I'm not sure that the term "change expert" isn't an oxymoron. :)

The guy makes some good arguments. Some others I think are specious. There is a tendency to hyperbole, pronouncement, and the use of inflammatory language. I get the impression he doesn't have problems with self-esteem, and that his political views are what most would call leftist. When I see phrases like "... this obscene inequality of wealth and privilege in our shrinking global village, ..." alarm bells start going off.

So, as just one more guy putting up ideas and opinions, he's not bad at all. Well, worth reading. As a pronouncer of the future, I'm not so convinced.

I found very little of value in the "futurist's" thoughts.

CT

Anyone know how I can become a "Futurist" or "Change Guru" and get paid to make menacing predictions about the future?

Also, did anyone notice the extended list of terms well down on the page with the heading: "Recent top net searches (as they were typed including spelling errors) on related issues which indicate how people who use search engines in English are thinking at present." Was it really necessary to inflate the page's hit count like that?

Interesting read, but I consider this "Futurist" to be an "Eutopian" with a spelling problem.

Puleeze...what here is original? Liberal cant; sounds like he read Hillary's fairy tale on the global village, fused it to the brilliant insights of Chopra and neo-marxism and come up with...ta da...lame, new age, one-world utopianism. Funny, he's blaming the wealthy nations for their business success and soliciting speaking engagements from same.

"Expect America..." he begins his central nut grafs, and then parallel-constructs all of our worst-case-possible scenarios. Before and after, we have little joy epigrams about united togetherness...this guy is a lefty preacher, manipulating feverishly to put everything that this country is trying to do for the world, into the worst possible light. Uses the usual trick of moving from unfounded premise to irreducible conclusuion. Fallacies of exclusion everywhere. This is nothing but socialist propaganda, and pretty crude, at that. His prescriptions have never worked, can't work, for anybody but people like him, who assume their own enlightened intellect will put them into the power jobs in the one-world utopia. This crap leads to death camps, just as surely as God made little green apples.

Yup, the "global democracy" he advocates under the aegis of a reformed UN is anything but.

1. He advocates each nation have a vote in the Assembly proportional to its population. In practice, this means China would wield enormous power, and Switzerland close to nil. Tyranny of the majority is what this is.

2. Alternatively, he proposes a democracy of nations. Well, we tried that under the Articles of Confederation, and it didn't work. Each nation can frustrate any other nation when it suits its convenience.

3. Finally, he suggests that the US is responsible for holding down the vast majority of the world in poverty and squalor. Redistributing our wealth on a population basis ("a chicken in every pot, but we'll take all the chickens from the chicken monopolist") under a supernational body would ensure social justice. This is just more Marxist hooey in "democratic" guise. Bullshit. We didn't steal wealth, we created it ourselves. If a "reformed" UN takes our wealth, it'll only use it to enrich itself, while we take the fall.

Tyranny of the majority is what this is" -- Samuel Tai

that was my gut reaction half way down. typically malignant shell game of socialism/marxism, convince enough usefull idiots to band together and redistribute the bad rich minorties wealth

instead of changing thier society and culture to a model that creates wealth, they think the can tap ours like a maple tree and have a never ending sugar party.

"A key challenge will be to reform the UN so that it can become... a federation of nations."
In a way it is, "One Nation, One vote" in the General Council, with the Security Council as a sort of Senate.

But even a federation is not waht he actually proposes, but rather a "democracy" in which each citizen of a regime like Hussein's or Castro's, with guns at their heads, has the same say as a citizen of Canada or Iceland. All backed by a wealth-distribution plan, rather than a wealth-generation plan.

Democracy, USSR style. No thanks.

After reading the "change expert's" main piece, the comments above seem much more sensible than the "expert's".

Are any international agreement binding?
You can sign any agreement and flaunt it the next day.

"In the last decade the UN has grown in stature from a feeble committee weakened by bickering, paralysed by a tiny minority of countries who had the right of veto. The UN has become a significant unifying force in world affairs. "

The UN has grown in stature, but not in procedural unity or in capabilities. It is weakened now not only by Mr. Futurist's "tiny majority of countries", by which he means the Permament Five, but also by a plurality of non-democractic national governments ready to use the UN as a tool against all attempts to dislodge or oppose their power. Think Libya, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, etc.

The UN has two primary problems: it is representative of governments, not peoples, and it has an inflexible governance structure. The first problem can only be solved by the spread of global democracy. This project has been ongoing for centuries, and will take decades or centuries more. The second problem is systemic and probably can only be solved by abolishing or bypassing the Security Council and finding new ways to appoint or elect members of the UN Secret-ari-rat. Unfortunately, the anti-American forces will continue to boost the Security Council as a potential means of restraining US power, and will decry every veto we cast in it from now on.

Allen, Australian PM John Howard has spoken to the very topic you broach here. His idea is a third tier, between the General and the Security councils...and a form of rotating membership in that middle tier...but, look it up, he had more to say, I just recall a highlight or two. Statement dates from about a week or two ago. By the way, Mr. Howard will soon be about an hour's drive north of me, in Crawford, Texas, visiting the GWB ranch. To all you Oz-folks, let me say, we are very honored to have your guy visit Texas; it is an honor, and a pleasure.

Boy, this one is has some serious problems.
1. The U.N. Representatives are not elected.. So they do not represent the people of the country, instead they represent the governments.
2. Most world governments are not Democracies and do not support the democratice process. In most cases they see the democratic process as a threat to their power.
3. The U.N. is the organization that voted Iraq in charge of its proliferation comitee and Lybia in charge of its Human rights comittee.

The U.N. is about maintaining the world as it is.

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (Click here should you choose to sign out.)

As you post your comment, please mind our simple comment policy: we welcome all perspectives, but require that comments be both civil and respectful. We also ask that you avoid the extensive use of profanity, racist terms (neither of which we consider civil or respectful), and other boorish language.

We reserve the right to delete any comment, and to prohibit you from commenting on this site, if we feel you have broached this policy. As a courtesy, we will first send you an email noting a violation so you understand the boundaries. This will occur only once, however, and should we ban you from our comment forums we expect that ban to be permanent.

We also will frown upon those who suggest that we ban other individuals for voicing unpopular opinions, should those opinions be voiced in a civil and respectful manner. The point of our comment threads is to provide a forum for spirited though civil and respectful discourse … it is not to provide a forum in which everyone will agree with your point of view.

If you can live by these rules, welcome aboard. If not, then we’re sorry it didn’t work out, and thanks for visiting The Command Post.

URL:
Remember me? YesNo

Comments: