Britain: Five billionaire famlies own 20% of wealth
05-18-2014, 08:24 PM
A couple of points:
On Democracy
The problem is not poor people voting as such. That's just a symptom or a secondary effect, a logical endpoint. The problem is democracy itself. People who can't vote are an untapped market. As such, someone will try to expand into that market to his own advantage. Let's say that only white, land owning males can vote initially. Let's say that's 10% of the population. A canny politician is going to say, "90% of potential votes are being wasted. All these other idiots want to waste those votes. I'm going to get myself some of that 90%!" He will then try to expand the franchise because if he can stand as a "man of the people" (or at least, all other white men initially), then he will pick up say, another 30%. Even if he gets none of the initial 10%, he doesn't need to care because he has three times as many people.
Of course, it's not quite that simple, because obviously other politicians will be forced to respond. The entire focus of political discourse now moves from say, the median or mode within the top 10% to the median or mode within the top 30%, and that's a downward shift.
Fast forward 100-200 years and everyone is arguing over the median or mode for the entire population. That's why Mitt Romney could make remarks about the 47% and get absolutely hammered for it. Just a generation or two ago, let alone 100 years ago, people wouldn't have had such an issue with his comments.
Why though, especially since there has been universal suffrage for longer than one generation? Because water flows downhill. So does culture. So does political discourse. We might think that we could lift people up, rather than be dragged down. Yet it's always easier to make simple promises to stupid people, especially when there are lots of them and the franchise is expanded rapidly, and so the political discourse moves downwards, not upwards. If everyone has a vote, then everyone's ideas, and by extension, culture, are equally valid, no matter how stupid. Once a critical mass of stupidity is reached, it crowds the smart and responsible out of the discourse.
Democracy is, at its heart, dysgenic in every way, from genetics to culture because it shifts the mode and the median to the left of the distribution graph, and then a feedback loop is created.
On Globalisation and the Labour Market
All things come and go. All things are born and die. Nobody wants to see a beautiful thing, a familiar thing, die. Yet new beautiful things are born and become familiar. I don't want to see Western civilisation collapse into mediocrity, yet such is the way of the world. I think we're probably past the tipping point with a few countries (the U.S.A., the U.K.), and not far off with others, though they may have time to course correct. Yet all things come and go. You can adapt or die. There is a massive sense of entitlement from the middle class in the West. It's also laden with hypocrisy since they have been happy to buy cheap consumer goods from abroad anyway. At some point, everyone, whether as individuals or as groups, needs to ask what value he provides to others. What value does the average person in a developed country provide to anyone else? Obviously, not very much because, given by their actions, they all think that the guy next to themselves is of little value. If Joe won't support Sam because he thinks Sam's product or service is too expensive and buys something from abroad instead, then why should Joe expect Fred, standing on his other side, to support him simply for existing?
Taken from another angle, why would a guy in a foreign country want to support Joe in the lap of luxury? Why wouldn't that foreigner want to nibble away at Joe? What a sense of entitlement on the part of Joe!
The solution then is to offer value to someone, to lift your game. What value does the average person in the West really offer to anyone? Look at the P.I.S.A. scores for the U.S.A. Look at the average person -- male or female -- as frequently complained about by people on this board. The average Westerner is useless, or worse than useless, yet entitled. Americans keep complaining about either or both of their two major parties, yet they keep voting for them expecting that this time, expecting a different result. What did Einstein have to say about that? People just want to complain. Anything else would be too much effort on their part.
If you're one of the people who is not useless, that provides opportunities for you. You may have to do unusual things to take advantage of such opportunities, including expatriation, but there will always be opportunities. It's not like the choice is between one U.S.A. and 199 Somalias. In fact, this has never been the case in history. If anything, it is easier than ever to pack up and leave for greener pastures.
We live in a period in history when everything is on the table. Everything is up for grabs. We're on the cusp of a new epoch, a paradigm shift. We can either pine for the old order, go down with the ship, or we can accept change and seek ways of prospering from it.
