The genie is out of the bottle and the control of the world economic system has been left to speculators to dream up ever more complex and bazaar financial instruments that play roulette with our future with deadly consequences for many.

While our so called leaders spend days arguing over a 5.5 cent reduction in the price of petrol, the realities of a global shortage of oil and the food crisis has not rated a mention.

An economic system that allows hedge fund managers like John Paulson and George Soros to profit from human misery no longer serves any real purpose and is well overdue for a thorough purge.

I get amazed sometimes at the examples used. So Haiti's lost the ability to grow enough food to feed itself as a result of economic and trade liberalization policies? This is inconsistent with the basic math. Haiti has 775,000 ha of arable land and a population of 8.9 million. By my calculation that makes 80 square metres of arable land for every person in Haiti. In 1960, the population of Haiti was 3.8 million. The problem is simply too many people in Haiti on too little land. Now until the commentators on food security issues feel willing to address the population issue, their suggestions are just pie in the sky.

An excellent article Richard Hil and Nick Rose: Haiti is a good example with a century of US domination that has yielded a social catastrophe, with two thirds of the population of 8 million somehow surviving on less than a dollar a day, 80 percent unemployment, and a life expectancy of barely 51 years. It has also produced extreme social inequality, with tiny ruling elite that is prepared to utilize the bloodiest forms of terror to defend its privileges.
The Haitian developments expose all too clearly what the US ruling elite means by democracy. Haiti has a long history of poverty and oppression extending far beyond the notorious torturer Doc Duval. In fact going back to the US invasion of Haiti in 1915, the 20-year occupation that followed, and Washington’s subsequent support for the Duvalier dynasty, which ruled the country through naked terror for three decades.
The “democracy” that Washington is exporting begins and ends with the establishment of regimes that allow the unhindered domination of US-based multinationals over all facets of the economic and political life of their countries.
Globally,the financiers and super rich are gambling billions of dollars on crop/food futures that directly push the price of food up sharply in the supermarket. Following on from this they then justify it by blaming workers hence absolving themselves. The only answer to this financial speculation that affects so many aspects of life is producing goods for people needs not profits - that is socialism.

Right-on johncee. Question is how to achieve, as soon as possible, an overthrow of the establishment order. That is the real question.
Maybe a curt look at the concluding chapters of the old roman empire. Basically it fell into a heap and was ignored as ordinary people got on with survival in spite of its irrelevance and annoying interferences. My vote goes to socialism, but one outside of the existing order.Is that possible?

Johncee,

Agronomist is right. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, 0.053 ha (= 530 square meters) of cultivated land is required per person to make an individual self sufficient in food, even with advanced farming techniques (State Land Administrative Research Project for Cultivated Land Protection, 1998). Even more land would be required to allow for a cash crop for economic sustainability. No doubt those other factors you mention have added to the mess, but they don't change the fact that there simply isn't enough arable land to go around. Some of you Leftists need a short course on exponential functions.

Divergence. Me thinks the establishment will do a marvellous job of reducing world population; starvation and wars for example. The leftist will generally discuss attempts to save it and improve the lot of the poor. Speaking of left (pun); if left to the intransigent Catholics and fundo. Christians of this world , standing in the way of birth control , a bad situation becomes worse by “decree”. Bit difficult getting around that argument DG using your logic, don’t you think?