Category Archives: Financial Crisis

America’s Rich Are Completely Losing Touch With Reality — and That’s a Really Bad Sign

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By Shaun Bradley

Source: AntiMedia

The divide between wealthy and working class has grown wider each year since the last financial crisis, but this disconnect is about much more than just money or politics. The super-rich, in particular, have become completely detached from the everyday problems facing millions of their fellow citizens. Instead of recognizing the urgency of the current situation and contributing to solutions that help empower all members of society, the focus for many has shifted toward simply indulging in the present moment and increasing luxury. This kind of self-centered worldview has emerged throughout history and typically thrives most when decadent empires start to crumble.

Right now, the average person is forced to worry about central banks devaluing their currencies, corrupt bureaucrats eroding their civil liberties, and an economy on life support. Meanwhile, a faction of affluent individuals has committed themselves to avoiding the turmoil around them, instead choosing to obsess over life extension, genetic manipulation, and creating luxurious doomsday plans. Those people who have the crucial intellect, resources, and influence needed to implement real change are consumed with self-interest to the point of total apathy towards the future.

One of the more disturbing trends has been a rise in interest regarding something called parabiosis. This practice involves blood transfusions between the young and old in an attempt to slow the aging process. The procedure has been studied in the past but has always been met with moral and scientific criticism. Recently, however, a California start-up called Ambrosia began offering clients the opportunity to purchase the blood of someone under the age of 25 for a mere $8,000.

The process gained attention after Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel came out in support of further research during an interview:

“I’m looking into parabiosis stuff, which I think is really interesting. This is where they did the young blood into older mice and they found that had a massive rejuvenating effect. And so that’s … that is one that … again, it’s one of these very odd things where people had done these studies in the 1950s and then it got dropped altogether. I think there are a lot of these things that have been strangely underexplored.”

The blood used for these transfusions is often purchased from blood banks without informing the original donors. Popular high-school blood drives could soon have a whole new incentive to encourage students to participate. Any possible medical advancements that can help improve the lives of sick people should be explored, but for a private business to benefit directly from the generosity of others without their consent is a bit unnerving.

The question of whether this treatment is effective or not is almost a secondary issue to the ethical one. What does it show about our society when the priority of so many is not building a better world for the next generation but, rather, appeasing their egos by desperately clinging to their youth? The similarity to vampirism can’t be overlooked and may be another sign that, in the end, the truth is stranger than fiction.

The super-wealthy who can see the dangers facing the world are also fine with hitting the eject button to their own private bunkers in a worst-case scenario. The prepping community that was once isolated to ‘conspiracy theorists’ and survivalist groups has now been adopted by the 1%. Several billionaires have even gone so far as to buy entire islands to guarantee they won’t be swept up in the panic of the masses.

Tim Chang, the managing director at a financial firm called the Mayfield Fund, spoke to a reporter at the New Yorker about some of the conversations going on in these circles:

“There’s a bunch of us in the Valley. We meet up and have these financial-hacking dinners and talk about backup plans people are doing. It runs the gamut from a lot of people stocking up on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, to figuring out how to get second passports if they need it, to having vacation homes in other countries that could be escape havens…I’ll be candid: I’m stockpiling now on real estate to generate passive income but also to have havens to go to….I kind of have this terror scenario: ‘Oh, my God, if there is a civil war or a giant earthquake that cleaves off part of California, we want to be ready.’ ”

While the ideas of democratic socialism have spread throughout the country, it’s clear that extreme individualism has developed on the other side. The majority of those with the means to care for themselves and their families have abandoned any connection to the rest of society. As long as the impact of the coming upheaval doesn’t affect them directly, it appears the fate of the rest is irrelevant.

The mentality of the nation has transitioned from proactive to reactive, with a sense of inevitability about the ultimate outcome we’re all facing. There is almost no effort to openly discuss the growing prospect of a civil war or severe economic breakdown, even as it grows more plausible in the minds of those paying attention. This obsession on the part of the super-rich for god-like control over their destinies only shows the fear that overwhelmingly dictates their choices. Maybe the modern day peasants of society should simply heed the advice of Marie Antoinette and eat cake while the world burns.

Three Paths

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By Erik Lindberg

Source: Resilience

To have lost the godlike conceit that we may do what we will, and not to have acquired a homely zest for doing what we can, shows a grandeur of temper which cannot be objected to in the abstract, for it denotes a mind that, though disappointed, foreswears compromise.  But, if congenial to philosophy, it is apt to be dangerous to the commonwealth.  –Thomas Hardy

We have the choice of three paths into the future.  But choice is probably not the right word, for historical change is, at its most orderly, the result of action and reaction and reaction to that.  The word paths may in the same way be too tidy, for we are more likely to go crashing into the thickets than to follow the marked and warn paths that inhabit our imagination.

But here, in this brief exercise, I’m thinking about moral and cognitive maps and the way we might direct our ideals.   Perhaps, then, I may be forgiven these simplifications.  I am not making predictions about how the future might actually unfold; rather, I’m imagining the directions towards which we might cast our highest aspirations.

1) The Arc of History Bends towards Progress

Path 1 might be called the Liberal[i] Choice.  It follows the idea that a just and secure global order requires basic equality among all humans and all nations.  But equality is only a half of it: as important as the ideal of equality to the Liberal vision is the way equality might be achieved—namely by way of economic growth and increased overall wealth, which (the Liberal half-assumes and half-hopes) will be spread more equitably in the coming decades, allowing the impoverished to increase their standard of living faster than the already-prosperous will.  The Liberal vision imagines that Western and industrialized standards of living might be spread across the globe so that all people might enjoy electricity, paved roads, internet connection, urban anonymity, and (almost as human right) relief from the most difficult aspects of manual labor or subsistence farming, with the opportunity to become educated and free from the limiting prejudices of traditional societies.  It sees mobility, individualism, and choice as the hallmarks of this just and equitable society[ii], and imagines humanity becoming more cosmopolitan, tolerant, and secular, while earning its daily bread through endeavors deemed creative according to middle class values.[iii]

Liberals sometimes appreciate the link between economic growth or growing overall prosperity, on the one hand, and a tolerant and cosmopolitan global order, on the other.  This link is more implied than discussed (though it is also sometimes difficult to find policy makers discussing anything but economic growth).   But Liberals are mistaken to assume, as they often do, that education, mobility, and secular tolerance (along with the embrace of “free markets” and the cultivation of an entrepreneurial spirit) have themselves created economic growth and growing prosperity, and are wrong to imagine (as they do in a vague and image-filled sort of way) that Africa, Asia, and South America might join the Euro-American prosperous middle class once they free themselves from the train of ancient and venerable prejudices[iv] that stunt their progress.  Western prosperity, after all, is not a pretty thing if you look into it too much.

