Drop your weapons and stop fighting.
The top and bottom have been caught in a vicious class war since antiquity. Unfortunately, neither side seems to realize that the real problem isn't each other- and that they both need to come together if they want to fix anything. What needs fixing you ask?
A huge, out-of-control central government that unfairly exploits its' citizens by stealing their hard-earned money, killing their unarmed children and jailing those who don't want to pay the piper.
Any system that forces a person to participate under threat of death is a terrible system that doesn't deserve your support, regardless of its supposed end goal or rationale. It doesn't matter if you think there are no other options available. Take slavery. It began with good intentions (so long as you weren't black): "Free labor will help us make cheaper stuff!" People opposed to slavery didn't really know what the alternative was, but they knew that forcing someone to work for you with no escape was just wrong and had to stop. Everyone can agree on that.
Most people can also agree that our system should reward innovation and hard work instead of mooching. You know, people who actually contribute to society.
Now, i'm going to tell you something you don't want to hear: Both sides are right.
The poor people say the rich are too greedy, and the rich say the poor are too lazy. But they're also wrong. You can take any group and find greedy or lazy people. Being poor or rich doesn't necessarily mean you're one or the other.
The wealthy have it especially twisted. It's not that poor people are lazy or don't want to work, it's that there are no jobs available for them. So even if they did want to make money, they can't. What few jobs out there are the low-paying ones where you have to clean toilets or flip hamburgers- and those are the competitive openings.
Poor people are just as guilty of stereotyping as the rich are. No, 1%ers aren't all greedy scheming little monopoly-men who only care about themselves. They're real people just like you and me. Most of them feel like they rightfully earned their wealth through hard work, struggle and innovation- and for the most part, they're correct. Less than 30% of wealthy people in America today are born into money. "If I can do it, you can do it too!". If given a chance to end poverty without personally giving anything up, most of the 1% would take it, if only for the publicity. If you don't believe me, just look at the billions donated to charity each year.
Like all stereotypes, there is an element of truth buried under all the rhetoric. There are some poor people who just don't want to work, and there are some rich people who legitimately don't care about anyone but themselves. It's still unfair to paint everyone with a broad brush.
We're tired of everyone pointing fingers at "those greedy pigs" and "those welfare queens" without doing something about it. Name-calling isn't going to fix anything, only systemic change to make life better for both the richest and the poorest Americans.
The cycle of class hatred feeds on itself- the poor use their political power to vote for politicians who raise taxes on the rich, and the rich in turn use their economic power to buy politicians & media in an attempt to save money and influence opinion. The pendulum swings. It never ends. Both of them never realize that the fact they have to do this is the problem, not the other side.
We need to break the cycle and break the system.
A wise old man named Albert Einstein once said:
- "The definition of a fool is a person who does the same thing over and over again while expecting different results".
Whether you prefer to vote, lobby or just buy elections, whatever you're doing isn't working anymore. Politics are stagnant, and politicians are ready to flip-flop to the highest bidder. The same talking points get rehashed time and time again, while everyone wants to speak and noone wants to listen. It's time for radical solutions. (nonviolent, of course).
You know the story. Conditions get worse and worse for the bottom 99% as the wealthiest get richer and richer. Eventually, revolution breaks out, a bunch of people die- and things end up worse than they were before. It happens time and time and time again, and if we don't do something soon the rich will be greeted at the door by a pitchforked mob and the poor will find themselves hiding from artificial-intelligence equipped surveillance drones.
It ends now. The Global Assembly has the only way to permanently end the class war while avoiding revolution, communism, mass riots, starvation, guillotines, beheadings and all that other fun stuff you heard about in history class.
Our revolution can happen peacefully, bloodlessly and most importantly, fast. The rich get to keep all their stuff while the poor won't have to worry about living paycheck-to-paycheck anymore.
Sound impossible?
It is, if we don't work together.
It's going to take compromise. It's going to take radical thinking, guts, and maybe a little crazy. Both sides are going to have to give up things they really care about to get something even better. But in the end, the prosperity created for all of us (yes, the rich too!) will be so incredible you can't even imagine it right now. It would be like a person living in the 1800s attempting to imagine the 21st century- your head would explode. The society we're going to create will be so awesome that people will wonder why we didn't do it centuries ago. Want a sneak peek?
The bottom line is that it isn't anyone's "fault" why things are the way they are. Rich and poor alike are in the desperate situations they're in because they're only doing what humans do best- game the system to maximize their self-interest. The problem with our current system is that the interests of the 99% and the rest of us just aren't aligned. You can earn money by doing some pretty terrible things to people and the planet. But if you redefine wealth to constitute making everyone better off, suddenly the 1%'s desire to maximize profit becomes a good thing.
Stay tuned.
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