One thing that anarchists get told a lot by people who seem to think it’s the first time anyone’s thought to say it to them is: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
Continue readingWhy I Don’t Vote: Part 2
Posts Tagged → capitalism
Why I Don’t Vote: Part 1
I first explained my reasons for not voting in 2005, in an article about anarchism for Auckland University’s student magazine Craccum. Three years later, after the election of John Key’s National government, a few friends took me aside…
Continue readingOpportunity and Outcome
The problem is that, in our society, even with formal equality of opportunity, you can predict with some accuracy someone’s outcome by knowing morally arbitrary facts about them. If there really were equality of opportunity in New Zealand, outcomes may not be equal, but they would also not be predictable…
Continue readingWe needed weinies. Mr Brown had weinies. It’s as simple as that.
New Capitalist Pyramid
A pretty good updated version of the famous old capitalist pyramid (below). The difference between the two shows the difference between the realities of capitalism (and socialism as a reaction to it) in the days of Marx and today. (Click here for a larger version of the new one.)
I believe the most important difference is the globalisation of the economy and the corollary outsourcing of poverty. While in the 19th century, one could, say, take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London…
…and see the people suffering at the bottom of the capitalist heap, these days you can only really see them on TV, and even then you have to go out of your way to find out about it, and even then there’s such a long causal string between your actions and their suffering that you don’t feel responsible or potent to do anything about it. Part of that is the media, of course, which is why us Westerners are so happy to be wedged in between the soldiers and the police.
Missing from this new pyramid, I think, are the politicians, who should be standing just behind the police, as I don’t think they’re quite represented by the guy at the top (at least in New Zealand; the US is a different matter).
Here’s the old discrete-nations pyramid:
Must Be Funny
Sorry, this is the best pic I could find.
Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while other people make $25,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 a year while other people get $250,000? Assume for the moment that prices of goods and services will stay the same.
Surprisingly — stunningly, in fact — research shows that the majority of people select the first option; they would rather make twice as much as others even if that meant earning half as much as they could otherwise have. How irrational is that?
Read the rest of this interesting LA Times article:
Paint by Numbers
Blue states turned red.
Via Reddit, via Metafilter, a fascinating image of the world based on GDP per square kilometre. James Hamilton’s comments are interesting, though they do have graphs, which make me go a great big rubbery one.