Liberals are likewise mistaken to believe that tolerance or peacefulness is a simple state of mind, or that they might be projected effectively with bumper-stickers, protest signs, and earth-tone sweaters, or that a Clinton regime would have somehow been less bloody than a Trump one, or, cum Sanders, that our unparalleled levels of consumption (i.e. prosperity) does not in fact require a menacing global military presence in addition to the manipulations of a multi-billion dollar marketing industry.  Peace does not come from virtuous mental states; it is instead the product of a delicate sociological balance that is absent in many parts of the world and that is disappearing in traditionally Liberal nations—and often for reasons that Liberals are hard-pressed to explain except by declaring that we need more Liberalism and its states of mind, backed by vague and increasingly incoherent policy objectives.  The tepid enthusiasm for the center left (in the U.S. last autumn or in France today[v]) may be a symptom of its incoherent and increasingly implausible vision.

2.  Power Realism[vi]

As I write these words, geo-political analysts are envisioning Russia and the United States on the verge of a new cold war.  Perhaps.  Regardless of how heated it becomes, the nature of this new East-West opposition, especially when compared to the previous one, is well worth noting.  Not only has the past ideological divide mainly disappeared, we might instead be struck by the way these global rivals are coming to resemble each other.  Never mind the possible scandals and whatever is at their root, the arrival of Trump represents what might hyperbolically be called Russianization of the U.S.  Like Putin, after all, Trump does not operate according to a myth of emancipation, but only according to the pursuit of national power.  Trump may not share Putin’s understanding that the source of power lies in resources (but perhaps he does), but his actions and his economic assumptions seem to concur with this view, as does the operating outlook that statecraft should work to corner as many remaining resources as possible.[vii]

Meanwhile, the rise of Trump and Trumpism in the U.S., as well as similar movements and sentiments in Western Europe, should in fact be attributed to the failure of the Liberal path and the decline of global economic growth—the end of one version of the “delicate sociological balance,” and the only version most of us can imagine (that gap in imagination is why I write).  Long term stagnation and the end of expansive bourgeois hope have worked to weaponize the “me first” attitude: under a neo-Liberal world order, self-interest was supposed to lead to a rising tide, but Power Realists have little need for any such benevolent apologia.  Now harnessed by belligerent nationalists, this attitude of economic competition is more and more likely to accept wide-scale inequality and is instead concerned to be on the winning side of a winner-take-all competition over the world’s remaining resources and comparative advantages.[viii]

To put this last point in another way, relatively few people have, at least until very recently, been willing to openly and consciously embrace the me-first belief-system of Power Realism, absent any accompanying narrative of emancipation.  But most of the West’s middle-class has long wanted, expected, and demanded in a way that effectively “chooses” a path of Power Realism and the international bullying it requires–far sooner, at least, than it would veer towards a lowering of any such demand and expectations.

Dead Ends

Liberals and Power Realists equally see the dead-end that the opposing path leads to.  But both are equally blind to, or at least resignedly sanguine about, the dead-end that their own path leads to.  Liberals correctly understand that the widespread global inequality that Power Realists appear ready to tolerate will lead to permanent war and conflict and perpetual assaults on national security by those left behind.

Meanwhile, Power Realists seem to understand[ix]  or sense (though they don’t openly articulate it in public) that the Liberal vision of 3% economic growth into perpetuity is a farce and a fantasy, and that the whole world will never live like we in Europe or America do.[x]  Our way of life may in fact depend, in the end, on the walls and borders that Liberals decry on “moral” grounds.  Insularity and defensiveness may be the required dispensation, as we choose our way of life over global equality.  Power Realists also intuit that most Liberals can be turned into Power Realists under increasingly common economic conditions.  The mere loss of expansive prospects is enough to turn many an Obama supporter into a Trump supporter.   Minor economic decline, even the absence of economic expansion, was all that it took.  Except for those prepared to blaze a new trail into uninhabited ideological wilds, Path 1 usually leads to Path 2 with the onset of only moderate duress.  Liberals mistakenly believe that hate is a prime driver[xi] of inequality or discrimination, and that it might be purged from the heart with an enlightened dose of Liberal hope.  This may occasionally be true, but hate is more the symptom and might inflict itself on anyone who has suffered repeated humiliations or degradation—or even the mere loss of unquestioned privilege.

Our current political conflicts, both domestic and international, can therefore be largely attributed to our adherence to these two merging paths—especially if we take into account our destabilized climate and resulting droughts in places like Syria and Somalia, in addition to all the other ways nations and peoples jostle for power and advantage.  Climate chaos and the resulting political chaos will be the most notable legacy of Liberal growth and the Power Realism that has begun to cruelly manage it.[xii]

Political conflicts are almost always presented as a battle of ideals (as with the American choice of freedom over tyranny during WWII[xiii]) with the implied presumption that we might choose peace and equality as discrete policies or national values, unconnected from our economic and consumptive being- in-the-world.  According to this battle of ideals, then, one side sees the world divided between a coalition of enlightenment, empathy, tolerance, and inclusion, opposed to uninformed bigotry and short-sighted selfishness.  As a bumper sticker I saw the other day smugly put it, “I think, therefore I’m Liberal.”  The other side sees a line dividing steadfast, uncompromising faithfulness and resolve from naïve and undiscerning acceptance and compromise, a line between strength and weakness, between realism and soft-headed idealism.

But our current global change and conflicts are better understood with concepts drawn from sociology or anthropology than from self-reassuring talking-points.   A stable social order requires what we might refer to as consent or “buy in,” perhaps a lessening of the inevitable tension between civilization and its discontents into a stable détente.  During the short Pax Americana, this consent has been purchased with the promise of expanding prospects for all, fueled by an economy that devoured its own resource base in a way that renders its continuation impossible.  The Liberal order replaced social bonds with growing possibility,[xiv] and required for its maintenance the fulfilled promise that every year would provide more and that every generation could expect distinct material improvements. [xv] This order had no plan for material contraction or the onset of limits, other than to declare in the face of reality that there are no limits to growth.

This lack of a plan for stasis, let alone degrowth, might explain the demise of what so many Liberals believed to be the arc of history.  We maintain our acquisitive and competitive values and the primacy of individual liberty.  But in the absence of the growth and opportunity that purchased consent, trust horizons shrink and we see a turn towards group identity (as an alternative to participation in some imaginary global civilization) and begin an openly hostile scramble for remaining pockets of wealth and privilege (in the absence of the promise that everyone might have more forever).  Globalist buy-in has no dependable currency.

Picture global conflict not as the fight between liberals and conservatives, between the enlightened and the ignorant, between moderates and fundamentalists.  Picture, instead, penniless children with their noses pressed against the candy store window, while entitled brats stuff their pockets full of unearned loot.[xvi]  Forget ideals and instead imagine repeated humiliation, envy, and frustration, broken promises and abortive ideals.  It is not some obscure “ideology of hate” or an unexplained failure of moderate pro-Western policies according to which the explosive vest is strapped on.  Nor can we explain as simple sexism the way Donald Trump’s gropings (and so much else) were so widely forgiven.  Far stronger than we tend to accept is the desire for purpose and belonging, and the desperate (and sometimes violent) search for renewed social bonds when the limitless world of boundless and bondless expansion flounders on the shoals of a finite planet.  We once lived in a world when there was little disbelief in face of the comforting contradiction that we might all somehow “get ahead.”  Now it is clear that only a few can actually do so.  It is this realization that creates nationalism, Brexit, right wing populism, hatred of immigrants, or “America First.”

3. A Third Way

The Liberal Dream is dying because the planet was never infinite and our potential never limitless–not because some bad-guy ignoramuses somehow got the upper hand.  A social order could never be maintained for long by the promise of more every year, while the tide can only rise so high before it washes all good fortune away.  The most direct and facile, yet brutal and likely, antithesis of Liberal Growthism is personified by Trump, Putin, or Le Pen today, Hitler, Mussolini and Franco in years past,[xvii] and can only lead to war and repression.[xviii]  Such rulers are what arise at the onset of Liberalism’s decline.  But they offer no real solution, only a quick reordering of hope and expectation into anger and hate—an ordering nonetheless.  Intoxicated by the thrill of an arms race, Power Realists ignore the fact that the oppression and forceful repression of at least half the world’s population is unsustainable, and that the immiseration it spreads will eventually inflict us all.  Liberals know this and are aghast at the rise of these values.  But they, in turn, are all too ready to ignore the fact that Liberal hope requires unsustainable growth and insulate themselves from the realization that our global climate crisis was not caused by nationalism or the greed of someone else.  It was caused by this same growth, which continues to demand levels of goods and services that are bringing our ecological systems to the point of collapse.

There is of course a third choice—one that is simple yet mainly unthinkable.  It sees with heart stopping clarity the dead-end towards which the other two paths lead and has math, science, and even hard-headed economic analysis[xix] on its side, not to mention a pretty solid interpretation of most of the world’s major religions.  But it is a choice that few appear prepared to adopt, even entertain.  It accepts the view that a secure and stable global order must be a relatively egalitarian one—that, according to one idiom, all God’s children deserve a fair share of the Earth’s bounty.  It understands that the 5% of the global population that the United States accounts for cannot continue to use a quarter or a fifth of the world’s energy and natural resources while emitting a similar proportion of carbon dioxide.

And here is where this path parts ways from any of the views normally deemed fit for polite company: for it does not believe that the rest of the world should be brought to our level; that would be ecological suicide.  For if the whole world were to live like Americans we would need an additional four to six Earth’s to supply the required energy and natural resources, and to absorb our terrible waste.  A transition to wind and solar power does not substantially change this equation, nor do all the most far-flung efficiencies that anyone might realistically imagine.

The path according upon which humanity has a chance to find a just and sustainable world requires what is unthinkable yet mathematically impeachable and morally imperative: that we in America and Europe live more like African villagers, Indian subsistence farmers, and South American peasants.[xx]  They must become our models for the triumph of human dignity and justice, not to mention sustainability.  We, who have the appearance, at least, of a choice, must choose this sort of radical simplicity, embrace the hard work and the community interdependence, and abandon dreams that we might live without limits and be or do anything we can imagine (that godlike conceit was forged under the illusion that we have an infinite universe at our disposal[xxi]).

This will never happen you say.  It is unrealistic.  People will never give up privilege unless they have to.[xxii]  Congratulations: you have just chosen Path 2.  But true enough, I can’t disagree, this skepticism is probably warranted, especially if the limits of human aspiration are to be pragmatic and strategic, if you can’t hope beyond the current political parties and already established life-paths for middle class people.  For there is no clear path from where we are to a world of radically simple sustainability, except the one paved with cataclysmic violence and bloodshed, in which we will eventually be forcefully taken to our knees.[xxiii]

But we might still stand up and declare, “this is the right path, this is what I support, this is where I will throw my energy.”  There is no reason why we must continue to choose Path 1 or Path 2, or accept it–no reason why we must continue to pretend that our way of life or our side of the ideological divide (give or take a few ideological tweaks) is just and sustainable.  There is no reason why we should continue to give our consent to the maintenance of either growth or inequality.   Let us openly and loudly declare our commitment to our own eventual material poverty, and in this declaration find moral and spiritual wealth.  Let us begin to proclaim the unthinkable and think it every day.

 

[i] By Liberals I mean philosophical Liberals, which has generally included many who are considered political conservatives.  Ronald Reagan was as much a Liberal as Bernie Sanders.  Donald Trump, however, may not be a Liberal.

[ii] To borrow Chris Smaje’s term, Liberals are “solutionist” when it comes to freedom and choice, unable to see that there are in it advantages and disadvantages, payoffs and collateral damage.

[iii] Where apps are “creative” but managing erosion on a hardscrabble farm is not.

[iv] And accept that loan from the IMF along with the accompanying “restructuring” and “reforms.

[v] Does anyone really embrace the vision of a Clinton or a Macron?  Or is it just a safe alternative to the alternative?

[vi] I am not suggesting that “Power Realists” are across the board more “realistic.”

