Only market fundamentalists saw that idea as anything other than a massive windfall for Wall Street — and a tremendous risk for Main Street — and yet many people are essentially doing that right now by allowing their retirement funds to be invested in the stock market for them.

The whole point of the stock market is that there *is* no guarantee that one’s investment won’t go down — as illustrated by the bursting of the “New Economy” (a.k.a., dot.com) bubble a few short years ago — which is something that people tend to forget. Wall Street is a casino, with the odds equally (if not more so) stacked in favor of the “house”, which (as in a casino) are the people who run it.

To the degree that fraud was committed, there should be criminal prosecution of those responsible, and (to the greatest extent possible) restitution to those defrauded. But if it’s simply a question of getting in on a stock (or housing or other commodity) bubble and then losing money when the bubble bursts, I fail to see the injustice in that.

What’s necessary is that some people lose money — unfortunately, it’s (again) usually not the guys who run these rackets — in order for others to learn that the stock market is a fixed game. If more people were paying attention and were less quick to throw money at these guys (especially during the recurrent booms), the whole system would be much more rational and sustainable.

Professionally I work in monitoring an industry sector around the world and taking action to hold it accountable to international marketing standards.

This has led me to think a great deal about more effective ways of holding corporations accountable when national measures prove ineffective. To this end, I took part in a Task Force of the UN System Standing Committee on Nutrition to investigate the use of current human rights norms to argue that nations have a collective responsibility to hold corporations accountable. How this might be better achieved in practice is discussed in detail in the chapter I contributed to the book resulting from this project, called “Global Obligations for the Right to Food”.

Amongst the proposals is for a global regulatory system. I have developed this proposal further and submitted it for inclusion in the Simultaneous Policy, which is being developed as part of a global democratic movement bringing people together around the world to debate, develop and approve the policies they wish to see implemented to address global problems. The proposal goes under the title: “World Transnational Corporation Regulatory Authority”.

I would very much appreciate your views on these proposals and to discuss any common ground we may have in pursuing this or similar proposals.

You can find further details of the proposal and the book on my blog at:
http://globaljusticeideas.blogspot.com/2008/07/world-tnc-regulatory-authority.html

Respectfully, what makes massive energy initiatives like solar and wind projects any different than the railroad projects of yesteryear? Clearly, it takes very large amounts of capital to tackle projects of this magnitude. And as a stockholder in a publicly traded company vested in alternative energy development, you have the opportunity to participate in the risk and share the rewards.

Mr. Picken’s goal is profit, pure and simple. Personally, I applaud him for his visionary efforts because this is a “Wind Wind” situation. He and his investors take the risk and reap the reward, but in this case, humanity and the entire planet benefit whether you invest or not. Maybe he’ll eye the opportunity to start building a high speed magnetic levitation train system next and power it with energy from his wind farms. We’d all breath easier, wouldn’t you agree?

In closing, I sincerely appreciate your efforts to start the discussion moving. Thank you for providing all of us a forum for discussion.

That - alone - is not anything important. (Unless you despise capitalism for its sake alone.)

What is important is - is his plan
*ethical
and
*sound?

Criticism of the ethicalness and the soundness of his plan 0 properly footnoted - would be something to consider.

As for “PROFIT MOTIVE”… OR “BIG MONEY OPERATORS”
OR “….ROBBER BARONS” well - right now, we are funding terrorists with portions of that 700 billion.