How to curtail greed in a democracy ?

Greed is the fundamental driver today in human civilization. Greed has grown to be the major problem in the world today because of several factors. Greed which takes it's birth from fear has always existed in all thinking living beings on earth, but nature's laws prevent it from growing to be a major problem. Like if there was no concept of money, then it would be difficult to hoard goods and transport the same easily hence discouraging greed.

Corporations with monopoly (or ineffective competition) due to various barriers like scale, capital etc capitalize and over charge customers for goods and services. Today's majority of corporations are inherently undemocratic in nature and therefore put the interest of the wealthy shareholders on top of everybody else viz, the floor workers (job cuts), environment(exploitation and pollution) and even customers (poor products and customer service).

Easy solution to tackle greed across the board can be as below,
Simple way of curtailing greed is to have federal top income tax rates for all individuals at 90% just like between 1950 to 1980s in the United states. If somebody somehow makes excess money, they have to let go excess money to the government. Now since the government is democratic, it is obliged to spend this collected money on the poor and the needy. This solution will to a large extent solve the problem of greed, provided we elect honest people as our representatives. Another advantage of this approach is we need less complex regulations, as nobody can cheat, take shortcuts, exploit environment to make excess money as in the end excess money has to be handed over to government. There is less incentive to make money (less greed) which is exactly what is needed.

There are few problems with this approach like the Federal government becomes all too powerful with all this money and will start exercising this power across the world by waging unnecessary wars etc, etc. Remember concentration of any sort of power is bad and against the concept of democracy. So we need to reduce the money power of federal government. What can be done is the federal government can have the power to collect federal taxes but they shouldn't have the power to spend it. The power to spend the federal income taxes should lie with the states and local/city governments. Say for ex, federal government collects the tax money and distributes it among all states on the basis(ratio) of the human population in that state. When the state government get's this money (they no longer need to collect state income taxes) they should be forced to distribute this money among local governments. All the expenses for running the federal government will be born by the states on expenditure basis. Say for ex, the salary of Senators, Congressmen and federal employees will be borne by the states where they reside. They key message is distribution of power. If power is concentrated in a place(like an oil well) or an individual (like a CEO or a judge), some evil person will abuse that power.

Please feel free to leave your comments.

Why mainstream medicine is a failed approach ?

The only way people in mainstream medicine know to overcome an infection is by using a poison/chemical to kill a bacteria or virus that is supposedly causing this problem. First you put this poison in our body thinking that it will kill the bacteria while knowing that it will kill good bacteria and kill some body tissues as well during the course.

This is the same approach of using pesticides to kill crop pests. This is the culture of war that is so deeply ingrained in western culture and in some sense in primitive human instincts. This violent fight/war is going on by mainstream medicine and US/Europe military to conquer and kill all known enemies and they some how think there is no alternative to this war.

If you are against violence and you are against the concept of war, then you should seek alternative non violent methods/ideas to solve the problem. By being non violent doesn't mean you shouldn't defend yourself, but you will never attack somebody else or infections by using poison.

Let me give you an example, if you are a perfectly healthy individual and you get infected with Malaria. The only thing you need to do is eat healthy diet and let the infection run it's course in your body. If your body is healthy, your immune system will fight the infection and after a week or so you will be perfectly normal and your immune system is stronger. That is how you treat an infection, not by loading your body with chemicals and toxins.

Similarly the way to control crop pests is not by spraying highly toxic pesticides, but by using natures own way of dealing with pests by using Integrated pest management method. You might lose 10% of crop by the pests, but your poultry can eat those pests and give you a lot of eggs. Remember nothing is wasted in nature and everything is renewed. It is only the crude human unsustainable thinking which destroy and waste precious nature and life.

So the next time you are down with cold/fever don't fear and start taking pills, eat healthy stay active and if you need try safe alternative remedies without side effects. God bless.

Why I don't want to eat Genetically modified foods..

Whoever thinks GM crops provide better yield than crops grown under integrated pest management method is misunderstood. There is no major improvement in yield by using GMO seeds. What about external costs of using GM crops and pesticides ? If you know what I mean..

I don't want the money I spend in buying foods to reach monster agri corporations. Why should I make them and their shareholders rich ?

If every food that we eat is GM, where is freedom of choice? This is undemocratic. Europe provides freedom of choice, America doesn't.

Buying locally grown or organic foods support small farmers and help create healthy communities. Check the facts, small farmers can't afford GM crops and supplemental pesticides.

Finally don't mess with mother nature. You don't know the consequences and you won't be able to bear it.

Are Corporations Evil ?

As per the current dated rules, A corporation in America is technically equivalent to a person. There is an discussion with respect to Citizens United v. FEC case and corporate money in American elections. Some activists are suggesting to change US Constitution, to not treat Corporation (Corp) like a person.

I would say not allowing to treat corp as a person, is a good thing. But it is like treating the symptom and it won't bring overall benefit if we don't treat the root cause of this problem.

There is no point in demonizing the Corporation. We know it is a non living thing; it can't do good or bad without the people who own those corps (Read shareholders). It is their motive to make money which decides each move of the corporation.

As long as the owners of corps have an incentive to extract more money in terms of profit from the corp, they will and there is no stopping that, unless they all decide to become Buddha. ;)
 

The only way to prevent corp from doing evil things even though it is bad for the employees, customers and society, is to minimize the incentive for corp owners to make profit their main motive.

And how to do that ? Simple, have progressive income tax rates to a high percentage. Check the facts that highest individual income tax rates were over 80% for a long period during 20th century in the US. What is the highest tax rate now ? 35%. The wealthy have an incentive now to make more money, they pay very less tax.

What would wealthy people do if highest tax rate now was 80% ? It acts as a discouragement for wealthy to make or extract more money. Too much money anyway is useless for anybody. Think about it.

PS: Money is power. Nobody would like to lose power and become weak. Rich would always like to stay rich or become more rich.