Are Americans ready to come together and fight their real enemy: greed?
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Crypto billionaire Justin Sun ate a banana last week that he had purchased for $6.2 million (try explaining that sentence to a time traveler from 2004). But he did so much more than that. He also emphatically reaffirmed that there should be no billionaires… crypto or otherwise.
The world’s richest have been making the case for years that they should not exist.
That doesn’t mean they should be guillotined, of course (although, based on the reaction to the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson this week, millions of Americans probably wouldn’t have a problem with that).
No, they should be taxed — which, if you listen to them, might be an even worse fate.
Before we get into that, let’s consider how much $1,000,000,000 is. Let’s say someone were to offer you a daily stipend of $25,000. That’s nearly $200,000 per week and close to $1 million a month.
Would you rather have that or $1 billion?
The answer is the latter, of course.
Even if you found a suitcase with $25,000 on your nightstand each morning, it would take more than 100 years to amass $1 billion.
And, when you have that kind of money, you will eventually run out of stuff to buy or do. And that’s when billionaires become a real problem for the rest of us.
In the case of Elon Musk, even if you woke up with a fresh $10,000,000 every day for 80 years, he’d still have more money than you.
Or, to put it another way, over their lifetime, the average registered nurse (with an annual income of about $80,000) would earn $3 million until retirement. Musk has 100,000 times as much right now. Do you really think that, whatever he does, it is more valuable than the life’s work of a football stadium full of nurses?
Of course not.
Nobody has ever “earned” (or deserved) $300 billion.
And, when you have that kind of money, you will eventually run out of stuff to buy or do. And that’s when billionaires become a real problem for the rest of us.
It would be one thing if the world’s billionaires would simply get together in private jets, yachts, and fancy cars (or even spaceships, which many of them seem to find fascinating); play polo; pat each other on their backs for being so great; and eat $6 million bananas.
Unfortunately, that’s not what is happening.
There is a saying that some people have “more money than God,” and today’s billionaires certainly conduct themselves accordingly. They act as though they are above the law, and spend their riches on (re)creating man in their image.
There is just one problem: Most rich people are entitled assholes, and the rest of us don’t really want to be like that.
To be fair to them, the current brood of billionaires isn’t the first to dabble in world-building instead of simply enjoying their riches.
The super-rich have always done that — and it has never worked out for regular people.
The billionaires of the past weren’t entitled and narcissistic tech bros but rather inbred royals who weren’t any better.
Their world-building mainly consisted of sending poor schlubs to war against other poor schlubs serving other inbred royals, all in the process of “colonizing” much of the world.
Again… things never worked out for regular people.
Sometimes, however, those people then rose up and forced a much-needed correction in the allocation of wealth and power.
To ensure greater profits, health insurance companies will literally condemn their customers to death or a lifetime of debt, social media platforms get rich from dividing us, and fossil fuel companies have knowingly been mortgaging the future of humanity.
Another one of those corrections is needed now, and we may be at the beginning of it.
Right now, the uber-rich (and the corporations many of them run or invest in) are not a force for good. Instead, their greed causes problems for everybody else (starting with them not paying their taxes).
Many Americans haven’t quite put together to what degree these wealthy leeches are making their lives miserable (although this guy apparently did).
Right now, the entirety of their anger is directed at the government, which explains Donald Trump’s victory last month. But just wait until they figure out that the “machine” they are so upset about is really unbridled capitalism, and that politicians are just one cog of it.
But the government isn’t the real enemy; rather, it’s billionaires and corporations willing to do anything for a buck.
To ensure greater profits, health insurance companies will literally condemn their customers to death or a lifetime of debt, social media platforms get rich from dividing us, and fossil fuel companies have knowingly been mortgaging the future of humanity.
Those are just the highlights. The list is endless.
Without its laws and regulations, businesses could dump battery acid in rivers, force their employees to work in inhumane conditions, do away with product safety checks, and force consumers to pay absurd prices for goods and services they need.
Did you call customer service recently? Was that fun? Probably not, because it’s much more profitable for companies to make you wait than to hire enough staff to answer all calls quickly.
Been on an airplane recently? I bet that was great.
“Sir, there is a $30 e-ticket charge for mailing you the flight confirmation.”
