The Value and Use of Resources

The western economic model produces a pathological level of waste across a broad range of critically important resources. The control and value of these critical resources is in the hands of a small number of individuals and institutions. Many of these institutions are controlled and run by small groups of egocentric and avaricious industrialists, media moguls, financiers, lawyers, clergy and politicians, hell bent on reducing the rest of us to a state of child-like dependency (read slavery).

The root of our present problems in relation to resources, lies principally in the way in which we view, rank and prioritise them. If we think of the principle resources of land, labour and capital as a dependent hierarchy (where each higher level depends on all lower levels for its survival), the present view would rank them according to the list shown in Fig 1.

                   LAND

                  LABOUR

                 CAPITAL             

Fig.1. The list shows a dependent hierarchy where capital supports labour and land. The test of the validity of such a dependent hierarchical model is, if we remove the base support from the pyramid, namely capital, do the layers above remain and survive. The answer to this question is clearly yes.  

The present western political and economic model uses this method of interpretation of the relative values of our major resources. This means that a clear emphasis is given to the value of capital over labour and land.


However, it shouldn’t take the brains of Einstein to realise, that if we value capital over people and the land beneath our feet, we might eventually run out of, or destroy the planet, and ourselves.

A completely different view of these fundamental resources from the one pictured in Fig.1 is required in order to create, at least the conditions for our future survival. This would take the form of Fig.2 below:

                   CAPITAL

                   LABOUR
 
                   LAND

Fig.2. Shows the corrected model, where land is seen in its rightful place, supporting labour as the next most important element, with capital at the top, which in a dependant hierarchy, means the least priority.