What happens when control of corporations is concentrated in relatively few hands? When the controllers are permitted to pass control to their heirs?
I have been mulling what the optimal level of wage/income equality/inequality is. Any ideas? Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
"The middle class" should be a reasonable if controversial answer.
I mean, you need both fairness, social mobility and rewards for entrepeneurs and people who want to study and work hard.
Without losing sight of the veil of whatever Rawls called it.
A hugely complex issue, permeating everything we discuss here. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
isn't social mobility one of those growth myths though? if everyone is upwardly mobile, then who picks the fruit, who sweeps the streets, who washes the floors?
the technotopian answer to that is "robots of course", whicm merely means substituting energy slaves for human slaves. and energy is now an increasingly scarce resource, alont with enojgh other resources that we know "social mobility" cannot continue to mean "aspiring to live like ozzie and harriet" let alone paris hilton.
why should rewards only go to inventors and entrepreneurs and similar [mho] growth fantasists? why should not rewards go to good stewards of land, producers of good food and high quality durable goods? or even to people who keep the streets clean or fix bike tyres or cook a magnificent blintz?
for people who like to study, isn't studying a reward in itself? do they also need to be bribed with positional goodies galore? surely the reward of studiousness is to be let loose in a library: the maintenance of a library being a net-positive benefit to everyone instead of a privatised position good to reward only the elite few deemed worthy.
and so on. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
