Interesting little piece on wealth distribution:

Specifically, the number of people with some value of wealth w is proportional to 1/wE. Pareto claimed that E is generally has a value of between 2 and 3. The bigger this value, the greater the extent to which extreme wealth is suppressed - and the more socialist the economy.

Burda's group define liberal economies as those in which E is less than 2, and social economies as those in which E is greater than 2.

.....

It looks to me like a larger E means much more difference between high and low incomes (Third world model) and a smaller E introduces a larger middle class. So a larger E does not limit high wealth, it simply limits the number who have a high wealth, while increasing the number with very little and squeezing the middle class, which is the 'regressive', not-socialist situation.
I beg for validation, even by way of refutation.

Wealth spawns corruption

Isaac Asimov, when considering a world where robots had become as functional, intelligent, and more powerful than their human creators, posited three fundamental laws that would determine the behavior of such potentially dangerous human-made creations. His Three Laws of Robotics stipulated that non-living human creations must obey humans yet never behave in a way that would harm humans.
Asimov's thinking wasn't altogether original: Thomas Jefferson and James Madison beat him to it by about 200 years.
Jefferson and Madison proposed an 11th Amendment to the Constitution that would "ban monopolies in commerce," making it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, banning them from giving money to politicians or trying to influence elections in any way, restricting corporations to a single business purpose, limiting the lifetime of a corporation to something roughly similar to that of productive humans (20 to 40 years back then), and requiring that the first purpose for which all corporations were created be "to serve the public good."
The amendment didn't pass because many argued it was unnecessary: Virtually all states already had such laws on the books from the founding of this nation until the Age of the Robber Barons.
Now, Nike is arguing that, as a legal person, they should enjoy the same "free speech" right to deceive that individual human citizens have in their personal lives, in this case, to fraudulently claim that Nike no longer uses slave labor to manufacture its shoes.
This, and what President Lincoln said of the newly enriched corporate enterprises following the Civil War, and more....

Now Corporations Claim The 'Right To Lie'

We're in deep shit people. Time to get off the couch and get involved...

Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wifes Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There?

A CHRISTMAS TRUCE

On Christmas Day, 1914, in the first year of World War I, German,
British and French soldiers disobeyed their superiors and fraternized
with "the enemy" along two-thirds of the Western Front. German troops
held Christmas trees up out of the trenches with signs, "Merry
Christmas." "You no shoot, we no shoot." Thousands of troops streamed
across no-man's land strewn with rotting corpses. They sang Christmas
carols, exchanged photographs of loved ones back home, shared rations,
played football, even roasted some pigs. Soldiers embraced men
they had been trying to kill a few short hours before. They agreed to
warn each other if the top brass forced them to fire their weapons, and
to aim high.

A shudder ran through the high command on either side. Here was
disaster in the making: soldiers declaring their brotherhood with
each other and refusing to fight. Generals on both sides declared this
spontaneous peacemaking to be treasonous and subject to court martial.
By March, 1915 the fraternization movement had been eradicated and
the killing machine put back in full operation. By the time of the
armistice in 1918, fifteen million people would be slaughtered.
...

an XMAS tale from WW1

Daily headline propaganda from a British perspective. Delight in these whimsy:

"BUSH ADMINISTRATION: DEFINITELY NOT LIKE
NAZIS
(POSTED 26 09 02) Whitehouse spokesman Ari Fleischer (no
relation) has said the Bush Administration "are nothing
like the Nazis in 1930s Germany." He explained "the Nazis
were militaristic bullies convinced they were the master
race. They wanted to invade other countries to boost
their own economy. They wanted to weed out imperfect
human specimens using genetic science. They used the
cinema as propaganda for the masses. And they subsidised
major corporations to pioneer weapons of mass
destruction. Hope that cleared everything up. Now
- can we please stop all this nastiness and start
invading Poland. I mean Iraq.""

Spin On This - proper news is just propaganda

From the men at Infinite Jest (like the Onion but bitter)
Episode #2 is finally here!
Pat Buchanan, Jerry Falwell and Senator Jesse Helms debate:
Black Men In Prison: How Many Is Too Many?

Cross Afire #2: Black Men In Prison: How Many Is Too Many?

] "http://sfweekly.com/issues/2002-11-27/smith.html/1/index
] .html
] The SF Weekly's column by Matt Smith in the Dec 3 issue
] points out that there may be some information that John
] M. and Linda Poindexter of 10 Barrington Fare, Rockville,
] MD, 20850, may be missing in their pursuit of total
] information awareness. He suggests that people with
] information to offer should phone 1 301 424 6613 to
] speak with that corrupt official and his wife. Neighbors
] Thomas E. Maxwell, 67, at 8 Barringon Fare ( 1 301 251
] 1326), James F. Galvin, 56, at 12 ( 1 301 424 0089), and
] Sherrill V. Stant (nee Knight) at 6, may also lack some
] information that would be valuable to them in making
] decisions -- decisions that could affect the basic civil
] rights of every American.
] Some people are suspicious that the degenerate
] Poindexter's Total Information Awareness system will be
] used to harass and track the activities of people who
] some significant fraction of society disagree with. They
] fear a replacement of today's general tolerance (and
] official blindness to one's Bill-of-Rights-protected
] activities such as speech and association), with specific
] harassment of those whose names pop up in the database.
] Such harassment of people who are not reasonably
] suspected of criminal activity would destroy much of
] value in our society, such as the presumption of
] innocence and the "live and let live" philosophy that
] encourages diversity. "

Eyeballing Total Information Awareness

* Borrowing Bush's Brilliant Idea* When Bush
insisted that U.N. weapons inspectors be able to take
Iraqi scientists and their families outside of Iraq for
interviews, thus protecting the scientists from possible
retaliation by Saddam's secret police, Carlsson had the solution
that had eluded Palme so many years ago. "That's it!" he told a colleague.
"We'll offer U.S. bureaucrats
and their families safe passage to Sweden and a secure
environment from which they can speak freely and publicly to the
folks back home. They can stay here at our expense until a
climate of openness and honesty prevails in the Bush
administration." In addition to Williams, 28 other bureaucrats and their
families
are en route to Stockholm. All were spirited out of Washington by
a team of Swedish secret agents who had honed their rescue skills
in Yugoslavia and the Congo. Once the former officials settle into their new
homes and get
comfortable with saying who they are and what they think, they'll
spend their time giving speeches an interviews. Former CIA analyst Williams is
already a sensation on Swedish TV
as a regular guest on the top-rated chat show, Nugen Farger
("Hard Rugby").

Sweden Offers Sanctuary To U.S Officials Fleeing Bush Regime

It's about information, and libraries and archiving.
Concerning archiving Mr. Sterling says:
"We're already leaving some impressive gifts for the remote future of this planet. Nuclear wastes, for instance. We're going to be neatly archiving this repulsive trash in concrete and salt mines and fused glass canisters, for tens of thousands of years. Imagine the pleasure of discovering one of these nice radioactive time-bombs six thousand years from now. Imagine the joy of selfless, dedicated archaeologists burrowing into one of these twentieth-century pharaoh's tombs and dropping dead, slowly and painfully. Gosh, thanks, ancestors. Thanks, twentieth century! Thanks for thinking of us! "

The Twentieth Century: Our Curses Work

``Free as Air, Free As Water, Free As Knowledge''

MP3 audio of a great talk by Howard Zinn. Required listening for anyone with an interest in dissent or non-standard history.

Howard Zinn - Reed College Talk - People's History of the United States