I don't know who Freya Hastings is, but I love his/her series of webpage essays/rants on politics and economy. I have never read anyone's writings who agree so much with my own. This "rant" appended below portrays the upper class/ruling elite/rich/CEO's, etc., as vampires, parasites upon society. I don't agree with everything he/she says, but it is definitely interesting:
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Perception is relative. Plato’s “Parable of the Cave” teaches that we are all chained in a cave of misperception, and what we perceive as reality are merely shadows on the cave wall. Plato’s basic tenets: Question Authority. Question everything. Writing a few years after Plato in the 4th century BCE, Aristotle was an equally important foundation of western thought. Aristotle gave us the ruling class named after him: Aristocracy. He believed in slavery. Yet he also gave us democracy and said we should build a democratic society as egalitarian as possible, so that all men can be equal. Quite a paradox, until you realize that “men” means only landowning aristocrats. Women and slaves, the majority of the population, don’t count as people. America’s Founding Fathers based American Democracy on Aristotle, Locke and Rousseau, and continued the tradition that women and slaves are nonpersons not even mentioned in discussions of democratic reform. Southern plantation owners carried this tradition on the floor of Congress, favoring States’ Rights even as they denied rights of slaves. By the time women and slaves were allowed to vote and did achieve equality, globalization changed the rules of the game.
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Aristocrats over the last few decades have gotten fantastically rich on the backs of the majority, who are just as superfluous as any slave caste in history. Only the justification has changed, to be more palatable to a more literate public: Now we call this master-slave system the Global Free Market. Power corrupts. Money corrupts. Whatever aristocrats have, they say it’s not enough and demand more. Multimillionaires lobby against taxes, even against a minimum wage. Their value system, all that neo-conservative nonsense they learned in business school, is based on selfish narcissism. These people are incredibly selfish, egotistical, narcissistic monsters. These monsters hate, fear and loath the public, the majority, our community, our society. Hording millions is at heart a hate crime. Such monsters have no sense of noblesse oblige and cannot be trusted with the supreme social responsibility their wealth demands.
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Our society is bound together in a series of Social Contracts. John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau recognized this: Rulers govern only with the consent of the governed. If the public will not tolerate a regime, the regime cannot function. Millionaires think they can horde their millions according to the fiction of the laissez faire free market, failing to realize that they are bound by the Social Contract: The poor allow the rich to earn the lion’s share of wealth only if the rich reinvest and benefit society. The poor majority of the public agree not to rise up and chop off the heads of millionaires only if the system benefits everybody. Millionaires must adhere to this Social Contract: They must act responsibly, with noblesse oblige, and reinvest the majority of their money for the benefit of society. If they choose to horde millions, progressive tax must forcibly take the horde from them. Today we see a breach of the Social Contract as millionaires choose to believe that the laissez faire free market allows them to horde and misallocate millions. Breach of the Social Contract at the other end is therefore justified, as the populace wakes up and asks, “Why are we tolerating these millionaire thugs? Let’s kill the rich and take their money! Why not?” Indeed, why not? If one party negates the Social Contract, there is nothing to prevent the collapse of society.
As for the Social Darwinist belief that the rich are inherently, genetically better than the poor, we can ignore such nonsense. The upward mobility of classes and families in America throughout the centuries proves that Social Darwinism is incorrect: Anyone, any family, can prosper and rise to leadership if they are simply given a chance. We are all born equal and free. As Rousseau said, “Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.” The artificial social hierarchy of our class system, imposed from birth, is what cripples the self-esteem and skills of the poor, and gives the rich undeserved confidence and opportunities. The rich create the poor, by maintaining a society that denies college education to the poor, and systematically encourages the poor to have large families, to deliberately flood the labor market to keep wages low. Family Planning, Birth Control, Social Democracy, and Progressive Tax can reform such an artificial system, so that ultimately, everyone will be allowed to realize their true potential, regardless of whether they are born with wooden souls or golden souls.
more here:
http://www.geocities.com/kew1788/AristocratsVampires.htm
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