[p2p-research] [tt] The rich...no longer getting richer?

Sun Aug 23 05:03:58 CEST 2009

just a little correction: Soros did not give his money to Gates, that was
Buffet, Soros has his own Foundation, which has been hyper-active in
democracy work mostly,

Michel

On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 3:19 AM, Paul D. Fernhout <
pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

> Randall wrote:
>
>> From: "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com>
>>> Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:57:02 -0400
>>> To: Peer-To-Peer Research List <p2presearch at listcultures.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [p2p-research] The rich...no longer getting richer?
>>> User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Macintosh/20090812)
>>>
>>
>>  "[p2p-research] Basic income from a millionaire's perspective?"
>>>
>>> http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/003949.html
>>> """
>>> The fact is, the basic income is already about what most millionaires
>>> might
>>> be earning off their investments after inflation (assuming they have
>>> anything left after the recent market crash). So, in a way, this proposal
>>> makes everyone in the USA into effective millionaires (or close to it).
>>> So,
>>> that means that millionaires have a lot more potential friends in the
>>> local
>>> neighborhood with a millionaire-level of spare time to do fun things with
>>> during the day. So, being a millionaire will be a much less lonely thing
>>> in
>>> our society. And should a millionaire have children, the millionaire
>>> knows,
>>> no matter how irresponsible with money their kid might be, that child
>>> will
>>> always be a millionaire, in terms of a basic income.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Greed is a disease.   There exists among us a certain personality type
>> whose sole desire is the accumulation of assets, for whom there is no
>> greater good than amassing more wealth.  Recall the line in _Citizen Kane_
>> to the effect that "It's not hard to make a lot of money, if ALL YOU WANT is
>> to make a lot of money" (emphasis added).
>>
>> To a person who already is a billionaire - of what use is another million
>> dollars?  And yet the type person who becomes wealthy will move mountains in
>> order to increase his wealth.  George Soros was a billionaire many times
>> over already, and yet he purposely destroyed the economy of Thailand,
>> causing incalculable suffering to millions of people he'd never met, in
>> order to make more millions to toss on the pile.
>>
>> And then he gave the money away, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
>>
>> Go figure.
>>
>> --
>> "You got ninety percent of the American public
>> out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make
>> the
>> rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper
>> clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there
>> wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think
>> we're
>> living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market." - Gordon
>> Gekko
>>
>
> I know. That's one reason why I am not financially obese. :-)
>
> It's hard enough to just scrape by without hurting others.
>
> Consider Jains, who may wear masks to avoid accidentally inhaling even an
> insect:
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
> "Jainism ... is an ancient dharmic religion from India that prescribes a
> path of non-violence for all forms of living beings in this world."
>
> How do they survive? Some became bankers, probably indirectly contributing
> to the suffering of millions and the destruction of entire biospheres.
>
> It's hard to sort these things out.
>
> Especially with a steady drumbeat of "greed is good" and "the unfettered
> free market solves all problems".
>
> But, even without that, things are hard:
>
> http://www.pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Project-Virgle.html
> """
> ... I agree with the sentiment of the Einstein quote [That we should
> approach the universe with compassion], but that sentiment itself is only
> part of a larger difficult-to-easily-resolve situation. It become more the
> Yin/Yang or Meshwork/Hierarchy situation I see when I look out my home
> office window into a forest. On the surface it is a lovely scene of trees as
> part of a forest. Still, I try to see *both* the peaceful majesty of the
> trees and how these large trees are brutally shading out of existence
> saplings which are would-be competitors (even shading out their own
> children). Yet, even as big trees shade out some of their own children, they
> also put massive resources into creating a next generation, one of which
> will indeed likely someday replace them when they fall. I try to remember
> there is both an unseen silent chemical war going on out there where plants
> produce defense compounds they secrete in the soil to inhibit the growth of
> other plant species (or insects or fungi) as a vile act of territoriality
> and often expansionism, and yet also the result is a good spacing of biomass
> to near optimally convert sunlight to living matter and resist and recover
> from wind and ice damage. I try to recall that there is the most brutal of
> competition between species of plants and animals and fungi and so on over
> water, nutrients (including from eating other creatures), sunlight, and
> space, while at the same time each bacterial colony or multicellular
> organism (like a large Pine tree) is a marvel of cooperation towards some
> implicitly shared purpose. I see the awesome result of both simplicity and
> complexity in the organizational structure of all these organisms and their
> DNA, RNA, and so on, adapted so well in most cases to the current state of
> such a complex web of being. Yet I can only guess the tiniest fraction of
> what suffering that selective shaping through variation and selection must
> have entailed for untold numbers of creatures over billions of years. To be
> truthful, I can actually *really* see none of that right now as it is dark
> outside this early near Winter Solstice time (and an icy rain is falling)
> beyond perhaps a silhouette outline, so I must remember and imagine it,
> perhaps as Einstein suggests as an "optical delusion of [my] consciousness".
> :-)
>
> """
>
> --Paul Fernhout
> http://www.pdfernhout.net/
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090823/e27c064a/attachment-0001.html>