You are correct.  But I only referenced monarchism as the source of the mind set, not what it is today. In other words, they are use to a government that took care of them, so their brand of democracy (with the socialism tendencies) was born from it.  I did not mean to make the connection between the state owning all (as in Monarchies and Communism) as the very democracy that succeeded the Monarchy was a refutation of total ownership by the state, and an embrace of private ownership.

I am curious as to the scholars doing this (I think that in itself may be telling).  I can see where a person may think their life's work is endangered by new revelations, so perhaps the theories are from younger scholars looking at the data critically, and with less prejudice.

I must respectfully but strongly disagree. Democracy is fundamentally dependent on the equality of citizens, which means that large differences in wealth are a problem for democratic systems. In the mercantilist world, the monarch's claim to absolute authority was the ultimate form of private ownership (the absolute monarch/owner thing also applies to many non-European cultures, like the pre-conquest Inca). In a democratic environment, people are forced to address the fact that wealth is a form of privilege that can undermine voting equality even though a majority might still prefer to tolerate as much wealth diversity as possible without formally abandoning democracy.

Hit the Wikipedia for some basics & follow up with some -site:.com or site:edu searches. I'm a lapsed scholar now, but I believe there's a good scholarly debate going on about the basic question of whether Harappan script is a true written language or just a proto-literate system for marking ownership, inventories, important dates and whatnot. The question isn't really about whether young scholars are working with "less prejudice" but which group of scholars is doing a better job of filtering out their prejudices as they work. Sometimes that means the 'old' scholar is the one really developing 'new' insights, like with Diane Ravitch's remarkable abandonment of her career-making devotion to free markets and national standards as the salvation of public schooling in the US.

Probably a matter of me being a former formal theoretician, complicated by the fact that I'm about as much of a democratic socialist as any U.S. native can hope to be at the moment. Modern U.S. rhetoric (i.e. the reason Michael started this thread in the first place) has me pretty touchy about phrases like 'private ownership' because they more often than not equate to 'concentrated, elite ownership.' I'm suspecting you meant something more like 'widespread, small-stake ownership.' (In other words, I smell a Jeffersonian.)

I'm a science groupie from way back and staunchly defend folks who reject the very name of my own political 'science' degree (my master's, by odd Texas-importing-Harvard-scholars luck, is labeled "Government" even though the department mostly thought they were political scientists). But for every social 'scientist' I've pissed off by using shudder quotes like that, I've tried to find a hard science friend to hassle about how their work can never be truly objective because their questions, funding, and methodologies are all deeply rooted in the mess of social phenomena.

EA is the epitome of capitalism, a large and exceedingly wealthy organization that has become so enamored of the charts illustrating the steady growth of their wealth that their leaders have lost all meaningful contact with both the people they employ and the customers they have won. Sound like a government to you? That's because major corporations and governments are the same class of organism--large-scale formal organizations that tend to 'institutionally forget' the reasons they were established and end up focused on protecting and expanding turf for individuals in the leadership hiearachy.
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EA has at least somewhat caved into customer demands.  EA, while a giant company, is but one of many companies out there.  The video game industry just about has more companies providing the service (video games) than just about any other industry except maybe the food industry.

Also, if you hate EA, then dont buy their games.  Simple.  If you hate your socilaist government, your options are much more limited...

Can't argue with you there.  The real controllers are the international bankers and CEO of major corporations.  However in real capitalism, fair competition must be allowed.  The cheating these companies does is hardly true capaitalism.

That's because "true capitalism" is one of those Platonic ideal things, not something actually possible in the real world. The cheating those companies due is born directly from the fact that the markets need regulation to maintain orderly operation and boost profits, and regulators are subject to capture by the interests whose actions inspired the regulatory effort in the first place.

And if you're scoffing the idea of regulations boosting profits, just ask yourself how well any transportation industry would work without things like standard rail guages, roadway lane widths, and air traffic corridors.

Faugh. France is every bit the playground for corporate power that we have here in the U.S. True, they have civilized health care and were briefly flirting with labor laws that reflected the goal of working to live, not living to work. But I'd never consider living there until the power of Paris was broken in favor of the provinces and the Turkish and North African immigrants were treated like people, not problems. (Well, really, I'd never consider living there because I'm a passionate regionalist; I want to be within at least a long day's walk of where I was born when I shuffle off the coil. But your mockery assumes I'm geographically disloyal, like most in the U.S.)

More importantly, it takes money to emigrate to another rich country and I'm just a struggling neo-wage-slave who has to pretend to be a small business at tax time because our tax laws haven't caught up to the world where careers are a thing of the past and a growing share 1099 contractors are just humble working stiffs, not high-powered consultants.

"Justice is forcing poverty upon the wealthy."

