Western Europe faces the same dilemma,…declining population growth among working-age people who contribute to the economic growth and stabilization of society, and their own future as they become retirees. Meanwhile, in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Arab world, population is growing at a faster rate than their current societies can absorb, resulting in mass physical, social and economic displacement for both the “home” countries of these peoples, and the “host” countries trying to cope with the influx of “economic refugees.”

Looking at the failed “ism’s” of the past,… Fascism, Nazism, Communism,…it’s easy to see the mass enslavement and exterminations practised by their leadership resulted in a historical lesson not to repeat using these types of “governments” for solutions.

The late 20th-early 21st century experience with kleptocracies,…both the “sophisticated” kind on Wall Street and world markets and the more basic, brutal types in sub-Saharan Africa,….also offer no reasonable solutions. No, greed is NOT good.

Taliban-style theocracies, while appealing to the easily-led, hyper-macho and disenfranchised, lack
the societal staying-power needed to bring stability, sufficiency and success to an ailing planet.

No,…the solution lies in a new, long-term paradigm that recognizes the REAL “wealth of nations” lies not in factories or mines or agriculture or information, but in effectively capitalizing on the greatest resource of every country in the world,…its’ people.

India and China have started to recognise this,…that their people are the engine, the producers, the product and the customer-consumers of their own societies and the world. At certain points, China has even looked beyond its’ borders for labor and raw materials in other less-developed regions of the world,…Cambodia and Sudan come to mind….

And, as all boats rise on an incoming tide, the general well-being of their people has risen a bit as well.

The Global Guild for Human Survival, an NGO in its’ formative stages, is in the process of issuing for 2009 a list of the “economic values of human life” for each of about 200 nations around the world. Based on almost two decades of research, the organisation tallies the lifetime economic earnings impact of an infant born today who would live to roughly about 75 years based on today’s dollars. The values range from more than six million U.S. dollars for a baby born in Luxembourg to less than $20 thousand for a child born in the failed states of sub-Saharan Africa. The goal, however, is to have governments look upon their citizens long-term as assets to be nurtured to reach their fullest economic and social potential for that society, rather than as
liabilities to the state in the short term. Only then can humans ascend to their rightful, God-given respected place as productive citizens in a stable, self-sustaining world.