this youtube link goes to a clip from an episode making a similar point on the war on drugs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2fV-_eiKxE

simon's outlook is based on slow decay. i think he's right about the value of the individual decreasing as capital, but people are more valued than before i think in terms of the likelihood of a person's survival. in any case, the slow decay model is dead now, i think, with the environmental stuff speeding up, no more trouble figuring out those existential questions. all hands on deck! woop, woop, woop!

HooAhhh!! Thank you Johnathan. Thank you. Thank you.

Awesome find. Why is it that progressively love the Wire? Besides that it's just good tv?

BTW Assif Mandvi returned to the daily show to do the gonzales fall out skit. Why do they hold off using him? That character is great!

So white middle-class Americans are coming to realise that they are only several blocks away from the ghetto. As long as you had the nice house in the suburbs and a good job, everything was fine with Capitalism.

But they are blinded by the idea that only Capitalism generates wealth. Other modes of economic organisation such as Chinese feudalism have created great monuments and large stable empires with a highly educated society.

Capitalism is different that the accumulation of wealth is the end in itself. You cannot make Capitalism 'nicer' without interfering its ultimate aim.

All of the decisions that David Simon talks about are rational ones within the Capitalist system. It is not about greed, but about working within the system.

[Disclosure: I am a member of a Communist party - so you can ignore all of my comments]