Excellent piece! Indeed, our society needs a radical restructuring, perhaps starting with sharing this article with people we know and following R. Nader’s suggestion to make Congress representatives of the people, rather than representatives of corporations.
Pre Covid, I worked and lived part time at an ashram where living spaces and meals were shared, and it had a profound effect on me. It inspired this short post about how I'd like to live, with a lot of shared space. https://ideasbigandwild.substack.com/p/a-new-dream-of-home
Couldn’t agree more. For me, I now look at those striving for the elite life and assume they must have missed something in their development. Relationships is almost always the defining quality of life - what we judge ourselves on when on our death beds. Sadly, the market is driving many of us to seek the same. The mission is to provide a different vision and pathways to a more satisfying life.
This is 100% spot on. I see it all around me living in central Florida. I see how the millionaires took over all the neighborhoods around winter park Florida where many African Americans use to live. They knock down the small bungalows and build huge mini mansions. There goes the churches and all the little grocery stores etc etc. These folks have no place to go bc rend is high and buying a house is unrealistic for average median price around this area is over $650k
Today's robber barons have turned any attempts at collective efforts, for a "public good" into a dirty word one does not dare mention in the US. This is no more apparent than the absence of a public Universal health care system in the US, that is enjoyed by all other advanced countries in the world in one form or another, and would be a far better and efficient system than the corporatized, for profit pariah health care system we have now. Which is more of a for-profit scam than an actual system that would benefit us all individually or the country as a whole.
The current worldwide system centered on increasing the power of a relatively few wealthy robber barons is now leading to a breakdown of any kind of "rules based order". The fundamental value of each human being is being replaced by a system where an open genocide can be committed by the United States and Israel, a state that tortures its prisoners at will, and the world does nothing about it but looks on.
Meanwhile, a percentage of Los Angeles burns down and the robber barons (our current rulers) are really more worried about where they can: drill baby drill.
Capitalism relies on the myth of 'independence'. We are taught it is weakness to need to rely on others, despite the fact we all do it every day (not many are growing and cooking their own food, providing their own gas and electric, building their homes and devices, etc). This is intentional as it creates isolation and makes devision easier, meaning we're all fighting over scraps of rights, instead of realising we're all getting screwed by the very few. Isolation is how they control us.
I refer to these buildings as part of the infrastructure of the 1% Money Class. And what are the other parts of their infrastructure?
I suggest that the countless warehouses we see popping up are also part of their infrastructure. These warehouses are not only land-grabbing visual insults, but they produce tremendous traffic and safety and air pollution and flooding problems in our local environments.
These warehouses are the infrastructure necessary for at least some of these ultra rich people, and they are the buildings that house much of the goods we Americans consume. The internal volume of these buildings is the replacement volume for the volume inside the countless Ma and Pa and small business stores that most of us grew up with.
Even more, the volumes in these warehouses are also the volumes that many American factories used when they manufactured and stored the goods we Americans used in or daily lives.
It seems then these are also the visible effects of what this highly elite group of people require for their way of life, and the amount of it increases daily as our country is pushed towards an Oligarchy; i.e., "rule by the rich."
As I see it, the only possible way we have to fight this transition is that "we the people" demand a Constitutional Amendment mandating that only individual, human voters be allowed to make political campaign contributions, with an across the board maximum whereby voters too poor to afford it are subsidized by the government.
Either that, or that government subsidize 100% the cost of political campaigning. It's probably the single most effective way to eliminate money in politica.
In other words, as a so-called democracy, we do in theory have the power to fix our political problems. The fatal flaw of course is that people don't give a damn.
Thank you for your thoughts. I will also add the food system is broken, factory farms require land to be developed in order to house mass amounts of animals to crank out profits. This also makes the system vulnerable in a changing climate. How many chickens have died in hurricanes and disease spread, ideal in high density operations? More millions per year than imaginable. Such waste, toxic waste in place, and unimaginable death. Through in transportation breakdowns, and most Americans are food insecure in a week of no grocery store deliveries.
Fantastic essay! I resonated with everything you said, and it made me think of the John Donne quote, "‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."
“The Solarians have given up something mankind has had for a million years; something worth more than atomic power, cities, agriculture, tools, fire, everything; because it's something that made everything possible (...) The tribe, sir. Cooperation between individuals.”
Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun
“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”
It's not aspiring to the lives of the super rich. It's avoiding the problems of the under resourced classes. Have you ever tried to get a crack addict out of your life once they are there? Are they victims of the system? Yes. Will your fenty nephew break into your house and steal your medications? Also yes. All we are aspiring to is peace and security.
Two of the Livingstons were signers of the Declaration of Independence, and one largely wrote the original constitution of the state of New York. At least they weren't Tories.
Excellent piece! Indeed, our society needs a radical restructuring, perhaps starting with sharing this article with people we know and following R. Nader’s suggestion to make Congress representatives of the people, rather than representatives of corporations.
