Unfortunately, the backbone of every empire to ever exist came from slavery and stolen wealth/land. 

Well, I wouldn't be so harsh, but mobs do havea history of doing things such as that. 

Oh man some of this thread is weird.... no most of this thread is weird.

- Cancel spending money on NASA research because you could put that money into the 3rd world? I love that the first jump was to stop spending money on something that helps the 3rd world, not say... stop spending money on War and Terror(and the war on Terror) first of all, but second, you pump more money into some countries with completely corrupt leaders, all you are doing is funding people who are already very well off, look up how many people are actively starving to death on the planet, there is times of famine and certain disasters where starvation becomes a thing, but those charity box images you hold in your head when it comes to the third world are an advertisement for a business, and much like the sexy figure drinking the Coke you want to buy, they are just a model and not the real person.

- Someone in Dubai has a Lambo, omfg my life sucks! Why? What difference does it make to you in the slightest? Because there is someone in the world you'll never meet driving a more expensive and far more dangerous version of a thing you own yourself? Especially the people on this forum, who have a PC, electricity and the time to spend sat down at it chatting about video games they love. I think there is really not a whole lot most people on here at the very least should be sad about, only have a few hundred or less in the bank? Is it enough for you to live happily with? Then be happy about it, don't spend your life looking at people like Bill Gates who hit it big or a family who has been gathering wealth for 200 years, they all shit, they all die, when all is said and done your pile of bones will be just as dead as theirs, don't spend your time alive wishing you were them, enjoy your life, tis short enough.

I'm sorry btw if there are people on here who do not have enough money to get by "happily" week by week, perhaps there is something changeable to help you achieve being that bit better off to the point where you are comfortable, but even then... don't look at these 62 people and compare your pile of wealth to theirs, because like I said at the end of the day, everyone dies, can't take it with you.


Like Kowen said btw (or at least as I read it, sorry if I misunderstand you Kowen) But someone has to lead when it comes to the world, both Politically and Financially. If everyone had the same as everyone else to keep things "fair" you are talking communism, and that doesn't work too great either.

I hope you're being ironic.

And that my friends, is why I'm a communist.

True. Its just something to think that one family would run the focial banks of five nations and have influence for hundreds of years.

Sorry, you should learn Indian history. India didn't have slavery, nor it's inhabitants ever wage a war on any other nation. Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism all gave birth in India while buddhism spread throught asia by trade and peaceful contact. And since their inception, those religions have accepted eachother and others, until Islamic Conquests (1200-1700) and British Colonialism (1700-1800) sent India (and China) in a way back a 1000 years. All the while generation of Indians, and Africans were being supressed and forced to basically make colonists rich, yes in fact it still is true, why is it that europe and and america own more wealth than all other races, when for the majority of humanity asia was the superpower? Before Europe and Islamic people started interfereing with their affairs with swords and guns ablazen. This article's maps proves my point: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/09/map_of_the_week_global_wealth.html

Communism is probably the most unfair political system ever envisioned. It is equal (in theory at least. Has never, and won't ever actually happen, but that's not important to this discussion), but not fair. Distributing things equally is about as unfair as it gets.

Now, I'm a socialist, so I want everyone the get the same opportunities for success. I think we've managed that pretty well in Norway. But that does not mean everyone will achieve the same success, and that does not mean everyone deserves the same success, and it deffinitely does not mean that everyone are entitled to have as much as everyone else. It also doesn't mean that poor people should be left on their own with no help from others.

Because it's unfair and a lot of people don't even see it. "But they worked so hard for it." Yeah, 'probably', and what about the factory workers or dok workers who work their asses off? What about them? Don't they deserve a good live too?

To illustrate my point, in Belgium, we'll be getting a new energy tax to cover up the hole in our government budget caused by subsidies for solar panels. Everyone (solar panels or not) has to pay a monthly contribution, which is quite a lot for normal people and small businesses, but which is absolute peanuts for large companies who laid entire solar farms and are stilling making a killing from them.

All over the world, people in the middle class are slowly being squeezed, some toward the top, most toward the bottom.

I'm not proposing absolute income equality in sé. What I see as communist is a system where large scale inequality can never happen, a system where cooperation and sharing is the base for society, not competition, and where the vast majority has real democratic powers (not the "put-your-ballot-in-a-box-every-five-years-and-let-us-f*-everything-up), a system where the economy and energy sector is democratically planned by everyone (and not like the old USSR by a large beaurocracy).

I might have been a socialist, but the social-democrats here (in Belgium) are nothing more than a bunch of left-wing capitalists. They never look for any real change in the system, the only thing they do is correct the margin a bit. The Greens aren't much (if at all) better.