The RTP filter and the Great Money Trick

One of the books that helped to define the way I look at the world is "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" by Robert Tressell.

You can find the text online HERE or it can be purchased from a wide variety of places if you'd prefer paper to pixels. I recommend your local independent bookshop, rather than the big sellers, if posible. Ideological, that's me.

The book itself is an explanation of Utopian socialism, and is both somewhat naive, and something of a polemic. It's a reflection of it's time (it was written in the first few years of the 20'th century) and yet so much of what it has to say still reverberates.

So, for example, when I read people discussing filesharing, I can see that Tressell would have approved of it completely, but would consider the artists creating the stuff being shared as having contributed something of value to society, and to be therefore entitled to their fair share of the things produced by that society.

Or more specifically, when I read today's news, and I find that the Board of the Royal Bank of Scotland are threatening to resign if they don't get their multi-million pound bonuses I find myself thinking

The men work with their hands, and the masters work
with their brains.
What a dreadful calamity it would be
for the world and for mankind
if all these brain workers were to go on strike.