Title: What’s Going On? How Can We Help? The Consequences of Capitalism and Actionable Steps Towards a Healthy and Sustainable Future
Author: Freequill
Publisher: Illuminate Press
ISBN: 978-1-7752528-0-1
Genre: Political, Economic
Pages: 234
Review: Prof. Gehert Gertz, Ph.D.
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Pacific Book Review
The author wishes to write anonymously, using the pen name “Freequill” in this extremely fact-laden presentation of material focused on creating the reveal of a new global economic structure which is timely and relevant in order to save humanity. As the premise is clearly stated in the title and subtitles; What’s Going On? How Can We Help? The Consequences of Capitalism and Actionable Steps Towards a Healthy and Sustainable Future, the author builds a foundation identifying the greed, corruption and disproportionate allocation of wealth the centuries of “money” (in all of its forms) has created.
As the tone in this book initially became reminiscent to me of the writing of Thomas L. Freidman’s books in his series The World Is Flat, the reader is bestowed with fact upon fact, showing how out of balance with basic human values money has disrupted our evolution. It postulates money as the root cause of virtually every polluting, de-foresting, over fishing, over population demise and the basis of war, anarchy and division in people’s beliefs. Surely some of the concepts are familiar; such as there are 8 people with a combined net worth equal to roughly the economy of one-third of the poorest people on Earth – some 3.6 billion people. Other facts were almost comical, how Celine Dion has over 7,000 pairs of shoes – an extreme example of excess. The book not just highlights inequities of cash, but environmental disorders as well. For example, dairy cows produce an unbelievable amount of waste – per pound of meat or per gallon on milk. A dairy farm of just 2,500 cows produces waste equivalent to a city of 411,000 people. Not to mention the methane destroying the Ozone.
Freequill moves from the way things are to the way things could be in money-less society. There are dozens of examples of successful enclaves of people, usually in groups of 150 or so, subscribing to the communal ownership of all resources and products; sustainable in their own economic system circumvented from the world banking and monetary structures. The book brings the goals of the Free System outlined as an acronym CHEEFS; standing for Community; Happiness; Equality; Ethics, Freedom and Sustainability. Systems paralleling and emulating many of the attributes of CHEEFS are shown – such as Free World Charter, A Featherway, Time Banking, Ubuntu and other examples are presented. Each is described with its commonality and differences to the morphed world order and structure Freequill manifests.
The book is interleaved with appropriate quotations from famous and scholarly people, servicing both to drill in the points of what is being presented, and used to segue for moving forward with the logical decimation of the theme. One in which was highly appropriate towards the conclusion of the book came from the Native Cree Indians, “Only when the last tree has died, the last river been poisoned, and the last fish been caught, we will realize that we cannot eat money.” This calls to action readers of What’s Going On? How Can We Help?
This book is an important addition to Freethinkers. It is ideal as a study group or course outline in social economics, human group behavior and alternative history. Impeccably written with hundreds of footnotes referencing and giving credit to sources of information obtained by others, one will agree, disagree, or agree to disagree so to speak; yet all will have a heightened reflection of how a totally different world may someday exist. In conclusion Freequill suggests many will believe a crisis needs to happen in order for these radical concepts to take hold – let’s look around us … are we witnessing a crisis now?
