Re: [sudo-discuss] DystopiaNews: Veggie-meat: you don't have to eat bugs.

One thing the world can't afford is real estate speculation. Andrew's point about $30/plate restaurants is right on target here. The price of restaurant food is primarily driven by the rents charged for the real estate. And the rents in turn are driven by the price of buying the real estate. Most of that cost doesn't go into the property owner's profit, because chances are that s/he had to buy the property at a high price to begin with. The source of those high real estate prices is speculation in real estate, and it's also why your home/apartment rent is eating from 1/3 to 1/2 or more of your monthly income. And the solution to that is known generally as _land reform_, whereby land is treated as a static resource rather than a speculative commodity. Getting from here to there will require truly revolutionary change. But there's something else the world also can't afford: an aristocratic oligarchy that lives like something far beyond royalty, riding on our backs. And here's the dirty little secret that the real oligarchs don't want you to know: The average millionaire is closer to his/her gardeners and custodians in terms of assets, than s/he is to the real oligarchy. That's how far in the stratosphere the oligarchy lives. And for every Bill & Melinda Gates, who put their wealth toward really solving the world's problems (the Gates Foundation does more for global public health each year than any half dozen national governments put together), there are many more whose goal in life is to buy a handful of Senators or a President. Occasionally they succeed, such as when the CEO of Diebold assured Ohio Republicans in 2004 that he would do everything possible to get Bush elected to a second term. After it was over, independent statistics experts demonstrated that the odds of Diebold's electronic voting machine errors coming out favoring Bush by the reported numbers, were millions to one against chance. In other words, the 2004 election was hacked. We can't afford that. The world can't afford that. Everything we do to remove ourselves from feeding the oligarchy's insatiable appetite, is a revolutionary act. -G. ===== On 13-05-16-Thu 12:46 PM, Andrew wrote: