Wonderful article.  Inner transformation truly is the secret sauce of sustainability.  As a wise man said, "What you achieve inwardly will change your outer reality"

I believe you are right on target, Ms. Barnes! I tend to
think of capitalism as incompatible with long-term sustainability because in
practice, first and foremost, it is about the relentless amassment of capital -
which inevitably becomes concentrated in ever fewer hands, leading to eventual
collapse of the system.

Yet as you indicate, this is largely driven by our
debt-based monetary system. Few people appreciate the fact that, by design,
there is *never* enough money in the system to settle all debts, due to
interest charges. (Today, virtually all money is loaned into existence by the
private banking system, not printed by the government, as is popularly
misconceived.)

Because of the above, bankruptcies and foreclosures are
inevitable, and can only be minimized by constant “economic growth” (which is a
euphemism for constantly increasing national indebtedness). Put in these stark
terms, a child should be able to see that such a system cannot avoid eventual
implosion. Yet the implications of this are so distasteful that even Noble
Prize-winning economists seem to remain blind to it.

The good news is that we don’t need yet more money to
implement an alternative. We simply need a new kind of money - one based upon
credit rather than debt. The simplest way to implement this would be take
money-creation powers away from the private, for-profit-at-the-nation’s-expense
banking system (e.g. by vastly increasing fractional reserve requirements), and
back into the U.S. Treasury - then simply issuing currency in the amount needed
to conduct the nation’s business. In addition, we’d have to de-incentivize the
long term hoarding of monetary wealth (i.e. euphemistically called “savings”)
through a zero or even negative interest rate. Money is supposed to be
circulating through the economy and doing work, not locked up in private
coffers.

This means we’d have to start trusting and depending upon
each other and our communities for our security rather than private hoards of
wealth. Can we do it? I’d like to think we can. But it will require turning
down the fear and hatred in society and turning up the love, empathy and
compassion.