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Technology Is Making the World More Unequal; Only Technology Can Fix This (theguardian.com)
mspohr shares an excerpt from an article written by Cory Doctorow via The Guardian: The inequality of badly-run or corrupt states is boosted by the power of technology -- but it's also easier than ever to destabilize these states, thanks to technology. The question is: which future will prevail?" [The article discusses two sides to the issue:] Here's the bad news: technology -- specifically, surveillance technology -- makes it easier to police disaffected populations, and that gives badly run, corrupt states enough stability to get themselves into real trouble. Here's the good news: technology -- specifically, networked technology -- makes it easier for opposition movements to form and mobilize, even under conditions of surveillance, and to topple badly run, corrupt states. Long before the internet radically transformed the way we organize ourselves, theorists were predicting we'd use computers to achieve ambitious goals without traditional hierarchies -- but it was a rare pundit who predicted that the first really successful example of this would be an operating system (GNU/Linux), and then an encyclopedia (Wikipedia). [Cory also has a new novel, Walkaway , which explores these ideas further.] The future will see a monotonic increase in the ambitions that loose-knit groups can achieve. My new novel, Walkaway, tries to signpost a territory in our future in which the catastrophes of the super-rich are transformed into something like triumphs by bohemian, anti-authoritarian "walkaways" who build housing and space programs the way we make encyclopedias today: substituting (sometimes acrimonious) discussion and (sometimes vulnerable) networks for submission to the authority of the ruling elites.
You don't get out much, do you?
Apathetic populaces arise from wealth. It's a positive feedback loop.
Minum wage laws are an attempt to establish gross salary inequities, not its cause.
Corrupt dictators and their fiscal abuses are unavoidable in general. Preventing them requires consistent policies by their political and fiscal sponsors, which is incredibly difficult to avoid.
Local banks inflate at will, too.
Laws that make investing money difficult are balances against potlach, and founded in attempts to take money *out* of inequitable reserves and get it back into the economy.
The list goes on, and on.
The 20th century had 3 catastrophes in row: WW1, the Great Depression, and WW2. These all served as levelers, and by 1945, Western society was more level than ever. So people that grew up during the decades that followed, came to view the prevailing equality as "normal". Things are now regressing to the mean.
You ignore the Cold War, which leveled the top off of the rich by making them pay for military and scientific competition between superpowers. Catastrophe was not enough. It was nationalistic competition which created equality through high taxes. A decade after the Cold War ended, tax cuts to the rich caused a regression toward inequality and the inevitable Great Recession.
Not for the 99%.
About half of them -- say, 47% or so -- want the 1% to pay all the taxes. Worse, they think such a scheme will fund everything they want government to do.
Let's have the 1% actually pay their share, and then talk about it. They derive more than 3/4 of the benefit but pay less than 3/4 of the taxes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"