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Wealth inequality stands at its highest since the turn of the 20th century - the so-called 'Gilded Age' - as the proportion of capital held by the world's 1,542 dollar billionaires swells yet higher. The report, undertaken by Swiss banking giant UBS and UK accounting company PwC, discusses the roles technology and globalization play in the status quo, and appears two weeks after the IMF recommended that the rich should pay more tax to address the enormous disparity.
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Leona, I want to CONFESS things to you ... I want to WRAP you in a SCARLET
ROBE trimmed with POLYVINYL CHLORIDE ... I want to EMPTY your ASHTRAYS ...
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Sunday October 29 2017, @03:12PM (13 children)
Just give me ONE example of a society which is civilized and doesn't have a government.
I'll give you Somalia as an example of a society without government and it ain't civilized.
Some tribes in the Amazon might not have a government as such, but they can't be called civilized either.
Both communism (i.e. workers' governing themselves) and the 'noble savage' of Rousseau have been throughly discredited, but don't let facts stand in the way of your ideology.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 29 2017, @04:34PM (10 children)
Strawman. I said people can be civilized without the government forcing them, not that there should be no government. There is a vast gulf between small government and no government.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Sunday October 29 2017, @10:20PM (9 children)
Give me an example of the type of government you believe exists that is qualitatively different from the government of the U.S., U.K., France, Germany or any other ‘civilized’ nation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 30 2017, @03:46PM
Buzzy doesn't give examples and doesn't explain his opinions beyond superficial ranting. He is a small minded fool whose only real argument is "why do you think it is OK to steal MY money to pay for someone else.". That is it, fill stop. Logic begins and ends right there for him.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 30 2017, @04:04PM (7 children)
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:58AM (6 children)
Either TMB forgot to switch accounts or you can read his mind!
Assuming TMB is a straight arrow and would not be trying to fool us with multiple accounts, I gather you know what he's thinking. So tell me, where does he keep his stash?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 31 2017, @04:33AM (5 children)
And if we are to believe the story, we're in the midst of a second gilded age despite the far larger governments of the present. Funny how they spend so much more without getting so much more.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Tuesday October 31 2017, @04:38AM (4 children)
Maybe I should have highlighted the part that reads 'you believe' as in referring to TMB?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:44AM (3 children)
(Score: 1) by jelizondo on Tuesday October 31 2017, @07:09PM (2 children)
I want TMB's opinion, that is all. Not any opinion, but his.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 31 2017, @11:43PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Wednesday November 01 2017, @01:50AM
I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. I went back to my post and realized that it can be read perfectly as anybody/everybody being asked and that was not my intent. I apologize.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 29 2017, @08:54PM (1 child)
communism (i.e. workers' governing themselves) [has] been throughly discredited
History alliterates are really irritating.
I guess that the blame can't be put -entirely- on those individuals.
USAians were "schooled" in a way that ignores anything that challenges the notion of Oligarchical Capitalism, so USAians grow up pretty ignorant.
So, for the non-autodidacts, there's The Paris Commune of 1871 and Barcelona 1936 -1937 for starters.
Both were broken up by Authoritarians with guns.
I can't think of an instance where that wasn't a cause for the "failure" of Socialism.
Down on the page, this gal has a longer (but still non-comprehensive) list. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [socialistworker.org]
Mondragon started in the Basque Country of Spain in 1956 with 6 worker-owners and now has over 100,000 worker-owners on 5 continents.
An exceptional example of democratic self-governance.
Suma is the largest worker-owned cooperative in UK and has the kind of democratic governance that you wish you had where you are
e.g. they voted to give *every* worker-owner the *same* (very nice) compensation package. [google.com]
Socialism works just fine, thank you very much.
...and every place that has called itself "communist" has been a top-down Totalitarian thing--the complete opposite of what Marx was describing.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 30 2017, @11:13PM
And you read a different translation of Marx from the one I did, there was plenty of overlap between the failed authoritarian not-what-people-who-see-some-benefit-in-some-communist-ideals-call-communism-in-retrospect regimes and the meaningless-to-self-contradictory word salad Marx wrote.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves