement with the sentiments of the day. People came in supporting many individual causes; but shared the feeling of a need deal with our problems fairly and sustainably. Less violence - less profiteering - less inequality - less destruction of nature. Yesterday their were over 950 demonstrations around the world directed at the injustice and inequity created by the wealthiest among us. The primary target being the banksters who dragged down the financial system and, rather than declaring bankruptcy. Especially the ones who declared they were too big to fail. They said if they sank we would all go down with them. They took trillions in handouts (and cost free loans) while they watched the rest of us went down the drain. They bet against us and won. The people that came together on Kauai, like thousands of people across the developed world, have declared that a miniscule number of elitists cannot rig the system in their favor any more. Many now are connecting the dots and seeing that the population crisis; the energy crisis; the water crisis; the climate crisis are all of the same cloth.People are onto them, declaring that the jig is up. Image above: Lind Pascatore holds sign reading Invest in People Not Corporations - Sustainability Not Growth" . Photo by Juan Wilson. I separate myself from those who believe that there is a way to continue forward with an equitable economic system of expanding wealth if we just made the system fairer. I'm afraid there are simply too many humans and too few resources left on the planet for expanding wealth for everyone. We are all going to have some impoverishment to swallow. Unfortunately, down at the center of the system is the nasty necessity for ever continuing economic growth. "Growth" being the taking ever more land and resources out of the natural world for human consumption. Without it the system fails. Capitalism creates money out of thin air with a printing press (fiat currency). It is used to lend and invest so there can be infrastructure, production and jobs. This "thin air" money is "fattened up" to become new real money by the taking of ever more natural resources to feed those endeavors. This is the mechanism that allows us to pay back debts. We take it out of nature. No one has figured out how to do investment or lending without requiring economic growth. That is why the boyz in Washington and Wall Street are so desperate "jump start" the economy. Throw paper money and oil on and put a match to it. Just get that growth fire going again. It seems then that there is little chance of operating capitalism without growth. It would follow that as we pass Peak Everything (Oil, Water, Phosphorus, Food, Consumption, etc.) that capitalism will not be the system that we use to run our economy. The people participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement is seeking an alternative to crushing debt and taking it out on nature. .