I know that
I am going to sound very childish in this post but my lungs may just burst out
if I do not get it off my chest.
It has been disturbing me for years.
I thought it will go away as I grow older and therefore more mature to
understand realism but it just disturbs me even more. It disturbs me that the
elite few have too much, the majority almost never have enough and the rest
have nothing.
The majority have to go on working and
slogging away in the system that clearly supports the elite few and will go on
enriching them if the system continues to work the way it does now. Wish that it does not have to be this way.
I wish that no one will be deprived
the right to life in the wholesome and true sense of the word. But I know that this is a childish wish
because the reality is that the rich and the powerful will not want their
status to change at all. The rich and powerful can no longer be that rich and
powerful if the available resources are more equitably distributed among the
people.
So to maintain the richness and the
power, they will ensure that the resources are not fairly distributed. They will also have to consider that as their
family expands, they will have to increase the base of their power and their wealth.
In order for this to happen, they know that they have to have greater wealth to
spend to ensure that their wealth increases further. At the same time, they
know that they must also increase their power so that with this power they can
influence the ability to further increase their wealth and the power.
Most people have heard about the
poverty cycle but almost none have discussed what I call the elitist-wealth
cycle (“EW cycle”). The EW cycle keeps on perpetuating itself
incrementally. In simple language,
wealth and power is used to create more wealth and power. The downside of this EW cycle on the majority
of the populace is that it displaces resources which are rightfully theirs into
the hands of the elitist. Let me illustrate
this with a simple example – education.
While the elitist rich and powerful
will not have to worry at all about the education of their children (nor even
their children’s financial future), the majority of the populace will find
themselves enslaved further to the system that supports the elitist. Today for example, a young graduate of 23
years old will find themselves burdened with a study loan of RM25,000 to
RM30,000.
Imagine, you are 23 and you are already
starting off life with a loan even before you earn. To this, you have not even included the cost
of living for “startup” and the car loan that you will eventually take. And
also the housing loan. So, today, you will find that the young person will most
probably start working for the bank all his life!
I believe that the study loan
problem will not have arisen if the big bulk of the resources have not been
taken away by the elitist few in the form of “projects”, leakages, corruption, economic
rent (“duit buta”) etc which actually takes away the resources from providing
free education and so on. This is just
one example to show how the income and “power” gap between the elitist few and
the average majority will get wider through time. In the process, we will end up having modern
day landlord and peasants relationship, albeit that modern day peasants rents houses,
flats and apartments! This is not even considering the many more who never even
dream of owning a decent home.
It is sad that as long as the system
continues the way it works today and the mindset of the majority is still in
the “hopeful state” it is in today, the condition of the majority will only get
worse and worse. The majority is still being fooled by "clever sounding solutions' that do not address the root of the problem - equitable and transparent distribution of resources. By the time they realize it, they may be too weak or too weary
to even think of reforming the system.
The majority think that they are
helpless to reform the system not realizing that their apathy now will render
them truly hopeless in the future.
I know, this is just my childish idealism.
Peace!
1 comment:
couldn't agree more on your statement.
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