Thread by @mhbx

Ponder the meaning of this money flow. (And remember Money is a function of
a) meeting the needs of life/living. A way to get things done. Integral to our systems of survival.
b) a store of wealth.

When B overcomes A there are problems.
Like this.

cnbc.com/2020/05/21/ame…

It releases many hard and fundamental questions which we are not prepared to even think about. Not prepared and do not want to.

This time of Covid is an opportunity to "think anew", but we probably won't. People who are able to do nothing more than own stock and augment

their wealth by these numbers... People like this enjoy a third function of wealth

c) Power.

At these levels it is akin to the energy equation:
E=mc2. Money = Power. Power is measured in money.

There are some interesting lines to work out w this analogy. for another time.

In brief: Everything has gravitational pull, just most things smaller than a planet the pull is minuscule and overwhelmed by larger objects.

So wealth/power is like this. To be able to have so much that in a matter of months you have done nothing else than HAVE money as a

"mass" attracting ever more money.

And that is the point. There is another function of money

d) assign relative value to work. Labor. and things.

More questions arise in light of this point.
What is there relative value of a Bezos to a laborer in his warehouse?

This debate usually is had in terms of annual income as a ratio of CEO to Lowest Paid Worker compensation.

But that, of course, is a bit of a distraction. Compensation is different from wealth accumulation.

[and etc....]

Stepping back.
Some of the larger, foundational questions of what it means to be human, and how humans organize themselves are surfaced by this event.

Underlying this moment of wealth accumulation at these numbers and rates are all the complex systems that have been developed to

facilitate life. Human societies/life.
The systems of Nature function at one level of course. The environment, water, air, earth, fire (energy) and etc, these are the systems that underly all of life. Including human life - as much as we try to bend these systems to our own

purposes.
To pick a large an obvious very complex example, our use of fossil fuels to energize our societies (otherwise known as Nations - a way of organizing human affairs that also is not a "law of nature", but a system of survival developed to meet certain needs. ....>

Needs that in many cases are no longer valid for organizing our affairs in this way. But persist, just like the economic & legal systems that enable the accumulation of wealth discussed in the article. They persist because they serve the purposes of power. Inertia.
[and etc.]

We use these fuels to fuel societies designed & developed in times when the issues that present themselves were not able to be contemplated, much less understood.
At the time of the first oil rig pulling crude out of the ground it was impossible to even frame the question in

any meaningful way. "What might this do to our environment?".
As w all breakthroughs the only question was "How can this be utilized to solve the problems we are currently dealing with?". In some cases, in the case of a "paradigm" level shift in capability...the problems that

were in play were the ancient ones. Like how to exert more force to do work.
Prior to oil energy work was measured, as it still is metaphorically, in terms of "Horsepower".
[and etc..]

All of this period is neatly described as the Industrial Age. It is also described as the

time of the Robber Barrons.
The interplay between new knowledge and astonishing new capabilities and extension of human ability to manipulate the world for its own purposes... and the legal, social systems that give rise to the economic systems to enable this. Which describe

the function of ownership.
Which comes full circle to the question of Money, and how we want it to function in our society. ( "society" is a broad term covering all levels from Global, nation, state, community and even to the household levels. Each level has its own functional

"economy, derived from the axiomatic principles defining the overarching framework.)

"Capitalism is a sophisticated Ponzi Scheme".

These are some of the underlying points to support this conclusion.
Capitalism, as an "~ism", has this one essential flaw: It has no principle of "Enough".

As such, if capitalism is allowed to function without restraints it will

accomplish exactly what is exemplified in this article: The slow (and sometimes fast) accumulation of Capital > Money > Wealth into fewer hands (read that corporations and a few individuals). Once the flywheel of that system starts turning, it will, if not checked, flow all the

wealth into those few repositories.

