Private Property, the Commons, & The War on the Middle Class
A major problem facing humanity is how we share our finite world. Even though the rate of growth is slowing, the human population is still exploding. And the problem is still being ignored. Thus, we face environmental and resource distribution problems that are increasingly out of control.
In our current situation, who has the right to decide how our planet is used? Do people have a right to possess unlimited wealth while others starve? Charity certainly is a good thing. But does anyone have the right to demand that those with more give up some of what they possess so that strangers—strangers who we have no reason to believe would be any more inclined to give up their wealth if the situations were reversed—can live decently?
The Horribly Skewed Ownership of Our Planet
How skewed is the distribution of our world's wealth? Consider these bizarre facts (taken from a longer discussion of how crazy and dangerous the inequitable distribution of resources has gotten):
Americans earning minimum wage earn more in one hour than most third world people earn in a brutal 10 - 12 hour workday; many millions of Americans (those whose salary and benefits are equal to $60,000 or more) make more in one hour than those people earn in one week of virtual slave labor.
From 1993 to 2002, the aggregate compensation of the top five executives in all public companies amounted to an astonishing $250 billion, equivalent to 7.5% of all corporate earnings. (Journalist Unmesh Kher, "Inflated Pay," Time, December 5, 2004)
To translate that quotation: Take the enormous "profit pie" baked by American corporations. Cut it into 13 slices. Now take one of the slices and give it to just five people! That seems like a sane distribution of resources, right? In a world with limited resources and starving billions, five people should be allowed to accumulate so much? Did these five really add as much value to their companies' bottom lines as the full time labor of 750,000 average US workers? That's what we paid them: Each one earned as much as did 150,000 average US wage earners during the same time period. Another way to view that simple fact: Each one of those corporate leaders earned more than ten million average Third world workers during the same time period.
And in the "First World," they are hard at work,
diligently trying to eliminate the middle class.
How Mega Corporate Globalization Is
Actually Creating Global Slavelization
The Elimination of the Middle Class: Part I
(A brief, vivid explanation of how wealth has been
transferred from the middle class to the super-rich)
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How about this: The 400 richest Americans (or, for comparison, the 225 richest people in the world) have more wealth among them than the poorest 45% of the rest of the world; the wealth and control of our planet's resources of this tiny group of rich people is more than the combined wealth of 3 billion people! You're right. That isn't fair. That's why George Bush thought we'd better give the Fortunate 400 a massive tax break, just to make sure they weren't being taken advantage of by paying too much in taxes!?!
It may even be killing you . . .
Click on the audio player to hear Stephen Bezruchka, M.D.,
of the University of Washington, describe how the skewed
distribution of wealth may be profoundly affecting your health.
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The truth underlying Stephen Colbert's black comedy in the video below should be frightening. Our corporate oligarchs are rapidly dismantling the economic system that enabled a middle class to thrive in the industrialized First World. If you disagree and think things are OK, then to you, more than anyone, Stephen says, "You're Welcome."
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download, right-click.
Jon Stewart & John Hodgman on the Bush Tax Cuts
The Elimination of the Middle Class: Part VI
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Stephen Colbert & Lou Dobbs' War on the Middle Class
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So how do they get the middle class to vote for such idiocy?
& Michael Moore On the Downsizing of America
The Elimination of the Middle Class: Part XII
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Finally, Lewis Black On the Heart of the Matter: Greed
The Elimination of the Middle Class: Part XIII
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Blaming America
While in many circles it is quite fashionable to blame America for the tremendous disparity in wealth and power, that obscures the issue and makes finding a solution almost impossible. The historical fact is that once humans moved beyond tribal living, the skewed distribution of resources became more and more extreme. There was an Inca emperor with 10,000 virgin wives, not to mention King Solomon with his 1,000 wives and concubines. While there are those that would also be quick to blame Saudi extravagance on the artificial creation by the West of the Saudi family's dominance (or Dubai extravagance on the West's support of the emirates), there is simply no evidence that historical patterns in the region were ever any different once tribes began to be replaced by kingdoms and eventually empires.
Welcome aboard Wall Street Executive
Air's nonstop flight to Economic Disaster. We will be arriving slightly ahead of schedule.
