Yeah, I have given a lot of thought as to how to reconcile my instinct that there is something immoral about the persistence of poverty in the presence of extreme wealth, and that there is also something immoral in the kind of coercion that can be found in certain expressions of the socialist/communist models for wealth re-distribution. I do believe there must be a way to nourish human potential and desire for progress, ambition, creativity, healing, caring, learning, teaching, and also for keeping things going (eg. maintenance type work like cleaning, cooking, fixing things, raising food, transporting things), without any human beings ending up in the human dustbin that is poverty (which, contrary to metaphorical probability, is also a treadmill and a trap).

I don't have a lot of answers, but I like to pay attention whenever I spot someone making creative suggestions. Like I say, when you think what the writers of the US Constitution (and the Bill of Rights) actually accomplished, I know it is possible for someone to come up with a creative new way of running economics that would be every bit as innovative as their prescription for running politics. Anyone who is familiar with Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy may be inspired, as I was, by the fictional martian community's innovative economic thinking in the second book.

There is one thing that puzzles me. The "conservative" cluster of ideological positions seems to, almost always, include a great regard for both capitalism and for Family (in caps). In my experience, capitalism is often the death of families (small letters). This is because capitalism awards value to people as either consumers, workers or gatekeepers (more on that in a minute). Therefore there is no room in capitalism to reward or recognise the type of caring commitment that families (small letters) need. As a mother, and as a long-term carer for my husband's elderly uncle - Alzheimer's/mobility issues, etc, I was not very much good as a worker (little time), and therefore became a poor consumer (I hate spending on anything unnecessary). By a failure of luck, genes, heredity, or whatever, I am not a gatekeeper, so I lack anything worth selling but my own time, and that is already required by the caring needs of my family. If I had not been lucky enough to obtain a really, really cheap mortgage compared to the size and roominess of my house, and to work part-time from home, I would have been forced to sacrifice my family's needs at the altar of capitalism, and become one of those workers forced to consign their care duties to the state or to a stranger.

This, in my opinion (and not a general degeneration in morals) is one of the reasons families find it so hard to hang together.

PS. A gatekeeper, in my way of thinking, is someone who is able to restrict access to a desirable resource, and then sell access rights. Think of a concert you bought a ticket for. Someone is able to hire the muscle to keep you out without a ticket. But various criminally-minded hangers on can further restrict that resource by buying up all the tickets and "touting" them to you at a vastly increased price. All wealth in capitalist systems is generated by one form of gate-keeping or another - including the criminal, parasitical types of gate-keeping - eg drugs, prostitution, etc.

Ironically, sometimes the original gatekeeper is someone who committed an act of theft by fencing off a common. But their original act of theft goes un-noticed. It is the existence of the fence that makes possible the capitalist crime of "theft." This is why an organic farmer complaining about the invasion of GM seeds into his land from a nearby plantation was himself accused of theft - the seed, owned by the biotechnology company, was on his land! The GM movement has fenced off what used to be a common - genes - and awarded property rights accordingly. The original act of theft is unperceived, it is only the trespass against the gene "owners" that can be prosecuted.

Gatekeepers don't need to be industrious to generate wealth. They have "people" for that!

Thanks, all, for the advice on blockquote. I seem to have gotten it by the last one, though I was using the 'blockquote cite=>"" /blockquote> (leaving out the opening karots for both so I don't inadvertantly trigger anything).

Forgot to say one thing to Scotlyn about Ragtime--if you're not familiar with the musical, look up "make them hear you" on youtube or wherever you can find it. It's beautiful. The main context is about white on black racism in the turn of the twentieth century, but the wording is vague enough that it can easily include every similar minority vs. oppressive majority struggle throughout time. I like that because it emphasizes our shared humanity and the universality of such struggles.

Anyway, if anyone still reading hasn't heard that song, look it up. It really is wonderful.

If you're still having trouble with blockquotes, the correct syntax is this (type it exactly as I've typed it below, with angle brackets):

<blockquote>
your text goes here
</blockquote>

which produces:

your text goes here

..."<pre>" isn't on the list either?

WRT blockquote, the trick is to type

(leaving out the spaces) at the start and

at the end (again, leaving out the spaces).

""Go invent the next Snuggy and make some money. "

You do realize that the Snuggy is currently manufactured by a company that takes things inventors have made, jacks up the price, advertises it and makes a profit? The inventor isn't making money off of it."

Very true. Which is why, when people find out I'm an animation major and ask if I'm going to work for Disney, I tell them "I will never work for Disney. Ever." Disney, from all accounts I've heard (esp at AiP) owns its' artists. Literally. Everything you do belongs to them if you work for them. When you go home and work on your own projects on your own materials and your own computer with your own software licenses, all bought and paid for by you, Disney owns it all and you have no rights to it. Disney is an evil corporation on so many levels, I've lost count. I understand it wasn't always like that, or so I've heard. But it is now.

