“Democratic” Monopoly-Capitalism’s Last Raspy Gasp…
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My feelings about “capitalism” were benign most of my life. Of course, my concept of it was mostly the hard striving business, competing against similar businesses in a generally fair, decently refereed, economy. Although in high school, I had read about Teddy Roosevelt’s trust busting, and as a 20-something consumer, I experienced the chopping up of AT&T.
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My perspective began changing somewhere between the dot com boom, and the 2008 crash. The housing collapse, and stock market crash solidified my current negative perception of capitalism. Ironically, this happened during the high point of my small business’ boom that lasted about four years, or until 2010.
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As millions were losing their jobs in late 2008 and all of 2009, my business was doing better than it ever had. Conversely, I was the same age as my father, 48, when he had the worst couple years of his life, career wise. Dad lost his job during the 1973 oil embargo and recession. At that high point for me, and low point for the country, I started to work on a project to change how we approached the economy, and jobs development.
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Unfortunately and serendipitously, my health gave out within two years of my business reaching its highest, yet modest, revenue level. I lost all my clients in six months. Though returning to work a year later, I was not able to gain back more than 40% of my business five years afterwards. My mental energy level no longer was into that old, cash piling up somewhat endeavor. I decided to move on to full time writing, and developing my project about a year ago, after my remaining client responsibilities wound down.
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That project has now expanded to other areas of society including social justice elements, developing into the We The People (WTP) System.
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I have written a lot about it, and will be doing more, but instead of another explanatory essay, something more staunchly opinionated, satire riddled, and sarcasm-filled is required. It is what I need to keep my mental energy at a sharp level. Capitalism must be skewered at least figuratively every so often.
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Capitalism, Never What We Are Told It Is.
Whether it is called a “free” market, laissez faire, or a dink me over economy, the controls on its excesses were forced deeper and deeper into the swamp during every administration over the last four decades. Democrats may slow it down, but no President or Congress has provided a full picture of the damage its gouging, grafting, and engorging has done to the paychecks, and wealth of American workers in the bottom 90%.
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Every side is working with at least bad mapping technology, if not outright collaborating in some manner in the downfall of workers. Libertarians are one of my favorite punching bags. Their general ideas make some sense, but most adherents head down the Mises Institute miser hole, Austrian School of sphincter austerity sinkhole, or the Ayn-Rand fundamentalism, rabbit hole.
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Libertarians often push their economic myths more than any reality. They have discovered little of anything new. Nothing is ever as simple as their one economic theory developed by Methuselah. Yet most Republicans, and too big a portion of democrats, fell for and sopped up that mummified and unexamined hocus-pocus, poppycock, and plundering theory. Workers and citizens are now paying greatly for this inflexible, and anti-modernistic economic philosophy.
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Purer capitalism is the worn out leather on the ass of a stupid idea.
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We do various things that our ancestors did like eat, shit, and make babies. Yet many other parts of life have had dynamic advancements over time. Everything modern is not good, but many things that are old have never been fully understood. We think capitalism is the best we can do because we are told to fear anything else.
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Yes, communism and socialism as practiced in a number of high profile situations ended very badly. Of course, capitalism also failed workers and citizens in banana republics, and other developing nations. That said, there are other economic elements to consider. Here I present my civic and economic transitional, and transformational, plan around the following music recording analogy:
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Our move from vinyl records to 8-track to cassette tape to compact disc, and now digital, was worth it, generally, as a transitional experience. Although the cassette tape was just an okay transition, and 8-tracks were almost worthless, we got passed both lackluster stages to something much better in various ways. While some are still full of nostalgia for vinyl, it will never do everything digital does.
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We learned from the 8-track (Stalin’s USSR, and Mao’s China) disaster that such things will never be worth going back to. The cassette tape version (the French, Swedish, British NHS attempts at socialism) are fine for them, but not exactly what we want to do. Our socio-economic leap from agrarian society vinyl to the manufacturing age CD made our lives somewhat better. That said, we need a higher level of interaction, capacity, ease-of-use, and other advantages due to our combination of competing ideologies, and being in a large advanced society.
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Using socialism as an epithet directed at Democrats is as smart, and cogent, as a January 6th “christian” nationalist insurrectionist’s anti-Antifa, or anti-anti-satan, protest sign.
