The globe’s top three billionaires possess more wealth than the 600 million poorest of us. I entreat this forum for an explanation.
I am wealthier than any one of those 600 million. And I’m poor.
Do you want:
A) righteous indignation?
B) an exegesis of capitalism?
C) death to the imperialist pigs?
D) a loan?
E) an excuse for a diatribe against american foreign policy?
f) none of the above?
Explanation:
When money is allowed to formulate compound interest, whilst centralized, it soon becomes a plutocratic “black-hole”, sucking up more and more money, like a chain reaction, and a blind-natural-disaster.
Capitalism is the more subtle form of slavery, in which, the common person is not forced by wips but instead, forced by poverty, because hardly any of them own anything, and a few own everything.
Crime always will exponentially flourish in capitalist nations. Drug lords are the perfect example of this process. Mafia activities rapidly grew as population and quality-of-life dropped in Russia after the fall of their ‘communism’.
But what makes the “free market” and “personal ownership” ideals so appealing, is the illusion of control which is presented. “I was born free and am like everyone else, with equal rights and equal oppertunities. I’m in control of my life. etc.”
Disunity leads to the inequalities. Upgrades, when not spread properly, eventually will lead to pyramid structure. And that’s when any autosphere goes vertical. It’s when a hand full of inequalitarian verticals mannage to take control of a realm or world, and have the power to crush slowly-growing rivals if they present too large of a threat.
Even the Terran biosphere went vertical in the passed, for complex reasons that I don’t want to list off right now, but now we have a “barberic” system where everyone is a piece of food, and noone gives a fuck.
I’d likely be happy with any of the above. I’d probably choose “sincerity” had it been included as a selection.
how could this forum ever explain that to you?
most of work all our lives reenforcing that system (whether we agree with it or not.)
have you ever read Noam Chomsky?
cheers,
gemty
You mean you want the Economic History of the World. Maybe tomorrow, right after coffee. It’s a tall order.
I fear that capitalism is reaching towards its orgasm nowadays, with economic growth and globalisation and dehumanising garages as such. You can literally smell the dirt of souls anywhere in China at the moment. I doubt if you can breath any better here in the City, where belly some analysts wearing £300 ties pile together making love to portfolios and contracts. Getting drunk after hard work and do it all over again the next day. Watching their bank accounts grow, plotting schedules for their promotional career. “Oh the challenge and reward!” That is their excuse, their humanity pathetique. The things capitalism do to people, without they knowing it, of course. But if they achieve happiness, then my argument is redundant. Though I doubt that they are happy people without their martin or Mercedes, but their joyful rapture only exists momentarily and arbitrarily in the moments when the booze and speed are in effect. Their ego is actualised only when they make a profit or get a promotion, that is to say, their happiness are hinged upon material terms. But happiness is spiritual in the core, so what these people doing is fundamentally inadequate and biased. Their style of life, their direction of strife, is off course. As a consequence, they suffer from inadequate humanity due to lack of personal development into the right direction. Happiness is not their property.
But surely I am speaking of the archetypical individuals, I am sure that many people in these kinds of professions can and have achieved admirable spiritual prosperity. I want to be one of those people and I hope to work under them. How possible that hope is, I cannot say due to lack of social experience, I will have to see for myself if the world right now is full of incorrigible corrupt pigs as I see on TV, as I read in newspapers, and the little pigs lining up after their backsides. Should my nightmare come true, I have no choice but conspiring towards armed communist revolution, unless I become a pig myself, which is not entirely impossible. It all goes down to how challenge the life style is for me, never mind about moral ideologies. He who uses the world for weak and lazy purposes shall be my foe. He who is not human enough due to their all-too-humanness, shall taste my sword. Then I have no reason to be pessimistic in any case, since it seems that my foes shall bund. I can start a revolution anywhere and anyhow. That is my optimism.
But that is everybody’s optimism. Society is where they come together and fight for individual recognition, reward and outstanding. Even when they form ships and families, they are essentially aimed at the same stuff. By establish their individuation admits society, they work against it, resisting and convincing others. Acquiring existential capitals for themselves. Capitalism, transcended as such, perhaps can never die. What I am is a mere spiritual/cultural capitalist. Then this shall it be my kind of capitalism against their kind. With this manifesto. Not to become a knight for a practical cooperate army, but to become a disguised social saint on behalf of all the exiled philosophers. I wish to become nothing else than a returned embodiment of Jesus. But I am always prepared to settle for a published or secluded messiah. Under no circumstances I will settle for a respectful or respected civilian. But I am not talking about breaking the law here. I mean making the law, rather. I divide people into two categories: the law lords and the lawyers. Note - the actual law lords are under my definitions mere lawyers; the actual lawyers are under my definition mere waste of space. For the law I am talking about is nothing other than morality/culture/religion, fundamental faiths and ethos, humanity itself.
