In Reply to: Money for all... posted by noddy_star on Wednesday, 7. September 2005 at 09:51 Bali Time:
Any economic system can only be successful if it is voluntarily entered into by all participants. To point to places like Russia and say, "See, communism doesn't work" is like saying that women can't get along with men because no matter how many times you punched your wife and told her to love you, she refused to obey.
Anyway, China is an economic powerhouse, even though the so-called communist party are all capitalists. But again, it's a system built at gunpoint.
A better model would be Venezuala, which is recovering nicely as a fledgeling socialist society. So long as the West leaves them alone to get on with it, I think they will do okay. Cuba certainly never had that privilege, though it has survived.
As far as the protestors go, I think that if someone's day-to-day business leads to the suffering and starvation of hundreds of millions of people, they should be kept out of the office.
Most of the protestors are peaceful, but there are always agitators -- either psycho protestors or planted there by the status quo to belittle the efforts of the protestors and make them seem foolish. It's a method that works, and gives the media something to point the cameras at. There are entire websites dedicated to exposing these planted agitators, as the same people show up in photos at various rallies and start trouble. Some have been tracked down and found to be on the payroll of one or another company or interest group. For every one discovered, you can only guess at how many others go undetected.
And I don't believe you are genuinely asking what the protestors' point is. Wasn't there just some huge mega-concert to make people aware that 75% of the world lives in poverty? (I didn't watch it, but I thought everyone else did.) The point the protestors are making is that many of these people are starving because of groups like the WTO, WEF, G8, IMF, World Bank, etc.
It's not so much that they want the rich people to give everything back. They just want to stop them taking the rest. Everything doesn't have to be equal, but, really, if you already have a billion dollars, surely you can let someone else have a banana or two. Especially when so much is just needlessly wasted. And really, can't they at least let people own their own water? Is that too much to ask?
Anyway... we're way off the original track, and far from Bali (though these issues do obviously affect Indonesia). So this will be my last post on this thread, and you can have the last word if you like.
Cheers.