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How do we combine our hunting, animal spirits with our collective, gathering spirit without alienating the other? The animal spirited is the individual hunter of game, who wants to be left alone, not interfered with by an overarching, impersonal government, and believes in the “free” market. The collective, gathering spirit realizes we are not, and cannot be a fully individualistic society. That government should play a larger role in our lives, when the “free” market rolls over people, and in other instances where basic human rights need protection.
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Like digital does not offer the sound experience of vinyl, the animal spirited will need to weigh that experience element with regaining more of their individualist characteristics, and getting government off their backs. Vinyl economics and democracy never satisfied the gathering spirited, and some may cling to cassette social democratic nostalgia. The movement to digital may make them uncomfortable initially because they still perceive a better, and different landscape using their cassette plan.
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However, the digital plan, my WTP System, may make both groups nervous. Probably not due to its features, advantages, or benefits; more so its unfamiliarity, and the worry it will not work as advertised, and be better for the other group than their own group. That being said, if we do not overcome such fears, we will never gain back what we have lost under Trump, let alone move much farther along in our development as a democracy.
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Monopoly capitalism is what our economic structure tends towards. No one individual player is at fault; it is the fault of our current system, which allows such entities to develop and thrive. Some kind of entity must always check them, and prevent legislation that encourages such rapacious activity. Our political system is too convoluted, and corrupted by moneyed interests for citizens to get a proper word in edgewise that has any lasting, positive effect.
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The “free” market has only ever been free to a few, and mostly to abuse, and from democracy corruption never do they recuse.
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A high percentage of Americans believe getting wealthy is just fine, but I do not think most want the rich to get special favors from the government. Once a big corporation, and wealthy persons are allowed one favor, it is much easier to get another. After awhile, the balance is forever in their favor. Our system will likely catch a major scammer like Bernie Madoff. That is not the case when politicians are manipulated to work our system over, and constantly weaken the guardrails further.
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Most of us do not see the slight weakening of the guardrails each year by the business behemoths and our monopoly masters, and only after decades do we catch on, when it is much too late to reverse the car (clock). That is because we inculcated a very uncontrolled corridor as the way we have always driven the economy. When we try to restore or reengineer the route, Republicans then tell us additional regulations will do more harm than good. Once workers are placed in this seemingly no-way out paradox, Republicans cry scary socialism to avoid any scrutiny of monopoly mania caused by unfettered capitalism, and their democracy demoralizing project.
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The paradox is further heightened due to the lower prices we covet from the current monopoly system. Perversely, as the prices of the monopoly services and products fall, our paychecks are reduced because monopolies destroy the economic vibrancy of the many businesses that would have paid us more. The impact is often indirect; a person does not lose a somewhat higher paying warehouse job at a small company to work at an Amazon warehouse. Instead, what is more likely: a medium-sized employer — paying its workers better than livable wages — no longer garners revenue from clients of many smaller businesses that Amazon crushes, over many years. The indirectness could also be more distant, harder for us to see its connections to monopoly power.
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Unhealthy Partnership: Monopolies And Democracy.
The problem with monopolies is their short term consumer seductiveness combined with their long term I.E.Ds, i.e. worker rights and civic participation implosions. While competing smaller businesses and some communities become very aware of their danger-filled incursions early on, the general consumer is awed by their power and ingenuity, and seduced by their lower prices and much wider selection of goods all in one place.
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Once wages start to fall due to monopoly efficiencies, and fewer workers are needed, the consumer population begins clamoring for even lower prices because their buying power continues decreasing. This vortex of damage to workers in the monopoly economy cannot be as easily remedied as can the optical delusion of lower prices on goods and services. However, when fewer people have good jobs, not even lower prices will staunch the hemorrhaging of worker power.
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An effectively working democracy and beneficial worker economics go hand in hand, until monopolies put an efficient, lower price down on a consumerism state. Then the capitalists shake hands on it, and subsequently shake us down.
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Investment grade items get farther out of reach for these consumers. Those items include good housing, higher education, and affordable health insurance. As the value of your housing is reduced, education opportunities shrink, and personal health declines, your future dries up as well. While some may not need or care about more education or healthcare, lack of its availability to others, means jobs at the lower end become more competitive, and harder to get.
