Friday, January 12, 2018

Haitian Embassy -- Express your apologies

If you want to express your apologies for the disgusting profane comment of our "sable genius" president against the nation of Haiti here is the link.

http://haiti.org/contact-us/

Profound Questions

A man, Alan Milner, who is on my FB feed and who is bright offers his cultural, political and economic views.  I find them challenging and have responded with my own answers and questions. 

Alan Milner:  I just do not believe that you watch billionaires at the Golden Globe awards and you think that they are any more in touch with reality than the current asshole in the White House.Here's some reality for you. Anyone who has billions of dollars is a murderer. They may not have pulled the trigger of a gun, but by hoarding great wealth, they are responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. Multiply that by the number of billionaires we have out there now and that equals to millions of deaths. 

Let me say this very clearly: Being a successful billionaire mogul doesn't qualify anyone to be president regardless of your motivations. Billionaires are disqualified by virtue of their wealth because the ONLY way that wealth is ever accumulated is at the expense of the poor and the working classes. If you don't get this, then you don't understand either politics or economics.
But what I am really disturbed about is that you even watch this s%$t and think it bears any relationship to your reality.

John responds: If you think most of the people at the GGs are billionaires, then you don’t know much about the movie business.

AlanPeople do not understand the concept that extreme wealth makes monsters out of people. You don't own the money. The money owns you.

My Comment: I hear what you are saying, Alan, I really do. I have spent my young adult and adult life thinking about the concepts you raise. I need clarification though. How would you want to organize society? What nation on this planet shares all the accumulated wealth equitably? I am not an economist by far but in shaping my political philosophy I examined what was out there. Did Marx have it right? Did Adam Smith the advocate of capitalism have it right? Did Ayn Rand have it right with unbridled capitalism with which Speaker Ryan is in love? Did Castro, Mao Tse Tung or Lenin have it right? Did all the fascist autocrats get it right? Who got it right?

I submit man has not figured out how to equitably motivate people to create the necessities of life and live comfortably. I came to the conclusion that although not perfect capitalism when done right with wealth not horded by a very few provides the motivation for people to create. It needs boundaries though.  What brakes would you want to create, Alan, that put a lid on how much money a person can accumulate? Capitalism when done more equitably creates quality -- a better mousetrap and all that. The problem is when our nation takes off regulation, takes off the brakes on the financial system, takes off brakes on commodities that pollute, denies science to accumulate that wealth just for the sake of its accumulation then chaos happens and many deaths occur.

Everything that Trump has done creates a HUGE imbalance of wealth and power. That is as I see it the problem. Once a culture removes the brakes and allows its people to go haywire in the pursuit of wealth with no or little regulation then it becomes an immoral wasteland where the few take it all and majority will suffer greatly with significantly less. Depressions and recessions happen of which revolutions are made only to be replaced with a system that is often worse. You tell me how you would organize a system where the production of goods and services creates a better standard of living but is at the same time equitable?

Your thoughts are profound, Alan, but I simply do not see an economic system out there that is fair, just and provides the greatest number of necessities for the greatest number of people without incentive to do so.

NOT ANYMORE

  I wrote this last week and for the most part sat on it because I did not want my writing to imply anything against Israel. As stated agai...