The United States is simply the geopolitical-economic entity currently on the top of the heap. With the mismanagement and explosion of the US deficit due to massive tax cuts for the rich along with a simultaneous massive expenditure of funds on the Iraq War, the strength of the American economy may be rapidly eroding. And, as we have seen recently, the deregulation of the financial markets has enabled unrestrained greed to create economic havoc that may finally end American dominance. In any case, with corporate globalization, the distinction between the U.S. and the rest of the world is slowly dissolving. Yet, as this occurs, the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands is increasing, rapidly creating a pattern that might better be termed global slavelization. The new ruling oligarchy is becoming an alliance between those whose interests lie with the multi-national corporations they own and control.
The problem is that we need to come to terms with the normal, universal human tendency to try to acquire and retain control over wealth, over resources. This tendency has accelerated out of control as we have created larger and larger social groupings that have enormous quantities of wealth. The wealth of southern city-states enticed the northern barbarian hordes to invade. While we may be able to stop the endless organized violence over land and other spoils of war, the vast resources within societies numbering many millions of people remain a mesmerizing target. With the advent of the corporation, we have made legal and financial manipulation the preferred weapon of conquest and acquisition. However, when the population explosion is added to the increasingly inequitable distribution of resources, the situation becomes increasingly untenable, unstable, and unsustainable.
Here's an Insider's View from
the Top of the Corporate World.
Toward a Yoan Understanding of the Problem and Its Solution
What does the study of Yo (Reality) tell us about property rights and sharing our world? Help us develop a Yoan philosophy of property rights. On our WikiYo, we have created a page where all can contribute and you can help us develop a proposal for a Yoan model of ownership/property rights. Please feel free to chime in and edit the linked page and to create other linked pages with other proposals and/or discussions of the issues.
To download a printable copy of a recent version of this collaborative view of property rights, click here.
Are we exaggerating the extent of the problem?
Well, if the incredibly skewed ownership of our planet doesn't convince you that there is a major problem, maybe Michael Crichton's short essay about ownership of knowledge will. It's a bit of a "mind blower." And it shows that Dave Rovics is not exaggerating, even a little, in the song below.
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download, right-click.
First you told us only through you could we know God
And if we dared to question, then He wouldn't spare the rod
For you we worked the soil, for you we dug the moors
For you we shed our blood and fought so many pointless wars
Now you build your fences; you say there's nothing we can do
You say the world around us belongs fairly to the few
But about six billion people, no doubt will agree
This world is our home, not your property
It's the commons, our right of birth
And you who would enclose the land all around the Earth
Our future is your downfall, when we cut this ball and chain
You who'd sacrifice the public good for your private gain
With our sweat we built the railroads, built cities on these shores
But because you own the money, you say that it's all yours
We laid the phone lines and the pipelines and then right before our eyes
You say the things our taxes paid for you now will privatize
Privatize the hospitals, privatize the schools
Privatize the prisons for all those who break your rules
And preparing for the day, when all the wells run dry
You say you own the very rain that falls down from the sky
But it's the commons, our right of birth
And you who'd own the water all around the Earth
Our future is your downfall, when we cut this ball and chain
You who'd sacrifice the public good for your private gain
You claim to own the harvest with your terminator seeds
You claim to own the genomes of every animal that breeds
You claim to own our culture and the music that we play
And with each song that we download to your coffers we must pay
You would even own my name and you say it's for the best
Maybe you'll let us on your radio if our songs can pass your test
You own country, you own western, you say you've given us a choice
You may own the airwaves but you'll never own my voice
It's the commons, our right of birth
And you who’d own the music all around the Earth
Our future is your downfall, when we cut this ball and chain
You who'd sacrifice the public good for your private gain
Some other views of "property rights"
Tongue-in-cheek or not, this is actually what happens when individuals and corporations are allowed to exploit resources without a concern for the long range general good:
Intellectual Property Rights
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Here's Stephen Colbert & Lawrence Lessig
On our grossly outdated copyright laws.
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And whatever you do, don't forget the hairy-nosed Wombat!
 "New US Currency: The Reality Note (or The Yo Note ;-)'")
 "New International Currency: The One Reality Note (or The Yo Note ;-)'")
Click down here
 "In Mexico, a tiny elite owns almost everything, while half the population lives on less than five dollars/day.")
 "CEO of Exxon: One of the Owners of Our World")
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