fatvegan

I just read on the Secuestro Express website that someone is abducted in Latin American every hour. And 70% of those are killed. People have suggested that violent crime is partly a product of economic inequality, but it's never struck me as a very productive response. It's kind of a massive blackmail that the poor executes, hoping that the rich will decide they have more to lose. But I think the perpetrators of crime tend to lose more in general. Maybe kidnapping is a smarter response. You get the blackmail effect of making life miserable for the rich, but you also get money, and you don't necessarily have to kill anybody. Massive inequality is a sad sort of denial of reality. It's pretty easy for the screwed to make life unhappy for the screwers. Perhaps in places like South Africa, or Nicaragua, the state used massive violence to keep control of things, but who wants to live like that? The only way the rich can truly win is if the poor just sit down and take the abuse quietly. I suppose that does happen occasionally too, but I suspect Marx is right in thinking that can't be sustainable in the long-run. He just underestimated the willingness of the rich to compromise their wealth to save themselves. I reckon the wealthy in countries like Chile are probably pretty chuffed that they semi-voluntarily eased off on the genocidal capitalism before they turned into another Cuba.