I agree with you, Joshua.
Pre Covid, I worked and lived part time at an ashram where living spaces and meals were shared, and it had a profound effect on me. It inspired this short post about how I'd like to live, with a lot of shared space. https://ideasbigandwild.substack.com/p/a-new-dream-of-home
Couldn’t agree more. For me, I now look at those striving for the elite life and assume they must have missed something in their development. Relationships is almost always the defining quality of life - what we judge ourselves on when on our death beds. Sadly, the market is driving many of us to seek the same. The mission is to provide a different vision and pathways to a more satisfying life.
This is 100% spot on. I see it all around me living in central Florida. I see how the millionaires took over all the neighborhoods around winter park Florida where many African Americans use to live. They knock down the small bungalows and build huge mini mansions. There goes the churches and all the little grocery stores etc etc. These folks have no place to go bc rend is high and buying a house is unrealistic for average median price around this area is over $650k
https://organizingmythoughts.org/
Today's robber barons have turned any attempts at collective efforts, for a "public good" into a dirty word one does not dare mention in the US. This is no more apparent than the absence of a public Universal health care system in the US, that is enjoyed by all other advanced countries in the world in one form or another, and would be a far better and efficient system than the corporatized, for profit pariah health care system we have now. Which is more of a for-profit scam than an actual system that would benefit us all individually or the country as a whole.
The current worldwide system centered on increasing the power of a relatively few wealthy robber barons is now leading to a breakdown of any kind of "rules based order". The fundamental value of each human being is being replaced by a system where an open genocide can be committed by the United States and Israel, a state that tortures its prisoners at will, and the world does nothing about it but looks on.
Meanwhile, a percentage of Los Angeles burns down and the robber barons (our current rulers) are really more worried about where they can: drill baby drill.
Capitalism relies on the myth of 'independence'. We are taught it is weakness to need to rely on others, despite the fact we all do it every day (not many are growing and cooking their own food, providing their own gas and electric, building their homes and devices, etc). This is intentional as it creates isolation and makes devision easier, meaning we're all fighting over scraps of rights, instead of realising we're all getting screwed by the very few. Isolation is how they control us.
J.P., thanks for your thoughtful essay.
I refer to these buildings as part of the infrastructure of the 1% Money Class. And what are the other parts of their infrastructure?
I suggest that the countless warehouses we see popping up are also part of their infrastructure. These warehouses are not only land-grabbing visual insults, but they produce tremendous traffic and safety and air pollution and flooding problems in our local environments.
These warehouses are the infrastructure necessary for at least some of these ultra rich people, and they are the buildings that house much of the goods we Americans consume. The internal volume of these buildings is the replacement volume for the volume inside the countless Ma and Pa and small business stores that most of us grew up with.
Even more, the volumes in these warehouses are also the volumes that many American factories used when they manufactured and stored the goods we Americans used in or daily lives.
It seems then these are also the visible effects of what this highly elite group of people require for their way of life, and the amount of it increases daily as our country is pushed towards an Oligarchy; i.e., "rule by the rich."
As I see it, the only possible way we have to fight this transition is that "we the people" demand a Constitutional Amendment mandating that only individual, human voters be allowed to make political campaign contributions, with an across the board maximum whereby voters too poor to afford it are subsidized by the government.
Either that, or that government subsidize 100% the cost of political campaigning. It's probably the single most effective way to eliminate money in politica.
In other words, as a so-called democracy, we do in theory have the power to fix our political problems. The fatal flaw of course is that people don't give a damn.
Thank you for your thoughts. I will also add the food system is broken, factory farms require land to be developed in order to house mass amounts of animals to crank out profits. This also makes the system vulnerable in a changing climate. How many chickens have died in hurricanes and disease spread, ideal in high density operations? More millions per year than imaginable. Such waste, toxic waste in place, and unimaginable death. Through in transportation breakdowns, and most Americans are food insecure in a week of no grocery store deliveries.
Thank you for your words. Je vous lis depuis la France et votre texte m’offre un précieux réconfort.
Wonderful read, the themes reminded me of Douglas Rushkoff's "Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires."
Fantastic essay! I resonated with everything you said, and it made me think of the John Donne quote, "‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."
“The Solarians have given up something mankind has had for a million years; something worth more than atomic power, cities, agriculture, tools, fire, everything; because it's something that made everything possible (...) The tribe, sir. Cooperation between individuals.”
Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun
“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”
William Gibson, Count Zero
It's not aspiring to the lives of the super rich. It's avoiding the problems of the under resourced classes. Have you ever tried to get a crack addict out of your life once they are there? Are they victims of the system? Yes. Will your fenty nephew break into your house and steal your medications? Also yes. All we are aspiring to is peace and security.
Two of the Livingstons were signers of the Declaration of Independence, and one largely wrote the original constitution of the state of New York. At least they weren't Tories.