RE: What IS America?
October 21, 2011 at 2:07 pm
(This post was last modified: October 21, 2011 at 2:10 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(October 21, 2011 at 1:08 pm)Vaeolet Lilly Blossom Wrote: Plutocracy requires only wealth. Nothing virtuous about it. Not much of a vice either.
No, traditionally, plutocracy tends not to be purely extractive, but are vested in the relative prosperity of the system that made them wealthy. Plutocracy therefore have produced many a powerful, prosperous, and long lasting states. Indeed all states are plutocratic to a certain extent.
Kleptocracy tends to be purely extractive. No kleptocratic state have ever prospered for more than a generation, and few have ever survived long before coming to no good end.
The subtle and arguably most insidious aspects of rightwing ideology is to ignore the difference between plutocracy and kleptocracy.
