Capitalism with investment banking,currency speculation,stock market shares and government subsidies to private business all made illegal,would capitalism have worked without the debacle.

It could work better. You could certainly have a fairer and less rabid system by running things along co-operative lines, and running institutions via direct democracy, and changing the way currency is issued, and not allowing casino speculation on commodities and materials which human-beings require to survive.

However, I have come to the conclusion that at some point we will have to stop running the world for profit and start planning how we’re going to use resources, and ideally develop resources which aren’t finite. I try to see both sides of every debate, and try to understand and compose counter-arguments to anything that is put forward, as I think there are always two sides to every issue. But I just cannot see any argument against the view that you cannot continue to run the world on a model which requires constant growth, perennial growth, and for more and more resources to be used in order to generate growth.

It’s quite obvious to me that oil is going to begin running out sooner or later, for example. I’ve written a couple of articles about this recently:

uk.news.yahoo.com/ever-seek-alternative-...5000442.html#V0ECXT5

uk.news.yahoo.com/oil-going-run-worry-123000803.html#vlhcQOF

Yet you can read the comments section for the second article in particular, and people are desperately clinging to the idea that we’ll somehow find a way to make oil last forever. Obviously this isn’t going to happen! What are we going to do then? Already, we’re turning food into fuel in order to keep the sham of a system going. It has been acknowledged that this is helping to push food prices up, by none other that George W. Bush, so this isn’t some anti-corporate, dissident argument, it’s just a fact. Yet stock market speculation on the price of basic foodstuffs is still happening.

And we haven’t sought any alternative or renewable sources of energy at all. This is quite simply because speculating on food prices makes money, and seeking renewable energy sources does not make money. Yet we’re a completely energy dependent culture, rabidly consuming sources of energy which we know to be finite, while pretending that they’ll last forever, just because the alternative doesn’t make money!

I hope I’m not here to see the day when oil production seriously declines and the infrastructure problems that this will inevitably cause. Or the vicious spike in world food prices which occurs when biofuels have to replace the vast amount of oil that is used. Or the day that it’s no longer possible to service the hundreds of trillions of debt that exists and the whole economic system goes kaput and has to be reset. I probably will be, though. But a much more sensible path to go down would be to admit, at least among ourselves even if we can’t expect the people who control it to go along with it, that the current system is not sustainable.

Those steps would certainly help, hs but they are a bit like a plaster.
Like wub, after looking at it from every angle i can conceive of, I'm left with any relatively short term sustainable future for humanity, let alone long term off world future, having the removal of profit as one of the early steps. For us as a species to live this way, knowing all that it creates/destroys, is insane. Monumentally insane.