I just read that the film Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows Part2 has broken the £1bn mark in worldwide box office receipts (Avatar
holds the record at over $2bn.) Fact: a populist fantasy film is just a bit of
minor escapism. It is of very little consequence in the greater scheme of
things.
So, whatever the complexity of the argument, I can’t help
but contrast this with the fact that people die in the world’s richest country
because they can’t afford medical insurance, and that there are millions of
people throughout the world trying to eke out a meagre existence in the most
abject squalor and poverty. Surely, even the most rampant free marketeer must
admit that the way we distribute wealth is a bit rum.
Unequal distribution of wealth has been a fact of life since
the development of agriculture, but it’s moving beyond the unreasonable, beyond even the unreal, and into the
surreal. This balloon is becoming over-inflated by the mania for material
values, and must surely burst one day. And when that happens, when the fat free
marketeers have been consigned to some cold planet at the edge of the solar
system and the dust has settled down here, maybe the human race can start
rebuilding with the focus on a more real sense of its potential.
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