Comment: Can we stand prosperity? How can we mature unto peace?

I'd say too that, compared to previous times, we are all incredibly RICH in America, just by the fact that there are public libraries, that almost everyone has a device in his/her pocket that gives quick access to a very large portion of the information of the world, etc.  there's no doubt that those with 'money' have always tried to keep down the newcomers--it's a status thing.  But, if McCloskey is to be believed, and the scholarship  seems to be there, the ONLY reason that there has been a stead rise in per capital wealth since 1750is the the bourgeois virtues of the trader/marketer/innovator have been supported, rhetorically and financially, as over against the aforementioned status.  Now that  status seems to me to have become identified with political ower, in that political power is used to keep other down (socialist Kolko 'Triumph of Conservatism' years ago). And war is the health of the state.  Thus, fewer wars, fewer state powers to keep people down. America has been where one could make it big and keep it--but is that true now, as it was? That's the key.  And...Barzun and Creveld and others say that this oppressive piratical infrastructure is failing of both justice and stable money for retirees.  We should be thinking, locally to start, of how to maintain justice and stable money as the state continues declining. Creveld: The Rise and Decline of that State.  That is, had we the empathy we should.  I get NO hearing on this. Peace, Chuck PS: That we can’t stand prosperity…that’s a challenge. A solution? Learn more history, teach it, apply it. Have a vision…