[afro-nets] Food for a thought whose time has come (7)

[Jeff Buderer <jeff@onevillage.biz>]

Food for a thought whose time has come (7)
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George,

Those were great comments. There can be no global healing of the
divisions that threaten humanity's future unless we address the
core human problems that fuel anger, angst, stress, depression
and resentment. The recognition that all people have human
rights is a needed complementary approach in any sustainable
health care development strategy anywhere in the world.

As was mentioned previously, the US spends a disproportionate
amount of money on health care and actually gets less in return
than many nations who spend considerably less. In my view the
fact that affordable health care is not available in the US
definitely put into question whether the US - despite its status
as a military superpower and by far the nation's top economic
power (and also the #6 most competitive economy) - should be
considered a model for a modern health care system or for
developing societies on the whole.

The very complex patterns of exploitation that are embedded
within the American socioeconomic system and their relationship
to the current patterns of disease and stress in American
society also needs to be considered. Human rights relates to
what kind of place the society provides for its people. Most
large scale developed economies for example fare far worse in
terms of providing the effective social infrastructure to
provide for its citizen's needs than do smaller societies. Thus
to me the real issue is about the development of authentic
governance and social development systems that authentically
provide for people's needs rather than seeing people as simply a
means to the end of greater power for the leadership and
professional classes. This is very controversial but if we do
not address the root problem of human and ecological neglect we
will never truly be able to find realistic solutions that are
truly effective.

Who are the true global leaders for developing a sustainable
society that includes a holistic health approach? In my view
what is emerging is the realization that the answers are not
always from the so called developed nations and especially not
the large ones like the UK, US France and Germany. What we do
see is public private partnership are key and we see this best
in Costa Rica and Parana state in Brazil. Kerala in India is
also notable in its success in providing for the needs of its
people - despite its having a history of being controlled by the
communists. In Europe, we see the tiniest nation-states (nations
of 5 million people or less) as having long established social
programs. Every person in these societies has access to adequate
education, health care, descent shelter and a clean environment
- even when it led to a strong state presence and the
redistribution of wealth from the rich to poor that would make
conservatives in the US scream. Interestingly several of those
state's with strong social programs also have been recently
listed as the most competitive global economies. The US which
was in first place moved to sixth with Switzerland at the top
followed by Singapore, Finland, Denmark.

We should reconsider this idea of human rights and I think this
is what Claudio, you and others are putting forward. It goes
deeper than something simply about values of human dignity,
justice and freedom. Those are important but from a practical
standpoint we can see the convergence of long term social
prosperity and quality of life, human rights, a commitment to
maintaining ecological integrity as well as economic
competitiveness. A practical approach to truly SUSTAINABLE
Development is definitely a challenging balancing, act as we
want to encourage innovative technologies and approaches to
promote economic prosperity in the society, while also making
sure that no in the society gets left behind as that only leads
ultimately and inevitably to rising disease, crime and
terrorism.

Jeff Buderer
mailto:jeff@onevillage.biz