The real moral questions include: what is a tolerable level of inequality? To what extent can we calculate who deserves what?

And the real practical questions include: what is an achievable level of equality? How do we know when it is achieved? And do people really care about it?

Inequality only becomes a hot issue when the economy shrinks. When the economy is growing, inequality falls in importance for most people. It’s striking that the outcry over the “1%” (why not the 5%?) occured right after a significant fall in the share of wealth owned by the top 1%.

The brain needs to be properly fed in more than one way. 

1. Evidence of Psychopathic profiles in CEOs, etc

“In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses’s scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders”.

2. Evidence of zero skills in financial high-fliers

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. “The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.

I have never worked on Wall Street, although I did a consultant gig at age 16 for a stockbroker who wanted some dodgy reverse-engineering that was still legal back then, when dinosaurs roamed the earth.  I have never worked in politics, except as a voting official for the Republican party during the last presidential election (I donated the paycheck to Planned Parenthood).  I do make truly absurd amounts of money, mostly by answering questions.  Mrs. Kagehisa donates much of it to environmental and social causes, and while I have no debt other than a mortgage, I am not at all rich by US standards.

I enjoyed the video, thanks!

It’s amazing how quick some people are to forsake common sense, independence and skepticism as long as their team is calling the shots. What an awful, loathsome  opinion by someone so commonly referred to as an ‘expert’. It had more in common with an official party release from North Korea than a page in a leading part of the free press.

The fact that our govt INSISTS on being so involved in every facet of life makes it a lot more difficult to tear ourselves free from the influence of the  corrupt, incompetent dullards who think it’s their place to police everything. 

Consider this quote from Michel: “For any kind of institution with a democratic base to consolidate the legitimacy it needs to exist, it must have an organization that delegates tasks … The leaders now control the tools with which to manipulate the opinion of the masses and subvert the organization’s democratic process.”

From this, Hayes deduces that we are doomed to oligarchy. Of course, he’s making a pretty big assumption in his premises: should such organizations be considered legitimate? What establishes their legitimacy other than the brute force of a majority? What I would deduce from that quote is that the problem is actually the societal establishment and acceptance of the “tools” of oligarchical protection. As has been demonstrated time and time again, the oligarchy rules only at the pleasure of the masses. If the society does not accept the legitimacy of the coercive tools necessary for the oligarchy to maintain power, the society would not face the problem he describes.

And that’s a lesson to take home: People aren’t stupid. They are often complacent, but if you cheat on them to much, they will come and do nasty things to you.

Michels’s grim conclusion was that it was impossible for any party, no matter its belief system, to bring about democracy in practice. Oligarchy was inevitable.

What hope can there be to escape the clutches of oligarchy if both left and right wing political parties are destined to same oligarchical end and that even revolution merely treats the symptom, but never results in a cure?

Peter formally studied and taught education and his work was based upon systems thinking. Reading _The Peter Plan_ now, published in 1975 projecting a society in 1990 that has learned to live within ecological limits.  Heartbreaking to see how much farther away we are from such goals today.

Which tells me what?

And you are right, Addington most certainly seems psychopathic by any rational definition. I gather you object to that too.

How much you make, Ito? Work on Wall Street do you, or perhaps a political office? I wonder.

Also, fuck oligarchy (NSFW).