Last Blog on Multiply

If you look at the top of this page, you will probably see the following message: "From December 1st, we will unfortunately no longer be able to support Multiply in its current form. Read the details". What this means is that the new Indonesian owners of Multiply have decided to turn Multiply into an e-commerce site for Southeast Asia. All blogs and other material will be removed. So, therefore, all my future blog entries will be at the following site:

http://www.blogster.com/nathanson1947/

After having had to move here when Yahoo 360 closed, it is a pain having to move again, but sic transit mundi.

The Fall of Capitalism

It is approximately twenty years since the occurrence of what the media termed "The Fall of Communism". At that time, this was considered to be a good thing. A new era of freedom was supposed to be arising in Eastern Europe. Perhaps, today, there is a bit more freedom in the former Iron Curtain countries. On the other hand, one could seriously argue that Vladimir Putin is no less autocratic than the Soviet government that preceded him. "Plus que ça change . . . ".

The world now has different problems to worry about. Forty years ago, there seemed to be a lot more prosperity on the planet. Could it be that, just because they were facing the competition of the Communist system, the companies and corporations in the Western World were on their best behavior and were trying to prove that the "Free Enterprise" system was able to provide a better life than the Communist system was able to? That may well have been the case. But nowadays, unadulterated greed seems to rule the roost. No matter how obscenely huge corporate profits may now be, there seems to be no way of lessening the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. Eventually, the situation will begin to resemble France in 1789 or Czarist Russia in 1917. And then, everything will collapse. That is, if environmental degradation has not already created a crisis situation. Take your choice.