[vii]http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-01-24/donald-trump-and-economic-growth-a-brief-interregnum-on-growthism/

[viii] http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-01-24/donald-trump-and-economic-growth-a-brief-interregnum-on-growthism/

[ix] I’m completely not sure about this.  Power Realists may be as Growthist as neo-liberals and certainly trumpet the ideals of economic growth.  But their rise, I would assert without much qualification, has been made possible by the ending of growth and their policies are suited to the end of a Growthist order.

[x] It is with some weariness that I feel compelled to provide evidence for this conclusion.   Either the idea that the Earth can provide enough resources for the rest of the world to live like us, or the idea that exponential growth remains a viable plan for the future, on their own, belie any mathematical conclusions. But the Liberal vision requires both.  A true Liberal paradise would require that we maintain 3% or so economic growth in the industrialized world, while the “developing” world grows even faster to catch up.  The main reason that this can’t work is, simply, that growth is tantamount to mass genocide followed by mass suicide.  For despite ballyhooed efficiencies and alleged “decoupling” no one has figured out to create more stuff for more people without using more natural resources.  There is no way to lift a 400 ton passenger airplane off the ground with a small ecological footprint or provide everyone with one-hundred horsepower personal transportation without making the planet unlivable.  If everyone were to live like Americans, we would require about 6 times the current amount of things like rubber, oil, timber, concrete, and iron ore.  Meanwhile 3% economic growth—the amount most Liberal economists believe is necessary to maintain our delicate sociological balance—means that the size of the economy (and the amount of natural resources it requires) will double every 23 years.  That means in 56 years, the natural resource requirements would be quadruple the current level.  This is not a viable path into the future.  These resources simply don’t exist, and attempting to squeeze them out of our planet would make it unlivable.  Past and current attempts may already have.  No wonder so many pro-growth technophiles look to outer space as the solution to humanity’s alleged need for growth—which begs the very basic existential question of why so many humans see this as a better plan than the unthinkable one I suggest below.  I review some of the fundamental problems of economic growth in http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-02-22/economic-growth-a-primer/

[xi] What Jacques Derrida would have referred to as a “transcendental signifier,” a thing-in-itself, something that just is, which, like “evil,” not only needs no further explanation, but in fact shuns it.

[xii] As Michael Klare has recently noted more people are on the brink of starvation now than at any time since WWII.  http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-04-21/climate-change-genocide/

[xiii] This “choice” is far better described with that word, and with the notion of “ideals,” than anything we encounter today.  However, the clean narrative of good vs evil has nevertheless been simplified, with the relation of national interests to resources and empire being erased from the picture, or perhaps overshadowed by the atrocities.

[xiv] http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-01-17/the-growthist-self-growthism-part-3/

[xv] http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-01-11/a-geo-physis-of-freedom/

[xvi] And then picture these same entitled brats with their noses pressed up against another window on some other day.

[xvii] As the US Joint Forces Command concluded in 2010, “A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity. While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China and India. At best, it would lead to periods of harsh economic adjustment. To what extent conservation measures, investments in alternative energy production, and efforts to expand petroleum production from tar sands and shale would mitigate such a period of adjustment is difficult to predict. One should not forget that the Great Depression spawned a number of totalitarian regimes that sought economic prosperity for their nations by ruthless conquest.”  https://fas.org/man/eprint/joe2010.pdf, p.22 (emphasis added).

[xviii] Someone like Reagan is of great historical interest, what with his attempt to create a synthesis of the two, reflected in his soaring rhetoric, but paid for with massive debt and the strategic use of populist hate.

[xix] I am not, of course, referring to most mainstream economic analysis.  Economics as a discipline has been charged mainly with the task of figuring out how to grow the economy regardless of the consequences or the possibility.  By “hard-headed” I am thinking of the few economists who have escaped this Growthist ideology and follow what Charles Hall and Kent Klitgaard refer to as “biophysical economics.”

[xx] This point has been made most poignantly by Chris Smaje.  If you haven’t been reading his work, start now.  It’s among the most interesting in the “deep sustainability” world.  I need to further note that this current essay was motivated by Chris’s “Article 51” where he writes: “I’ve been accused before of irresponsibly wishing to lower the standard of living in the wealthier countries to the level of common misery experienced by humankind in general in relation to my remarks on immigration. On reflection, I’m happy to embrace that accusation, if I’m allowed a few extra lines of defence. I embrace it because, well, what’s the alternative? Historically, capitalist ideology has justified itself with aqueous metaphors of downward trickling and upwardly rising tides that benefit all. It’s become clear that these are mirages. So the argument against a fair global spread of economic resources then boils down essentially to the devil take the hindmost. I can’t justify that to myself ethically, and in any case I think that road leads to a still deeper mire of global misery.”  http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-03-28/article-51/

Smaje consistently condenses complicated issues into digestible form without sacrificing the complexity.  I’m trying to recondense some of his thoughts—or my take on them—into my own idiom and may be justly accused of adding little to what he has already said.

[xxi] It’s a nice sentiment, and it’s everywhere.  The prevailing “moral” of 90% of the movies currently made for 5 year olds is that they can be who or whatever they want, if they only follow their dreams and “be themselves.”  I get where this is coming from, and can glimpse the cost of abandoning this fiction.  But we need to start considering the fact that it just isn’t true, and certainly can’t be, at least as currently understood, for 6 or 7 or 8 billion people.  It might be possible, for a while, for half a billion or so.  And then they are likely to kick and scream and pout when the promise turns out to have been false.

[xxii] And the ecological limits of the world will never appear to us as a “have to,” even though they most certainly are.

[xxiii] There are of course brave pioneers who have beaten a track in this direction—ones like Jim Merkel.  But the problem of a whole-society or whole-system transition has yet to be solved.

Our Political Parties Are Obsolete

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

When the parties do finally implode, the general mood will be: good riddance.

History informs us that once something is obsolete, it can disappear far faster than anyone expected. While we generally think of obsoleted technologies vanishing, social and political systems can become obsolete as well.

Should a poor soul who entered a deep coma a year ago awaken today, we must forgive his/her astonishment at the political wreckage left by the 2016 election. The Democratic Party, a mere year ago an absurdly over-funded machine confident in an easy victory in the presidential race, is now a complete shambles: its leadership in free-fall, its Fat-Cat donors disgusted, and its demented intoxication with pinning collaboration with Russia on the Trump camp eroding whatever feeble legacy legitimacy it still holds. What the party stands for is a mystery, as its Elites are clearly beholden to insiders, special interests and Corporate donors while glorifying the worst excesses of globalism and the National Security State’s endless war on civil liberties.

