Dear Editor:
Re: Desperately seeking a fix for economic woes, Our View, Burnaby NOW, Aug. 10.
Your editorial, questioning whether our economy actually works, really hit the mark. It's pretty obvious that it does not work, except for a small fraction of the population.
As I write this, it is perhaps appropriate that I am at the Chariot Festival, one of the largest religious festivals of India, surrounded by thousands of devotees.
The fundamental question we need to answer is whether we treat other people and other life forms as things to be exploited for our own material gain, or as important entities whose survival matters as much as our own.
The first choice leads to the commodification of everything and ultimately to the destruction of civilization. It is easy to see that the human race is far advanced on that route.
The second choice will require a complete transformation of almost all human societies. We will need to give up eating meat, killing in general, war (of course), gratuitous consumption, waste, cars, and probably airplanes.
Speculation in essential things will need to be outlawed, and the idea that some people enjoy insane wealth while others live in dire poverty will have to be abandoned. All of these things are ethically, economically or ecologically unacceptable.
The choice is clear - civilization or barbarism.
Victor Finberg, Burnaby
