The soviet era had is share of wealth grabbers living of the masses they were know different. I remember having to vouch safe for a top KGB agents so he could spend his money in NYC.
Vam is right the change that actually needs promoting is Dharma.. creating an understanding of those principles should help remove the blinders form peoples eyes. Allan On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 1:35 AM, archytas <[email protected]> wrote: > Does anyone know why we keep people poor? I used to imagine it was to > (somehow) keep the rest of us motivated, and I was once swayed by > notions of meritocracy. As biologist, I found lots of similar > situations amongst animals and still believe we are stuck with these > genetic influences in our unconscious - this being most of what we are > as social animals. The conscious-rational is still a small part of > what we are. In animals the poor or subordinate can become the 'rich > leaders' - clown fish even changing sex to do this, almost as if their > genetics keeps some in 'reserve'. I find poverty something we should > eradicate, but when I ask myself what poverty is find a complex. > > My guess in terms of the Macht Politik is that the West has notions of > needing to stay ahead, ensuring relative poverty for many, in order to > have the ability to attract the best brains, innovation and technology > development. This neo-conservatism doesn't appeal to me, but I accept > its logic to some degree. There are things 'out there' to protect > ourselves from -though eventually this logic collapses into itself as > paranoid-schizoid positioning. Beggar-thy-neighbour economics has > been around a long time - and one consequence of the neo-con madness > is that arming China through manufacturing investment and 'Walmart' is > treason. Transferring manufacturing expertise and raising wealth in > China has changed the balance of power. I don't object from my own > perspective, just note the inconsistency of the neo-cons. > > Our economics creates small numbers of very rich people and an elite > of about 20% who rake in about 20 times the income of most of the > rest. We are always told this is the only game in town and the > nightmare of Sino-Soviet experiments is used to show us all > alternatives fail. In fact these systems produced similar elites. > Islamic banking, with its anti-usury, still leaves its poor poor. > > I have no wish to see everyone equipped as mega-consumers of the dross > that helps burn the planet, or to find lager louts where I go on > holiday and I don't go for 'wonderful human nature' solutions. Yet > this system has allowed the human population to triple in my lifetime > and broken every 'promise' of the better world to come. In all of > this, a rich elite controls nearly all the wealth that we can put > monetary value on, and they largely prevent us even arguing as though > our democracies matter - we would like to do this but the banksters > won't like it, the rich will take 'their' money abroad sort of stuff. > Keeping people in poverty and without education has led to a lot of > stuff (like loads of people) the planet can't afford > > We may have gone too far for a remedy, yet we have ideas and bright > people who could change things if we stopped relying on the system we > have. I think this involves eradicating poverty and a lot we > currently think is moral duty in our basic thinking on fairness. We > are being made serfs to accumulated money. We should, instead be > accumulating social capital and finding discipline that is not > enforced by need of making a living. -- ( ) |_D Allan live is for moral, ethical and truthful living.
