The citizenship test includes a question related to the U.S. economic system. The answer is that it is capitalism in a free market economy. Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of property and business, with the goal of making the greatest possible profits for the owners. This is probably the ism most American egos are familiar with. This system has caused the greatest damage to our planet and our society because it places the value of money before the value of life. It is a selfish system that places greed, corruption and power in the hands of those who make the rules. It is the reason the one percent have accumulated more than half the planet's wealth. An oft-quoted saying is: "Money is the root of all evil," but this is not the original saying. It was written as: "Love of money is the root of all evil."

Money is an abstract idea, not a reality. Its effect on society is solely based on agreement. More than 99.9% of monetary transactions in the world are merely zeros and ones in computers that carry whatever meaning to money worshipers. Because most of the world looks at money as the solution to human ills, instead of the cause of human ills, we all suffer. What would happen if the economic system crashed and money no longer had value?

Without money, there could be no wage slaves to do the bidding of the rulers. Criminal activity would be restricted to mental and/or emotional imbalance. Why would anyone ever go to war? We would have to depend on each other to survive and create a new model of society. We would have to become self-sufficient and self-governing. How could this work?

First of all, the population has to get real and face the truth. There is no such thing as "ownership" unless it is bestowed by agreement. Even then, no one TRULY owns anything. As Chief Seattle wisely noted: "The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth." Only the ego has attachment, attitude and addiction issues and capitalism surely feeds those aberrations. Television and other media continually feed the idea of individualism to the American ego while the truth is that we're all interconnected and interdependent. We need a paradigm shift.

For a new system to arise, people must come to an agreement of what is important to enjoy the trip from cradle to grave. What do we really need versus what we want? If we have consciousness, what more do we want? The answer probably is that we want to enjoy our animal body as much as possible before it disintegrates and returns its atoms to its creator, Mother Earth. This is where cultures differ and, if we are to become civilized, must be synchronized to some degree. Where to start?

All humans have the same needs to maintain their animal forms operating in homeostasis, or balance. These are food, water, shelter, and clothing. As an aside, the most important need of all of Mother Earth's creatures, and the one that will not be denied, is sleep. Sleep is number one in importance for maintaining a healthy body; everything else can wait. Even plants must sleep.

Capitalism engenders competition among egos. Bigger, better, faster, cheaper, etc. dominate in the U.S. and elsewhere and could be quite useful if directed towards appropriate goals that have nothing to do with making money. If we were to compete about cleaning up the environment and eliminating fossil fuels, that would make a huge difference. Corporations who whine about people losing jobs in those industries are trying to protect the fat cats who run them, not the people who work them. Turning to green energy could create millions of jobs that could benefit all of us, rather than push our children and grandchildren into cannibalism.

Mother Earth would have no problem supporting more billions of humans if they would not be so wasteful and disrespectful of her life. The money that the one percent has amassed actually represents the human effort that was needed to create it. That effort is being wasted on the few while the many struggle.

The pictures of Earth from space are beautiful and the one feature I enjoy the most is that there are no borders evident anywhere on her face. The artificial political borders that scratch and scar that face are the problem we must remove. We must all rise up to the satraps, despots, political parties, ad nauseum, and all scream at once: "Let our people go!" We don't need more walls, we need fewer.

Technology has brought us to the point where very little manufacturing cannot be automated to a large degree. The U.S. economy has become service-based for the most part. Much of the service addresses the worship of money. Retirees are trapped in their Social Insecurity cocoons while the fat cats frolic. It is time to serve people rather than the dollar.