On May 21, 2016, at 9:14 AM, John Young <jya@pipeline.com> wrote:
Got proof?
Depends on if you’re a Marxist and think that money steals power, or an anarchist and thinks that power steals money. The latter grabs the market-elephant blindly, the former sucks giant donkey dicks in the Tijuana Donkey show of force, fraud, and plunder. As an example of what Peter might have been alluding to, Pompey and Julius were rich Roman guys who got richer in the conquering trade, Pompey going east after pirates and then eastern kings, and Julius going after, well, Gaul, actually. And then, you know, Rome, after that. But, like I said, it’s older than that. Since people started staying in one place in middle Anatolia about 12-18,000 years ago, about five thousand years before they actually started cultivating the wheat they were harvesting every year and moving out from there down the Tigris and Euphrates and Nile and out into Fair Europa, all farmers -- and then mechanics -- since have been subject to the depredations of former hunter-gatherers who plundered them for their “surplus” assets. And priestly former scavengers who told them lies of pie in the sky when they die to justify the actions of the guys who, you know, beat the fuck out of you if you didn’t pay up. Because, like dogs, and hyenas, they could. Now the priests are academics, the media, and legislative politicians. The Hunter/gatherers are either professional military (mostly harmless…) or plundering proto-warlord aristocrats like, come to think of it, all four current extant presidential hopefuls, and the current occupant of Adams’ Edifice. There. How’s that? Cheers, RAH