"The wealthy, not only by private fraud but also by common laws, do every day pluck and snatch away from the people some part of their daily living. Therefore, when I consider and weigh in my mind these commonwealths which nowadays do flourish, I perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men in procuring their own commodities under the name and authority of the commonwealth.

They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that which they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the people for as little money and effort as possible."

Thomas More, Utopia

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Why? Because they can.



PS. Arthur Silber shares a few thoughts on the subject as well...
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14 comments:

Anonymous said...

The rich stay rich and if they lose, we'll bail them out. When will folks like our buddy, Rue, realize this? Our president proves he is still a toolf the rich.

"leftisthebest"

1:20 PM
Coldtype said...

The more one internalizes the values of the current order the greater the resistance to any counter narrative which may call its validity into question. Even if confronted with the evidence on a daily basis which belies received wisdom, actually acknowledging the truth is literally unthinkable.

For those who have been lead to believe that the United States is incapable of malicious action or that something called a "free market" has actually existed in the real world, no amount empirical evidence to the contrary is likely to shake them of this belief.

5:47 PM
Rue St. Michel said...

You Utopians seek perfection. There is no such thing BUT the closest we have to a fair and equitable governing philosophy is capitalism.
Income disparity is, and always will be, a simple fact of life. Are there income disparities in Russia, China and Indonesia? Of course!

Tell me Coldy and LITB; what would our society look like if your collective dream came true tomorrow? Why not paint us a picture so we can visualize how all that "egalitarianism" would look? Would it resemble current day Europe? Would it look like Oslo Sweden?

I'll tell you that your Leftist Utopia would have reeducation camps and an over-arching, centralized, authoritarian government - a la Orwell's BB - breathing down our collective necks every second of the day.

Your philosophy of Marx-Lenin-Alinsky all end in one condition for the "masses": tyranny.

3:26 AM
Coldtype said...

Rue, have you not just witnessed with your own eyes over the past three years the consequences of giving free reign to the forces of "free market capitalism"?

Furthermore, are you at all curious about how a system (as it actually exists today) can call itself 'capitalism' when it is largely devoid of Capital but is instead consumed primarily with the creation (and alleged securitization) of debt and/or transaction fees? None of this activity by the way is the least bit productive and, quite the contrary, is an extractive parasitic tax on real wealth and labor.

10:04 AM
Anonymous said...

I think Rue-y we need a fair market system and not a free markey system. You ask where is there such a system? Nowhere now, but that doers not mean it cannot exist.

There would be a society where the rich have to contribute more because they have more. A system where there is no racism. A system where the good of society outweigh the benefits for the rich.

"leftisthebest"

3:55 PM
Anonymous said...

Indefinite detention coldie the end is near chambers Johnson is right. Nemesis: the last days of the American republic m

4:13 PM
Jack Crow said...

Odd. If we compare the expectations of communism with those of capitalism, I think it's more than obvious that the utopian theory is the capitalist one. It assumes that the majority of people will gladly accept that their irreplaceable mortal lives should be lived so that a ruling elite can live fully human lives, without any inevitable blowback.

4:57 AM
Coldtype said...

It would seem such a simple point to grasp, yet still here we are.

7:33 AM
Jack Crow said...

What I meant to write:

"...It assumes that the majority of people will gladly accept that their irreplaceable mortal lives should be suffered..."

9:21 AM
Anonymous said...

The alters are back,oh my.Must be the holidays.

7:06 AM
Rue St. Michel said...

The more one internalizes the values of the current order the greater the resistance to any counter narrative which may call its validity into question. Even if confronted with the evidence on a daily basis which belies received wisdom, actually acknowledging the truth is literally unthinkable.

What are you talking about? Can you offer some specificity?

This is the problem with you Leftists, you've "internalized" the values of a non-workable, social engineering scheme, that denies the individual citizen, while elevating the power of the Almighty Central Government, that YOU cannot see the marvelous miracle that is America.

I'm usually a bit stunned when I meet or read a black man who is also conservative. He has to work doubly hard to over come the "internalizations" that the black community demands of its soldiers. All must be in unison, all must comply, all must obey. Reverend Wright is just one of thousands of fake reverends who are committed to racial rabble-rousing and divisions. So I know it must be hard for you to leave the herd and actually embrace what you must see all around you.

5:23 PM
Coldtype said...

What are you talking about? Can you offer some specificity? -RSM

Rue I present your tenacious insistence that the United States remains a democratic republic as exhibit A. Think about this for a moment:

there is a near complete disconnect between public opinion and public policy on every matter of consequence, yet still you believe;

the greatest wealth transfer in human history--the continued bailouts of the insolvent Wall Street zombies to the tune of 14 trillion dollars (so far)--maintains bipartisan support from both allegedly adversarial legacy parties over near universal popular objection, yet still you believe;

the lords of war maintain the largest military expenditures in the nation's history (absorbing 50 cents of every dollar collected in government revenue) at a time in which no other nation menaces us (please spare me the War on a Tactic), yet still you believe.

Rue, I had legions such as yourself in mind when I wrote that line.

8:49 PM
Al Schumann said...

This is the problem with you Leftists, you've "internalized" the values of a non-workable, social engineering scheme, that denies the individual citizen, while elevating the power of the Almighty Central Government, that YOU cannot see the marvelous miracle that is America.

Heh. Well, there's truth in that. Actually existing socialism has imploded nastily every time. The negation of individual worth has been a major driving factor in the implosions. The elevation of the Almighty Central Government amounted to the elevation of nomenklatura that was indistinguishable from any other bureaucratic elite. Lenin himself decried it at the onset. His proposed remedy:

In view of the scandalous red tape on the deal (such-and-such) involving the purchase of food for Soviet rubles, order the State Political Administration (they need a little scaring!) to find those guilty of red tape and incarcerate for 6 hours those working for the Moscow Gubernia Economic Conference, and for 36 hours those working at Vneshtorg (of course, with the exception of All-Russia C.E.C. members: after all, we enjoy almost parliamentary immunity).

After this, instruct the press to ridicule both groups and pour dirt on them. For the disgraceful thing here is that Muscovites (in Moscow!) have failed to cope with the red tape. For this they should be beaten with a stick.

I can't say I blame him a bit. Who wouldn't want to incarcerate heartless bureaucrats? Which brings me to foreclosure fraud, asset-backed securities fraud, defrauding pension funds, defrauding retirement accounts, accounting control fraud in general, the the grotesquely bloated salaries of private jet welfare queens and banksters' lackies pledging the entire net worth of the country, present and future, as a backstop for more fraud.

And to facilitate this? The negation of individual worth, both material and personal, of the people who created all that wealth in the first place. Utopia is impossible, but it surely couldn't hurt to at least try.

6:22 PM
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9:04 AM

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