Preface: This is a late night post, and is usually when I get really political and pessimistic and do some deep and often flawed thinking, I just wanted to get this out there, for lack of a better place.
As I think about the world and see the changes happening around me, and hear about all sorts of bad things happening, I can't help but feel down, like there is no hope for bringing kids to this world and just hope that everything doesn't collapse before my lifetime.
The problems I refer to are from the big things, the economic crisis in the US and global warming, to the little things, like ads in places there use to not be ads (youtube).
The more I think about these things, the more I trace everything back to human selfishness and greed. Seriously, I feel that every problem in the world is a descendant effect of this basic principle. Examples - ads everywhere where there use to be none. In streaming videos online for example, there has been a huge increase in the amount of ads now from when I remember. This comes from corporate greed, and the universal need for corporations to expand, no matter how big they get. You never hear a corporation or business with the goal of being stagnant, but stable. Every aspiring business would love to become a multinational multi billion dollar corporation, and that is the ultimate goal, whether realistic or not. If this means decreasing the quality of their products, or stepping on their employees' salaries, overtime, pensions, health care, and hours (all things that are becoming bigger issues now) then so be it.
Now this is where government is supposed to step in by regulating businesses, to make sure they won't overstep their bounds, but what seems to be the popular opinion now is that big government is bad and big business is good. It seems like most politicians are bought and paid for by big corporations to pass laws to further their profits, and the regulators, again motivated by greed, are bribed to skip over safety checks of say an oil drilling operation which led to the BP oil crisis.
We hear about how the United States is bankrupt, and about the rising price of living, and about inflation of the dollar with absolutely no increase in average salary of the middle class worker and how this generation is the only generation that will have is worse than the last one. But then we hear news reports of massive wall street bonuses, and how the top 1 percent controls like 50 percent of the wealth or something, and how the rich CEO's are paid like 256 times the amount their workers are, which is some big number more than it was ten years ago. We hear about out debt to China, and fail to attribute it to the fact that our entire manufacturing industry has almost moved to China, where businesses went in order to pay less for their goods to be made by workers who will do anything for a pittance. And after they make these goods, they lobby to decrease tariffs on these imported goods so these oversees products cost less than our own products, causing our manufacturing industry to die out.
Now we have this 14 trillion dollar debt, and at the same time, we lower taxes on everyone because remember big government is bad, and we are all to happy to have lower taxes cause thats what Fox News tells us, and besides, we can't afford to live with our stagnant salary in a more expensive world so more money = better world. This makes government unable to pay off the debt, and on top of THAT, we hear about politicians proposing cuts to spending in infrastructure and education (which is good for keeping the sheep stupid and unaware of how hard they are getting screwed). So spending cuts are not enough, so they go after Medicare, saying they should replace it with a voucher good for a few months worth of an average senior's expenses in medicine.
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Now all that is just stuff that you may not see and be affected by, but it affects our daily lives as well. Remember times before EA/Acitision and CoD type games, where 90% of the game's budget is spent on advertising instead of on the game itself, making it not stand on its own merits, but on how much people know about it? Can you imagine how much more freakin' amazing some of these games like L.A. Noire could be if you didn't have to see their ad like 500 times already, and they spent more money on development or making the game cheaper? (seriously, I can repeat the entire ad word for word I've seen it so much, and I don't even have the game). Remember the old Battle.net and how you could do LAN games with your friends? Might be no more of that because that means you and your friends may be able to play the game with only one purchased copy, and in fact, you may even have to pay a premium to play with your friends now (like what WoW is about to do) instead of going through matchmaking.
See how high gas prices have become? If oil companies weren't lobbying to subsidize every form of energy equally instead of encouraging renewable and greener methods, we could have many more electric or solar powered cars for affordable prices, helping the environment, and cutting our dependence on oil. Why can't we have this? Greed.
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The best explanation I can think of as to why the human race is driven by greed and lust for power is that a long time ago, the caring, selfless, community based cultures were overpowered and wiped out by the people who will do anything to increase their personal wealth and power. If you want a great example of this, see the Mayans before they were wiped out by people looking to make themselves rich.
