Hospitium And America’s Robber Barons Who Are Now Worth $2.3 Trillion

It really doesn’t matter who, what, where, why, this system is finished.  One of the most intriguing forms of propaganda I see today from those who have stolen everything is that you can’t make society wealthy by taking from those who have achieved individual wealth.  Hahaha.  That’s a f*cking joke.  It certainly is true that in a just and honest society that taking from those who have worked and toiled to invent, create and produce and giving to those who are lazy, entitled, privileged and, in general, parasites and manipulators, is not the way to create wealth for everyone.  But, in actuality, most of the people who have achieved substantial wealth today have stolen it from those who don’t.  It is the successful who are often lazy, entitled, privileged parasites.  The methods of this theft are endless.  Whether that is the surplus value of one’s labor and intellectual capital stolen by capitalists or the massive money-to-make-money dynamic of rent extraction of renter capitalism or the fraud and corruption of rigging just about every aspect of society so those who have stolen everything are guaranteed to keep it.   As I have noted before on here, it doesn’t matter where or when in history, when we see this level of theft that results in concentration of wealth, a redistribution is going to happen.  That could be through the failure of money, the failure of property rights, the failure of state power or any other number of methods.  

The signs of an unprecedented peak level of excess of the useless amusers who sit atop of the world are everywhere.   Whether that is the regular pronouncement of a new multi-million dollar car, or condos in London, New York or the French Riviera going for over one hundred million dollars or art selling for astronomical dollar amounts or Facebook CEO, and owner of the massively bubblicious stock of his company,paying $114 million to buy up a large tract of land in Hawaii, the signs of garish and obscene peak excess are everywhere.  All while the world experiences unprecedented global suffering.  

I would bet my life, literally, that we will live to see the day when this type of property ownership and obscene concentration of wealth are overturned.   Whether that is through dynamics similar to the Reign of Terror associated with the French Revolution or the failure of money or property rights or an outright bust similar to 1929, it’s coming.  A redistribution of what has literally been stolen from humanity and hoarded by a small number of people will happen.  And we will live to watch it happen.  And what a glorious day it will be.  Because   anyone who can justify this level of self-centeredness, in the face of so much suffering, truly is Godless and lacking in any connection to their humanity.   

When I first penned this post, the following day Russell Brand posed the question fo whether it is  your fault you’re poor.  This is a must watch video.   Brand is truly one of the most observant and insightful people in the world today.  He intuitively understands what the disconnected ego of pathology doesn’t.   He understands the profundity of this moment while those who have stolen everything are busy amusing themselves to death.  It literally makes me sick to my stomach when watching Stuart Varney and Bill O’Reilly spout such f*cking hatred and deceitful, arrogant lies about poverty.   I guess this is what they call compassionate conservatism.  The ego literally knows no bounds to its lecherous evil.  I think it’s telling that Russell’s video has a 99% approval rating.   That is, welfare and other demeaning state programs are used to keep the jack boot of violence on humanity for the benefit of state actors who then steal with impunity from the human family.    Russell speaks from experience being on welfare.  Guess what?  I do too.  And no one in my family wanted to be poor, was lacking in a desire to have a better life or any motivation to work for it.  In fact, I suspect my family did more productive work that benefited society than Varney or O’Reilly ever did.  More lies this system perpetuates to rationalize its endless God forsaken evil.  Let’s see Stuart and Bill come into my family’s experiences and watch their pablum puke work magic in their rise to arrogance and hatred.

As it pertains to the title of this post, I have noted with numerous dynamics such as this that these numbers truly aren’t real.   This “wealth” we see just isn’t real.  It is really a function of a dying monetary phenomena.  The most staggering example if this I have cited is that the Dow Transports over the last 80 years.  For the first 40 it rose 1x then in the next forty years culminating in today it rose more than 64x.   It’s simply a monetary phenomena that is temporarily granting an illusion of prosperity.  How it plays itself out to the ultimate end game becomes somewhat speculative.  But we know certain dynamics of a control system are likely to pass as it becomes unstable.   Regardless, the fact that a handful of people have more wealth than the vast majority of Americans or people in the world is not a sign of prosperity but rather a sign of how broken the monetary, economic and political system are.  Over 50% of Americans rely on some form of government assistance while we have people who could never possibly use a small fraction of that which they have stolen.  And, mind you, when we are talking numbers this ridiculous, it is nothing more than a wealth-shifting scheme enforced through state violence.  No single person is capable of generating this type of wealth.   