So there are lots of questions that need to be asked at this point. Many of them are already on the table.
This is one small contribution of mine to the discussion
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1263148…

There are many others, from popular (accessible) in nature to very academic. Here are a few references from recent publications:
> Sam Harris w Daniel Markovits
samharris.org/subscriber-ext…

> Paul Krugman and his book Arguing With Zombies
wapo.st/3c03lIc

Discussed w Al Frankin
overcast.fm/+R5gIthzLA

> Robert Reich... I'll just cite his twitter account... Subscribe.

twitter.com/RBReich

> Rueter Brugman. The historian who challenged the Davos crowd.

(watch this extended session... it embodies most to the themes in this post)

This entire discussion is about the "container" for capitalism & what should happen now?

amazon.com/gp/product/B01…

Of course the more fundamental works by such as Piketty
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_i…

And of course the entire political discussion in USA is always about this tension of who has the money (power) and who gets to have it, and Why, and How.

The UBI debate, @BernieSanders @SenWarren are all one side of this great conversation.
How we actually have this conversation

will precisely describe/define what is possible in terms of how we understand the public, the purpose of the government (for/by the people? or something else?). Will we rethink what the Constitutional principles (see Preamble) mean? And how they are best implemented in todays

circumstance? Or will we continue the tension in play since Adam Smith and the infancy of "capitalism"? The one Marx tried to grapple with. The function of wealth as power, and power in a few hands, previously organized as Royalty and the rest of the population... vs

the American attempt to break w the foundational organization of society on that Royal Hierarchy and upon something else. [and etc... A v. large convo re the nature of the New World...esp re "virgin" resources. Virgin to a rapacious "gold hungry" European, of course. Who

grant no particular value to simply living and respecting the land...
Now we are out of new "virgin" territory... and the systems that came to be in that context may not be applicable any longer. They certainly have to be rethought... Which... is the point of this discussion.]

The point of this ad hoc thread:
Capitalism as a system, not only an economic system, but one w intricate integration into every single other human system, and effecting every other non-human system, must function in the context of a larger system.
In a word, it needs a

governor; A governmental container that defines the purpose of this, vs any other, economic system, and then defines the boundaries and the rules of how Capitalism is supposed to function...And the consequences if it breaks those rules and boundaries.

Government, of course, has been made out to be a cuss word. Republicans in particular have been very effective in completely screwing up the notion and understanding of what government is. Libertarians taking this flawed idea think to reify it into "no government". [and etc..]

The reality of course, as well illustrated by the current Covid crisis, is that government is the institution that is the structure of how a society sets the rules and gathers the resources to meet the needs of society/country.

We see how a libertarian/Republican world doesn’t actually work in times of crisis. Ref: FEMA and its work. [before Republicans eviscerate it as unnecessary...and then blame the Gov for being unprepared and unable to meet the needs of the citizens when the inevitable crisis

occurs.]

The assertion is this: Capitalism in America, and in the Global sense, has breached the boundaries no less than Katrina overcoming the levees in New Orleans. With similar consequences.

We need to think through all this again, so we have a system that is able to

handle the inevitable without resorting to badly thought out "emergency" resolutions.

How we treat our economy now is like GWBush said about Health Care: "Everyone has health care, they can go to the emergency room..."

A very inefficient Health Care system.

What is interesting to me is that the knowledge is out there. We know what the problems are, and, at least in principle, are clear what the solutions are.
Back to the top: There are people and institutions that greatly profit from the existing order. They are not inclined

to want to change it. Why would you, if you can become 25billion $ richer, more wealthy (read that powerful), that is $25,000,000,000, just by sitting around and letting the system do its thing.

The system is broken.

Many of the basic systems in America are broken.

This is not news. It has been clear for many years the basic systems have been broken. Rather than actually fix them, we have been cobbling together band-aid solutions to keep "the car running". Keep the engine going, at least "until I no longer am responsible.

So I can retire and punt the problem down the line".

For example, Congress has rarely passed a budget per law. But has depended upon "continuing resolutions".
We are not thinking through the problem in any serious, much less relevant way.
pewrsr.ch/2yv4mur

We must abandon the worn-out creeds and dogmas of the past if we intend to 'save ourselves'.

We are out of band-aids. What happens next defines what happens next for a long time.