“The first 7 inches of legroom are free; each additional inch is $25. However, if you give us your firstborn, we’ll upgrade you to economy plus.”
Speaking of your firstborn, do you not want a bunch of 10-year-olds to assemble the cheap crap you buy that breaks down all the time? Tough luck! Somebody somewhere is getting rich off child or slave labor (because US-style greed is going global).
Look, there is no doubt that the government isn’t perfect. It’s flawed in many ways (often deeply). But it also benefits the American people in countless ways and is the one entity standing between barely restrained and unrestrained corporate greed.
Without its laws and regulations, businesses could dump battery acid in rivers, force their employees to work in inhumane conditions, do away with product safety checks, and force consumers to pay absurd prices for goods and services they need.
Of course, you may say: “Doesn’t the marketplace take care of that? If a company does a poor job, people will stop buying from them.”
The answer is: “What marketplace?”
In many sectors, companies keep merging to create corporate behemoths that can set prices at will and deprive consumers of choices.
Because, as long as poor white people believe that poor brown people are to blame for their lack of advancement, the billionaire class wins. As long as voters believe that trans athletes in high schools are the real problem, the billionaire class wins. As long as Americans worship the ultra-rich as heroes and not villains, the billionaire class wins.
Do you know who prevents even greater consolidation of oil producers, airlines, grocery store chains, banks, television stations, etc.? That’s right, the government.
And this is precisely why the Donald Trumps, Elon Musks, and Exxons want to do away with these laws and regulations — because the very protections they afford to the majority of Americans are also the greatest obstacle to the tiny minority amassing even more obscene wealth.
In their ideal world, nobody would tell them what to do.
And Trump’s victory, along with total GOP control of Congress and the Supreme Court, puts them closer to achieving that goal than at any other time in recent memory.
It also showed that dividing Americans into different tribes and pitting them against each other remains a winning strategy.
Because, as long as poor white people believe that poor brown people are to blame for their lack of advancement, the billionaire class wins. As long as voters believe that trans athletes in high schools are the real problem, the billionaire class wins. As long as Americans worship the ultra-rich as heroes and not villains, the billionaire class wins.
But the election also provides a real opportunity, albeit one fraught with risk (i.e., if Musk et al. are too successful in dismantling government).
The next two years will be crucial.
Republicans will undoubtedly try to use their unlimited power to dismantle the hated government and reward their corporate allies.
Neither is going to materially improve things for most Americans. An administration of billionaires will not look out for regular Joes and Janes.
Indeed, circumstances may get much worse. Because all of those government agencies they want to destroy serve a purpose.
If that becomes evident quickly enough, without Trump following up on his promises of lower prices and lower deficits, enough GOP voters may wise up to the reality that they are being played.
Because the greatest fear of billionaires, corporations, and those who do their bidding is that the people will realize that the greatest obstacle to their opportunity and prosperity is the greed of others.
The reaction to the murder of Thompson shows that Americans across the political spectrum are fed up with that greed, and their discontent is close to boiling over in a big way.
It may not if Republicans continue to convince half of them that the government is the problem.
However, if Trump does not produce the promised results, those voters might be receptive to true economic populism, i.e., a massive redistribution of wealth that benefits the vast majority of Americans.
Now is the time for a new type of candidate to rise up and start a movement that is fueled by that cauldron of discontent.
Who?
We have some thoughts. It certainly won’t be a corporate Democrat, because the platform this candidate has to run on will be radical.
It will involve things like unprecedented wealth taxes, health insurance for all, completely taking corporate money out of politics, breaking up conglomerates, and truly holding executives to account for crimes their companies commit.
In other words, this candidate’s message will be, “I will punish the rich for what they have been doing to you.”
The leader of such a movement would have to be charismatic and passionate, and instill hope. That’s the only way someone can bridge the partisan divide and bring Americans together again.
If we had to choose a Democrat, we’d pick Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY). In many ways, she is the political heir of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), whose movement championed some of these ideas but couldn’t quite break through.
However, a decade of discontent and real anger may be enough to turn the tide now.
But it doesn’t have to be a Democrat.
For once in US history, this may be a real opportunity for a third-party candidate unburdened by partisan baggage.
We have no idea who that might be, but we hope they are out there and willing to choose this moment to stand up.