The newly awakened citizen would also marvel at the chaotic war zone of the Republican Party, in which the Insider Warlords are battling insurgent Outsiders, while the same Elites that fund the Democratic machine are wondering what they’re buying with their millions of dollars in contributions, for it’s unclear what the Republican Party stands for: it’s for Small Government, except when it’s for Bigger Government, which is 95% of the time; it’s for more law enforcement and the militarization of local police, and more intrusion into the lives of the citizenry; it’s for stricter standards for welfare, except for Corporate Welfare; it’s for tax reform, except the thousands of pages of give-aways, loopholes and tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations all remain untouched, and so on: a smelly tangle of special interests masked by a few sprays of PR air freshener to the millions left behind by the globalization that has so enriched Corporate America and the class of financier-owners, bankers, insiders and technocrats–the same group that funds and controls both political parties.

Political parties arose to consolidate centralized control of the central state.We have now reached the perfection of this teleology: the political elites and the financial elites are now one class. In our pay-to-play “democracy,” only the votes of wealth and institutional power count.

As I have often noted here, the returns on centralization are diminishing to less than zero. The initial returns on centralizing capital, production and social-political power were robust, but now the centralized cartel-state is eating its own tail, masking its financial bankruptcy by borrowing from the future, and cloaking its political bankruptcy behind the crumbling facades of the legacy parties.

Now that technology has enabled decentralized currency, markets and governance, the centralized political parties are obsolete. They are the political equivalent of buggy whips, and those holding tight to the fantasy that their current dissolution will magically be transformed into unity by some future leadership will be disappointed.

The fragmentation of the political parties is not temporary–it is permanent. As I discussed yesterday, political and social fragmentation are the consequence of economic fragmentation–these are self-reinforcing dynamics, as fragmentation in one feeds fragmentation in the others.

Those who have gotten rich inside the bloated machinery of the parties will never accept their era has ended. The dreams of private jets and millions of dollars in contributions die hard. But the voters and donors are both waking up to the cold reality that the parties are nothing but wealth distribution machines that sluice millions from financial elites to various political elites.

All the legacy claims of both parties ring false; neither party gives a hoot about the working class, small business or civil liberties. Their entire game plan is to whip up hot-button social issues to distract a fragmented citizenry and arouse last-gasp emotional loyalty to empty slogans.

Is it any wonder that people are abandoning both parties and claiming Independent status? All the core systems of the nation are failing, visibly, painfully, badly, and yet all the parties can dredge up is more of the same and TINA–there is no alternative.

The citizen who just awakened also awakened to the truth: the legacy parties have no solutions; their game plan is to milk the system as long as they can before it collapses in a rotten heap of corruption, fraud, collusion, debt and profiteering that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

When the parties do finally implode, the general mood will be: good riddance. A centralized spoils system is no longer a viable way to govern the nation. Political systems everywhere are facing a choice: Decentralize or die.

Now Just Five Men Own Almost as Much Wealth as Half the World’s Population

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By Paul Buchheit

Source: CommonDreams

Last year it was 8 men, then down to 6, and now almost 5.

While Americans fixate on Trump, the super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues to grow. An analysis of 2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion in total wealth. As of 06/08/17, the world’s richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average, each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people.

Why Do We Let a Few People Shift Great Portions of the World’s Wealth to Themselves? 

Most of the super-super-rich are Americans. We the American people created the Internet, developed and funded Artificial Intelligence, and built a massive transportation infrastructure, yet we let just a few individuals take almost all the credit, along with hundreds of billions of dollars.

Defenders of the out-of-control wealth gap insist that all is OK, because, after all, America is a ‘meritocracy’ in which the super-wealthy have ‘earned’ all they have. They heed the words of Warren Buffett: “The genius of the American economy, our emphasis on a meritocracy and a market system and a rule of law has enabled generation after generation to live better than their parents did.”

But it’s not a meritocracy. Children are no longer living better than their parents did. In the eight years since the recession the Wilshire Total Market valuation has more than TRIPLED, rising from a little over $8 trillion to nearly $25 trillion. The great majority of it has gone to the very richest Americans. In 2016 alone, the richest 1% effectively shifted nearly $4 trillion in wealth away from the rest of the nation to themselves, with nearly half of the wealth transfer ($1.94 trillion) coming from the nation’s poorest 90%—the middle and lower classes. That’s over $17,000 in housing and savings per lower-to-middle-class household lost to the super-rich.

A meritocracy? Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos have done little that wouldn’t have happened anyway. ALL modern U.S. technology started with—and to a great extent continues with—our tax dollars and our research institutes and our subsidies to corporations.

Why Do We Let Unqualified Rich People Tell Us How To Live? Especially Bill Gates! 

In 1975, at the age of 20, Bill Gates founded Microsoft with high school buddy Paul Allen. At the time Gary Kildall’s CP/M operating system was the industry standard. Even Gates’ company used it. But Kildall was an innovator, not a businessman, and when IBM came calling for an OS for the new IBM PC, his delays drove the big mainframe company to Gates. Even though the newly established Microsoft company couldn’t fill IBM’s needs, Gates and Allen saw an opportunity, and so they hurriedly bought the rights to another local company’s OS — which was based on Kildall’s CP/M system. Kildall wanted to sue, but intellectual property law for software had not yet been established. Kildall was a maker who got taken.

So Bill Gates took from others to become the richest man in the world. And now, because of his great wealth and the meritocracy myth, MANY PEOPLE LOOK TO HIM FOR SOLUTIONS IN VITAL AREAS OF HUMAN NEED, such as education and global food production.

—Gates on Education: He has promoted galvanic skin response monitors to measure the biological reactions of students, and the videotaping of teachers to evaluate their performances. About schools he said, “The best results have come in cities where the mayor is in charge of the school system. So you have one executive, and the school board isn’t as powerful.”

—Gates on Africa: With investments in or deals with Monsanto, Cargill, and Merck, Gates has demonstrated his preference for corporate control over poor countries deemed unable to help themselves. But no problem—according to Gates, “By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world.”