On that note, how much money do you think a single person is capable of making in a market-based or community-based economy comprised solely of individuals?  No corporations used to exploit the masses and loot their intellectual and physical labor.  No state protection rackets and privileges and class by rigging rules.  A million bucks?  That would be $4,000 a day.  I’m not aware of anyone who can make that much money off of other individuals through direct trade.   That would mean you would have to offer ten people something you personally made or personally were able to offer them of value from your own intellectual capacity that would amount to $400 for 10 individuals or, more likely, $40 for 100 individuals, every single work day for a year.  It’s more likely that the most you may be able to make would be one twentieth that amount or less.   But you would still be reliant on society to provide the roads, bridges, electricity and other basic necessities of life.  So, taking your share of paying for that out of your earnings, in today’s dollars, how much could one person make by selling something from their own two hands or their own mind to another person? 

Let’s make sure we measure this accurately.   Doctors, as just one example, can’t factor in medication, sutures, testing equipment or anything else that is made by another person or people.  And they cannot include office help or nurses in the assistance of making money.  Nor can they use the internet to sell  services because that too is managed or created by someone else.  My point is that I want to measure what do you offer personally that affords you to make outlandish amounts of money when the economic system is truly democratic.   For many people, the answer would be I offer nothing because we have lost touch with craft, skilled-trades, making our own food, producing that which we need, etc.  Now we focus on skills that serve no purpose other than to benefit corporations and the class that uses them to exploit the rest of us.  I’m not advocating a return to a world where everything is made by hand.  I’m simply pointing out how this type of supposed wealth disparity we see today is really not achievable without the force of the state that allows a small number of people to exploit all of humanity through class and privilege.

I don’t know why I have never seen this written anywhere but I have talked about the game of Monopoly on here over the years.  And that it was created during the Great Depression.  This was a time when it was thought that unbridled corporate power created the Great Depression dynamics.  Which, by the way, is accurate with some nuances behind it.  Debt, schmet.  Debt is a symptom and so is this monetary system.  The real issue of one of class and power that controls money and debt as noted in my recent post on Ireland. 

Anyway, who hasn’t played Monopoly?  I suspect most people reading this have.  In the game all of society starts out with an equal footing.  Or, the same amount of money as a baseline with no property or asset ownership.  As the game is played, winners and losers are invariably created.  The winners become even more wealthy as they extract endless rent and fees while the losers become even poorer.  Until, at some point, one person owns everything and everyone else is subjugated to that person’s rent-extracting assets and property until they literally go broke.  It’s essentially a rent-seeking theft scheme.   The winner to Monopoly isn’t the most altruistic or the smartest.  The winner is whoever has access to capital to continue to expand their empire and some flavor of dumb luck.   In other words, the first to buy assets and properties is the winner.  In the game, that access to capital is funny money used to buy railroads, rental properties, etc.  Or, things made by other people.  In real life, the medium is credit.  Because if you have credit, you don’t need two nickels to rub together.  This is important to note because this is how a system of class and state violence continues to keep their boot on the face of minorities, the poor, the working class, women, the dwindling middle class, etc.   And who gets credit?  Those who most effectively produce a profit for the benefit of the holder of credit.  That is, the bank and the investor class of predators.  Those who are willing to destroy productive work and sell off assets like Gordon Gecko or private equity or ruthless and predatory corporations.  It really doesn’t matter.  It’s simply who, under any type of circumstances, be they brutal and inhumane or not, can produce the greatest rent-extraction scheme.  After this example, which really is representative of corporate capitalism’s systemic corruption, do you have a greater appreciation why I incessantly babble on here about public capital and public banking?  