What I am doing here is to flatter my own purpose and goal, inflated my ego so that I feel compelled enough to pursue its social unleash. I pretend to be a promising and fatal seed, an immense potential and an inspirer of mankind. I stage the prelude for a stage and applaud myself all the way. I think Beethoven was just luckier than me to have played the piano younger, and I think Nietzsche was a genius only because his father had a brain tumour. I have convinced myself that my genealogy stands shoulder to shoulder with Zeus in the family tree therefore my transcendental kingdom enslaves everybody from Plato to Blair. Genghis Khan was a shameful failure by one of my past incarnations and Mao’s political manoeuvres have been shrewdly staged by me when I was at school. In short, I control enough dunamis inside to blow the whole universe away… and replace it with another brand new… This is to say that my show piece versed prose is a pain for Byron, and this represents a stubborn old law of humanity that I am not willing to disgrace or dispel. Its will to power.
The stage disappears if it is erased off the table, the nihilistic abyss will then swallows man in whole. This is my sole nightmare. I dreamt of it several times, it was hell. You felt so empty and void in such a frightful and darkening way that you woke up hearing your own curses upon your shivering existence. I guess many people these days do exactly that when gazing into their empty beer bottle, at reflections of themselves in the brown mess involuntarily remaining inside. They smash the bottle and feel better. Next day, like yesterday, they voluntarily be the hopelessly contained once again. Their daily satisfaction is hence a perpetual process of building up and releasing off - “work hard and play hard” as they so frame - brought cheap from a wine shop, irrespective of how much money they have. Alcohol is the best thing they can have, alcohol metaphorising their kind of drift in Eros. They are not potent enough to live erotically enough in frequency nor in intensity, their socio-psyco-chemical rapture is pathetically powered and loosely grounded, compared with aesthetic raptures of Euphorion or the Muses.
Capitalist democracy and its concomitants, need constant reformation on the philosophical level, not on the political level. Politicians are a waste of time, lawyers are a waste of space. There is no cynicism in saying that, there is only a healthy will to power. There is also this fact, that everyone else is essentially exploited and pushed around by them, very much voluntarily, which is natural from the point of view of Darwinism. Instead of being a social critique like Jeremy Paxman who interviews prime ministers and business tycoons, I aim to remove those people and the kind of social structure that they represent, by all means necessary. I will strive to make sure that a certain philosophers, dead or alive or yet to be born, penetrate and occupy the centre of power of society. There is a breed of people, a new race of dying tradition and emerging cultures, that must be implanted and fostered. Genetically as well as existentially. Everyone else in remaining in the old race, will be compelled to comply and acknowledge the new order and new hierarchy created and maintained by these philosophers. They will not be forced, any force represent failure.
What I aim at is the uprooting and moving of the underlying historical trend, it is something to which morality and religion are close. Once the underlying trend manifest itself sundry on the surface, my endeavour as the underground sculptor succeeds. The estimated results will be, for examples, a country’s constitution is designed based on a new valuation of ethics, a country’s economy is managed based on a new system of epistemology, a country’s military activity is replaced by its commercial trade. It will also be important to keep the new race expanding, by tailor designing the education system while shaping the media via influencing the arts and criticising the literature… all this, is my idealism in its very infant stage but nevertheless determined in its direction. I do not feel pressured. This, to me is not the essential choice. The essential choice is never an actual choice, it is always something conditions you in the fundamental level. It corresponds to the underlying social trend aforementioned, except that this is its individual counterpart. The relationship between these two fundamentals is the fundamental ground of both existences. Existence is relative. To affirm this relativity and to master this relationship is to establish my genuine and authentic stance in society, is key to make life meaningful and worthwhile to me. Here, in thinking and talking about this relationship alone, not even acting and realising anything, is making me feel worthwhile. Thinking is the first step of action, anyway.
