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Can Those Who Create Problems Fix Them?

The elites of some countries granted themselves the right to usher the peoples of the world into promising future. Widely recognized as industrialized or developed, they have been doing so for a century or more by relentlessly promoting the ongoing socioeconomic model.

The model seems to be incompetent.

Presently, the peoples of the world are questioning their very existence feverishly looking for a clue of the sustainable development.
One needs not to be an expert to realize that the economic model that assumes everlasting growth must end in a complete failure. For, "Nothing lasts forever." or, even, "Nothing grows forever." (the former is a result of the second and the latter of the first and second law of thermodynamics combined). Yet the very same is being celebrated as the only viable model as for building up a prosperous society. The criterion for ranking countries as for the quality of their economies is the measure of the economic growth: the higher growth the healthier economy. The growth is expressed in the number of units or quantity of any kind of goods produced. The outcome is the eternal promotion of energy consumption. Also, production requires the engagement of material resources. Those resources are mostly provided by the destruction of natural capital. It calls off the principle of inter-generational equity and leads to the continuing degradation of the environment: a gallon of crude oil is not produced but it is the result of exploitation; once sucked out from the ground and processed, the gallon of oil is left without any kind of substitution; then, by being burnt out, the gallon generates carbon-dioxide on account of reducing the atmospheric oxygen, thus supporting global warming and gradually wiping out life from the face of Earth.
To maintain everlasting economic growth (Who, in the world, delivered such a ludicrous idea?), it is necessary to keep producers going on, producing more and more. Producers can only sustain if the production is profitable. Profitability, on the other hand, requires demand and a precondition for high demand is ever-increasing population. Therefore, popular economic model, apart from relying on scarce natural resources and promoting the degradation of the environment, also pumps up the population pressure - the most serious challenge humanity has ever faced.

Let live for themselves the peoples of so called developing countries, in the environment of permanent social unrest (usually created from elsewhere, that is, from developed countries), poorly educated, prone to adopt everything preached by religious leaders, create the illusion of social security by maintaining large families. The population of those countries increased dramatically over the narrow period of two centuries. Today's world population exceeds seven billion. Yet, if you try to screen down the optimal figure that fits the needs of sustainable development, the population must be kept between one and two billions - the body of humans that can rely on oil, pesticide and fertilizer free food production. The red line closes into a cycle due to the struggle of the developing to get developed by applying the same dubious socioeconomic model.

Our civilization is in dire straights looking from any direction: from North to South, from the obese to undernourished, from the rich to poor, from the overpopulated to uninhabited areas, from the ignorant toward the educated, from the consumers of high culture to those whose social life begins and ends before a TV set. Humanity is spinning trapped in a vicious cycle. To seek a way out by secretly inventing new proposals founded on old premises is absurd.

The point here is not to make choice between economic (capitalism or socialism), social (democracy or totalitarianism), or between various cultural models (Islam, Christianity, or any other): they are all equally incompetent, but to answer the question, “Is there a way out of the deadlock?” The answer might be affirmative if it is possible to create a socioeconomic model that does not rely on never-ending growth of economy and population respectively. The problem-solving outlines two opposing bids:

1. Bullying-Elitism
It assumes self-proclaimed elites of the developed countries to shrink into a single, exclusive body, which will, then, manage sustainability on the global stage. The bid begins with the construction of a single hierarchical society for all people on Earth. It would be a society governed by a tiny, invisible elite through all means of technological achievements: from mass media to pharmacy, from microelectronics to genetic engineering. In other words, bullying-elitism, on the purpose or not, creates a totalitarian society. It is supposed to be applied involuntarily, that is, by means of bare force.  The bottom line of bullying-elitism is the reduction of overall energy consumption by keeping existing level per-capita intact, but to deny access to energy sources to large portions of population (read it as their extermination). So, the price of saving civilization is to be paid by those from developing countries. If any remonstrance expressed, bullying comes to play: social turmoil by design, sanctions, isolation, civil war, bombardment, invasion, and so forth. In spite of the prospect of efficiency, it will fail on the long run for it relies on worn out premises. Bullying-elitism endorses freedom to a negligible part of the society thus creates no ideas. Certainly, by the very notion of elites, the bid is secretive.

2. Comprehensive-Voluntarism 
This one assumes a broad consensus of the peoples of the world upon the issue of the design and implementation of the principles of sustainability. The use of force is not welcome but left if other measures give no results. Since a consensus is in question, comprehensive-voluntarism is by definition public.

Truly, it would be a formidable challenge to squeeze out the unison voice upon the issues of the sustainable development. Although seems far-fetched, it is possible to agree upon the subject if the key-parties express any zeal about it. The process requires great negotiating skills, patience and a good will since all parties involved are supposed to share the burden of change. Comprehensive-voluntarism goes primarily for the reduction of total energy consumption by cutting down the consumption per-capita. Consequently, the population problem gets less urgent and postpones the use of radical steps. Non-violent population control also embraces wealth distribution for the percentage of the old and unproductive will constantly increase. For those, and many other reasons, self-proclaimed elites will never welcome the postulates of Comprehensive-Voluntarism, hard to put into practice all the same.

But, the advantage of Comprehensive-Voluntarism lies in the maintenance of reasonably free societies. Freedom is the mother of creativity. Obviously, in the absence of creativity human kind would lose the last chance of surviving on this planet or elsewhere. Inevitable, painful changes can be performed only in comparatively free societies able to generate ideas - brand new ideas carried out by a brand new generation of the open-minded - that is what humanity needs to sustain.

So the answer to the question of all questions "Can those who created the problems fix them?" is, definitely, negative.





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