The game of monopoly is played in every city, every state, every country, every industry, etc.  So, winners develop, through selection by privilege by granting them special access to credit, until there are only two or three large corporations serving the vast majority of society in every single industry.  Or, a small number of people who control all of the wealth in a particular community.  Ditto with two or three large nations serving the vast majority of the global economy.   And on, and on, and on.  You could consider this as a fractal that repeats itself on all time scales, in all markets, and all scale.   We see it locally.  We see it nationally.  We see it internationally.  We see it segmented by industry.  And on and on and on.   Are these economic winners the smartest people?  Have you ever been beaten at Monopoly by a ten year old kid?  Need I say more?  But once you become part of the club of privilege, afforded by the almighty god of service to money and profit over humanity, this socioeconomic system elects you to other corporate boards, to community functions, to political institutions, etc.  And you then have even greater power to project your values of evil, greed and corruption onto everyone else and all of humanity.   The fish rots from the head first.

I have met my fair share of “ten year old” Monopoly players making some really big bucks in corporate America.  Most aren’t all that.   A small number may have invented one thing or may be very capable as measured by some forms of standardized testing.  (Most of those forms of testing are bullshit.  How did Albert Einstein or Nikolai Tesla score on standardized tests?  Or, how does compassion, mercy and kindness score on a standardized reasoning test?)   Most winners are simply bureaucrats who learned to play the game.  That included kissing ass long enough to become part of the club.   Especially since entrepreneurship in this nation is essentially dead and has been for decades.  Especially in the capital-creating industries.  In the process of becoming part of the club, most sell their soul to money, greed, power, exploitation, victimization, predation, etc.   And, this is really the reason why this system will fail.  Because it is Godless and void of any humanity.

Freedom needs to be redefined in socioeconomic constructs.  Freedom doesn’t mean you are free to exploit humanity to appease your own inner demons.  Dare I say nary a single person on this list of richest people is emotionally-free in any aspect of their existence.  Which, frankly, is the only type of freedom that truly matters.   I can say that without equivocation because if you are truly emotionally-free, demagogy doesn’t appeal to you.  Consumerism doesn’t appeal to you.  Outsourcing your power to corporate hierarchy, politicians or the state doesn’t appeal to you.  Making obscene amounts of money you could never spend beyond some degree of self-appreciated austerity doesn’t appeal to you.   Building empires to your own vanity doesn’t appeal to you.  And seeing others suffer while you are living large doesn’t appeal to you.  Freedom doesn’t mean you are able to take as much as you want while others have literally nothing for any number of reasons.   Most of which are beyond their control.  And, thus, must serve you as their master.  True freedom, emotional freedom, recognizes the worthiness of all life.  And, therefore, seeks to see all life prosper.  Even if I have to share.  Or, maybe I should say, especially when I want to share – which is an innate human value. 

Sharing was the divine right of hospitium or hospitality that has been part of so many cultures for time immemorial.  That is, until the state arrived on the scene.   The divine right of hospitality conferred that you were required to share everything you owned with strangers in need.  That included offering them shelter, clothing and food.   I wonder how many on this richest list would open their homes to those without shelter and provide for the welfare of anyone and everyone in need?  And continue to open their homes and wallets until every stranger was fed and clothed?

That is the true parable (or who knows, possible a true story) of the demise of Sodom and Gomorrah as is known by true historical intellectuals as opposed to the contrived stories of hatred perpetuated by religions demagogues and fanatics.  These corrupted, greed and money-driven, selfish societies broke the divine rights granted to strangers and to their fellow man.   They failed the divine right of hospitality.  And, because this was a divine right granted to all, these societies were destroyed by the Divine.   Whether this is a parable or reality, doesn’t really matter.  It is a proven data point of karmic outcomes to socioeconomic conditions and human behavior - evil, wickedness, greed, gluttony, vanity and ultimately wrath - that foretells of coming collapse or worse of a world that has lost its humanity and its connection to the universe.

Ezekiel 16:49-50, “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”

America’s richest 400 worth $2.3 trillion.  Which is essentially an update to the last pronouncement that the 85 richest people on earth are worth more than half of the entire world’s population. 

State liberalism is dead.