I do not exclude the possibility that a philosopher must eventually find it no longer efficient for him to spend most of his time in society, so to speak, in his experimental laboratory. This laboratory can serve its purpose if and only if the philosopher attains enough social power to match his intellectual advancement, therefore to try out his theories. Marx was unique among philosophers in the sense that his advanced theories have been played out, instead of only have been published out as mere books, and this was made possible naturally by his timing, and humanly by his friend Engels. Friedrich Engels was an industrialist and a banker, I mean, he got money. This is another reason why I choose investment banking, which is at the centre of the way capitalist societies are organised, where political power boils down to wealth accumulation. I want to learn what really goes on here. And to learn more - to construct a working laboratory for my learning’s - I might have to earn. Afterall, a revolutionary turbulence of epoch does not occur very often, Marx was lucky enough.
Communists, and political philosophers of all ideologies today, can only hope to spur waves of argument across the academia. The factions at Westminister remain indifferent to transcendental theories, they use ethical and economical ideas as mere banners for their dogfights, what they want are practical theories to fund election campaigns that are their weapons. It would be good if I can be a Poli Smith, just another name I give to politically inclined investment bankers. The trade of political capital between the businessman and the civil servant and the court judge is itself a fully complex market. This is why, if I do postgraduate study, I will likely be doing political economics focusing on this particular nasty invisible market. These insider dealings are commonplace in investment banks, in local councils, and in barrister chambers. The capital markets, the regulatory institutions, and the supreme courts, all monitored by the media, are hence merely ex-post reports and representations. There is no such thing as live news of political events, in this sense. Democracy and transparency will always be an illusion in a capitalist society.
Capitalism and true democracy do not match. True democratic politics will not exist, because only genuine communism can give rise to its plausible existence, but such communism is non-political. Politics is a lost cause for man, on any level for anyone, it logically contradicts itself and eventually diminishes itself. It does not pertain to a natural phenomenon, unlike the other sciences. Economics is natural, since trades and exchanges are amoral. Because of the absence of amorality, politics is artificial. When we perform naturally, we beget true profit. When we perform against nature, we beget nothing but the insatiable desire to beget true profit. The will to power of anyone must be directed inwards, for natural causes. Morality must be overcome. The will to external social power is off the main course of the human business that is the business to relate oneself essentially to society in an authentic way. A person is fully his human own only if he is in authentic relation to society. People are socially merged under their will to disgenuine and inauthentic powers, hence they are called social animals, not really man.
Man rules animals, who are men of former animals who have evolved themselves out of their herdish past. Morality is herd instinct, it is necessarily transformed by evolution. The latest specimen of evolution of any historical period, is always the philosopher, who demonstrates new moral values for a new herd. And evolution goes on this way, along the valuation table of morality, penned down by value destroyers and value creators. Christ invented heavenly moral against the suffering moral. Spinoza invented the atheist moral against the church moral. Marx invented the communal moral against the corporation moral. The Jews are truly the chosen ones. The western hemisphere has been evolving around them. The Chinese must not only financial overpower the Jews, but also morally overpower them, in order to avoid the craps of capitalisation and to proceed fast. This requires not only financial technical excellence, but also philosophical constitutional enlighten. China is at a crucial stage, staging a very exciting game.
In short, I want fast Freddy to assist slow political economics.
That’s part of what interests me - the aquiescence or even eagerness with which folks invite economic oppression. Maybe a question is this: how willful is the ignorance that forbids real understanding and evaluation of capitalist oppression? At the most fundamental level the capitalist model can be understood as a repressive structure with no possibility of loosening, ie there can only be so many people of wealth, or conversely, there must be so many people of little means. I don’t think one needs to have read Marx to understand this intuitively. There is a certain (growing) amount of floor space in an economy that must be mopped. Floor moppers are paid very little, something approaching subsistence pay. The economy, then, demands that certain of its participants subsist on the paltry pay of janitorial work. Too, there are only a relative handful of executive positions available in a given economy. A vicious game of musical chairs develops, and I can’t help but think that most folks are aware of this fundamental structure. Or, that they don’t buy the meritocracy line, having in some instance or another observed their own work being superior to someone whom the economy has rewarded more handsomely. This may be a sociological question more than a philosopical one.
Thom - I would ask you what the alternatives are.
To wit: the gap between rich and poor is ever-growing. But I can find no evidence that the poor are poorer as measured against subsistence. Yes, they are poorer as measured against the wealthy, but that is not the true, or certainly the only measure. There have always been starving people. But there haven’t always been the extant economic conditions. Knowhaddamsayin?
Most people are essentially peasants, and aspire to nothing greater; what more explanation is needed.