Warren Buffett: Demanding To Be Taxed at a Higher Rate (As Long As His Own Company Doesn’t Have To Pay) 

Warren Buffett has advocated for higher taxes on the rich and a reasonable estate tax. But his company Berkshire Hathaway has used “hypothetical amounts” to ‘pay’ its taxes while actually deferring $77 billion in real taxes.

Jeff Bezos: $50 Billion in Less Than Two Years, and Fighting Taxes All the Way 

Since the end of 2015 Jeff Bezos has accumulated enough wealth to cover the entire $50 billion U.S. housing budget, which serves five million Americans. Bezos, who has profited greatly from the Internet and the infrastructure built up over many years by many people with many of our tax dollars, has used tax havens and high-priced lobbyists to avoid the taxes owed by his company.

Mark Zuckerberg (6th Richest in World, 4th Richest in America) 

While Zuckerberg was developing his version of social networking at Harvard, Columbia University students Adam Goldberg and Wayne Ting built a system called Campus Network, which was much more sophisticated than the early versions of Facebook. But Zuckerberg had the Harvard name and better financial support. It was also alleged that Zuckerberg hacked into competitors’ computers to compromise user data.

Now with his billions he has created a ‘charitable’ foundation, which in reality is a tax-exempt limited liability company, leaving him free to make political donations or sell his holdings, all without paying taxes.

Everything has fallen into place for young Zuckerberg. Nothing left to do but run for president.

The False Promise of Philanthropy 

Many super-rich individuals have pledged the majority of their fortunes to philanthropic causes. That’s very generous, if they keep their promises. But that’s not really the point.

American billionaires all made their money because of the research and innovation and infrastructure that make up the foundation of our modern technologies. They have taken credit, along with their massive fortunes, for successes that derive from society rather than from a few individuals. It should not be any one person’s decision about the proper use of that wealth. Instead a significant portion of annual national wealth gains should be promised to education, housing, health research, and infrastructure. That is what Americans and their parents and grandparents have earned after a half-century of hard work and productivity.

It Is Bettter to Light One Candle than to Curse the Darkness

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By Harvey Lothian

Source: Dissident Voice

The world is in bad shape. Every reasonably intelligent, aware, objective person in the world knows, if only intuitively, that something is very, very wrong. There should not be this many armed conflicts, this much anger, this much violence, this much unemployment and underemployment, this much debt, this much homelessness, hunger, poverty, this ever widening gap between the income and wealth of the super rich and everyone else, and this much distrust in government and politicians. The future does not look good; a financial crisis and a socioeconomic collapse are just around the corner. Another World War or innumerable smaller wars seem almost certain.

Things are dark everywhere in the world, except in the offices and homes of the wealthy and highly connected people of the world. They control the world. There are no genuine democracies in the world, only oligarchies and dictatorships. The wealthy classes have never had it better. Never in recorded history has this class had higher income and wealth compared to the average working family. Oxfam reported that the richest 50% of the people own over 99% of the world’s wealth, the richest 1% of the world’s population hold over 50% of the world’s wealth, and the richest 62 people in the world has as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population, about 3.6 billion people.

Rich people’s insatiable greed has brought the world to this lamentable state. Make no mistake about it, the greed of the wealthy classes and their flunkies are responsible for the wretched state of the world today. We, the masses of the world, believed their lies because we are decent trusting people. We did not believe anyone would tell us such monstrous lies. The wealthy classes did, then they had us go to war against other innocent trusting people around the world while they looted the assets of our countries and stole our future. They have left us nothing but our confusion as to why our lives are going down the drain when we believed and tried our best to be patriotic citizens of our country. Our confusion is rapidly turning to anger as we learn more details about how the wealthy classes and leaders have deceived us, betrayed us, and ruined our lives. They have used us in the most despicable of ways; they used our trust, and naivety to rob and violate us to our very core, by destroying our lives and our hope and dreams for a better future for ourselves and our children.

To put this insanity in clear perspective, consider the following. Reliable U.N. agencies estimate that 32,000 children die around the world every day from hunger and hunger related diseases. They die because their parents do not have enough money to feed them a nourishing diet. Billions of people around the world live on one to three dollars a day, so we can safely say that if these 32,000 children’s parents earned $3 a day these children would not die. A tiny $96,000 a day given to these children’s parents, in wages for work performed, would save these children from what is apparently a painful death. That is $35,040,000 per year to save 32,000 innocent children, or, $1,095 per year to save one child. According to Forbes magazine there are 1,810 billionaires in the world worth a total of $6.5 trillion. Why do 32,000 children die every day from hunger and hunger related diseases, 224,000 every week, 11,648,000 every year when there is enough food to feed them and enough money to buy that food? Because we live in a totally insane world where accumulating wealth is more important to some that feeding hungry children.

There is no way out of the insane economic house of cards the rich have built except total collapse. The rich made that inevitable when they relentlessly incurred ever increasing amounts of federal debt, in our name, as they continually sent our well paying jobs to low wage countries making it impossible for us to reduce that debt through our taxes. They got super rich, we lost our good jobs and had enormous amounts of new debt piled on to us. This is not sustainable, the house of cards must eventually collapse. Or, our insane leaders will try to turn the world into one huge war zone.

We, the decent, sane people of the world now have an important decision to make; we can continue to curse the darkness the insane wealthy people of the world have created with their insane endless pursuit of more wealth, or, we can begin lighting candles by seeking and employing methods of solidly uniting us so we can defeat our common enemy and move us to a better way of living together. If we do not have a clear picture in our minds of how we want to live together in peace and harmony chaos will occur when the socio economic system collapses. We have to know where we are going, or we are lost.

Where do we want to go? The answer is obvious; we are all human beings, we all sprang from the same source, we are all brothers and sisters and all have exactly the same innate needs for food, water, shelter, warmth, sleep, social order, safety, security, stability, employment, a sense of belonging and love, and the opportunity to develop to our fullest potential. Simply put. we want and need to live in a world where countries are at peace with each other while we live in peace and harmony with each other in our country and we have the opportunity to lead decent normal lives while developing to our fullest potential.

The only way out of the horrendous mess of the collapsing house cards the greedy people have erected is if a vast majority of people around the world solidly unite as brothers and sisters under the motto, “All for one, one for all.” After the collapse occurs no one must be left without the necessities of life. Brothers and sisters take care of each other.

No kind of violence can be tolerated after the house of cards collapses. Violence breeds violence and solves no important long term problems. Brothers and sisters are not violent with each other.

