Day 10 - Finders Keepers and The Future of Earth

"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” - King James Bible "Authorized Version", Pure Cambridge Edition

Why was there a requirement in Genesis for God to say that the human is the BOSS on earth, unless this was not actually the case, unless man knew within himself that it was not actually true ?

This belief of Man’s Dominion over the Earth has been one of the cornerstones of the current capitalistic system. It can be found in today’s laws of countries (e.g. Art 4. BW Book 5 in Dutch law: “He who takes into possession an object that belongs to no one, acquires ownership thereof.”)– where it is stated that whoever finds something that is not already someone else’s property may lay claim to it as his/her own property (implying that as such everything belongs to humanity).

In other words: Finders keepers.

This makes it easy to see that the core principles of the capitalistic system are not actually based on a rational assessment, but on RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. Hence it must follow that capitalism is in its very nature a religion. This in turn explains why the human presence on earth is currently so destructive, because we are basing our decision making on BELIEFS instead of PHYSICAL REALITY.

The best way to see this is by looking at alternative economic systems and how they would go about managing the resources of the earth, such as the Equal Money Capitalistic system. In this form of capitalism the Finders Keepers mechanism is removed and replaced with a common sense approach to resources based on equality and sustainability.

Within Equal Money Capitalism the earth and the resources are considered an equal party within the production process of physical goods. There is in other words an equality-relationship between man and the earth instead of a ‘dominion’ relationship. This is expressed through the agreement that whatever resources are used or extracted from the earth, they must be equally and within a reasonable timeframe be replenished. For example a corporation that is cutting trees must also have a department that is responsible for planting new trees equal to the trees that have been cut. This indicates that Man is no longer the legal owner of the resources he is utilizing, but is merely borrowing them to then return them.

To see how this will affect the pricing process in the equal Money Capitalistic system, I suggest you read the following blog.  

It also follows from this agreement that resources which man is in fact unable to replenish, should then not be used at all. The best example of course is oil. Although some argue that there are no equally viable (cheap) alternatives – it is inevitable that at some point in the future we will face a crisis due to the usable oil having run out. So why wait for the catastrophe when we already know that we’re going to have to come up with something else anyway?

Prevention is the best cure.

To find out more about Equal Money Capitalism – read the Economist Journey to Life blogs and join the Forums on Equal Money.