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LifestreamFairly dispiriting … not that it should come as a surprise to anyone. Now the question is if we’re heading towards more limited ownership of the world and its resources. Chances are that is in fact so given the fast accumulation of wealth and rising gaps in industrialized nations.
Two percent of adults have more than half of the world’s wealth, including property and financial assets, according to a study by the U.N. development research institute published on Tuesday.While global income is distributed unequally, the spread of wealth is even more skewed, the study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the U.N. University said.
About the only good news here is that the situation is bound to ferment massive resentment on a massive scale, eventually reclaiming the commons or radically turning the slope. But needless to say, things are going to have to become a lot worse before people realize their own interests and how these robber barons — in one way or another — are in fact limiting personal freedom and opportunity for the vast majority.
12:27 on December 6th, 2006
I often wonder what happens after that "massive resentment" kills a few millions and overthrows the bad guys… I’m thinking for example to the Russian Revolution.
The bad guys gets slughtered and new bad guys take over, so that not much changes?
Have you ever considered the need of a more definitive solution that does not involve wiping out all mankind from Earth and neightbouring celestial bodies?
Seriously.
Do you have any hope for mankind?
14:56 on December 14th, 2006
“Common sense” knowledge may corroborate your point. But the historical situation you mention (The Russian Revolution) is infinitely more complex. For starters, Russia was extremely poor, lacked many if not most of the institutions that we attribute to a modern state nowadays. Not to mention Russia’s disastrous involvement in WW1 and a counterproductive class structure that should have discouraged most Marxist thinkers. The revolution was doomed in that sense from the very beginning. It also didn’t help that foreign powers — the United States and the usual suspects — did their very best to impede, destabilize and sow seeds of discord, paranoia from the start.
Having said that, it is clear that a more conservative and incremental process is desirable. But what one wants and what one gets are two entirely different things.
In the meantime, and generally, the best we can do is not to meddle with the affairs of other nations and put in place puppet regimes. That way we at least cut down on the number of possible “bad guys”. It seems clear to me that most of these sorry figures that we’ve seen in the last century are a result of direct or indirect foreign intervention. To just concede to the idea of the “domestic bad guy” and the reproduction of certain patterns is a little too simple and omits important parameters.