Now you have made me think!! Naturally I don't mean to support the global free trade push, rather I support regulation at the national level, but it is the mechanism of that regulation I am struggling to identify. I like your point about real capitalism as opposed to the corporate way. Unfortunately the pooling of resources may be a characteristic of modern man in that it gave a selective advantage to the tribes that employed it best. I am not convinced that this is intrinsically evil. Even at a village level those who benefit from working together need a way to demonstrate a social conscience, in the absence of a spiritual incentive, taxation seems appropriate.
<---profits are privatized, but costs are socialized. The attendant repair and maintenance are left to succeeding generations if possible, if not, to present low and middle income taxpayers."> I agree that socialised costs, either infrastructure or environmental, are paid for by taxes. There are more low and middle taxpayers and therein lies the democratic possibility of shifting the tax burden to where it belongs. And yes it may well be a trickle down effect but without some mitigating mechanism the efficient capitalists tend to condense to corporations. A classic criticism of taxing wealth is that it removes the incentive for economic advancement, that of course is the idea, by providing incentive for the poor and removing the incentive above some point we may reduce the gap between the rich and poor. It also caps the local capitalist. If we can't do that in developed countries what chance else where. <The poorer they are the more children they have. I know of no instances where the Green Revolution reduced infant and mother mortality rates, many instances of it doing the opposite.> Population would not have increased without a higher survival rate- naturally the population expands to meet another (or the same) limiting factor. If we rationalise the obvious- that the children we help to survive will contribute to further population pressure- we are on dangerous ground. The best way I can detect to prevent this is to properly educate the children and provide them with social (including food) security by taxing those who accumulate the wealth. ( Increases in productivity do produce wealth and it does accumulate some where.) This is improving my expression but I am still waiting for mechanism. "Come the revolution" is no longer good enough, nor can we wait for some genius, we need to find ways to turn the tide ourselves and use the expanding environmental movement to affect the democratic system. Our "green platitudes" work on the converted, pragmatic sustainability and transparent mechanics of change may work on the majority. You have offered some insight to the issue of assisting sustainable development in under developed States. Thanks Harry Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
