“Same as it ever was” rubbed me the wrong way.

If you think the comparison you refer to is “obvious to a block of wood,” you might want to go over that East Germany thread again.

You know damn well why I have to “dumb down” the conversation in so many areas. Apologies if you got caught in the backwash.

I said nothing of the kind. What categories? What equivalence? I was describing an objective phenomenon, the filtering of a population by societal rules, that really should be obvious to even a twelve year old (come to think of it, especially 12year olds, because they’ve recently experienced how transition from the social system of elementary school to the social system of middle school has completely changed their lives and status. They went from being one-percenters in elementary school to being the gum on the bottom of an eighth-grader’s shoe.).

The payoff for actually being able to think at such an abstract level is that it might occur to you that while it’s difficult to judge the value of a realworld system by examining its rule book (something like Godel’s Completeness Theorem gets in the way), you can quite handily judge any system by looking at the people who rise to the top 1% within that system.

Jackass. The “dictators in palaces” produced by one system compared to the “businessmen in mansions” produced by another system make it obvious even to a block of wood which one is superior.

Once again you’ve dumbed-down the conversation.

Why do I bother?

The US has the fabulously rich, and the poor are guaranteed squat. And that is followed through as best they can.

Arf

Our hypercapitalism selects for the gift of accumulating piles of money. We identify our 1% by the elephantiasis of their wallets.

The top 1% in the Soviet system were bureaucrats. They enjoyed huge material comforts, but they weren’t rich as we understand rich. Rather, they were the 1% most skilled at managing a command-and-control economy and were rewarded commensurately with a nonmonetary slice of the pie.

The Pope and his Cardinals in the Vatican are religion’s 1%, and they live in medieval splendor.

Pick your system…Colombian narcosyndicalism, Somalian anarchy, Russian kleptocracy…somehow each eventually ends up dominated by the 1% selected by the system’s rules and most competent at working that system.

Same as it ever was, Rob.

…and a question for the poor…which basically was me when I was growing up…when do you perceive your social conditions as “equal”?…or enough? Who determines that? Who has that right? What is your responsibility in the equation? Are you part of the problem…or part of the solution?

…and for the filthy rich…which has never been me…what do you personally do to help who you can?