Can we, the people of the world, do this? Can we solidly unite, watch out for each other, protect each other and help those in need? The alternative is too awful to think about. So, we must try. If we try we may succeed. It would be a wonderful world if we cared about others as much as we cared about ourselves; if we were all brothers and sisters. It is time to start lighting candles and stop cursing the darkness. Love thy neighbour as thyself. Or, at least try to do it.

 

Harvey Lothian is a 79-year-old and living on the Sunshine Coast of BC, Canada. His passions since a teenager have been history, politics, economics, sociology, social psychology, learning, traveling and reading. In recent years he has come to understand what Plato meant when he said all dogs have the soul of a philosopher.

Are We (Collectively) Depressed?

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

We need to encourage honesty above optimism. Once we can speak honestly, there is a foundation for optimism.

Psychoanalysis teaches that one cause of depression is repressed anger.

The rising tide of collective anger is visible in many places: road rage, violent street clashes between groups seething for a fight, the destruction of friendships for holding the “incorrect” ideological views, and so on. I Think We Can Safely Say The American Culture War Has Been Taken As Far As It Can Go.

A coarsening of the entire social order is increasingly visible: The Age of Rudeness.

This raises a larger question: are we as a society becoming depressed as we repress our righteous anger and our sense of powerlessness as economic and social inequality rises?

Depression is a complex phenomenon, but it typically includes a loss of hope and vitality, absence of goals, the reinforcement of negative internal dialogs, and anhedonia, the loss of the joy of living (joie de vivre).

Depressive thoughts (and the emotions they generate) tend to be self-reinforcing, and this is why it’s so difficult to break out of depression once in its grip.

One part of the healing process is to expose the sources of anger that we are repressing. As psychiatrist Karen Horney explained in her 1950 masterwork, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization, anger at ourselves sometimes arises from our failure to live up to the many “shoulds” we’ve internalized, and the idealized track we’ve laid out for ourselves and our lives.

The recent article, The American Dream Is Killing Us does a good job of explaining how our failure to obtain the expected rewards of “doing all the right things” (getting a college degree, working hard, etc.) breeds resentment and despair.

Since we did the “right things,” the system “should” deliver the financial rewards and security we expected. This systemic failure to deliver the promised rewards is eroding social mobility and the social contract while generating frustration, anger, etc.

We are increasingly angry at the system, but we reserve some anger for ourselves, because the mass-media trumpets how well the economy is doing and how some people are doing extremely well. Naturally, we wonder, why them and not us? The failure is thus internalized.

One response to this sense that the system no longer works as advertised is to seek the relative comfort of echo chambers–places we can go to hear confirmation that this systemic stagnation is the opposing political party’s fault.

We don’t just self-sort ourselves into political “tribes” online–we congregate in increasingly segregated communities and states: The Simple Reason Why A Second American Civil War May Be Inevitable.

Americans are moving to communities that align more with their politics. Liberals are moving to liberal areas, and conservatives are moving to conservative communities. It’s been going on for decades. When Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, 26.8% of Americans lived in landslide counties; that is counties where the president won or lost by 20% of the vote.

By 2004, 48.3% of the population lived in these counties. This trend continues to worsen. As Americans move to their preferred geographic bubbles, they face less exposure to opposing viewpoints, and their own opinions become more extreme. This trend is at the heart of why politics have become so polarizing in America.

We’re self-sorting at every level. Because of this, Americans are only going to grow more extreme in their beliefs, and see people on the other side of the political spectrum as more alien.”

Part of the American Exceptionalism we hear so much about is a can-do optimism: set your mind to it and everything is possible.

The failure to prosper as anticipated is generating a range of negative emotions that are “un-American”: complaining that you didn’t get a high-paying secure job despite having a college degree (or advanced degree) sounds like sour-grapes: the message is you didn’t work hard enough, you didn’t get the right diploma, etc.

It can’t be the system that’s failed, right? I discuss this in my book Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform: the top 10% who are benefiting mightily dominate politics and the media, and their assumption is: the system is working great for me, so it must be working for everyone. That’s the implicit narrative parroted by status quo mouthpieces.

The inability to express our despair and anger generates depression. Some people will redouble their efforts, others will seek to lay the blame on “the other” (some external group) and others will give up. What few people will do is look at the sources of systemic injustice.

Perhaps we need a national dialog about declining expectations, rising inequality and the failure of the status quo that avoids the blame-game and the internalization trap (i.e. it’s your own fault you’re not well-off).

We need ways to express our resentment, anger, despair, etc. that are directed at the source, the complex system we inhabit, not “the other.” We need to encourage honesty above optimism. Once we can speak honestly, there is a foundation for optimism.

 

America’s Oligarchs Will Control 70% Of National Wealth By 2021

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By Whitney Webb

Source: AntiMedia

America’s rich just won’t quit getting richer, according to a new study released in mid-June by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting firm. The study, which seeks to analyze the global wealth management industry, as well as the evolution of private wealth, uncovered some startling statistics that suggest that global financial inequality will grow significantly by the year 2021.

The firm found that the already massive gap between the world’s wealthy elite – the approximately 18 million households that hold at least more than $1 million in assets – and everyone else is continuing to widen at a remarkable rate. The estimated 70 million people who make up these households were found to control 45 percent of the world’s $166.5 trillion in wealth. And in just four more years, it is estimated that they will control more than half of the world’s wealth, despite representing less than 1 percent of the world’s current population.

However, while rising inequality is a global phenomenon, it is especially pronounced in the United States. While wealth inequality in the U.S. is by no means an unknown phenomenon, the U.S. is significantly more unequal than most other countries, with the nation’s elite currently holding 63 percent of the private wealth. The U.S. elite’s share of national wealth is also growing much faster than the global average, with millionaires and billionaires expected to control an estimated 70 percent of the nation’s wealth by 2021.

The U.S.’ high wealth inequality largely owes to post-World War II government policies that have seen almost a quarter of all national income go to its wealthiest residents. Meanwhile, wages for the majority of Americans have remained stagnant for decades – in contrast to the richest Americans, their future economic outlook is incredibly bleak by comparison.

The U.S. is also home to more billionaires and millionaires than anywhere else in the world, which partly explains how U.S. policy has come to favor them over the years. According to Bloomberg, two out of five millionaires and billionaires live in the United States – and their ranks are growing.

