Our Diagnosis - The Links Between Global Problems and Our Everyday Lives

We live in an era of great transformation.

Citizens everywhere can feel the ground shifting from under them, from terrorism to pandemics to job insecurity, yet we do not yet have a road map of the changes, let alone a blueprint for how to address them. We have all noticed the breakdown of steady employment prospects. The dream of so many immigrants to make a middle class life for themselves in the West continues, but the reality is that most of us are constantly worried about losing our jobs and our benefits, as well as whether we will have adequate funds to retire. We all feel increasing insecurity, when, after the jubilation at the fall of the Berlin Wall, we now face not conventional armies but violence aimed towards us civilians at any time or place. Every time we enter the airport, the change from just 5 years ago is palpable. Our news is filled with more indirect threats that reflect this new age of insecurity. Citizens under the so-called “Minuteman” program are trying to enforce border patrol. Leaders make pronouncements about the global fight against AIDs, but the battle is not anywhere near won. In the meantime, diseases such as polio and tuberculosis threaten to make a comeback. Industries that employ thousands of workers, from coal mining to automobiles to IT to textiles threaten to go under at any point. Financial disasters such as those in the Enron and MCI cases seem to demonstrate that these are not just events that occur in places such as Argentina and Indonesia . Our graying population is finding it ever more difficult to retire amidst the dot com burst of stock market values and real estate prices shooting through the roof in what everyone expects will be another bubble.

In this site we point out the links among some of the key forces shaping our lives. You can download a summary as well as a link to each part of our argument.

A. Summary of Our Diagnosis: How Global Terrorism; Insecurity of Employment; Financial Volatility and Corporate Disasters; Global Disease and the Fear of Pandemics; and Global Warming and Other Looming Environmental Disasters can be understood by 2 key factors:

1. The Development of the Global Financial System where Corporations, Terrorists, and Narcotraffickers can Share Accounts

2. The Emergence of A Global Production System, where production can move anywhere at any time, with no safeguards in place

Our argument in a nutshell is that the development of global financial and production systems, in combination with the fact that no nation has responsibility for global welfare, spurs on and exacerbates all kinds of global financial disasters. The shoes you are wearing may be made by prison labour. Part of the money that financed a real estate boom in certain parts country likely included profits from arms and narcotics dealing. Despite pouring money into overseas development, we still face the threat of massive migration with no control or assistence, as well as global disease from bird flu to the Ebola virus. We urge you to read these discussion pieces, send us your comments, and then read on to why we think a solution that ties all these things together is both feasible and within easy reach.