Yeah that's why everyone's 97% poorer than they were a hundred years ago.

Oh wait...

So the ancient rulers ran a centuries-long secret conspiracy to spread Christianity, all the while persecuting Christians, and building expensive momuments to pagan gods to keep up the pretence? A conspiracy that transcended continents, languages, and lasted through countless civil wars and transfers of power?

Maybe you should put down the Dan Brown books.

What is the cost of a budget laptop and the cheapest Internet subscription, compared to a hundred grand medical bill, or a house in an area that isn't crime ridden and where the schools aren't worthless?

People who make your argument always focus on the petty things rather than the things that really make you poor. As if poor people are supposed to live in a cardboard box eating rats.

And no, they don't have healthy food available, they live in food deserts where capitalism has decided it's more profitable to only sell junk.

Government cannot create private sector jobs. Period.

Government spending stimulates demand which provides the private sector with its customers. Cut government spending and you cut the private sector as their customers run out of money.

I don't see how that would work out. Bear in mind that Finland has the best pre-university education system in Europe, you couldn't get that in Ireland no matter how much you paid. Even if the private schools in Ireland were as good as the Finnish state schools, they'd cost tens of thousands, way more than you'd save on taxes.

Then you have the high cost of living in Ireland because of the property bubble, the inferior telecommunications infrastructure, the crime, the unpaved roads, the Catholic theocracy etc.

I don't think many people will be willing to accept a massive drop in living standards just to save a few thousand on their taxes, especially when it works out to be a false economy.

There's a passage from Orwell that I can't recall, but the general gist is that poor people don't save up because they have no pleasure in their lives other than the instant gratification they get from instantly spending. The middle-classes can easily forgo the occasional indulgence because their lives are easy and pleasurable as they are, they can let that one go because they know there are many more to come, the poor have to take it because that's basically all they've got.

The people in Britain who design and build cars are rarely given the chance to run the companies.

There aren't enough resources in the world for everyone who wants to start up a business to get the funding. Even a dot-com start-up requires dozens of employees, server farms, electricity, software licences etc.

A few successful investors rationing out those resources helps direct them to the most fruitful ideas. It doesn't always work, and plenty is wasted on bad ideas, but it's the most successful system we've discovered so far.

Of course, they should allow their environment to be destroyed in order to boost economic growth. Because that's working out so well for China.

Another random fool on the Internet who doesn't know what Luddism is.

Luddism is objecting to the use of new technology to destroy the livelihoods of workers. Objections about fracking are environmental. If you're going to be a meme-spouting Internet nut-job, at least get the terminology right.

For the record, the Luddites were right. Technology could have been used to make everyone's lives better, instead it was used to make everyone's lives worse. The only people to benefit were the rich. The majority saw their livelihoods diminished, they were kicked off the land and forced to work longer hours in more dangerous conditions for less pay and zero job security.

The Luddites opposed the effects of the industrial revolution which directly caused the social conditions we know today as 'Dickensian'.

All your three points admit that water is more important. What use is your electricity and Internet without water to be distributed and boiled?

You're still talking from the perspective of someone with access to drinking water. If those water trucks hadn't come, would you be crying out for the Internet and electricity?

Your opinion comes from a middle-class perspective whereby you take everything else for granted. What would you rather have, access to the Library of Alexandria, or to fix your car so you don't lose your job?

Would you rather read wikipedia or pay for medication? Download ebooks or fix the boiler? Access your bank online, or make sure your electricity isn't cut off?

You talk about basic survival being met as if it's something easy to get done in the first few days before you get on with the important business of playing around on the Internet, whereas it's something that millions of people struggle with every day, even in developed countries, never mind a post-apocalyptic scenario.

You betray your class with the things you consider to be 'vital'. The millions of people who've done without the Internet all their lives don't appear to consider it vital. Surely by definition, if Internet access was vital, people without it would be dead. It may be inconvenient, it may cut you off from society, but being without the Internet is most definitely not vital.

A TV is a good investment for poor people as it's the cheapest form of entertainment. People need luxuries, if they're to do nothing other than eat, shit and work, then there's no point even being alive.

At the end of the day, it's the rich who push all this shit via advertisements, and who created the economic system which revolves almost entirely around the consumption of pointless shit, who then turn round and complain about poor people buying the things they've been telling them to buy.

Just because he dedicated his career to working his way up a greasy pole doesn't mean he's worth millions of dollars. The corporate world is full of sharp-elbowed ladder-climbers who don't really do anything other than angle for promotions and line their own pockets.

Interestingly, this is the business model which did for 'Game' in the UK. Eventually they alienated the publishers and couldn't get stock.