The New Human Rights Movement Quotes

“It is in this line of thinking that Dr. King’s “poverty of the spirit” really hits home. That a person can have a billion dollars in the bank and walk around as though that excess is OK in the midst of the vast suffering around him is an exceptional state of ethical and empathic impoverishment. But instead of looking at billionaires as a manifestation of both our problematic social system and disturbed human psychology, the public is lured into cultural violence, idolizing billionaires as heroes and beacons of success.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“let’s step back and consider the idea of economically driven structural violence in abstract principle. Imagine an island with 100 inhabitants. One person has managed to acquire, through customary trade methods, 99 percent of the resources of the island. The other ninety-nine are poor, sharing only 1 percent of the resources, and they are consequently suffering physically and psychologically. They are getting sick, fighting among themselves, and dying off prematurely for lack of economic means. The one wealthy person has more than enough to provide for everyone on the island without suffering any real loss of well-being, but chooses not to help. While intending no harm to anyone, the wealthy person simply thinks “everyone gets what they deserve” however unfortunate their plight.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“Gilligan makes it very clear what the most powerful generator of shame and humiliation is in human culture, according to his extensive study. As corroborated by others in epidemiological research, socioeconomic inequality appears to be the greatest driver of behavioral violence in general. Gilligan states, “Worldwide, the most powerful predictor of the murder rate is the size of the gap in income and wealth between the rich and the poor. The most powerful predictor of the rate of national or collective violence—war, civil insurrection, and terrorism—is the size of the gap between income and wealth between the rich and poor nations.”46 This is a troubling finding as wealth inequity is a textbook characteristic of capitalism, effectively making capitalism itself a precondition for war and violence.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“the market economy is based on cyclical consumption and it really doesn’t matter what is being produced, how it is being produced, or why. If demand or production slows, so too does the movement of money, and when this happens, the economy contracts, systemically reducing the standard of living for many. Ecologically, this means capitalism is structurally oblivious to humanity’s existence on a finite planet. The system wants to produce, not conserve. In fact, if you think about it, you will discover an interesting paradox to market logic: the fact that capitalism is a scarcity-based economic system that actually seeks infinite consumption. In other words, it favors a threshold of goods scarcity to secure competitive profits, theorized as a model to properly manage scarcity, optimizing resource use and distribution. Yet, at the same time, the system demands more and more human dissatisfaction and “want” in order to function and grow. It rewards consumption, with no inherent incentive to conserve anything.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“Charity is the humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“The rise of automation breaks the need for human commodification and dehumanization, assuming we adjust accordingly to remove labor-for-income as a universal economic requirement. In the words of Jeremy Rifkin: A half century from now, our grandchildren are likely to look back at the era of mass employment in the market with the same sense of utter disbelief as we look upon slavery and serfdom in former times. The very idea that a human being’s worth was measured almost exclusively by his or her productive output of goods and services and material wealth will seem primitive, even barbaric, and be regarded as a terrible loss of human value to our progeny living in a highly automated world.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“Today, species are now going extinct 1,000 times faster than the rate recorded during the previous 65 million years.19 The “sixth great extinction” is upon us. There have been five large extinction events in the past, from the Ordovician-Silurian, some 400 million years ago, to the Cretaceous-Paleogene, some 60 million years ago.20 However, unlike prior events, it appears this one is entirely manmade.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“People who flaunt extreme status and wealth are, in effect, harming the sense of integrity of others, instigating conflict and insecurity. Wealth signaling and class stratification itself is really a social pollutant, not an inspiration for progress, as is often argued.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“It is time the world began to understand and see beyond the mythology of “free markets,” realizing that no matter how idealized theoretical assumptions may be, the structural bigotry and systemic oppression will forever harm the lower-class majority. Please note that I do not see the rise of modern capitalism and neoliberalism as some evil that could have been prevented. Rather, we are dealing with a natural progression of social evolution and at a certain point in time market capitalism was indeed the best method we had. Yet, as can occur with any socially perpetuated phenomenon, we are now stuck in a feedback loop that perversely restricts our ability to take the next evolutionary step as an intelligent species. It is in this stage, a stage philosopher John McMurtry calls “the cancer stage of capitalism,” that a great deal of energy is now needed to deliberately shift the course of civilization.