While the world’s richest citizens may be pleased by the results of BCG’s recent study, there is plenty for them to be worried about if history is any indicator. Indeed, history shows that societies with drastic wealth inequality are much more unstable and more likely to experience drastic economic failure or outright societal collapse.

For instance, a 2014 study conducted by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center noted that over-consumption and wealth inequality have occurred in the collapse of every civilization over the last 5,000 years. That same study also warned that rising inequality could easily lead to an unsustainable use of resources and the “irreversible collapse” of global industrial civilization.

This warning seems particularly prescient, given that wealth inequality in the U.S. is well above that of past civilizations that eventually collapsed as a result of these factors. For example, at the time of the collapse of the Roman Empire, the top 1 percent of the Roman elite controlled just 16 percent of the society’s wealth, a measly figure compared to the percentage commanded by the 1-percenters of the U.S.

While the BCG study paints a rosy picture for the world’s millionaires and billionaires, particularly in the United States, they should be gravely concerned that their growing accumulation of wealth could have drastic consequences – not just for those poorer than them, but for everyone.

Godzilla Amazon: The Amount of Power in Jeff Bezos’ Hands Should Frighten All Americans

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Amazon very effectively uses technology and data to sidestep traditional restrictions on monopoly power.

By Matt Stoller

Source: AlterNet

To understand the depth and breadth of Jeff Bezos’ ambitions for the company he built, type www.relentless.com into your browser. The domain Bezos registered in 1994 will redirect to Amazon, the company aptly, and ambitiously, nicknamed The Everything Store. He tells his shareholders that the company will act like an aggressive startup — that at Amazon, it is always Day One.

Like Google and Facebook, Amazon uses technology and data to sidestep traditional restrictions on monopoly power. Our lives are increasingly organized by the platforms these companies run, platforms which now mediate the way we communicate and engage in commerce with each other. We are living in a world organized by tech monopolists, a change in power relationships that no one voted for but has been imposed upon us nonetheless.

Now, Bezos is attempting to add more power to his empire with the surprise announcement that the company will pay $13.7 billion for Whole Foods Market. Amazon will now have a store footprint in neighborhoods across America.

Our communities and the way we engage in commerce will change. Imagine walking into a Whole Foods store and seeing different prices depending on whether you are a member of Amazon Prime — or seeing different prices depending on any other way that you interact with Amazon.

This isn’t implausible. It is what the company does when it opens up stores. For instance, Amazon is creating a chain of physical book stores to take the place of the book stores the company destroyed. In these stores, there are no price tags at all: You scan the items with your phone and have a price delivered to you, personalized by Amazon. Why wouldn’t Amazon extend this to Whole Foods? “Our goal with Amazon Prime, make no mistake,” says Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, “is to make sure that if you are not a Prime member, you are being irresponsible.”

This statement and the amount of power in Bezos’ hands should frighten all Americans. Bezos meant that Amazon will soon be so good for consumers that it would just be folly not to be a member. But what he unwittingly implied is that as a citizen, you will have no choice but to interact with his institution to buy and sell key goods that everyone needs — on his terms.

Jeff Bezos, in other words, has a vision. To be everywhere, to be the platform for everything for every consumer. So when Bezos calls you irresponsible for not tithing to Amazon, America has a big political problem.

Amazon’s takeover of Whole Foods means that it can target and eliminate regional competitors one by one as it did with its online competitors. When Diapers.com emerged as a competitor to Amazon, Amazon simply sold diapers below cost until the company capitulated and sold itself to Bezos. There’s no reason to assume Amazon wouldn’t bring the same predatory pricing strategy to bear in every city in America. Why wouldn’t it? Even though predatory pricing is illegal, the government hasn’t enforced those laws for decades. Whole Foods tends to source from local farms as part of a commitment to localism; these farms will now be negotiating with a much bigger entity that is committed to a ruthless model of efficiency.

There are so many ways that Amazon can use its power that it’s simply impossible to figure out what it will do. Amazon probably doesn’t even know yet; it will discover and test them, relentlessly. Maybe you will get first in line, or last in line, for the most popular toy during the Christmas period, or maybe the restaurant you own will get access to the freshest yet limited batch strawberries you need based on whether you are giving better deals to Prime members.

Or here’s a more creative possibility. Amazon is excluding Amazon Prime video from Apple TV so that Prime members will buy its streaming device instead of Apple’s. As the smartphone market commodifies and transforms, Bezos could simply use his combined physical and online footprint to keep you from even seeing prices at his stores unless you are using Amazon-approved electronic devices. If Amazon were just one of many stores that would be one thing. But Amazon is quickly becoming the dominant way to buy and sell.

And this, make no mistake, is what is happening. Upon the announcement of the acquisition, Target’s stock price dropped by 10 percent and Walmart’s by 5 percent. Amazon’s rose by more than the price it is paying for Whole Foods. Wall Street sees the writing on the wall. There is only one force that can stop Amazon from organizing and regulating basically all American retail commerce — our democratic institutions and our political system. We the people.

Bezos knows Amazon is a political enterprise at this point. The day before he announced his company’s attempt to buy this supermarket chain, he released a request on Twitter to have people offer ideas for where he can direct charity money. That is the kind of public relations undertaken by political leaders. And Amazon put out an ad for a Ph.D. economist-cum-lobbyist “to educate regulators and policy makers about the fundamentally procompetitive focus of Amazon’s businesses.” And he has put political fixers, like Ivanka Trump’s lawyer and ex-Clinton administration officer Jamie Gorelick, on his board of directors. He also bought The Washington Post.

The public should speak out in opposition to this merger. More than that, the government should take this opportunity to reject the entire pro-finance pro-concentration philosophy that has taken hold in this country since the Reagan era. It is no accident that Whole Foods founder John Mackey was forced to surrender his life’s work because financiers looking for a quick buck bought up a large bloc of shares in his company and pressured him to sell the company to Amazon. The day before the announcement of the sale, he called these hedge funds “Ringwraiths,” after the evil characters in “Lord of the Rings.” Bezos might be the most powerful empire-builder in the land, but he had help.

This merger should frighten all of us. But it should also embolden anyone who believes that America should not be in thrall to monopolists like Bezos. For them, today, as Jeff Bezos might put it, is Day One.

Matt Stoller is fellow at the Open Markets program, where he is researching the history of the relationship between concentrated financial power and the Democratic party in the 20th century.