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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (60467)	10/1/2002 1:45:12 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Well, how do you think it would feel not to fear death at 50? Not to lose half your children before they are adults? Not to have it be commonplace for epidemics to decimate cities? Not to have to work 12 or 15 hours a day for subsistence wages? Not to be illiterate and ignorant of even simple things, like how to use a bank or your rights as a tenant? Not to have your only choice if your boss wants sex to give it to him, because you cannot afford the loss of income? I could go one, but why bother.......

To: The Philosopher who wrote (60467)	10/4/2002 4:48:35 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

widened the gap between rich and poor Perhaps but while doing so we have lifted the poor up to a higher standard then what they had in the past. If I could make the poor have twice as much real wealth then they have now while the middle class has three times as much and the rich ten times as much I don't think I would refuse to take advantage of the opportunity. Also I'm not sure that the gap between the rich and the poor has greatly increased. The number of rich has gone up and the gap between average and the poor may have gone up, but the people at the very top have always had enormous advantages over those at the bottom. Where the poor in ancient Egypt or Rome closer in wealth and status and power to the Pharaoh or Emperor then the poor in the US are to the president of the US or of a large company? Was a medieval peasant so very close to a king of a major country or the Pope? (recognizing that the world simply cannot sustain an entire globe living the American lifestyle) At east not yet. have increased rates of cancer I think the main reasons for the increase from past centuries are 1 - Smoking and 2 - The fact that we live longer now. We live long enough to die of things like cancer and heart disease in great numbers. have increased exponentially the ability of people to kill each other We do indeed have greater power to use for positive or negative ends. have lessened interdependence It can be argued that we have done no such thing as we are more specialized now and less able to completely fend for ourselves. Also I'm not sure lessened interdependence is such a horrible thing. The idea of working together to help each other is great and often produces good results but I'd rather not be in a situation where a large communal effort was needed just to survive. have promoted the open use of sex for commercial purposes and the commercial degradation of women I don't thin commercial use of sex is really such a horror. It might reasonably considered negative but not IMO a big enough negative to really impact on the overall issue of how much things are better or worse then they used to be. and created many people who are dependent on drugs Many drugs were not that available hundreds of years ago but once they became wildly available they where used a lot and there was a lot of dependence. For that matter alcohol dependence has been with us for almost as long as we have had civilization. What I would use as an example of a negative trend more then most of these is the larger role of the state in determining how our wealth we be spent. Tim