Buddhism and one of the essential doctrines of that religion/philosophy (take your pick) is impermanence. As I understand it so far as a newbie, nothing is as solid as it appears. Impermanence means everything changes. Nothing stays the same. Everything is changing all the time and this is reason for hope.

Nicole Aschoff certainly gets the big picture.

That and - finally, someone who has done a beautiful job articulating some of my core frustrations with capitalism!

Foundations distract from how wealth creation works, by making it appear that philanthropists are doing people a favor out of the goodness of their hearts. This hides the fact that the wealth they have amassed was not simply the result of their own cunning or ability—it was made possible by all the people who worked for them, not to mention the public infrastructure made possible by taxpayers.

Yes, foundations, do some good things, but it also takes the focus off why these people have so much money they can run a foundation (probably mostly run on charitable giving by others)...in the first place.

Income inequality leaves us with "foundations" to help the disenfranchised...if they are lucky enough to qualify for those handouts. There are too many who don't get the help they need.

And these foundations allow a few wealthy individuals to have an outsize and not always benign influence on the areas the foundations address (think, for instance, Bill Gates and how his foundation is driving the discussion of education). It is explicitly anti-democratic.

to post it. I ultimately decided to focus on the wealth part cause I felt that the foundation part obscured that point a bit and it happens to be one of my pet peeves (to me corporate taxes are more akin to dividends on the infrastructure development provided by the government). But both points are very valid.

Thanks for posting.

Last edited Thu Aug 20, 2015, 02:37 AM - Edit history (1)

Even if you live in the most progressive of cities, overflowing with tax wealth in property speculation and tech boom times.

First, as Elizabeth Warren discovered, is the Insider/Outsider problem. You can't get any information as an insider if you criticize anyone or say anything polemical. Everyone will claim they are getting things done by "working with" the system, even though nothing ever happens except some covert personal favor trading. This seems more like some corrupt Third World regime than "getting things done".

Perhaps what they mean is they manage to elevate some of their coworkers to positions of national/International consulting prestige. Their global leadership unfortunately still doesn't get things done at a local level.

The local machines and personal loyalties to people of power (certain big developers for instance) are so tightly wound that people with the most radical social commitments in the world will play games of extreme logical twister to exonerate their special friend - taking personal offense if they are criticized while they assume liberty to pursue other "malefactors". In a room of any 10 people you will find enough criss-crossed personal loyalties to be blocked whichever move you try to make. And no one sees the problem with this. They all think they still have socialist goals and want to get things done. They just casually block and tackle each other and play insider games until all useful intent is frittered away.

This is really starting to piss me off.

It would be one thing if there was a deliberate GOP plot to prevent Democrats from making decent policy moves. It's another when people call themselves Progressives and then don't check their own logjams and corruption.