Saturday, August 19, 2006
Why don't we have money for education, or the poor? Boats!
"Saudi Prince Alwaleed is reportedly in the process of building a yacht that will be up to 525 ft. long and will boast a shower room carved from solid onyx."
A thing occurred to me yesterday while walking around San Francisco (it seems that most larger cities suffer from this condition of multimillionaires and homeless living on alternate blocks...).
There are three classes of people in the world.
1. The people who are truly suffering, without the basic needs of life, and are oppressed in ways that most people in classes 2 and 3 could not imagine.
2. The people who have a variety of maladies, ranging from medical conditions, to difficulties making ends meet, or not having a big enough TV to impress the neighbors. Always looking at ways to pull themselves a bit further out of entropy and better their life condition, but all in all, it's relatively bearable.
3. The people who are privileged enough so as to be able to be free from maladies/difficulties, and are focused on things other than relieving their condition. Certainly, health issues may happen to anyone, but these are the people who don't have to worry about their health insurance, or the like.
The link above is to a category of people who control the money, and what they are doing with it. This isn't just about a Saudi Prince, and it isn't just about boats. It's about the fact that that $500 million dollars is economic energy being steered toward self-satisfaction and not toward the betterment of society. It's also about the fact that upon reflective inspection from outside of the system, all money is ill-gotten in some way, since that money represents resources and human labor, and those resources and human labor are of the earth, but somebody decided they're for sale.
These people were disciplined enough to follow the rules of capitalism to the top of the heap, yes. But it also smells of the snowball effects of today's multinational corporatism, because being at the top means that there are a lot of other people lower down propping them up. It makes me think of Yertle the Turtle.
music: Meat Puppets - Up On the Sun
colors: Onyx
mood: exasperated
chant/prayer/mantra: share and share alike.
pax hominibus,
joel
A thing occurred to me yesterday while walking around San Francisco (it seems that most larger cities suffer from this condition of multimillionaires and homeless living on alternate blocks...).
There are three classes of people in the world.
1. The people who are truly suffering, without the basic needs of life, and are oppressed in ways that most people in classes 2 and 3 could not imagine.
2. The people who have a variety of maladies, ranging from medical conditions, to difficulties making ends meet, or not having a big enough TV to impress the neighbors. Always looking at ways to pull themselves a bit further out of entropy and better their life condition, but all in all, it's relatively bearable.
3. The people who are privileged enough so as to be able to be free from maladies/difficulties, and are focused on things other than relieving their condition. Certainly, health issues may happen to anyone, but these are the people who don't have to worry about their health insurance, or the like.
The link above is to a category of people who control the money, and what they are doing with it. This isn't just about a Saudi Prince, and it isn't just about boats. It's about the fact that that $500 million dollars is economic energy being steered toward self-satisfaction and not toward the betterment of society. It's also about the fact that upon reflective inspection from outside of the system, all money is ill-gotten in some way, since that money represents resources and human labor, and those resources and human labor are of the earth, but somebody decided they're for sale.
These people were disciplined enough to follow the rules of capitalism to the top of the heap, yes. But it also smells of the snowball effects of today's multinational corporatism, because being at the top means that there are a lot of other people lower down propping them up. It makes me think of Yertle the Turtle.
music: Meat Puppets - Up On the Sun
colors: Onyx
mood: exasperated
chant/prayer/mantra: share and share alike.
pax hominibus,
joel
