"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- unknown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

bassackwards
December 21, 2003 - 11:20 am

well, that a noble idea, but the person didn't quite see that doing that wouldn't solve anything.

without even thinking deeply about it, it occured to me, that if we all had million dollars.. would that mean no one would work? well, that'd be silly. if no one worked.. what good would a million bucks be? who would be making the goods to spend the money on? so, no.. we'd all still be working.

since we are still working.. and the companies are paying us all a million bucks - can you imagine how expensive a cup of coffee would be?

afterall, the little dinor that sells you cup needs to pay each employee a million dollars - so you can bet you're pay several thounsand dollars per cup. hope it's yummie.

not to mention some folks do their damndest to loose that money as fast as possible and others would be working just as hard to take money (i don't mean via stealing) from others.

in short order we'd be back to pretty much what we have now.. rich, middle class and poor.

the problem isn't who has money and who doesn't - that's just a symptom. the problem, at least to my current way of thinking, is that we live in a culture that has come to value money above all else.

we like to say things like 'money can't buy happiness' and 'you can't take it with you when you go' - but really.. as a whole we think money CAN buy happiness.. at least that's how it seems to me.

actaully, i suppose the root problem is human nature. we always need something more. we always need to feel special. we are a greedy species.

there's never enough good for us to have. never enough money.. never enough land - even if we kill off everything that lives there now, afterall, we are humans.. and the rulers of the earth. it's our land.. anything living there is just 'keeping it warm' until we get to it.

you can see this need for more more more throughout our culture. one girl gets her tongue pierced and that's considered out there and cool. now it's pretty common.. things have progressed. girls need to wear thongs and have the waist band of the thong showing above their pants/shorts - so everyone knows they are wearing a thong. getting nipples pierced is in.. anything they can think of to be hot, cool and sexy.

guys are no better.

adults are worse - we should have learned better by now. who the hell needs a gas guzzling suv? who needs a hummer?

status symbols.. are just a way of saying, yes i'm greedy.. but i look cool, so that's what counts. i'm different and better than you. i have money, money is what i need to make myself better/cooler than you.

i mean we live in a society where we work 8 hours a day and have an avgerage commute of something like 45 minutes. so that's a total of 9.5 hours a day devoted to work. add in the hour or so people get up before they leave for work and you're over 10 hours a day to work. if the average person sleeps 8 hours a night, that's 18 hours a day taken up. so we have about six hours a day to 'live' our lives.

how fucked up is this? how bassackwards can you get? the sad thing is...people really think redistributing the wealth of the world will fix things.

think about that.. if everyone in this world were to make an equal wage.. do you realize that the standard of living in a place like ethiopa would skyrocket? that's what everyone loves about the idea.. the truely poor and impoverished places would benifit a great deal.

but think about the premise again. we are redistributing the wealth of the world.

so if impoverished nations go up, the wealthy nations go down.

don't be a fool and think the poor nations are going to be just like the wealthy nations.. no, the standard of living in wealthy nations need to fall way, way, way down.

i don't know what country would be a good example of where the middle might be..

but i'm not fool enough to think i'll still be living half as nice as i am right now.

i dunno, perhaps that is the answer.. though we'd need one world government to do it.. probably have to sort out religion..

i don't really think it's possible, with how people are today, to ever have world peace. so much must change and people do hate to change to mesh with others.. no, all change must be to fit how we see things.

bassackwards indeed.