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Right-to-work, weak government support states are especially susceptible to, making the higher priced items untouchable for the average citizen. Why do monopoly companies with their lower prices get more protection, and support from the government than citizens and workers? Rather than being citizens first and foremost, many Republicans and some Democrats placate and patronize us as mere consumers.
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We should no longer partner with political parties on improving our job prospects, or bargain with businesses as mere consumers. We The People must stand up much higher as citizens and workers. Consumers are the weakest link in our national partnerships. Capitalism will always push towards monopoly without citizens constantly, and consistently activated to control their obsessively aggressive growth. “Free” markets are not free when we allow capitalist monopolies completely free rein to fully complete their reign.
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Absolute Power Rules Absolutely.
What the powerful and the wealthy believe:
Poor people are lazy (yet the mega-wealth powered create more of the poor).
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Government should be limited… to helping our few, of white hue, grow our wealth and expand our power.
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The world is better off, in a few vital ways, when a few people can decide if a few additional people, once in a while, can raise their standard of living.
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If you were as healthy as we are, you would not need all the government health insurance you need now.
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Just get wealthy like us; then you can complain about what government should do for you, and get real results.
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Our government’s most important mission is to protect our property rights because this government stole the rights of others — not white like us — to acquire all this property that is so sacred to us, our bank accounts, and our filthy rich, egregiously gaudy, and lazy lineage.
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What goes around, comes around. Believing in the value of all kinds of capitalism is stinking lazy thinking. Lazy is as lazy thinks.
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As the wealthy get wealthier, the harder it is for them to see us in their reflection. In their fully engorged state, they do not see their own reflection, or our misery. Nor do they worry about disunion, or dissolution of our democracy. Their monopolies become a necessary charity for us to survive. We are lucky to have their low paying jobs. Although we may think the worker economy would be better with stronger unions that is only true if we look deeper, which is not allowed. Having wealthy capitalists is good, no matter how it turns out for others, or if it turns us out in the street.
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Thinking critically about capitalism may conjure up ideas of socialism. Therefore, capitalism is always good. This restrictive structure of thinking forces us into another paradoxical box canyon. First, capitalism is not always good. Second, socialism or labor unions are not the only answers. There is another path out of this canyon that can satisfy the 80 to 90% of us in the middle.
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A Conspiratorial Conclusion.
The most successful, and actual, conspiracies are those we acknowledge, then forget about, or ignore. Capitalist monopolies are that conspiracy. We see them coming, but like a deer in headlights licking the salt block of seductive consumerism, we never look up long enough to truly see what is going to hit us, or when.
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Yes, just like we saw Walmart, and other big box stores kill main street businesses, but did nothing because it was good for most of us at the time. Maybe we did not fully understand the impact until decades later. Yet, we also figured the benefits would offset the losses.
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These changes were how things had to go. Progress is progress is progress. Nobody is pulling strings that would make most of us poorer, or gain little compared to some gaining almost all of it. Though as you can see in the chart, as the pie got bigger, the very wealthy got even more of it. From the H.W. Bush admin, halfway into Trump’s admin, they ate over 6% out of the bottom 90%’s wealth pie; and the top 9% (minus the top 1%’s 6%) eats up an extra 4% of the wealth pie since 1989, also out of the bottom 90%.
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The pleasure of lower prices delivered in a one stop shop only hits home when we have no money left to purchase any of the pleasuring. Being a democracy requires us to look up long enough to see what is happening. The consumer culture is bent over licking the salt block, or heads in the sand sucking on sour worms. Consumers are not citizens. Citizens are a democracy. Once we allow capitalism to make us mostly sour worm sucking, and headlight stunned consumers, they win, and our nation loses.
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It is time to quit licking the salt block of seductive consumerism, and sucking at democracy until it sours. That is how we improve our economy for workers. So please join me in no longer getting licked by monopolistic tricks, and not sucking at democracy.
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General elements of the WTP system that present its reality, and structural strength. These include the jobs development platform (JDP), common watchdog rampart (CWR), single civic door (SCD), emergency logistics/facilitator (ELF), and pollution eliminator project (PEP).
Notice how the movie makers regularly come up with scary systems, or A.I. that will someday, somehow control human…richard-the-chwalek.medium.com
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