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:
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