You’re dating yourself … but remember (no) back in the 90’s when Newt Gringrich (yes if you are young that is a name) and the Republicans crafted that “Contract with America,” and how almost immediately the joke (a primitive meeemmm) became “Contract on America,” and funnily enough, that’s just about what it turned out to be? Isn’t that just the tits?
Basically, this new and improved social contract between government and its citizens placed greater responsibility for sustaining society on the citizens, and freed up businesses to do as please. Nii-hii-hhice. It’s guuud to be Gub’mnt, and even better to be BigBiz.
Now this is funny. I like this. Like, dar’near more’n 200 years earlier at the exact … same … time … as the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE [aHAHA!] that Adam Smith described those moneyed individuals that made up BigBiz in 1776 (manufacturers/merchants = the folks who built stuff and sold stuff) and called them the “masters of mankind” (really? “masters”? of everybody? seems a little arrogant/they poop(ed) too–digress) and identifies “all for us, none for others” as the controlling economic dogma – the “vile maxim” – for the wealthy … an evil gospel, so to speak.
haHA! Yeh. Wow. That’s great.
Smith said that if society failed to keep businesses in check (hello taxes / greetings regulations) it would likely result in a consolidation of power (does everyone have Googly eyes?) and monopolization of markets (Xfinity? I know that’s you Comcast, hussy in a tight dress) in the moneyed classes (hello BigBiz!) at the expense of the masses.
BUT! The masses will be fine because “credit.” I get that. Tickling my monkey.
The wealthy get that way and stay that way because they are horrible people.
Well I consider myself to be a horrible person—wait.
Could that mean I am intended to be wealthy, yet I am behaving in a manner that is entirely contrary to my innate nature (see 1 Tim. 6:10) … or
The wealthy are not horrible people, and the notion of hoarding resources to the destruction of others is perfectly acceptable human conduct … or
… ?
I suppose then we need to define “horrible” for purposes of this exercise.
Perhaps later. Moving on
ALSO! also found out (this movie was so cool) that James Madison (one of the actual guys who signed the actual US Constitution back in 1787 whoo-hoo!) believed that it had to be written is such a way as to “protect the minority of the opulent from the majority” because safeguarding property rights is … like … why … we’re all … y’know … here. Gimme the stuff.
At any rate “Requiem for an American Dream” with Noam Chomsky is an easy, informative watch on the tubes ofYou, and he describes how wealth is power and power is politics and politics is power and wealth is politics and ad infinitum, and that humans have been in this particular money = mess for a long, long time.
Even written into the Constitution. Yesss
But I thought democracy was about the Voice of the Peeeople in the Laws that Control Their Liiives … oh, wait. Is that laughter? No? moving on
Looks like this whole democracy thing was a sham too, good to know, because the guys writing the founding document – oh wait; were those … “masters of mankind” …? hunh – intended to shelter their stuff with the implicit interpretation of wealth as power, and institutionalizing the protection of wealth as the first principle of a burgeoning nation.
Living under debt is so prevalent that the latest masters of mankind have coined a new phrase:
the Precariat; the proletariat in a precarious financial and economic state … awesome.
Quick distinction with a difference: finance = money, economics = markets … à la food, clothing, shelter concern the economics/economy, whereas paying for those things involves the financial …
In sum, welcome to the Precariat = the working poor with few resources and less access.
There is also this book of cold manipulative genius called “The 48 Laws of Power” – read it, human-sucksteristicness confirmed – and 7th law is to get others to do all the work while you take/get all the credit … which sounds a lot like the “vile maxim” of the wealthy. {Ezekiel 34:3} Hmmm
Perhaps all those so-called “masters of mankind” could do us a collective favor by embracing more of the “mankind” and less of the “master” … but that’s asking entirely too much.
Will every society formed by man fail for greed? I think yes
Buuuttt … and here is where GOD! sent me a little reminder …
see Voltaire’s quote:
“The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.”
So, in the alternative, people just have to stop being poor.
But how to do that when the educational, financial, and economic systems of the nation coupled with the policies and practices of government are explicitly designed to maintain that abundance of the poor?
Ya know … at his time … George Washington & friends? … buncha terr’rists.
Heh.