All societies are unequal
19/4/10 23:40![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsBut some, it seems, are more unequal than others.
And yet it seems to be that where the masses are dirt poor and starving peasants, the rulers of these countries are not as well off as affluent people in countries where the differences between the rich and poor are not as widely seperate.
In real terms, the people who form the ' inner ring' around a dictator like Idi Amin or Saddam Hussain are not as wealthy as say, the average stockbroker in Surrey, or the top earners in industrialised democracies. And this is not hard to fathom. If you have gun toting goons around you, you might be able to steal everything the peasants have got - but the peasants won't have that much that you can steal.
A wealthy stockbroker , though, you can tax . Sure, they will moan , but they will always pay more than an illiterate peasant. So, even the rich get a payoff for closing the gap between the rich and the poor. In pre-war Germany, Krupps, the big steel magnate, made a point of payin the workers well, building homes for the workforce, and even installing showers that the steel workers could use in the workplace before they got changed out of their overalls and went home.
When another wealthy friends questioned his generousity, Krupps remarked " it's a small price to pay to keep Communism and Socialism out of the workplace " Cynically, he bought the workforce off, undermining the sources of discontent and greivances in order to keep the bulk of the profits for himself. Yet it was true that his workers were better off than many of their contemporaries.
Today, The Green party is not out to abolish capitalism, but rather to close the gap between rich and poor. a goal that some see as a sell out. " Why beg for a few more crumbs when we can seize control of the bakery?" they ask.
The SWP, years ago were preaching revolution , and not reform. Rather than overhaul the system, they sought to sweep it away. And one day, a demonstration , up in the north, took a surprising turn. I know , because i was in the SWP at the time and I read all about it in the party newspaper, the Socialist Worker.
It turned out that a window got broken , and a small supermarket got looted. A lot of booze and cigerretes were 'liberated' and reurned to the control of the proletariat', it seemed . So, at the next big meeting that I went to, many speakers stood up to congratulate the workers who took part in the demo for their tremendous victory over the capitalist classes and their quasi-fascist police force. Then I got on the rostrum and asked a few questions. Like -
" How many tins of baby food got liberated and turned over to a young working mother to feed her child?"
"Did any local OAPs enjoy enjoy a bit of beef that evening, or did as much as a single bottle of milk go missing and find its way to someone in need?"
These questions were met with stunned silence. I took that to mean a 'no' then. And i pointed out that if this was what happened when they siezed control of one small shop, then what could we expect of them if they ever got control of something biigger?
Somehow, I got the feeling that we would not see a workers paradise come into being , but a selfish mad scramble as everyone stuffed as much as they could into their own pockets. Mark it well, all the booze and ciggies went - but no food. The rioters were not hungry I suppose. Even so, there was no thought for the poor who might have been. I remember it well, because I recall how dissappointed I felt at seeing these self styled revolutionaries in their true colours.
I also remeber it as the day I tore up my SWP party card.
Everyone who gets rich, or even stays rich, does so by being disciplined and well organised - or they don't stay rich for long. If we allow the rich to keep the bulk of the wealth they create, we can still syphon off enough to keep the poorest in our society at a decent levelof comfort and well being. We can even see to it that they can create some wealth themselves, and bette the whole community as a result.
A cap on the excessive bonusses of bankers would impact so few, but save so much. Raising the level of the lowest paid in sociey would also close the gap - and societies with a more equal wealth distribution have lower crime rates, lower rates of teenage pregnancy, disease and other social ills. So, yes, we would bring back in the 10% tax band, and the 22% basic rate, but also crack down on tax havens. why should the rich forid 'tax evasion ' when they simply call it ' tax avoidance' when they do it themselves.
More equal societies have fewer people in prison per capita, they also have less violent crime as well.
They even mange to recycle more! So, the Greens commit to making our society more equal, using a whole raft of measures.
For more info on Equality as an issue, go to the report by independant academics, found here at
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/
And yet it seems to be that where the masses are dirt poor and starving peasants, the rulers of these countries are not as well off as affluent people in countries where the differences between the rich and poor are not as widely seperate.