As I think about the world and see the changes happening around me, and hear about all sorts of bad things happening, I can't help but feel down, like there is no hope for bringing kids to this world and just hope that everything doesn't collapse before my lifetime.
The problems I refer to are from the big things, the economic crisis in the US and global warming, to the little things, like ads in places there use to not be ads (youtube).
The more I think about these things, the more I trace everything back to human selfishness and greed. Seriously, I feel that every problem in the world is a descendant effect of this basic principle. Examples - ads everywhere where there use to be none. In streaming videos online for example, there has been a huge increase in the amount of ads now from when I remember. This comes from corporate greed, and the universal need for corporations to expand, no matter how big they get. You never hear a corporation or business with the goal of being stagnant, but stable. Every aspiring business would love to become a multinational multi billion dollar corporation, and that is the ultimate goal, whether realistic or not. If this means decreasing the quality of their products, or stepping on their employees' salaries, overtime, pensions, health care, and hours (all things that are becoming bigger issues now) then so be it.
Now this is where government is supposed to step in by regulating businesses, to make sure they won't overstep their bounds, but what seems to be the popular opinion now is that big government is bad and big business is good. It seems like most politicians are bought and paid for by big corporations to pass laws to further their profits, and the regulators, again motivated by greed, are bribed to skip over safety checks of say an oil drilling operation which led to the BP oil crisis.
We hear about how the United States is bankrupt, and about the rising price of living, and about inflation of the dollar with absolutely no increase in average salary of the middle class worker and how this generation is the only generation that will have is worse than the last one. But then we hear news reports of massive wall street bonuses, and how the top 1 percent controls like 50 percent of the wealth or something, and how the rich CEO's are paid like 256 times the amount their workers are, which is some big number more than it was ten years ago. We hear about out debt to China, and fail to attribute it to the fact that our entire manufacturing industry has almost moved to China, where businesses went in order to pay less for their goods to be made by workers who will do anything for a pittance. And after they make these goods, they lobby to decrease tariffs on these imported goods so these oversees products cost less than our own products, causing our manufacturing industry to die out.
Now we have this 14 trillion dollar debt, and at the same time, we lower taxes on everyone because remember big government is bad, and we are all to happy to have lower taxes cause thats what Fox News tells us, and besides, we can't afford to live with our stagnant salary in a more expensive world so more money = better world. This makes government unable to pay off the debt, and on top of THAT, we hear about politicians proposing cuts to spending in infrastructure and education (which is good for keeping the sheep stupid and unaware of how hard they are getting screwed). So spending cuts are not enough, so they go after Medicare, saying they should replace it with a voucher good for a few months worth of an average senior's expenses in medicine.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now all that is just stuff that you may not see and be affected by, but it affects our daily lives as well. Remember times before EA/Acitision and CoD type games, where 90% of the game's budget is spent on advertising instead of on the game itself, making it not stand on its own merits, but on how much people know about it? Can you imagine how much more freakin' amazing some of these games like L.A. Noire could be if you didn't have to see their ad like 500 times already, and they spent more money on development or making the game cheaper? (seriously, I can repeat the entire ad word for word I've seen it so much, and I don't even have the game). Remember the old Battle.net and how you could do LAN games with your friends? Might be no more of that because that means you and your friends may be able to play the game with only one purchased copy, and in fact, you may even have to pay a premium to play with your friends now (like what WoW is about to do) instead of going through matchmaking.
See how high gas prices have become? If oil companies weren't lobbying to subsidize every form of energy equally instead of encouraging renewable and greener methods, we could have many more electric or solar powered cars for affordable prices, helping the environment, and cutting our dependence on oil. Why can't we have this? Greed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The best explanation I can think of as to why the human race is driven by greed and lust for power is that a long time ago, the caring, selfless, community based cultures were overpowered and wiped out by the people who will do anything to increase their personal wealth and power. If you want a great example of this, see the Mayans before they were wiped out by people looking to make themselves rich.
