Time for a head to head. It’s the battle of the ‘kats. The topic is unchecked greed (at least, to me, that’s the pertinent issue).

In short, Sc_Meerkat appears to be an apologist for the hoarding and unchecked profiteering of billion-pound businesses and the super-rich. That may be a hasty conclusion on my part, and I’m willing to modify my position as time goes by, assuming our discussion continues for much longer.

However, what I found most telling is that, despite being asked more than once about how he would resolve the serious problems of poverty, homelessness and hunger around the world, Sc_Meerkat did not truly attempt an answer. The closest he came was a vague allusion to changes in Chinese economic policy:

It ought to be noted that poverty remains rife in China, as it does in the UK, USA, and numerous countries that would like to consider themselves beacons of hope, justice, and prosperity. It’s almost as though poverty isn’t actually being dealt with at all, regardless of location, political systems, or anything else.

The reason is that there’s no profit in it. For the obscenely wealthy likes of Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos, they cannot become even richer by tackling say, homelessness. Instead, Musk has bought up Twitter for an eye-watering $44 billion, and Bezos is spending billions to send himself into space.

This is absurd. These people could remain extremely wealthy (as could the well-paid CEOs of energy companies), and at the same time, those who live month-to-month, pay check-to-pay check, could be paid a living wage, thus edging away from the breadline. Don’t listen to alarmist claims of inflation – that’s an excuse on behalf of these mega-rich corporations and individuals, who falsely claim they’d have to increases prices. They don’t have to, they merely want to, despite the reality that they could still earn huge sums of money, just not quite as much.

The scare-mongering on the part of billionaire apologists (I mean, why is anyone defending this?!) is baffling to me. This world has enough resources to ensure no one goes homeless, and no one goes hungry, and still allow people to make loads of money. To someone like Elon Musk, would it devastate him to earn say, $1 million a year, instead of $5 million? If BP reported profits of £3 billion instead of £9 billion, because they paid their workers a living wage, and didn’t rip people off via energy bills, would this be so bad?

Unfortunately, some people see any move towards a fairer society as a sign of an evil communist regime. In a bid to demonise anyone suggesting we genuinely help those in need, they resort to name-calling and accusations. In the case of some people that I have dealt with directly, they will deliberately misrepresent the arguments made, which to me, is a form of cowardice as well as dishonesty. Throughout history, hoarding wealth has never led to anything good, so maybe it’s time to try something a bit different?