Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Vatican News presenting Pope Francis’ support for the UN Secretary General’s vision of a global future of sustainable local cooperatives which eliminate the unfairness of Capitalism.
Pope: cooperatives for clean energy against climate change
…
Cooperatives – people-centred development
The aim of the annual celebration is to increase awareness about cooperatives. Being people-centred, not capital-centred, cooperatives distribute wealth in a fairer way. As farms, businesses, or other organizations which are owned and run jointly by members who share the profits or benefits, cooperatives are committed to the sustainable development of their communities, environmentally, socially as well as economically. They support community activities, local sourcing of supplies to benefit the local economy, and decision-making that considers the impact on their communities.
…
In a message for the June 4 International Day of Cooperatives, UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, focused on the role of cooperatives in addressing the challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change and in forging a path towards an inclusive and equitable future for all.
…
Read more: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-07/pope-francis-cooperatives-day-climate-renewable-energy-justice.html
Laudato Si‘, Pope Francis’ Climate Change Encyclical, also mentions the positive role of Cooperatives;
…
112. Yet we can once more broaden our vision. We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology; we can put it at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral. Liberation from the dominant technocratic paradigm does in fact happen sometimes, for example, when cooperatives of small producers adopt less polluting means of production, and opt for a non-consumerist model of life, recreation and community. Or when technology is directed primarily to resolving people’s concrete problems, truly helping them live with more dignity and less suffering. Or indeed when the desire to create and contemplate beauty manages to overcome reductionism through a kind of salvation which occurs in beauty and in those who behold it. An authentic humanity, calling for a new synthesis, seems to dwell in the midst of our technological culture, almost unnoticed, like a mist seeping gently beneath a closed door. Will the promise last, in spite of everything, with all that is authentic rising up in stubborn resistance?
…
179. In some places, cooperatives are being developed to exploit renewable sources of energy which ensure local self-sufficiency and even the sale of surplus energy. This simple example shows that, while the existing world order proves powerless to assume its responsibilities, local individuals and groups can make a real difference. They are able to instil a greater sense of responsibility, a strong sense of community, a readiness to protect others, a spirit of creativity and a deep love for the land. They are also concerned about what they will eventually leave to their children and grandchildren. These values are deeply rooted in indigenous peoples. Because the enforcement of laws is at times inadequate due to corruption, public pressure has to be exerted in order to bring about decisive political action. Society, through non-governmental organizations and intermediate groups, must put pressure on governments to develop more rigorous regulations, procedures and controls. Unless citizens control political power – national, regional and municipal – it will not be possible to control damage to the environment. Local legislation can be more effective, too, if agreements exist between neighbouring communities to support the same environmental policies.
…
Read more: Laudato Si’
Pope Francis sadly does not explain why a system in which people work hard but other people receive the benefit is somehow fairer than a system in which people work hard and get to keep the benefit. Of course, if all the fruits of my efforts were redistributed, perhaps I would choose not to work so hard. There is no point trying to work and save up for stuff you want to buy, if you are not allowed to keep what you save.
Perhaps this is what Pope Francis means by “a non-consumerist model of life”.
In the end, Socialism always fails because people cannot see the sense in working hard when the benefits of the labour go to others who have done nothing. In the end, “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work”.
Awesome, Francis. When can we move in?
Imagine if athletic competitions were like this proposal. Here in the states, the NFL (US football) is the king of sports. Say we were to instill this sense of “fairness” towards each NFL team. For an example, let’s look at the wide receiver position. To make everything fair between teams, a wide receiver who is faster than an other player would not be allowed to out run any other wide receiver but would have to run at, let’s say at 85% of their ability. This would give the other teams, who have slower players the ability to better compete, just to make it fair. Applying this obscure logic to every player and every team would keep all teams pretty much equal while no one wins and no one loses. This just makes it fairer for everyone. No championship, no Super Bowl. No progress and no incentive to win. Everyone ties. 8 wins and 8 loses for everyone!
Sorry, you are late to the party, Harrison Burgeon. I don’t even like Vonnegut, he nailed this.
Of course the NFL is pissing all over the flag and the National Anthem and as a result will soon be bankrupt.
More of a lesson in how not to run a capitalist organization.
All the players get participation trophies. Even the players who didn’t participate!
How can the Pope, who is purportedly a Catholic, be spouting credos of two competing religions; Marxism and Climastrology?
Marxism, which is a secular religion trying identify as an economic and political system, sounds good to the young and inexperienced mind. Unfortunately the sociopaths and psychopaths always rise to the top, like scum on a putrid pond of stockyard runoff. Our system of tripartite government is suppose to prevent this from occurring but without an honest media to point out the crime and corruption of our representatives and bureaucrats we will lose in the long run.
Climastrology, or GangGreen, is a nihilistic, anti-science, anti-human religious cult that incorporates the vagueness of Marxism with the worship of Nature or Gaia. It is interesting to look at the steady decline in CO2 over the last 40 or 50 Mys and think that human interference in the natural cycles may be the only way to preserve Life on Earth from dying of CO2 starvation. Oh, the irony!
If the Pope really wishes to help the poor and needy people of our world he might want to promote capitalism; which has lifted more people out of poverty, and provided freedom and prosperity to a larger percentage of humanity than any other system developed so far! But if he wants to go with the sharing deal I think he should start at home! I would love one of those crown thingies he wears for important occasions; it would look really cool and would probably get a lot of comments at the gun range!