Dreamworks is different and doesn't own your private endeavors. So Dreamworks is my big-time aim!

So once again, we have an example of robbing the poor to glut the rich. Rich corps getting richer off of an invention while the actual inventor never sees a dime, artists and writers having no legal right to their own ideas. I know it's hard for some people to face, but the system doesn't work. Everything is pointing to that fact. Unworthy people are being rewarded and worth people are being punished on a large scale. Lazy, shiftless rich people are living in luxury paid for by overworked, underpaid corporate slaves. Let it go.

As to this damnable blockquote--crossed fingers. Again. >:(

Scotlyn--

<blockquote cite="Michael, there is an accumulating weight of evidence, across many disciplines, demonstrating that less unequal societies gain an "equality dividend" in the form of greater happiness, better health outcomes, a better work ethic, more mutual trust, etc and everyone gains accordingly. (Of course this does not apply if "equality" becomes a value to be forced at gunpoint - per communism or some aspects of the French revolution). On the other hand, the greater the inequality index, the more chance there is of widespread misery, poor health, mistrust and theft, etc. In this view, there is a "tolerance" for income disparities of up to about 30 to 1 (ie the Company Director making 30 times what the poorest paid worker makes), so long as the 1 is sufficient to fully provide the basic necessities. This multiple appears to allow the system to sufficiently incentivise and reward ambition, innovation and risk-taking, and allow for personal mobility within the system, without fuelling resentment or a divergence of interests between the high earners and the low earners. But when the multiple becomes greater than 100 to 1 (and note, Walmart, just to cite one example, had a company inequality index of about a couple of thousand to 1, when I was reading about it a few years ago), the first thing that happens is a divergence of interests between the top levels and the lower levels. The top levels begin to institute ways and means of maintaining their own position, and ensuring they keep others out, and they lose a sense of solidarity and belonging with the people at the bottom levels. They no longer see the point of contributing to office collections when Mr Smith breaks his leg and can't work (for example). They've got their own private doctor, and a guaranteed income when they get sick. Meanwhile the bottom levels survive by adopting "slave stupid" work ways. Since they can no longer advance, no matter what they do, they give only, and exactly, what they are asked, and that as slowly as possible. "

Marry me.

Um...what I meant to say was, that is probably the most perfect and succinct summary of the problem that I have ever seen. Saved it in my archives for future use. I may even paste it on my wall with the other worthy comments and articles I have up there.

I am tired of the asinine claim that not being able to hoard all the gold and make all the rules and become a demigod in your society, doling out pittances to anyone who will lick your nuts in precisely the right fashion will somehow, in some way, destroy the will of people to strive or succeed. I call bullshit on that too. I see a benefit to people being able to do better if they put in more effort, but not in a system where whoever reaches the top first will be able to keep everyone else from even making a fair wage--for generations, even--and create a fundemental disconnect between working stiffs and privileged lords and masters. Basics, as you said, should be easily accessible for everyone (a fair basic income that can cover these things and should be immune to shaving down by the boss), but I don't see how a cap or a balance as to how much you can ultimately earn somehow cripples progress. And again I question the sanity of such a speaker--if you think money is the sole incentive to strive or succeed (not love, or family, or excellence in your field or interests), then you have some extremely serious problems that go beyond your opinions on the economy. If the money itself is all you want, there will never be enough.

And I love this social darwinist crap too. It's nothing like actual darwinism. Ya know why? Because the lion may weed out the sick and old antelopes but he doesn't glut himself on the entire herd, and every other herd, then move to other edible species, non-stop, without ever getting full and taking time to digest until the entire ecosystem is one big dried-out wasteland! Unlike the wealthy in our current system.

Anyway...

Leum--

"As to someones boss who buys his children sports cars. So what.

The point is that the children are being rewarded by capitalism for not working, which you proudly proclaimed would be punished."

THANK YOU!!! My point exactly. Love how my actual point was removed and the rest reconfigured to make it sound like "my boss bought his kid a sports car and it's not fair because I want one too. WAH!" Not even close.

Well,there's that point and the added fact that I see red when I think of that and then think of all the slaving people who actually earned the money to buy that sports car and how many of their kids are going to bed hungry or being denied a college education because their overworked, underpaid parents' wages and benefits have been shaved down steadily by greedy boss-daddy to the point where they can hardly make ends meet--and then hear some yahoo suggest that the rich, lazy children have what they have because they are just fundementally superior and that the people holding down two, three, or four jobs are just lazy and not willing to work. It makes me sick, and it also makes me seriously question the basic sanity of the speaker.

In short, "blame the victim" always pisses me off big time.

"For someone to just say it was all the fault of the guy running the ship for those 8 years is a little short sighted and naive. "

Missed this. "LOL wut u meen 'buck stopz heer?'"