In real terms, the people who form the ' inner ring' around a dictator like Idi Amin or Saddam Hussain are not as wealthy as say, the average stockbroker in Surrey, or the top earners in industrialised democracies. And this is not hard to fathom. If you have gun toting goons around you, you might be able to steal everything the peasants have got - but the peasants won't have that much that you can steal.
A wealthy stockbroker , though, you can tax . Sure, they will moan , but they will always pay more than an illiterate peasant. So, even the rich get a payoff for closing the gap between the rich and the poor. In pre-war Germany, Krupps, the big steel magnate, made a point of payin the workers well, building homes for the workforce, and even installing showers that the steel workers could use in the workplace before they got changed out of their overalls and went home.
When another wealthy friends questioned his generousity, Krupps remarked " it's a small price to pay to keep Communism and Socialism out of the workplace " Cynically, he bought the workforce off, undermining the sources of discontent and greivances in order to keep the bulk of the profits for himself. Yet it was true that his workers were better off than many of their contemporaries.
Today, The Green party is not out to abolish capitalism, but rather to close the gap between rich and poor. a goal that some see as a sell out. " Why beg for a few more crumbs when we can seize control of the bakery?" they ask.
The SWP, years ago were preaching revolution , and not reform. Rather than overhaul the system, they sought to sweep it away. And one day, a demonstration , up in the north, took a surprising turn. I know , because i was in the SWP at the time and I read all about it in the party newspaper, the Socialist Worker.
It turned out that a window got broken , and a small supermarket got looted. A lot of booze and cigerretes were 'liberated' and reurned to the control of the proletariat', it seemed . So, at the next big meeting that I went to, many speakers stood up to congratulate the workers who took part in the demo for their tremendous victory over the capitalist classes and their quasi-fascist police force. Then I got on the rostrum and asked a few questions. Like -
" How many tins of baby food got liberated and turned over to a young working mother to feed her child?"
"Did any local OAPs enjoy enjoy a bit of beef that evening, or did as much as a single bottle of milk go missing and find its way to someone in need?"
These questions were met with stunned silence. I took that to mean a 'no' then. And i pointed out that if this was what happened when they siezed control of one small shop, then what could we expect of them if they ever got control of something biigger?
Somehow, I got the feeling that we would not see a workers paradise come into being , but a selfish mad scramble as everyone stuffed as much as they could into their own pockets. Mark it well, all the booze and ciggies went - but no food. The rioters were not hungry I suppose. Even so, there was no thought for the poor who might have been. I remember it well, because I recall how dissappointed I felt at seeing these self styled revolutionaries in their true colours.
I also remeber it as the day I tore up my SWP party card.
Everyone who gets rich, or even stays rich, does so by being disciplined and well organised - or they don't stay rich for long. If we allow the rich to keep the bulk of the wealth they create, we can still syphon off enough to keep the poorest in our society at a decent levelof comfort and well being. We can even see to it that they can create some wealth themselves, and bette the whole community as a result.
A cap on the excessive bonusses of bankers would impact so few, but save so much. Raising the level of the lowest paid in sociey would also close the gap - and societies with a more equal wealth distribution have lower crime rates, lower rates of teenage pregnancy, disease and other social ills. So, yes, we would bring back in the 10% tax band, and the 22% basic rate, but also crack down on tax havens. why should the rich forid 'tax evasion ' when they simply call it ' tax avoidance' when they do it themselves.
More equal societies have fewer people in prison per capita, they also have less violent crime as well.
They even mange to recycle more! So, the Greens commit to making our society more equal, using a whole raft of measures.
For more info on Equality as an issue, go to the report by independant academics, found here at
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/
The problem with the ' Libertarian ' system.
Date: 20/4/10 09:55 (UTC)i reached the conclusion that if I said to the government that protected me from birth " thanks for the offer, but I no longer want to pay taxes, I will look after myself" - I will try imagining the consequences of them taking my offer seriously.
If they took it seriously, they would say "Ok - you don't pay taxes, so you don't get any benifits accruing to you any more, unless you pay directly for what you use."