I'm surprised that rational adults still subscribe to the class warfare propaganda.

Please elaborate. I'm Floridian, and almost all of my income has been 1099 since the .com bubble burst. I'm not at all clear about who "they" are or what they might be receiving.

I'll give you the fact that the notion of justice includes a fundamental eye-of-the-beholder problem, but your idea of who is forcing what upon whom seems back-asswards.

I'm surprised to find rational adults who still peddle this sort of claptrap instead of making some specific policy proposals or at least making a reasonable attempt at stating their ideological basics.

1099'ers are generally independent contractors subject to taxes paid by the payee, not the payor.  Avoids payroll taxes (SS, workers comp, unemployment ~ 20%) to the payor.  The point being contracting doesn't produce jobs in and of itself.  That is not to say it doesn't have stress...most contractors grovel to both potential clients and banker...not to mention employees...who have only to grovel to a fucked up boss.

psychoak...I don't always understand what you write, my bad.  Do you know Zyx?

He's not too fond of me either...entirely my fault.  I still think we are both a couple of loveable guys.

Thanks for taking the time to clarify.

That's because you're counting the payroll tax.  It does not go towards public goods.  Assuming you live to be around the average lifespan, you'll be paid back far more than you put into it as well.  The government is only collecting 15% max and spends it immediately, never to invest for any hope of a return.  Grossly insufficient for the average length of collection.

Look at the standard of living instead, it's irrelevant how far the spread is.  Would you rather everyone made the same amount of money and ate beans and rice, or would you like to stay where we are now?  Having an economy where the poor are fat slobs that eat too much and never work off the fat because they go everywhere by car is a silly thing to complain about.

While I do object to it, no.  When you take money from those fueling industry, and give it to some shmuck that's going to buy a t-shirt made in China, you're not doing a damn thing to increase production.  To generate wealth, you need to produce it.  It is not a complaint about paper money, it's an observation that certain idiots, the majority of congressional members for instance, haven't figured out that the paper itself is only worth a few cents a sheet without actual production to give it value.

If we had a massive trade surplus, such idiocy might actually accomplish something as they'd probably be buying local products, it's been decades since that was true.

All BoE's do.  They are populated by burnt out brain dead teachers.

Considering your previous posts, I'm having a hard time believing this statement.  Your knowledge level on the subject should be vastly more than sufficient to avoid this mistake.  Explain how the payroll tax goes towards public goods when it's supposed to be your own personal retirement fund and gets spent on someone elses personal retirement fund long before you even retire?

More confusing statements...  What 15% goes into medical care?  12.8% of the payroll tax is for SS, only 2.9% goes into Medicare.

I'll agree with your criticism of the cost inflation, but not your reasoning.  The inflationary drivers on medical care are Medicare, state insurance boards mandating low deductibles and coverage of various procedures, the separation of payment from the user of the service by making employer provided insurance a tax loophole, and obscenely good coverage for many unions.

When Bush, the fucktard that he was, got that idiotic part D through congress, drug prices started climbing like crazy.  Medical care in general has accelerated the rate of increase every time a new program was institute.  The cost of insurance only went nuts when employers started paying for most of it and low deductibles negated any need for patients to ask why doctor chickenshit wants to run 20 tests just to tell you the pnumonia really is pnumonia instead of lymphoma.  The evidence is all there, and it all leads back to the entity you're wanting to give control.

While beans and rice are good, you're ignoring the other side of it.  All your vegetables for the year come out of your garden, if you're wealthy enough to have a house with a yard, and the only meat you can afford to eat is what you killed and cleaned yourself.  All those five foot tall grandparents out there are five feet tall because this is how life was in the 30's and 40's for people on the lower end of the spectrum.

Your dislike of using standard of living as your comparison point is all very well, but the only reason you can make that criticism is because of rapid technological progress, brought about by the system you're looking to gut.  The height of such progress was during the 1920's, which just happens to be the height of income inequality as well.

If you'd like to remove that from the system, that's ok.  40 years ago would be 1970, a relatively good year considering the following decade sucked out in comparison.  The bottom quintile in 1970 was spending over twice as much of their income on necessities compared to today.  Life is good.

Yes, I know, the discretionary income statistics all say discretionary income is down.  They're also counting the two new cars every four or five years and a two story, 2400 square foot house on a third acre lot as non-discretionary spending.  I'm not joking about the car bit either.  They don't base it off any reasonable automobile purchasing.  My idiot aunt that has purchased, and I shit you not, four different automobiles in the last few years years, two of them new, two lightly used as gifts to people that didn't want them, is contributing every dime of that to non-discretionary income.

Her bike might have counted towards it as well, but I'm too lazy to find out if she added another ten grand or not with her "only used it a few times before getting bored with it" purchase.  When I say idiot aunt, I'm being very gracious.