If things are going to change, surely pressure needs to come from all sides, but particularly from mass social movements, as happened in movements such as the civil rights movement in the US. It sure as heck ain’t going to happen without them…

PS a little something to mull over – World Streets editor Eric Britton reckons one major obstacle to winning the fight for a more sustainable future is a lack of creative communications – an area in which you could no doubt help out:

http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/why-are-we-losing-the-war-on-sustainable-transport-sustainable-cities-and-sustainable-lives/#more-8719

I think “Too many things are soiled by an uncontrollable sense of despair that no matter how clear it becomes that our world society is a corrupt and hollow shell serving a tiny elite at the expense of the overwhelming majority,” just about sums it up. And that is a depressing thing to consider.

But. Film critic Mark Kermode, in response to a complaint from Simon Mayo that his rants against 3D were becoming boring, remarked recently, “Well, when it stops being wrong, I’ll stop complaining about it.” And for that reason alone – and it’s a good one – you need to keep blogging about what’s wrong. For one thing, I and people like me need to read it.

You’re so right though Uponnothing, the world is going to sh*t, economically and ecologically. A revolution by force is not right but perhaps a new political and economic system can be formed (more modernised version of Communism maybe? with democracy? lol)As I said, one day the human world will wake up to the resource problem, and climate change, and every other thing we’re screwing the world up with.

Anyway, keep up the good work man. Never feel discouraged. Stick it to the MAN

I’m afraid the majority are stupid, and will always be stupid, and the Daily Mail and so forth continue to strengthen this stupidity. But we can resist this, like you’ve been doing, and try to show the world what the people who give us information really are. Keep up the fight, and maybe one day the proles will fight for a better world (1984 reference BOO-YAH) You’ve just got to hope man, hope that one day someone GOOD and WISE will find power thrust upon them, rather than being power-hungry and seeking power. It’s all we can do, but if we keep trying to humiliate and insult the Elite (and their media servants) the world can get better.

(and yes I do understand that i’ve just written a barrage of positive, hopeful bullcrap, but hey, it’s good to be optimistic right?)

Physical resources on the planet are finite, but we are, as a species, incredibly ingenious at using them efficiently, under the capitalist system. High GDP per capita correlates with almost all that we want in life, including equality.

Big business, and businesses in general do not like capitalism: as Adam Smith observed, it is the goal of producers to suppress competition. In modern society with so much power concentrated in the state, the most efficient way of doing this, and receiving the ‘economic rents’ which arise is to capture the legislators. Sadly this is happening increasingly in the USA and in the UK.

You complain about ‘the corporate body’ as if it were a separate species. In fact corporations are owned by individuals, just as governments spend on behalf of individuals. Corporates, like any economic actors respond to economic incentives. One of the biggest incentives is to increase net profits by minimizing taxes. Governments deliberately produce tax codes with lots of loopholes because they are advised by professionals whose income depends on being paid to exploit these loopholes. The solution to this problem is not to increase tax rates on companies. One solution would be to not tax them at all, but to tax the stakeholders of companies (individuals, ultimately, forming employees, suppliers, shareholders, bondholders, other creditors) on the additional revenue that will accrue to them from the reduced rate of tax.

There is a problem with excess returns to management, but I believe that this is largely confined to the financial sector and simply arises because of the huge economic rents that accrue to actors in this sector as the result of innumerable subsidies to providers of capital, particularly banks. We are now funding UK banks at 0.5% from the BoE for buying Spanish Govt. bonds yielding 7%. Is it remotely suprising that it’s difficult for a small business in a competitive industry to get bank funding. The whole point is that small businesses face competition from new entrants into the sector while banks, because of the massive regulatory barriers to entry are virtually immune from competition.

Quite what we can do about it is another matter. There just doesn’t seem to be any spark to ignite the revolution – for a revolution is what we need to reset things I fear.

(For the record, I am a liberal at heart, so all this talk of revolution shows how far the world has skewed out of line.)