On Fri, 26 Jul 2002, Ian Andrew Bell wrote:
--]Being smart, for example, has made Stephen Hawking famous and
--]respected, but he's not particularly rich.
Bang, you fell right into the trap of Sematic Siezerdom.
RICH is a word of many contexts. You can be RICh in wealth, ie raw money,
you can be Rich in Wisdom, ala Hawkins, You can be rich with freinds, you
can be Rich in emotions........
--]all accounts a complete moron.  In fact, spend a weekend in Beverly
--]Hills and you will encounter vast numbers of people who are
--]profoundly stupid driving Rolls Royces and shopping at PRADA.
MOney Rich versus Mental Rich....Equality amongst differnt grains...Why do
folks still fall into this trap?
--]The working class IS the market and the working class IS where
--]wealth is created.
In the current ecomony Wealth is created only in TRANPORT of wealth, that
is in moving the micro welath of the masses to to macro wealth of the few.
100 million people making phone calls a day that net you 1$ per call makes
you a 100millionaire per day (minus operating expenses (real costs of
physical value as well as the less physical value of lubricant (taxes,
bribes, payoffs, kickbacks)etc)
--]And the people draining the hot tub are the folks in the ruling
--]class -- people like Ken Lay, Dick Cheney, Bernie Ebbers, et al --
They were put into the rulign cvlass by the mass consess that THEY are
amrt fellas who can make us feel good about giveing them the power to tell
us how to live our lives (and thus how to feel about ourselves,how to
value our worth, how to feel good about being etc etc etc)
--]So, is the lower caste necessarily stupid for saving money or
--]investing in retirement plans?  I don't think so.  Are they stupid
--]for buying clothes and automobiles?  I don't think so.
They are STUPID in allowing, heck forcing, the few to stand guard over the
many and then pay for the service of being servants to them.
--]At the granular level, the notion that "most rich people are rich
--]because they're smart" is so anecdotal and naive that it's not
--]worth arguing about, so I won't.  Still, a compelling point worth
--]some clarification.
At the grainular level it is simply that Those who can con enough folks
into giving up thier Choices to a governing body (usualy one they will
control) wind up with the most concentration of Wealth (money) and
Power(over others)
Basicaly we have gone back to being serfs, only we demand nicer hovels.
WE demand to have paid for a ruling class lord over us, protect us and
bascialy  build the castle walls stronger to protect us from all enemys of
the  status quo both forgien and domestic.
If the constitution were allowed to go up for a vite of confiendnce todayI
bet it would fall down and go boom.. Too much freedom, too many ways that
the INdividual is called on to be thier own guardian...too many demands on
the fraility of human nature...much better to errect protectors, let them
sort it all out, and tell us what we need to do to be happy.
Smart in todays society is having enough Welath, Charm, Will, Power,
Knowing etc to Do What You Want.
Stupid is living under others rules.
(to the stupid the smart are "stupid" "look at them, wasting all thier
time  on that tomfollery" "lords a goshen, aint they the queer ones"
"would you  look at that, some folks just dont have the sense to fit in")
The words Smart and Atupid are the wrong ones here... Lets change them to
Indviduals  and Sheeple
yea that works better for me.
tom
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