Going Mainstream: Publishing on the Huffington Post

I've decided to go mainstream. All I can really do on Evolver is preach to the choir, so I'm taking the message to the masses. I'm going to publish the following article on the Huffington Post, and maybe some other mainstream blogs (anyone have suggestions as to who might be receptive?)

Please feel free to suggest any corrections, additions, alterations, or general advice you feel the article could benefit from.

Namaste. :-)
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(quick note: i dont know how to make italics with html, so i'm using CAPS here for words that i'll put it italics for the published version)
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title: The End of All Debt
subtitle: How to truly, truly, truly FIX the economy
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The reason Obama can't get anything done isn't that he's not PUSHING hard enough. It's that the ideas he's pushing for, even if they do get implemented, don't go DEEP enough.

His agenda is to paint a house that's on fire.

Everybody, deep down, knows this. So it's not a surprise that the political will to pass his agenda isn't materializing.

In a time as fraught with danger and, simultaneously, as ripe with opportunity as this one, making small tweaks here and there will not suffice. It was never Obama's destiny to be a repair-man. He's not the guy who fixes our cable.

He's the guy who shows up in the cable guy's outfit, and then smashes the TV to bits and tells us to go out and get a REAL LIFE.

That's his calling. He either lives up to it, or his presidency will fail.

These times are extraordinary, and they call for extraordinary people. We're witnessing the most intense dysfunction of the political system ever. And it's for a reason. It's to make us look at the issues on a deeper level.

We either get to the roots - the very very bottom, the utmost foundation of the problems - or we don't solve them at all.

So let's get started. Let's begin with one of the biggest issues on the country's mind today: reform of the financial system.

Here's how you fix the financial system:

Pass a law that immediately and permanently nullifies all outstanding debt. For individuals, households, businesses, and governments. All debt, gone, nullified by the power of Congress. And then we prevent the problem from ever recurring by outlawing the charging of interest.

Take a break from reading this, and for a few minutes imagine the profound effect this is going to have on the psychology of this nation. Imagine every single man and woman, including you, walking out of the house tomorrow morning, debt-free.

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Now that you've done that, let's talk about the main argument against doing this, which goes something like this:

"If all debt is erased, no one will ever lend money again. There will be no trust, in all of western civilization, in the extension of credit. The very idea of moneylending will be crippled, and capital investment will become next to impossible."

To which I say: So what?

If new business aren't able to start up, and existing ones aren't able to begin grand new ventures, why exactly is that a bad thing? What exactly is it that we need to build more of?

Roads? Where?
Food? The farms all already exist, as do the machines to operate them.
Houses? For whom? We have so many houses, some of them are sitting empty!
General manufactured products? We have enough already in existence - they're just in the wrong locations, and all we have to do is move them from the possession of people who already have so many of them that they don't use what they have, to the possession of people who do.

From here, economic activity still takes place, new things are produced, and new concepts are explored. It's just slower. Slower, but sustainable. And it no longer has the frantic, coke-addict-like need for exponentially increasing amounts of stimulation that interest-based, growth-based economies require to stay afloat.

"But there are big projects that we need. What about the wave-of-the-future endeavors, such as building public transportation, linking all our cities by maglev bullet trains, and building enough renewable energy technology that we can get off of fossil fuels? Getting our society up-to-date with the 21st century will require lots and lots of capital!"

Projects like this are so massive, only government can do them anyway. No private business ever could or would have the money or the reach to successfully implement such a massive structural shift. And do you really want Halliburton running your trains? Things that are for the PUBLIC GOOD should be handled BY THE PUBLIC.

The economy of the 21st century is too big, too intricate, and too interrelated with the delicate life-support system of the Earth, to be managed adequately by self-interested profit-seeking business parties. Our economy does not need more growth. It just needs intelligence - and private enterprise doesn't have it.

With what's going on on Wall Street, and on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, people everywhere have finally realized this.

With the outlawing of profit-based moneylending, the dominance of the business model over the affairs of human activity will greatly shrink. And that's a good thing. Private enterprise has served a purpose, up until now; but it's time for it to take a back seat to real human welfare and the preservation of our planet's ecological integrity, and let civilization once again be run by the people, and for the people.

Money is an agent for facilitating trade. But when money itself makes money, it has gone beyond its purpose, and a perversion has occurred. Can anyone argue with a straight face that HAVING MONEY is virtuous enough in itself to mandate the receipt of more money?

When having money makes more money, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that all money will be sucked, inexorably, into larger and larger pools, and that, given enough time, and absent any governmental interference, all money will eventually be in one, massive pool - in the possession of a single entity. We're already well on our way - just witness the startling efficiency with which Wall Street is now confiscating our country.

Derivatives, hedge funds, credit default swaps, housing bubbles - the seeds were all planted the day our society made it legal to charge interest.

So let's fix the problem at its root. Forget regulation, forget reform, forget adding more rules on top of what's already the world's most convoluted, nonsensical institution. Forget repairs - just slay the monster.

And the way we do that is by getting rid of for-profit moneylending. Do that, and the whole mess dissolves.

If Obama is truly a transformational leader, he will explain this to the American public.

The good news is that this is not something he has to "fight for." This is not something for which he has to win the approval of a single member of congress - D or R. He doesn't need anyone's approval to go on camera and explain something to his nation.

He doesn't need the permission of a single soul. All he has to do is say to his press secretary, "I'd like to make a speech."

This problem will either be fixed at its foundation, or any and all effort to "reform" and "repair" the system will be a complete waste of time. If we don't go to the root, then the political malaise will continue until we do.

The changes we need will come eventually - they're inevitable. The only question is how much more pain it will take for the public to admit it.