Now, at first, this is great - I don't have any kids myself, so i don't pay for anyone's education. but then I flush my toilet, and instantly get a bill- the government put the in sewage pipes that go under my town, and every time it gets dark and they bill me for turning the lights on as well, unless I buy a torch and carry it around everywhere...
" Hold on , I think" I either buy my own street lighting , fit my own sewerage system and run my own amenities from scratch, or i go back to being a tax paying citizen."
As I citizen I get to vote - as a citizen I get to choose if I want my country defended by nukes or more conventional forces. I still get state protection if we are invaded. i have some say in how the police gets run, but don't have to hire my own protection squad.
I feel a lot of people may be pleased about the benifits of opting out of paying taxes, but have not researched the costs. most people don't think of sewer pipes, they never see them, but you cannot run a decent society without sewers and most people cannot afford to lay in their own sanitation system.
Re: The problem with the ' Libertarian ' system.
Date: 20/4/10 13:49 (UTC)Your experiences with the small supermarket are quite telling. If these theoretically self-decided non-tax paying folk were to lose their job we will also soon see how they react to being 'free'.
Re: The problem with the ' Libertarian ' system.
Date: 20/4/10 14:59 (UTC)The SWP were not the sort of people who I would call 'libertarians' - they want to smash capitalism and set up a Workers State.
Now, I dare say that I could do my job , even if my firm got taken over by a bunch of amatuers who had never run the transport industry before. however, whether the new owners could make a go of running the business remains to be seen.
Your average james Bond villain is a very wealthy industrial magnate, with his mountaintop lair or his own private island where his private army will patrol the perimiter for him and top up the generator to keep it going. but i wonder how he recruits the satff and gets the groceries delievered?
Most people who want to 'change the system' have no idea how or why the system took it's present shape. Or the shape of any costs/ benifits of proposed changes.
The fact is that the price of tea will go up if we have the sort of economy that I am advocating.
Because tea is currently bought by making poor people pick tea for less than a dollar a day. But i am willing to see the price go up if my money spent on tea will enable a tea picker to send their kids to school and give their whole family a better way of life.
Greens have an argument that consistently picks up a larger share of the vote, year on year. this year, we may even get our first Green MP. And that's because we understand the system well enough to suggest improvements that will actually work.
The SWP has not got that same sort of grip on reality. Lindsay german , who once proclaimed that voting was a front and we needed to smash capitalism and the political system it ran in is now standing as an MP.
Robbing supermarkets just wasn't getting the support to keep it going , I guess.
Re: The problem with the ' Libertarian ' system.
Date: 20/4/10 23:46 (UTC)Re: The problem with the ' Libertarian ' system.
Date: 21/4/10 08:30 (UTC)" I don't have any kids, so why should I pay for other people's kids to be educated?"
"People like Walmart should not pay taxes because they already give people jobs"
These are just two comments from the Libertarian community on Lj I have come upon. let's take them both and see what happens, when we pan it out.
Suppose we have a magic wand that means I get complete opt out - the government agrees not to tax me, but makes no contribution to me in return.
Ok, so I have to fix my house with a generator because the local power gets turned off - but Ii can afford it. But next day, when I leave my gated community of fellow millionaires, I go speak to my manager of the store chain I own and find that no one has turned up for work.
" the problem is" s/he explains " We did not educate our staff - the state did. We can only employ people who were privately educated. People who went to State schools make up 905 of our payroll. the checkouts are down , the delivery staff, even our management are mostly state educated.
Look, boss, I have private insurance, but the nurses in my retirement home I am going to in ten yrs time - i gave them a call, and most of them went to state school. I gotta consider my options, I'm tearing up my Libertarian Party card..."
I understannd that in the USA, a town is alredy under way, and people are being given the option to move there. In a State where laws are conducive, a libertarian community is already forming. Now, it's gonna be great fun for multi millionaires to move in and try running things, but sooner or later, they are going to find themselves paying for things they never had to think about - like drains - because the State took care of this stuff, and they never had to.
