The Stormcock Community

It's important to get this straight. When you say  "I think we agree in principle" well,  no we don't because you say it doesn't what what the system is and I am totally opposed to that standpoint. There's no need to pretend we agree when we clearly don't. That's OK. 

I don't agree that everybody has a chance to participate and benefit when the system totally depends on the existance of a large majority who create the wealth but don't benefit from the full results of labour because the profits are automatically  transferred into the hands of the minority who own and control the levers of power, communication and production. That's fundamental to how capitalism works, not an abberration of some purer form which never existed and never can.

I do agree about the fantastic material and human resources which are left under used or squandered and could be organised into a society of peaceful abundance, but not under the present system and insufferably slow change is equivalent to no change at all when the urgency of the situation is already long overdue.

When the necessary fundamental change does come, it won't be because of the actions of one or two charismatic leaders but more likely out of the desperate conditions triggering an uprising of ordinary people who just cannot take it any more,  organising  on a self determined local basis and then linking up to form voluntary coalitions, and then regional and international voluntary federations, with delegates still under the control of the grass roots movement and subjected to the right of recall and replacement if they show even the slightest hint of elitism.

Andy

http://distributedresearch.net/blog

http://usefulwiki.com/londontheatre

It has amused me the way that this accounting device has been blamed by the gamblers.  All it does is tell an inconvenient truth that has unfortunate psychological effects in irrational markets.  Investors have a right to know the true value of the assets in which they are investing. Mark to market provides the best estimate, based on current information, of that value.  The problem is that is leads to panic if formerly buoyant values are hit by sudden drops.  What was criminal in all this was the absurd way in which bad debts (the original sub-prime mortgages) were packaged up and sold to others, who invested the hard-earned wealth of yet others in these worthless assets - which were still being valued at a meaningless book value.  What is even more disgusting is that the original victims of the sub-prime mortage business - the poor people who couldn't afford the repayments on the high interest loans they took on and lost their homes - got no compensation and are still homeless or at best living in poverty, whereas the people responsible for this fiasco, the risk-taking entrepreneurs, got away with their massive bonuses and had their businesses rescued by "the most socialist measures ever taken by an American government ever": as if... merely the capitalists using the government's ("taxpayers") money to dig them out of a hole.

I speak as an accountant ...

Bob