The Oil Drum

61 comments on European gas supplies and a more than gentle cough from Russia

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Donal on April 25, 2006 - 6:25am

It seems that it is possible to have a profitable stock market without a prosperous middle class.

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alistairC on April 25, 2006 - 8:18am

yeah, that sort of confirms my intuition about the success of capitalism.

In its modern, refined form, capital serves only capital, it has no need of actual people.

The myth of capitalism as a liberating force for individual happiness and self-determination arose from that brief historical period when hired help, both as individuals and collectively, had considerable bargaining power.

Now, not even individual shareholders have any bargaining power to speak of. Governments have, on the whole, disempowered themselves in the economic sphere in recent decades, thereby renouncing any democratic accountability for businesses.

The last hope for humanity : ethical pension funds?

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gnm on April 25, 2006 - 8:42am

What good are pensions of any sort in the face of a permanently declining economy? As a result of ever-tightening energy resources.

-G

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Dragonfly41 on April 25, 2006 - 10:36am

I will take my pension in the form of beef jerky, bottles of water, seeds, and chocolate bars please!!

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“So one may almost say that the theory of universal suffrage assumes that the Average Citizen is an active, instructed, intelligent ruler of his country. The facts contradict this assumption.”

—James Bryce (1909, 35)