The previous century has witnessed the stand-off between two different and principally opposed forms of social set up - communism and capitalism. People my age and older are today "blessed" with the chance of viewing the demise of both - communism with fall of Russia and Capitalism with the economic downturn now - with the effects of latter much more widespread and devastating. For argument sake, you can call me either (a) a communist who accepts that communism wont work, OR (b) a capitalist who feels agony and fury when the so-called "fittest" scumbag more often takes advantage of the "principled and moral" mortal.
For (a) - Communism - "from each according to his capacity, to each according to his need" - In hindsight, Marx seems to be a really naive person to have actually believed that every human being will be truthful and honest enough to the society to give his best and at the same time, humble and content enough not to crave for more than what he needs for a decent living. Theoritically its not impossible, but then every one of us have to be a mahatma.
For (b) - Capitalism - we have the dog-eat-dog situation. The underdogs are always sacrificed. Not much different from the red regime's propaganda is this one from the west that made its citizens believe that their government is always going to be "for the people". Most ordinary citizens of western world fight for their living , earn a living. Some might put some of their earned dough back into the system (read investment) in the hope of getting more dough. All of them give some dough to the government to help them in common ways in present and for their future benefits (read taxes, public facilities, social security). A select class of the ordinary citizens gain extra-ordinary insight into the system and device ways to increase their share of dough by "taking" from others (read structured investment vehicles, financial schemes etc etc). When this exclusive extraordinary class has become filthy rich and the amount of "taking" has reached unsustainable levels, the system falters. Now the exclusive class, having set aside more than its share of dough for its rainy day, tells government it has not done anything illegal and that it does not have any dough it took from people left out to be given back to them. Now the ordinary class of citizens who "invested" have lost their bet. Not only that, with the exclusive class using its power and influence, makes the government "bail them out" with, guess what, the dough that ordinary citizens paid through their taxes. This is what is left out of the three groups - the exclusive class gets to keep its bounty as it dint do anything illegal, the ordinary class that invested lost it share of dough to the exclusive class but got some back from government as part of bailout, the ordinary class that dint invest probably went through hardships like layoff, foreclosure etc and later got some dough from government. But the dough that the government gave the latter two is actually a debt written against a generation that has not even conceived and will not be conceived for years to come.
So, whats the good way out. The answer is none - as long as we, as a society, keep disrespecting the rules and killing the spirit of the setup we created in the first place to help ourselves live an orderly life.
Thats the bottom line - as I indicated in one of my earlier posts, any system we conceive comes from a set of human thoughts (brains) and logically, there exists another set of human thoughts(brains) that can find loop holes or can break the system if it decides to. Probably instead of creating new systems and experimenting them at the expense of human peace, for once, we can try respecting the system we have and may be, we can co-exist peacefully with principally opposed setups. But then, this is again thought of one human brain which can be... (you fill up the rest).
The post can also be titled "Heaven and Wonderland". Depends on how you look at it.
For (a) - Communism - "from each according to his capacity, to each according to his need" - In hindsight, Marx seems to be a really naive person to have actually believed that every human being will be truthful and honest enough to the society to give his best and at the same time, humble and content enough not to crave for more than what he needs for a decent living. Theoritically its not impossible, but then every one of us have to be a mahatma.
For (b) - Capitalism - we have the dog-eat-dog situation. The underdogs are always sacrificed. Not much different from the red regime's propaganda is this one from the west that made its citizens believe that their government is always going to be "for the people". Most ordinary citizens of western world fight for their living , earn a living. Some might put some of their earned dough back into the system (read investment) in the hope of getting more dough. All of them give some dough to the government to help them in common ways in present and for their future benefits (read taxes, public facilities, social security). A select class of the ordinary citizens gain extra-ordinary insight into the system and device ways to increase their share of dough by "taking" from others (read structured investment vehicles, financial schemes etc etc). When this exclusive extraordinary class has become filthy rich and the amount of "taking" has reached unsustainable levels, the system falters. Now the exclusive class, having set aside more than its share of dough for its rainy day, tells government it has not done anything illegal and that it does not have any dough it took from people left out to be given back to them. Now the ordinary class of citizens who "invested" have lost their bet. Not only that, with the exclusive class using its power and influence, makes the government "bail them out" with, guess what, the dough that ordinary citizens paid through their taxes. This is what is left out of the three groups - the exclusive class gets to keep its bounty as it dint do anything illegal, the ordinary class that invested lost it share of dough to the exclusive class but got some back from government as part of bailout, the ordinary class that dint invest probably went through hardships like layoff, foreclosure etc and later got some dough from government. But the dough that the government gave the latter two is actually a debt written against a generation that has not even conceived and will not be conceived for years to come.
So, whats the good way out. The answer is none - as long as we, as a society, keep disrespecting the rules and killing the spirit of the setup we created in the first place to help ourselves live an orderly life.
Thats the bottom line - as I indicated in one of my earlier posts, any system we conceive comes from a set of human thoughts (brains) and logically, there exists another set of human thoughts(brains) that can find loop holes or can break the system if it decides to. Probably instead of creating new systems and experimenting them at the expense of human peace, for once, we can try respecting the system we have and may be, we can co-exist peacefully with principally opposed setups. But then, this is again thought of one human brain which can be... (you fill up the rest).
The post can also be titled "Heaven and Wonderland". Depends on how you look at it.
Today's post was one taken during our visit to NY. It shows the New York Stock Exchange building on Wall Street. A symbol of economic activity and economic pulse of the country. Even though today's post is about society in general, it all boils down to money and how the fruits of labor are shared or rather, unshared and hence the relevance to today's post. Taken with Canon A70 P&S, one can vividly notice the walls and floor that appear to be curved rather than straight. This effect, called Fish-Eye effect, was because of a wide-angle lens add-on that offered a 0.45x zoom out. Yup,..call me crazy.. I had purchased an Opteka wideangle and telephoto addons to my P&S.
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