Shifting wealth
Wealth is an elusive entity. One day here the the next day gone; boom and bust. Wealth always tends to accumulate in certain pockets at certain times. It is the flow from one pocket to the next that drives all economic activity. At any given time there will be a concentration in any one area and pockets will gain and loose as the wealth shifts around. Kings are born and then fall to ruin over time, empires rise and fall.
In our time we are seeing the most incredible shift in wealth that our species has ever seen. Whereas incredible concentrations would produce monarchs or regional or continental status, we are now seeing a concentration in a global arena. The upper echelons of society are concentrating the wealth of the entire world and we can begin to see the infrastructure the wealthy will deploy to keep and further this concentration.
We see government policy and decisions based on corporate need as opposed to public need. How else can one explain the complete lack of G20 bank and financial sector regulation while imposing severe austerity measures on depressed economies; economies who are often depressed due the casino like behavior of the financial and banking sectors. There is no trouble when public money is stolen from the private purse to bail out irresponsible private sector activity, but one cannot suggest taking money from the public sector to fund the public sector. By all rights many banks should no longer exist where it not for public welfare, yet no “austerity measures” are imposed on these reckless institutions! But banks now insist on imposing severe austerity measures on countries who are in the same position the banks were. So the wealth seems to only transfer in one direction in this regard; to the bank from the public when the bank needs help, but not the converse without austerity conditions that were not reciprocal.
The mechanics of this situation can be thought of as a question of “person hood”. Our society is composed of three fundamental types of “persons”.
- Regular people like you and me. We are born, we live, attempt to accumulate a bit of wealth, and then we die. There are billions like us and we populate almost every continent.
- The State. These are giants we created to protect groups of us as a whole. These people are born (usually through a constitution), grow up, bur vary rarely die. A regular person is relatively powerless against these types of people although the types stated goal is to protect the regular people.
- Corporations. Similar to States, these people (and they are legally treated as people) accumulate wealth and rarely die. Unlike States these entities DO NOT have as a stated goal to protect regular people. The usual stated goal of this type of person is to simply accumulate wealth, without any other concern. They are similar to people in many respects, but they do not have the right to vote in governments which control the State (the Corporation proper, individuals that work for the Corporation are free men)
Now if we thing in these terms, we can see that individual people cannot really affect States or Corporations. But as a collective people can affect them greatly. It is in the Corporate interest to discourage any collective action that would hinder their pursuit of accumulating wealth up to and including attempting to fight or control the Government (who in turn controls the State) to work on their behalf instead of the regular people. So the Corporate person will want to “fight” the regular people for societies resources, it is a class war of different types of “persons”.
The State persona was born out of the need to defend regular people against Kings and tyrants as well as other States. We created the State to have a “larger” person to fight for us, so that law, not man. Until the birth of corporations, States personas could only really be challenged by other states, or persons of their own size and strength. Regular people, even groups of vagabonds upstarts and rogues did pose a significant threat to the strength of a state person. And as long as the state was acting on our behalf (for the greater good) then all was fine. The State could use supreme authority (via its shear strength) to hold all else to account.
Then we created another type of person. The Corporation. Corporations started to grow up and amass large amounts or wealth. Corporate people grew to the size that they could challenge the mighty State people, and they had the distinct advantage of not having to care for anything but its own growth. As the Corporate people became stronger than the Sate people, the State people needed to appease the later; strength always gives way to greater strength.
Today, many would say that the Corporate people and the State people have teamed up to rule as one. With their combined strength there is little hope for us regular people. Society is being restructure with a bias that favor the Corporate people. Consequently wealth is being drawn up, like water, from the bottom to quench the thirst of the Giants that now rule; leaving a barren desert behind.
Mrs. Lead.
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These pools that, though in forests, still reflect The total sky almost without defect, And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver, Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone, And yet not out by any brook or river, But up by roots to bring dark foliage on. The trees that have it in their pent-up buds To darken nature and be summer woods -- Let them think twice before they use their powers To blot out and drink up and sweep away These flowery waters and these watery flowers From snow that melted only yesterday. - Robert Frost