The best that can be done is to look at the present system and make reforms. we can't go back to the days when people lived in mud huts and grew their own food and spun their own clothes. People who had to do that soon gave it up, you will have noticed.
Libertarianism only suits multi millionaires who can pay for those choices.
Most people opt for time share in stead of owning their own yacht, they opt to pay taxes instead of owning thier own private police force. I think this is why the Libertarians only have 2% of the vote in the USA.
Re: The problem with the ' Libertarian ' system.
Date: 21/4/10 10:21 (UTC)Why would this be the case? You aren't getting free power now, nor is it from the government (at least not in the U.S.). I pay the electric company to generate the power and deliver it to my house.
I assume you're referring to the Free State Project. If you are, you're not quite getting the idea of it.
Nope, a business (or more than one, ideally) would take care of it. Water service is not government provided either, although there is a lot of government regulations about what they can charge and water quality and other things.
Your lack of understanding of what libertarianism is and how it would work is widespread and is part of why the Libertarian Party doesn't get that many votes.
Re: The problem with the ' Libertarian ' system.
Date: 21/4/10 15:32 (UTC)Sorry - I left the communiity, and don't have their url anymore. I do recall a guy named ' modernday_knight', so that's the community I was in.
I pay the electric company to generate the power and deliver it to my house.
This is the case in England at present. however, it was the government that put up the national Grid, but Conservatives sold off the ameities to private investors. Now, obviously, if in the USA the state never put it there, then you are not beholden to the State in any waay, I grant you that.
However, can I ask how roads get built and maintained 'across the pond', so to speak ?
My main problem with the 'no taxation' concept is that although private industry can do certain things (I would be first to agree that privatising the phones was a great idea) I have reservations about privatising everything.
'Privatisation ' is what we call selling Governemnt run concerns over to private business concerns, in case you are unfamiliar with the term the opposite is Nationalisation - like when the government buys up railroads, banks and stuff and runs them as a public service.
In the 50s, a lot of things in the Uk were bought up by the government, but not entirely successfully run as a result. OTOH, some governmental services were sold off - and this was not always successfull either. It depended on what was sold, and who too, to be honest.
One big problem is the Post Office - the royal mail, as we call it in the UK.
Parcel carriers like DHL have made big inroads in delivering mail, but only in the cities. Imagine a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, or a remote island off the coast of Scotland. These little places have got no means of economically supporting a private owned office. but the Royal mail, a public service run by the state, will have a service , and provide the local people with a place to go send and recieve mail.
In the States, how would a remote ommunity get it's mail, how would the localPolice Force get funded?
in the UK at pesent, there are national taxes, but also "local rates". the people who pay rates are local land owners. wether business or private houses, if you own land, you pay local rates, and different political parties try to get seats on local councils and set rates at different levels.
Conservatives try to trim services back and keep rates low, but traditionally Labour /Liberal councillors try to open public libraries and other amenities like youth clubs and set rates higher.
this is a ' broad brush' approach, but it's how it pans out in the UK.
so, if you want to speak for yourself, and for Libertarianism as a supporter of it, I would like to hear your views on how it would all work.
Me, i just want to see a fairer society. a society where people did not have to be wealthy to get a fair deal. Uk Conservatives talk about 'freedom of choice' - but the money you have determine the choices you can make. poor people in the UK have few choices or none at all, sadly.
Re: The problem with the ' Libertarian ' system.
Date: 21/4/10 18:46 (UTC)They are currently done by a department of the government, in general, although that wasn't always the case, and there are private roads, which are generally toll roads. It's not really a big stretch to have those gov't departments be actual companies instead.
Here's one explanation:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/bryan6.html
Personally, I don't believe that a true anarchy can work in practice because people can't actually behave properly. There's a small possibility it could work if everyone only lived in small communities and were willing to be a lot more fluid about where they lived and worked (and if technology were sufficiently advanced enough to allow it). So, I'm more of a minarchist in practice even though I'm an anarchist in theory. The problem with minarchy is trying to figure out where to draw the line of allowable government practices. But the deciding factor for what government can do should always be decided by principles and not by desired outcomes. Otherwise, government is just a tool for some to control everyone else.