Earlier we discussed the heat wave in Australia and need for new vocabulary to cope with climate change.  Here is a followup report on Australia.

Right now the American economy is falling apart.  It’s easy to point fingers and cast blame for why this is happening, but really — it’s happening because it’s designed  to happen.  A free-market, capitalist system maximizes the ability to accrue large sums of money and minimizes responsibility for negative outcomes.  It encourages competition because it requires competition, but for many, competition ends in failure; not necessarily because they performed poorly but because someone bigger and stronger beat them to death financially.  The system encourages debt because it requires debt, but for many, debt becomes a spiralling descent from which they cannot escape.  The system encourages waste because it requires waste, but when people throw things away, resources run out.  We don’t just need to fix the system: we need to redesign it.