You offer many examples in which the Potlatch custom has been degraded. I would think that there are also examples were its practice may be considered more noble or egalitarian. I would also have to inquire of the time period covered by your data. European culture is well known for its savagely disruptive effects on other cultures. Not that other cultures can't express savagery but one would have to factor for the extent of European impact on the study subject. An accurate study would look at examples of "before European contact and "after European contact.

On Western economics:

The Western economic system can only be described as system designed to favor the designers. There are other models besides the sham system the West now uses.

I cannot tell you what our best option is, but I can tell you that whatever the system it must serve the common good.

For example, the author of the site captions the potlatch photo: “The periodic and humane redistribution of wealth prevents exaggeration of and minimizes distortion of the primary social imbalance.” This is a gross mischaracterization of the potlatch, which actually involved a ceremonial attestation of social superiority of the hosts, which was intended to exaggerate their status as being powerful and wealthy enough to host lavish feasts.

There was nothing humane intended behind the practice, which was a mechanism by which the natives cemented hierarchical order and status in their immediate governance systems; leaders would borrow heavily from tribe members in an effort to outdo the rival tribe, and the practice involved one tribe shaming the other by the host lavishing “gifts” on the guests, which spurred a cycle of the rival tribe inviting the original host to a potlatch in which the gifts were even more lavish, to restore honor and to shame the rival, whom would perpetuate the cycle.

In fact, the rituals involved intentionally wasteful spending to demonstrate that one was wealthy enough to be reckless with one’s possessions; copper is a valuable commodity in potlatch communities, and chiefs would break off pieces of copper and burn them, and burn oil in excessive amounts, or destroy canoes and blankets, just to demonstrate that they could afford to be reckless spenders as a means of shaming their rivals into eventual poverty. If anything, the practice was intended to grossly expand and ensure the social imbalance, by showcasing the great divide in economic disparity as a means of establishing political status and clout.

Capitalism is not the villain, villains utilizing capitalism are—and, what? Communism hasn’t given us murderous, oppressive, greedy, plutocratic usurpers? Sheesh! Capitalism is no more responsible for social injustices than knives and guns are for murders; it is the murderers whom are culpable, not the tools.

Back in 2003 I cited (in a similar paper) Sub-Commandante Marcos, charismatic leader of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN) in Mexico, who wrote:

"The ineptly-named cold war actually reached very high temperatures: from underground workings of international espionage to the interstellar space of Ronald Reagan's famous "Star Wars"; from the sands of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam; from the frenzy of the nuclear arms race to the vicious coups d'état in Latin America; from the menacing maneuvers of NATO armies to the machinations of the CIA agents in Bolivia, where Che Guevara was murdered. The combination of all this led to the socialist camp being undermined as a world system, and to its dissolution as a social alternative. The third world war showed the benefits of "total war" for its victor, which was capitalism. In the post-cold war period we see the emergence of a new planetary scenario in which the principal conflictual elements are the growing importance of no-man's-lands (arising out of the collapse of the Eastern bloc countries), the expansion of a number of major powers (the United States, the European Union and Japan), a world economic crisis and a new technical revolution based on information technology."

We are surely now in the midst of the Fourth World War – a war to determine who controls the means of communication and the flow of information. So far, the internet still belongs to the people, but there are growing threats to it from GovCorp. The sad irony of the matter is, that the grand majority of those whose very freedoms are at stake, are as yet largely unaware of the impending chaos that is likely to result from their own ignorance and inaction.

I personally believe that this is what 2012 is truly all about, because people can't possibly become enlightened overnight. It will probably be a rude sociological awakening that could get a lot worse, before it gets any better.

Peace be with you (and all of us for that matter).

thanks!