The Biblical Book of
Revelation describes "Babylon the Great", which is a totally corrupt
system luxuriating in extracted wealth and power and commodification of human
beings like the globalized plutocratic empire of billionaires we see today. Pettigrew was already calling America's
system a plutocracy over 100 years ago, as he was losing his Senatorial battles
against America's corporate-serving policies of empire building contrary to the
spirit and the law of the American constitution. In Revelation, Babylon and all who live in her system fall
violently in a very short timeframe.
The advice given in Revelation is, "Come out of her my people, so that
you do not share in her sins, so that you will not share in any of her plagues".
I think that's good
advice, because I don't think anyone can succeed in wresting control of this
system from its current rulers, nor do I think anyone should try. In "Plutocrats", Chrystia Freeland
quotes robber baron Andrew Carnegie, and members of the new crop of
billionaires, expressing their belief that they are "earning" their extreme
wealth. In fact they are
"extracting" it, as all great personal wealth cannot be earned by individual effort
but must be extracted from the efforts of many other contributors. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, two of
the modern billionaires, did not "personally" contrive to extract their
billions from the world. Their
lawyers and investment bankers and lobbyists handled that bit of the
business. Today's great wealth is
"corporate" wealth, after all, and a corporation is a collective effort of
thousands of managers and employees and contractors working in common cause to
enrich their corporation and themselves.
Adam Smith described this in 1776, and corporate motives haven't changed
in the interim.
As long as the system
of mass society provides opportunity to amass corporate scale wealth and power,
self-serving people will just keep seizing control of the system's levers of
power. So I say the best bet for
anti-corporatists is to simply fade out of their mass system and work towards
building small scale local solutions.
Almost everybody in the world today except peasant farmers depends on
the corporate production and transportation system for their necessities of
life like food and electricity and heating fuels. If that system crashes, then we lack the means to survive,
especially if the system goes down in winter. The grocery stores would be emptied on day one and with no
fresh deliveries people would soon starve and civil order would break
down. Once we finish starving to
death and slaughtering each other "the meek" peasant farmers who never got rich
from Babylon and who don't depend on her could very well "inherit the
Earth".
So if the question
is, "What would life be like without billionaires?" my answer is that
it would be a reversion to more simple small scale society where there is
little if any excess wealth to extract.
I don't think you can defeat the plutocrats and "redistribute" the
fruits of corporate production by changing tax policy, because the plutocrats
"are" the administrative top level of "government" and they're not going to
willingly give up their privileges.
I think you have to abandon them and their system and make your own life
outside their corporatized power structures.
It is not hypocrisy to use what you
need from the system, as it has pretty much already claimed ownership of all
the economic resources that we need to survive, and you have already
contributed to building up the world as it is. And you don't have to drop out entirely. Just start retaking responsibility for
your own and your family's and your community's well being. You don't have to wait for "the
government" to solve your problems for you by fixing "the system". The system will probably not get fixed,
not in the ways that would benefit you.
Small towns and rural areas are
probably better than big cities for more independent living, but even
transition towns within big city borders can function as "local" communities
that generate some of their own solar or wind electricity, grow their own food
and otherwise insulate themselves against failure of "the system". At least some degree of self-sufficiency
in providing the necessities of life for yourself, within a small community of
like minded people, is a personal security issue. Who knows, it might even be a more rewarding way of life than
spending all your working hours chasing the almighty buck.
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