Economic inequality
Effort deserves reward. Those who devote more time and energy to activities that benefit others deserve more reward. Alas, the relationship between effort and reward in the world today is horribly distorted
- Huge numbers of people around the world work themselves to exhaustion every day and yet struggle to pay the rent and put food on the table.
- At the same time some people receive huge sums of money for simply owning property and assets, enabling them to enjoy a life of leisure and unimaginable luxury without having to lift a finger.
- By contrast, rich entrepreneurs or executives often do work very hard, but their financial rewards vastly exceed the benefit to society that one could possibly attribute exclusively to their own personal effort or contribution.
The deeply unfair relationship between effort and reward prevents the global majority from having a decent standard of living. The excessive rewards received by the rich give them economic and political control over what is produced and for whom it is produced. This is a major obstacle to the 10 basic rights as the reallocation of productive resources needed to achieve these rights is strongly opposed by the rich.
Climate change
The 10 basic rights will never become a universal reality if we do not urgently tackle the problem of climate change – we must prevent it from worsening and we also need to invest in protecting ourselves from its already unavoidable effects. If we do not address climate change with the urgency it deserves, a rapidly growing percentage of the population will face increasingly severe physical and economic hardship.
- Global food production will become ever more precarious and unpredictable, leading to dangerously escalating food prices.
- For the average household, the damage and destruction of homes due to flooding, fire and other extreme weather events will become increasingly common and costly.
- The health of the population will suffer heavily from the climatic assault on food production, housing, infectious disease control, and increasingly constrained household budgets
These problems can be solved, but only if enough people unite to empower politicians and leaders who are prepared to take real responsibility for directing society’s productive resources towards finding solutions.
Ecological degradation
Climate change is not the only environmental problem we face. Our human civilisation could not exist without the presence of complex natural ecosystems. Without them……
- there would be no food, water, shelter, clothing or infrastructure, and
- the climate would cease to be hospitable to human beings
Unfortunately the inexorable pursuit of profit and financial gain by the elites who control our economy is slowly destroying our ecological life-support system.
- Profit is the driving force of the economy and the destructive exploitation of natural resources is a major source of profit
- Investments to protect our ecosystems from the ravages of the economy are not financially profitable, and therefore fall far short of what is needed
As long as ecological destruction continues unbated, achieving the 10 basic rights will remain out of reach. Yet this obstacle, like the others, can be overcome, if our abundant supplies of human ingenuity and resourcefulness are applied to the task. This will only happen once there is a globally united political movement that can communicate clearly to the wider public…
- the true nature of the obstacles we face, combined with
- an optimistic and exciting vision of how much better the world could be if we overcome these obstacles
A better world is possible once we tackle the impediment of gross inequality. Eliminating this roadblock will finally allow us to address climate change and ecological degradation with the seriousness they deserve. It will open up the way towards achieving the 10 basic rights for all.