Quote from: Cnut237 on Today at 12:59:08 PM

Quote from: _Miracle on Today at 01:34:46 AM

I don't know what the climate is in your country between left and right.

It's the UK. We don't really have a viable left, since the "Labour" party have reinvented themselves once again. The Green party is probably our main left-wing party, but they only tend to gather a few percentage points of the vote. Our future prime minsters are generally drawn from a small subset of children. But I won't expand on all of this here, or it will turn into an essay.

I would read that if you made a thread on bitcointalk. It would be nice to have the perspective from your view and of course inevitably someone from the other side will chime in but I feel like you'd be able to do that with civility.
If I watch news it's usually from other countries than mine and I will only watch snippets from my own to keep semi-relevant to current conversations but the political punditry in my country is off of the chain of reality, it would be difficult to convey how disgusted it makes me feel to watch without admitting my dorky hobby of
of reading long, old and some would say boring books regarding the founding of my country and the age that made it possible (The constitution, the federalist papers, all the letters the founding fathers wrote to each other, obscure laws from the time, generally authors from "The Age of Enlightenment". The depth of thought that went into building the amount of liberty the world is experiencing now is mind blowing in contrast to lack of depth and forethought our world leaders display now.

Quote from: _Miracle on Today at 01:34:46 AM

Sort of except that godliness (or our human nature) within each of us would be the unseen force: an invisible hand ----the observable market is the externality.
Maybe to explain what it is not: it is not an ominous controlling hand above us, it is us.

Yes, but centuries of evidence show that the invisible hand either doesn't exist or, if it does, then its effect is almost nothing.
I see now see why the concept get's misconstrued ---I don't think I have the skill to convey it properly so let's leave this one.
Maybe I'll run into some brilliant TedTalk of a social phycologist/economist who explains it better.

Quote from: _Miracle on Today at 01:34:46 AM

Stop letting corporations make their own rules and get big money interests the hell out of politics---just those 2 tweaks could go a long way

Yes, agreed.

Quote from: _Miracle on Today at 01:34:46 AM

It's disappointing to see the "tax the rich" rhetoric going on [...] we are attacking (as usual) people on the individual level.

If pure capitalism leads to excess and abuse, and there needs to be some mechanism to reduce this effect, as you seem to agree in your point above, then why should we not tax the rich? If a corporation exploits the system to the detriment of others by making its own rules, then why should the CEO and directors of that company be perceived as having acquired their wealth by fair and legitimate means? If there are people who exploit the system, then why would it be disappointing if we sought to prevent this exploitation? Is it okay that Jeff Bezos has $200 billion, but his employees have to sh*t in plastic bags in their vans because they'd lose their job if they took a toilet break?

Interesting that you post Amazon---I was a delivery driver for a bit when I got back to California and it IS as tough as they say...I'm also an Amazon junkie
Amazon contracts out its drivers to avoid labor and liability laws---- again stop allowing companies to make their own laws and profit by getting around them.
As a side note to that: I delivered for Amazon contracted through a company I helped build, I left years ago disagreeing with switching workers over to contractors (and went into real estate)

I've boycotted Walmart years ago but just can't let go go of my Prime!

Previously I have compared these two facts:

2. 1 in 3 people globally do not have access to safe drinking water.

Quote

2.2 billion people around the world do not have safely managed drinking water services, 4.2 billion people do not have safely managed sanitation services, and 3 billion lack basic handwashing facilities.

https://www.who.int/news/item/18-06-2019-1-in-3-people-globally-do-not-have-access-to-safe-drinking-water-unicef-who

Whilst, as I say, I am in favour of equality of opportunity, and against absolute equality of outcome, I do believe in progressive taxation. And income tax alone is insufficient when the elite draw most of their wealth from returns on existing capital. (Yes, I am a fan of Thomas Piketty, and read Capital in the Twenty-First Century when it was first published.)

I believe that existing inequality of outcome is obscene. I am not talking about someone who is talented and worked hard and made themselves say $10 million. Numbers become difficult to fully comprehend once we move past the scale for which the human brain evolved. I am fond of the visualisation below. Scroll through this and tell me that existing tax on the wealthy is sufficient (there is plenty of additional information if you scroll far enough).

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

We could have long conversations regarding the world water crises, I just cant type fast enough to do it here. On the small scale I've belonged to service clubs that help put in and teach communities to build/maintain their own wells. On the larger scale we have privatized some of earth resources and that's not going well for too many humans.

I think "taxing the rich" is another sound byte solution in a world where some in depth revisiting of policies could make deep meaningful changes without redistribution of wealth.

I think we need a major paradigm shift---I don't feel like it will be in my lifetime.