When greed triumphs over civilisation.

A letter a day to number 10. No 989

Thursday 29 January 2015. When greed triumphs over civilisation.

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http://www.keithordinaryguy.org.uk/

Dear Mr Cameron,

Humans evolved because each (healthy, unimpaired) human is capable of making, obtaining, gathering, from the incredible fecundity of nature, more than they need to live on. If that were not true we simply would not be here. With the use of tools and machinery we can produce many, many times what each individual needs to live on. In todays terms the excess from our labour is called profit.

In our world of 'work' the fruit of our labour is exchanged for a token called 'money' which is, all too often, much less than the value of our labour or what we need to live on, the profit going to the owner of the business. Profit is what is left after costs, including labour, are accounted for.

In the 'free market economy' there is no restriction on how much of the profits can be kept from us, indeed too many people are not enjoying any profit from their labour and can't make ends meet. The profits flow upwards without restraint and a small percentage of people, about 1%, grow ever richer whilst we barely plod along, struggling from week to week. Owners, CEOs, shareholders grow rich whilst ordinary people get poorer, or are merely maintained at a non-profit level of existence. That system is so deeply ingrained in our thinking and our belief structure that not only do vast numbers of people not question it, it is defended as normal. If we challenge it we are mocked and accused of being Marxists, communists, socialists, engaging in the politics of envy or just plain loonies.

Human kind evolved through cooperation, it's in our nature to do so, but a very few have exploited that through another part of our common nature, greed, and hence we have the mess that the world is in today. They don't want to share, they just want more and more and don't care at what cost they achieve that.

The mark of a civilised society is how well it looks after it's members who are vulnerable. You and your government are driving us in the very opposite direction, abandoning the poor and the vulnerable. You have created an utterly juvenile image of society as 'strivers versus skivers', with everyone in need of some support, the sick and disabled, the homeless, the unemployed, the young and old, those with degenerative diseases, all lumped in the skiver category. State barbarity is not something to be proud of, which you clearly are, it is unforgivable.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/thousands-with-degenerative-conditions-classified-as-fit-to-work-in-future--despite-no-possibility-of-improvement-9811910.html

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/entry/mythbusters-strivers-versus-skivers