Capitalism over the last quarter century has lifted more people out of abject poverty than any planned system has ever. I guess helping the poor is no longer a Christian mandate.
You can’t help the poor without the existence of the poor. He’s just making sure there’s plenty of poor to help /sarc
The Pope clearly doesn’t understand the difference between creating wealth and distributing wealth. Wealth is one thing on earth created by man, not God. Wealth is created only when the labor to produce something costs less than the value that is produced. Whether someone is mining gold, or curing a fatal disease, that’s the only formula that matters. If there is little wealth to distribute, the method of distributing it is is irrelevant. Governments mostly destroy wealth, as do most “distribution” schemes. In the US, some estimates go as high as 70% of the wealth confiscated by taxation for distribution to the poor is wasted in the government. The history of the world has proven that capitalism is the best method known for the creation of wealth. It doesn’t matter at all what the “wealth gap” is if the poor have sufficient wealth for their own lives. Most achieve that best by their own labor, not by distribution schemes.
All commies believe in zero-sum game and stolen wealth.
Sounds more Pol Pot than John Paul ll.
In the preface of a later edition of his novel Pickwick Papers, Dickens summed up organized Christianity:
‘… it is never out of season to protest against that coarse familiarity with the sacred things which is busy on the lip, and idle in the heart; or against the confounding of Christianity with any class of persons who, in the words of Swift, have just enough religion to make them hate, and not enough to make them love, one another “.
A prominent observation now I approach 80 years is about a change in the structure of many societies.
That change has produced a larger proportion of people whose main effort is telling other people what they should and should not do.
This change is real. It is measurable. It can be analysed to see if it has been a good change or a bad change. My personal conclusion is bad. I cannot say that we should reverse it, because then I would be guilty of telling others what to do.
In any case, my voice is small. People tend to listen to authority. For many religious people, the Pope is a high authority. It follows that I consider it extra bad when he tells others what they should and should not do, particularly when the topic is outside his field of experience.
He now appears as an actor in a commercial, an advertisement written by others to foist upon people they want to dominate.
Pity they did not choose productive, caring, life work instead of lazy, make-me-richer, parasitic time wasting.
Geoff S
Wouldn’t it be nice if at least the f-king pope wasn’t political. There is plenty for him to do regarding the faith without getting involved in Marxist BS politics. Worst Pope in my lifetime. Geezus!
[Anti] Geezus.
There, that’s better.
This man is small compared to the former Pope John Paul. Francis is a perfect example of a cross between a Catholic and a Marxist. God does work in mysterious ways.
“Or when technology is directed primarily to solve people’s concrete problems…”
Like allowing 2 billion people fossil fuels to provide electricity for heating and lighting.
As a Catholic I begin to despair of this pope. The road to hell is paved with good intentions ,what we need is good actions.
The purpose behind The Great Scam has always been wealth redistribution – at someone else’s expense.
Close the Vatican and sell it off and distribute the funds out to the local cooperatives you reckon boss? That worked really well with the decentralised local Sheiks and Imams with the competition for souls.
Perhaps the Roman Catholic Churh’s Pope Francis can first show us the way by distributing the RCC’s own enormous wealth to show everyone how that works out.
Make the world Amish again!
Joseph Stalin said something similar when he forcefully introduced the kolkhoz system of collective farms. Ask the Ukrainians how that panned out.
The pope makes a logical error. He assumes there will be wealth to distribute.
Isaac Asimov(I think!)
“Against stupidity the God’s themselves contend in vain.”
Strange, no mention of the right honorable author of that “Laudato Si”, why none other than Dr. “John” Schellnhuber, CBE , who just happens also to be the author of Merkel’s Great Transformation.
Now, the good Doctor, founder of the alarmist Potsdam Climate Institute, PIK, is rather outspoken on population, willing personally to accept 1 billion, how generous of his righteousness.
The British Queen herself honored the good Dr. with a CBE, Commander of the British Empire, at the Berlin Embassy in 2004. It should be the Order of Malthus.
What is not clear is how the Pope can ignore this?
Anyway it is not the first time the Vatican worked for power-elites. Take the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola, who retiring as a mercenary just happened to set his begging bowl at the door to the Doge’s Palace in Venice, until the wealthiest man in the world gave him his son for tutoring.
Sure gives a Papal angle to “follow the money”, what?
A bit of scholarship might be in order: The mummery of “cooperatives” is taken directly from Mussolinin’s Communitarianism. However that idea is G.K. Chesterton’s and Hilaire Belloc’s, both “catholic” fervent Mussolini supporters.
Look at Cameron and Osborne recently with a plan whose avowed author is one Phillip Blond. Blond laid out his thinking in a September 2008 article titled “Medieval Thinking,” in which he wrote: “Updating and recovering this earlier medieval model for the modern age is of course the task.”
Medieval Thinking? Communitarianism? Is this a severe case or royal nostalgia? What Blond seeks is a return to the bliss of the Dark Ages, before it was destroyed (in his view) by “secular monarchs.” He elaborates his vision:
“We will all become property owners, as joint owners of community investment trusts, which will create local cooperatives and “indeed guilds, around which people can invest.” Britain should hand its local post offices over to these local trusts. And so forth.”
Jousting next?
The finances of the Holy See are starting to look a lot like Argentina.
Cooperative’s equally distribute poverty, hunger and misery…. except to those in charge who, by virtue of their beneficence are rewarded the cream, not for producing more but for ensuring no one else produces more.