>>And on the bottom side, if you had a job, you had a decent living. Even if you weren't lucky finding a job, you had a guaranteed healthcare, and even some accomodation - you could be homeless if you really wanted to stay out of system or just deliberately pis*ed the system off.
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>>>If 400:1 means I make 200k a year and the president of a corporation makes 400 times that ( an issue that should only matter to his stockholders ), fine. If the ratio is 10:1 and I make 10k a year, I don't see the advantage to me.
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>>But if you make 50 or 80K, how can the guy making $8000/hr be 200 or more times smarter than you? If you're OK with that... well, I'm not.
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>But why does it matter if 50k or 80k gives you a better life than in a system where the bosses make much less but the workers live like peasants?

Are you sure this A xor B is the only choice there is? I'm not buying that clunky old black and white TV. There's a big flat color and 3d out there.

> I don't think Brittany Spears is worth more to society than Bernard Lewis, but I'm sure she makes more. A star on a sitcom makes a million an episode - but that's because he brings in 15 million an episode in revenue. Nobody said you couldn't be a junk bond trader.

I'm well aware that the system is rich enough to support thousands of such paradoxes :). If they had to wait for some revenue from me, they'd have to get real jobs ;).

>Inequity is not historically unusual. I guess the issue is what is your chance of grabbing one of the undeserved brass rings. Seems in that sense, we have at least created a place where that opportunity exists. The proof of that is the millions and millions who over the years have voted with their feet.
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>I was thinking about that a lot on July 4. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Notice the first two are outright guarantees, but the third - there is a guarantee of opportunity - the pursuit - but no guarantee of outcome. the state cannot promise happiness - only promise you your fair shot.

There's a nice cynical Serbian proverb, "promise, to an insane a joy" ("obećanje, ludom radovanje").

As for the shot being fair, I think that's an illusion. You may only be protected from outright assault by known tricks, and not even all of them - the rest will take some time, money and lobbying to get on the books, if they ever get there.

>I rather like that. It is both hopeful and cynical - but it does seem to reflect wisdom of the nature of what the state can actually do for an individual.

The land of opportunity, sure, as soon as you set your foot on it there are about a dozen cons rubbing their hands. They all have an opportunity to make a buck on you, because they know the ropes and you don't. And there's just too many ropes for anyone sane to know them all - you may not pay the toll on the bridge, but you'll pay for crossing the river every now and then.

>The French Revolution - and all the Marxist twaddle that followed - promised liberty, equality, and brotherhood. The second simply is never true and the third cannot be created by mandate. And when the disappointment and sense of betrayal sets in, it is Thermidor and the tumbrels start to roll - and life and liberty are the first victims.

Marx and Engels once said that the Revolution, if it would want a chance to succeed, would have to happen all over the world at the same time. I thought they were wrong, seeing the number of countries where it succeeded - but now I see that they actually didn't. They all succumbed to this or that version of siege mentality - and under siege they were for all their years - and one important measure of their success was in how much did they get away from the military thinking, from command model and top-down social engineering. Most of the things they let happen from grassroots were successful, while most of the things issued from the top were at best not too damaging.

One failure all revolutions have in common (including the bourgeois ones) is their (in)ability to defend themselves from, as Lenin said, from "thugs in our own ranks". Stalin, Spanish inquisition, Milošević et al, Nixon.