WHAT ARE THE PILLARS OF THIS NEW OPERATING SYSTEM?

FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE EARTH

The new operating system needs a new narrative. Capitalism, whether Private or State, has been very successful in spinning a compelling tale that when individuals act on their own self-interest within a free-market economy, they contribute to the societal well-being of all. The competition within these markets, looking for opportunities to make profits, propels businesses to innovate, enhance efficiency, and cater to consumer needs, that are themselves the result of a response to market forces. This cycle of competition and innovation then generates wealth, employment, and helps to improve living standards across society, effectively allowing wealth to 'trickle down', such as through taxes on profits. The narrative posits that as the wealthy invest in businesses, that process leads to job creation and income generation for others, which subsequently fuels demand for various goods and services, thereby fostering further cycles of growth, spreading out over the whole of society. It is obvious that, while this system has indeed created enormous wealth for a large minority of the global population, particularly in the last century in Europe and the US and more recently in Asia, it has done so in an unsustainable way and at the expense of the future. The current system relies on the exploitation of natural resources, thus contributing to the destruction of the biosphere and, by the industrialization of agriculture, cordons-off land, thus disenfranchising millions upon millions of people who traditionally had worked and cared-for the land which had been their inheritance from their forebears. Many of those same people have had no option but to migrate to cities, where they live in slums and work for a pittance as small cogs in the global system. The result of such ‘declared’ progress is a terrible quality of life for hundreds of millions of people.