Faust -
What is poverty if not the relative lack of what is otherwise available? It is when the material conditions exist for equal distribution that deprivation becomes poverty. I don’t know how much it can assessed over time. That is, one cannot say,“everyone was poor in 1450 because no one had a radio and a kitchen sink.” Such deprivation in 2006 would likely qualify one as “poor.” One can say, however, that in 1450 X amount of food and resources were available, and it was distributed in such and such a way resulting in some manner of deprivation.
Am i addressing your question or am I missing your aim?
$100,000 diamond necklaces are available. Equal distribution of scarce resources is not a measure of poverty. There is no absolute measure because, despite what you read in the papers, there is no one global economy. Poverty is a political term, not strictly an economic one. I know, economists use the word, but that’s only because they have to.
explain further.
Without avarice, humanity ceases to have cause to continue to force its own existence.
We are not what we would like to think we are, so we construct that which allows us to continue the delusion of having meaning.
Poverty is, as we know, a statistical measure. It surely existed before there were economists, but the term is used now in a technical sense, and this sense is generated by statistics. In the US many different statistical measurements relating to individual wealth are kept. It is always shocking to find discrepancies among different measurers, and to see an equally shocking correlation between the politics of the measurer and those discrepancies across political lines.
Probably the numbers you cite are generated by the UN. i don’t know - maybe you can tell me. Have you ever read The Skeptical Environmentalist? The author, who is a statistician, has some interesting things to say about UN stats.
But my overall point is that the subsistence farmer, the peasant farmer, may be living the way his ancestors have for many generations. But I know of no way to meaningfully compare his wealth to that of any US citizen, for example. And monetary income is not the only measure to begin with. Americans are wealthy in part due to their incomes, but much moreso because of their purchasing power. Things are just a lot cheaper here than in Europe, for instance (for a european, that is - I’m discounting exchange rate - which doesn’t hurt my argument at the moment, anyway). But also it is worth noting that many peasant farmers don’t want a television, or a telephone, or many US “market basket” items.
I am not, to be clear, saying that there isn’t “poverty”, but stats like the one you present have this sort of built-in presumption that poverty is caused by greed. Maybe it is, but it is not necessarily the greed of the world’s three richest people. Poverty is more often caused by war, oppression, and a lack of education than by greed. Or by tradition. By mores.
Or by greed. But it is usually local greed, and not due to the Worldwide Federation of Very Bad Billionaires.
Avarice is a compounding problem, that which occurs locally, is not confined to localism, because that is not how economics work, especially at this point in human history.
There is no conspiracy “by a few ultra-wealthy individuals” is certainly factual, as avarice would then have to be limited to only those individuals, and them alone.
Ah, yes. The “C” word. Conspiracy.
I’m outie.
I used the stat only as an attention-getter and an illustration that by no means was originated by – or is directly perpetuated by – the 3 billionaires.
They are no more guilty of greed than is a king who receives his throne by succession. The new king finds himself in a system that largely supports his reign. The divine right of kings was accepted by subjects and nobility.
Certainly, though, the king was fain to do whatever was necessary to maintain the structure atop which he sat – it’s a comfortable chair that throne. The current two-party electoral system is motivated similarly; you’re lucky to find any incumbent eager to rock the boat – to bite the hand that feeds him. (Notice I didn’t say “she” – us men have done some collaborating (dare I day conspiring?) to develop a system that favors us. We’ve put a good couple of millenia into it.) Trade unions work with same motivation more or less.
To remove this essential human trait – that of collaborating to secure one’s well-being – from the actions of large capitalists is to hold them separate and unlike the rest of humanity. I don’t exempt those more powerful than me from such basic human motivations.
A flood of “conspiracy theories” entered my mind after my last post.
I imagined a span of four centuries in which, here on american soil, owners of large plantations (and their beneficiaries) conspired to erect and maintain a system of slavery to cut costs, ie boost profits.
I imagined a world where aristocratic birthright determined one’s station and thus his likelihood of eating regularly. I struggled, but I managed to envision these fellows collaborating to maintain the system.
I dreamed of a world where a vast church structure spanned europe and the americas with very powerful bishops and cardinals to whom parishoners came meekly to offer gifts. In my fantasy this went on for 1500 years. In this case, I actually could imagine dark meetings and councils at which the fate of many was decided.
The more and more I thought about I even remembered instances in which I secured some sort of comfort by collaborating with others of like aims. It happened on playgrounds, in social circles, all throughout my life.
But the major stockholders, CEOs, and other significant financial directors certainly are free from these sorts of motivations, right? They’re better than us; that’s why they’ve been rewarded I guess. WHat do they call that, those impossibly lofty ideals? Those super-human aims? Ah, divine.