One last comment and I'm done with this...

"The pressure to climb the status scale (measured in the price of your car, mobile phone, widescreen TV, DVD player, clothes etc) is immense. These are the factors that contribute to producing the kind of scum that perpetrates violent acts against folkies."

From my personal experience = complete and utter bollocks. He did it because he wanted me to be totally submissive to him. In that time and place, he WAS the top of the social scale. He blacked my eye because I questioned an action of his. He kicked me in the stomach because I questioned a decision he made for the both of us without discussion. He fractured my skull because I dared open my own bank account so he didn't get all my wages.

If you met him in the street, the last word you would use to describe him would be 'scum'.

I daresay there are those who steal and hurt because they want to fill a need that has been manufactured in them by society. They are not all youths and they are not all crack addicts. There has always been a society of haves and have nots. There always will be. We will never have an equal society until we hold all things in common. But that will never happen because we are human beings, and the single, strongest urge from primeaval times to the present day, is to get the best for yourself so that you can live and spread your genes. Man will never live in communion with man, simply because he is man.

LTS