Quote Originally Posted by Kozzle View Post
Paradigm shifts do happen, albeit rarely, but they do happen under certain conditions. If they didn't happen the world would still be completely ran by the religious institutions because everyone would believe that this is the highest power. I don't expect any real sacrifices on anyone's part (except maybe to drop one's beliefs in a completely monetary-based system). There are ways to have a healthy medium except we haven't found those mediums. At the rate we are going do you think we can sustain our current system? It's only a matter of time before pollution is too great to face or that we run out of certain natural resources or what have you. It's not the system per se that is flawed, the problems we face are but symptoms of the cause: the consumer mindset that we are endowed with.
The reason government moved from a religious to secular basis is because the early adopters of secular governments had a competitive advantage. You want to propose changes that will devastate the early adopters... what kind of a fuckwit would possibly want to sacrifice his standard of living for that?

Quote Originally Posted by Kozzle View Post
How can anyone expect ethical changes when it costs money to be ethical? The vast majority of the population is stuck in a financial situation where they can't afford to be ethical without considerably lowering their standards of living while we have the fat cats at the top who don't give a damn about any of it. THIS is the part that bothers me. We have the technology and resources to provide a decent standard of living to practically everyone; but that can't happen with a system like this ran by humans (read the book i suggested; it isn't the system we live in that is fucking us over but rather our mindset towards these issues).
Shows a general lack of understanding of current best practices in business.

Stakeholder management is currently one of the most important fields of study in modern business and the companies that have done the best job with it are the ones who are consistently performing well. Compare the worldwide success of Coca-Cola to Pepsi; the major difference in the companies is that Coca-Cola is consistently heralded as one of the leaders in CSR. Even Wal-mart has been forced to integrate this process and consider its ethical and philanthropic responsibilities because the market is demanding this behavior.

Quote Originally Posted by Kozzle View Post
Solutions are possible, we just aren't exploring them because most of the people who have the resources to accomplish anything are only worried about 1 thing: profit.
At this point, I have to ask, Kozzle, what type of expertise do you have on any of these subjects? I can't tell if you're choosing to ignore vital portions of economic theory or if you're just uneducated and either way it's infuriating if not impossible to have a discussion.

Kuznet's Curve hurfdurf thread over

(and no I am not going to entertain discussion of it based on what you read on Wikipedia)