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, often regarded as the most famous decorated US army officer of the early twentieth century, wrote a book after World War I aptly called War Is a Racket. Upon retirement in the 1930s, he gave speeches around the country to spread his message—a message that sheds light upon the hidden internal dialogue underlying US military history. In 1935, Butler boldly stated: I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“There are about 1,800 billionaires in the world as of 2015, with more than $7 trillion between them.58 The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) calculated that it would take roughly $30 billion a year to solve world hunger through mostly agricultural development in poor regions. These billionaires could provide this direct aid for 200 years and still have about $550 million each, on average.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“if all money comes into existence through loans, with the returning of those loans removing the money from the money supply, where does the money to pay the interest come from? To better understand the question, consider a small island with 100 inhabitants. They have a bank that creates and loans money. Let’s assume each person gets a $100 loan. This means $10,000 has been created as the island’s total money supply. Everyone then buys goods and services, exchanging this money with each other, generating economic activity. This $10,000 in loans could then technically be returned to the bank, fulfilling the society’s loan obligations, removing all money from existence. However, if interest is charged, more money needs to be returned than actually exists. If each of those $100 loans required has a 10 percent interest fee, then while the total money supply is still $10,000, the actual value owed back to the bank is actually $11,000. So where does that extra $1,000 come from?”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“virtually all money is created out of debt by banks “extending credit” or giving loans. If all the debts of the world were paid off, there would be no money in circulation. How does this occur? Allow me to oversimplify, starting with government. When a government needs money, it creates bonds. These bonds represent debt. It then exchanges these bonds with its central bank, an institution granted the ability to create money. Of course, governments can also sell the bonds to the general public and even foreign nations to raise money, but that doesn’t actually create money—only banks can do that. Though considered investments, these bonds are really interest-bearing loans. If I buy a government bond for $1,000, I have actually loaned that amount to the government with the expectation that it will pay me back with interest accrued. Likewise, when the government sells bonds to its central bank, the central bank is technically loaning the newly created money, expecting interest payments. Bear in mind, both the government and the central bank are exchanging things invented out of thin air by essentially the transaction itself.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“The US government allocates roughly 2 percent of its annual budget to education. This is in stark contrast to the 20 percent allocated to the military, suggesting war is more beneficial to the nation’s leaders than an educated population.4”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“communism, as historically practiced, required large-scale social control with heavy propaganda and legitimizing myths to maintain a controlling elite, just as capitalism does. Communism (as practiced) was a form of authoritarianism that simply approached social dominance in a different way.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“I doubt many reading this would decide to re-plaster a ceiling that keeps leaking every time it rains, knowing the real leak is on the roof of the building. Yet our localized view of the human condition is still plastering away. To stop the leak, we need to seek out and resolve root causes that continue to lead to social oppression, ecological disregard, and other influences that reduce human well-being. It has only been in the modern age that sociological research has provided powerful evidence of what’s needed to resolve these problems. These new frameworks or models for understanding society must be applied if we expect to see true social progress.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“True intelligence is self-awareness—including a sense of just how wrong you likely are most of the time as a result of your biases.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“The total energy consumption of all the countries on the planet is about half a zettajoule (0.55) a year,69 which means thousands of years of planetary power could be harnessed via geothermal sources alone. The MIT report also estimated that there was enough energy in hard rocks 10 kilometers below the US to supply all the world’s current needs for 30,000 years.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“Martin Luther King put it in his final work, Where Do We Go From Here?: “Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“a 1992 Gallup Poll found that more than 50 percent of American adults volunteered time for social causes at an average of 4.2 hours a week, for a total of 20.5 billion hours a year.68 This was calculated to equate to about $176 billion in value.69 Even in times of recession, average people continue to give and help at high rates.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“The US’s having a federal debt of $19 trillion or $190 trillion is actually only as relevant as its position in the global power hierarchy. The US will never default as long as it remains a global empire, and all major nations buying US bonds know this deep down. The US can just make it up by way of its central bank, the Federal Reserve, which extends to a financial system with great global power, also ensuring the power of the US dollar. If debts are in dollars, the US simply makes more. Although people often argue that the US is in debt to a private banking cartel (its central bank) and that is a problem in itself, it is really irrelevant in the broad view. The whole thing is mostly a sleight-of-hand arrangement that lets the US government borrow endlessly while the banking system gets special political treatment. No one in the US government and its central bank cartel really cares about US government debt because money is made out of thin air. They only care about public regulation and public perception, not government spending or government debt. In the words of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan: “The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.”51”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“as expressed by Dr. James Gilligan earlier, “[T]he most powerful predictor of the murder rate is the size of the gap in income and wealth between the rich and the poor. And the most powerful predictor of the rate of national or collective violence—war, civil insurrection, and terrorism—is the size of the gap between income and wealth between the rich and poor nations.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“Hierarchy simply makes people sick. This is also made worse by the nature of our commercial, consumer society once again, where advertising’s functional role is to make people feel inadequate and subordinate. In the words of neuroscientist and stress-health expert Robert Sapolsky, “So it isn’t about being poor, it is about feeling poor.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“The United States, which is home to 5 percent of the world’s population, consumes 25 percent of the world’s energy production and 50 percent of the world’s production of raw materials, and produces 40 percent of the world’s waste.5 In fact, only 20 percent of the world’s wealthier population consumes a massive 80 percent of the world’s goods.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“as of 2015, almost 7 million people have lost homes to foreclosure in the US alone.97 As an aside, the ratio of empty homes to homeless people is troubling to think about. In Europe there are about 11 million empty homes and 4 million homeless—a ratio of just under three homes for every one homeless person—while in the US the ratio is six empty houses to one homeless person.98 In the UK alone, there are ten empty houses for every homeless family.99 This is no doubt a clear indication of serious structural inefficiencies in the economic system.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“if the goal of charity is to help those in need, you certainly wouldn’t know it based on the degree of waste and decadence present. There is something fundamentally wrong when people are eating extravagant meals, wearing $5,000 suits, and drinking $800 bottles of champagne while a guy on stage preaches about global starvation and poverty. This is particularly troubling in New York City, a place with about 60,000 homeless on the street each night.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“capitalism is and has always been vastly inefficient in its allocation of resources across populations, with now virtually half of the world’s wealth owned by 1 percent of the population. To put these figures into perspective, it is estimated that the annual income of the richest 100 people is enough to end extreme global poverty four times over.97 Given this characteristic of the market to create inequality and relative poverty, researchers in the 1970s found that roughly 18 million people die every year due to these uneven distributions.98 Extrapolated for the twentieth century, that is 1,800 million deaths due to perhaps the most fundamental social characteristic of capitalism: inequality.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“A notable modern example was the 1999 financial deregulation of US banks through the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. This act was introduced after the Great Depression in 1933 to help ensure commercial banks would no longer get involved with investment banks, pursuing risky speculation with their customers’ assets. However, once repealed after about $300 million in lobbying efforts, commercial banks turned around and engaged in credit-default swaps and other high-risk derivatives, paving the way for the 2008 global financial crisis.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“Rather than forage and follow animal migrations, people of the post-Neolithic world became tied to the land in a more direct way, critically dependent on factors such as regional suitability for crops and availability of food for domestic animals. This adaptation then led to inevitable borders between settlements that also didn’t exist in nomadic life. As such, emerging settlements were vulnerable, requiring protection of their location and economic productions. This then meant the need for increased organization through new social institutions. To translate into terms of modern political economy, you thus have the basis for property (ownership); capital (means of production); labor specialization (jobs); regulation (government); and protection (law/police/military). In other words, you have grounds for what is now the ultimate mechanism of survival once again: the market system of economics.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression

“the precondition of unemployment has actually been shown to correlate to a wide array of problems. In the United States, between 1991 and 2000 the annual unemployment rate went from 6.8 percent to 4.8 percent. According to a study by the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), that same period produced a 42.9 percent reduction in murder, a 33.6 percent decline in violent crime, and a 28.8 percent reduction in property crime.”
― Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression