Corbin, I hope you will make contact with Graham Platner. I have suggested to his staff that he connect with you. Your views would be useful to his policy development.
The times we are living in. When the richest man in the world is in reality a poor bastard trapped in an echochamber of his own making, A gullible con-man with a white supremacist, climate science-denying worldview, who has played a decisive role in corrupting the 2024 US elections, in promoting far right propaganda and disinformation, in dismantling the USA‘s democratic institutions and foreign aid, and in illegally stealing US citizen’s private data. This is the man with 240+ million followers on his own anti-social media platform, who managed to rig listing rules so that ETFs and index funds automatically purchase those overvalued shares, while allowing his investor buddies an obscene, unethical exit at the expense of common retail investors and pension fund beneficiaries. Let‘s just call this IPO what it is: another shameless act of looting the working class by the billionaire class in broad daylight.
All utilities should be nationalized along with healthcare. Let’s start with that and work downward to find a system that actually works for the people. Capitalism is great in measured doses. This nation is completely out of control.
We throw around the term "billions" so often that we've forgotten what it really means. A guy or gal with just $100 million in the bank could buy with cash a $5 million home on five continents, a Bugatti, a Ferrari, and a Lamborghini for their garage, and a $10 million wardrobe for themselves and their significant other, and still have $60 million in the bank generating $3.6 million a year.
Elon Musk’s personal fortune, now approaching a trillion dollars, is more than the gross domestic product of all but 21 countries in the world. There are more than a dozen people in this country with personal wealth in excess of $100 billion. The poor schmuck at the bottom of Forbes’ list of the 400 richest people in the U.S. has just $3.8 billion. Simple interest at 6% on a fortune of that size generates almost $230 million a year. Billionaires have fortunes so vast that those who try struggle to give away enough so that they don't keep getting richer.
What do you do with wealth that is vastly more than you need to buy all the creature comforts you could ever want? You spend it on power, and then you spend it on keeping the power you've amassed. The billionaires have already bought the current government, thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. If by some miracle “the people” can wrest control of the government from them and the billionaires don’t like where things are headed, amassing a drone armory and buying a copy of Mythos would be a rounding error in their bank accounts.
The only solution I see to this problem is not pretty.
Space X (and Starlink) should be part of NASA. Privatization (taxpayer funding of services that should belong to the public domaine) has accelerated the rise of fascism in our late stage capitalism and was/is the culprit that murdered our democracy.
An alternate solution to this is to charge senior executives with RICO violations, seize all their assets, seize the corporation as a criminal organization, and put the executives into a prison's general population. Under NSPM-7, they could be labeled as domestic terrorists pursuing anti-American and anti-capitalist activities and their Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus could be suspended, arguing that they are in rebellion.
I discovered Mr. Trent's writings a few months ago - blessed is the algorithm, it shall not be denied.
I immediately signed up at the $250 level. I'm not wealthy. I was impressed.
I feel his words are as unvarnished truth as any on the web. I've been looking since 2008.
My life's guiding words are from Marcus Aurelius: “Look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
That says to me - don't be afraid to demand exactly what you need. Never start your negotiations with compromise.
This also says, stop treating the symptom, Trump, Musk, Altman, more; start treating the disease as so well reported by Mr. Trent.
I'll suggest we need to give Americans a better way to meet our common needs than a Congress where most votes are bought.
We need to specify a voting mechanism where sizable majority citizen direct votes in support of a workable society create laws.
In the age of the internet (the seed crystal for the singularity), we the people should be able to vote on issues we want to and see our votes translated into law.
Mandates with sufficiently strong support like ending gerrymandering or Medicare for all or taking money out of politics could be added as amendments to the Constitution with no elected official being able to block.
Well, duh? The New Deal replaced by the Big Deal. The corporate pyramid replaces the People's Power. Wilson started it. The public tax system, the Federal Reserve System, the Pay to Play System. 1868, 1871, 14th Amendment, the Dictionary Act. Sovereign Ctizens become federal serfs. Corporations become 'persons.' The murder of Lincoln gave the South its real win. The first Johnson was such a tool, he took, with essentially no emergency brake, back to pre-revolutionary times. Talk is worthless, words are poison. Teddy and FDR did what they could to brake this runaway train, but were too imbedded in the system itself to make the play work. Eugene Debs had the right line of sight, and they jailed him. Wallace had FDR's legacy and ear, and they essentially ghosted him in favor of Truman, who was a patsy for the new corporate industrialists that had seized the means of production to win WW2. Actual citizens to Company Store chattel took just a few decades to implement, the Depression and Dust Bowl tipped the scales back a few years, but Ford and Hearst and Bush and others were determined to run the show their way, lost due to FDR's determination, got it back with Truman, lost it with Ike, undermined Ike and the Dulles Bros. gutted the freshly hatched UN in a few short years. This play is the Old Play Book of monarchical Autocracy, Kings Without Crowns, Grand Inquisitors without Courts other than the Monarchy Court of forever young SCOTUS, now the most corrupt entity among many vessels of corruption. How, pray tell, Corbin, do you suggest we chattel 'claw back' this parasitic Black Hole now equipped with AI?
This is something important to understand about our wealth gap and how it is poised to get worse if we don’t institute a rent tax on these companies, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_YymZgh3bk. A tax on rents is by no means THE silver bullet; it is one arrow in the quiver that must be loosed on these rapacious capitalists.
I think the modern version of subsidizing is the opposite of ownership. The shift was clear in 2008. When we bailed out the banks we didn't start controlling them, we started OBEYING the banks. We gave the investors zero interest for 15 years, which enabled them to take over the rest of the economy.. The same reversal holds true with Amazon and Elon. We aren't asking anything in return for our ownership, we're giving them even more than we gave before. These payments are more like blackmail than purchasing.
Before developing a treatment plan, not even implementing it, the diagnosis has to be clear. Treatment without diagnosis is a guess work.
A very small elite owns the means of production and finance and that is how they usurp the lion’s share and more of the wealth and income. And wealth concentration is really about the ownership of productive capital, the means of production and finance. It’s big capital (finance and business) that controls the investment, employment and financial decisions of the world. A dominant core of 147 firms through interlocking stakes in others together control 40% of the wealth in the global network. (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed-the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world/). A total of 737 companies control 80% of it all.
This is the inequality that matters for the functioning of capitalism – the concentrated power of capital. And because inequality of wealth stems from the concentration of the means of production and finance in the hands of a few, and because that ownership structure remains untouched, then any redistributive policy based on increased taxes on wealth and income will always fall short of solving the ‘economic problem’.
Inequality is the result of the private ownership of capital and governments dedicated to sustaining their power and wealth. If that does not end, inequality of income and wealth globally and nationally will remain and continue to worsen, and climate change will reach irreversible tipping points.
I have never seen that perspective before and I appreciate you taking the time and energy to clearly articulate how we need to go back to a country that builds and owns things. Couldn't of said it better myself.
Great words. This is the best response to not having a wealth tax. The term alone seems to imply it's for the people, but it's really just a cheap way for the Billionaires to appear to be giving us more crumbs. We must not settle for it! Thanks,Corbin!
Corbin, I hope you will make contact with Graham Platner. I have suggested to his staff that he connect with you. Your views would be useful to his policy development.
He was on the show recently.
The times we are living in. When the richest man in the world is in reality a poor bastard trapped in an echochamber of his own making, A gullible con-man with a white supremacist, climate science-denying worldview, who has played a decisive role in corrupting the 2024 US elections, in promoting far right propaganda and disinformation, in dismantling the USA‘s democratic institutions and foreign aid, and in illegally stealing US citizen’s private data. This is the man with 240+ million followers on his own anti-social media platform, who managed to rig listing rules so that ETFs and index funds automatically purchase those overvalued shares, while allowing his investor buddies an obscene, unethical exit at the expense of common retail investors and pension fund beneficiaries. Let‘s just call this IPO what it is: another shameless act of looting the working class by the billionaire class in broad daylight.
All utilities should be nationalized along with healthcare. Let’s start with that and work downward to find a system that actually works for the people. Capitalism is great in measured doses. This nation is completely out of control.
We throw around the term "billions" so often that we've forgotten what it really means. A guy or gal with just $100 million in the bank could buy with cash a $5 million home on five continents, a Bugatti, a Ferrari, and a Lamborghini for their garage, and a $10 million wardrobe for themselves and their significant other, and still have $60 million in the bank generating $3.6 million a year.
Elon Musk’s personal fortune, now approaching a trillion dollars, is more than the gross domestic product of all but 21 countries in the world. There are more than a dozen people in this country with personal wealth in excess of $100 billion. The poor schmuck at the bottom of Forbes’ list of the 400 richest people in the U.S. has just $3.8 billion. Simple interest at 6% on a fortune of that size generates almost $230 million a year. Billionaires have fortunes so vast that those who try struggle to give away enough so that they don't keep getting richer.
What do you do with wealth that is vastly more than you need to buy all the creature comforts you could ever want? You spend it on power, and then you spend it on keeping the power you've amassed. The billionaires have already bought the current government, thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. If by some miracle “the people” can wrest control of the government from them and the billionaires don’t like where things are headed, amassing a drone armory and buying a copy of Mythos would be a rounding error in their bank accounts.
The only solution I see to this problem is not pretty.
And what solution is that, pray tell?
Space X (and Starlink) should be part of NASA. Privatization (taxpayer funding of services that should belong to the public domaine) has accelerated the rise of fascism in our late stage capitalism and was/is the culprit that murdered our democracy.
An alternate solution to this is to charge senior executives with RICO violations, seize all their assets, seize the corporation as a criminal organization, and put the executives into a prison's general population. Under NSPM-7, they could be labeled as domestic terrorists pursuing anti-American and anti-capitalist activities and their Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus could be suspended, arguing that they are in rebellion.
I discovered Mr. Trent's writings a few months ago - blessed is the algorithm, it shall not be denied.
I immediately signed up at the $250 level. I'm not wealthy. I was impressed.
I feel his words are as unvarnished truth as any on the web. I've been looking since 2008.
My life's guiding words are from Marcus Aurelius: “Look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
That says to me - don't be afraid to demand exactly what you need. Never start your negotiations with compromise.
This also says, stop treating the symptom, Trump, Musk, Altman, more; start treating the disease as so well reported by Mr. Trent.
I'll suggest we need to give Americans a better way to meet our common needs than a Congress where most votes are bought.
We need to specify a voting mechanism where sizable majority citizen direct votes in support of a workable society create laws.
In the age of the internet (the seed crystal for the singularity), we the people should be able to vote on issues we want to and see our votes translated into law.
Mandates with sufficiently strong support like ending gerrymandering or Medicare for all or taking money out of politics could be added as amendments to the Constitution with no elected official being able to block.
Well, duh? The New Deal replaced by the Big Deal. The corporate pyramid replaces the People's Power. Wilson started it. The public tax system, the Federal Reserve System, the Pay to Play System. 1868, 1871, 14th Amendment, the Dictionary Act. Sovereign Ctizens become federal serfs. Corporations become 'persons.' The murder of Lincoln gave the South its real win. The first Johnson was such a tool, he took, with essentially no emergency brake, back to pre-revolutionary times. Talk is worthless, words are poison. Teddy and FDR did what they could to brake this runaway train, but were too imbedded in the system itself to make the play work. Eugene Debs had the right line of sight, and they jailed him. Wallace had FDR's legacy and ear, and they essentially ghosted him in favor of Truman, who was a patsy for the new corporate industrialists that had seized the means of production to win WW2. Actual citizens to Company Store chattel took just a few decades to implement, the Depression and Dust Bowl tipped the scales back a few years, but Ford and Hearst and Bush and others were determined to run the show their way, lost due to FDR's determination, got it back with Truman, lost it with Ike, undermined Ike and the Dulles Bros. gutted the freshly hatched UN in a few short years. This play is the Old Play Book of monarchical Autocracy, Kings Without Crowns, Grand Inquisitors without Courts other than the Monarchy Court of forever young SCOTUS, now the most corrupt entity among many vessels of corruption. How, pray tell, Corbin, do you suggest we chattel 'claw back' this parasitic Black Hole now equipped with AI?
;
This is something important to understand about our wealth gap and how it is poised to get worse if we don’t institute a rent tax on these companies, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_YymZgh3bk. A tax on rents is by no means THE silver bullet; it is one arrow in the quiver that must be loosed on these rapacious capitalists.
This is the welfare fraud we need to put in prison. Fk Musk
I think the modern version of subsidizing is the opposite of ownership. The shift was clear in 2008. When we bailed out the banks we didn't start controlling them, we started OBEYING the banks. We gave the investors zero interest for 15 years, which enabled them to take over the rest of the economy.. The same reversal holds true with Amazon and Elon. We aren't asking anything in return for our ownership, we're giving them even more than we gave before. These payments are more like blackmail than purchasing.
Before developing a treatment plan, not even implementing it, the diagnosis has to be clear. Treatment without diagnosis is a guess work.
A very small elite owns the means of production and finance and that is how they usurp the lion’s share and more of the wealth and income. And wealth concentration is really about the ownership of productive capital, the means of production and finance. It’s big capital (finance and business) that controls the investment, employment and financial decisions of the world. A dominant core of 147 firms through interlocking stakes in others together control 40% of the wealth in the global network. (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed-the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world/). A total of 737 companies control 80% of it all.
This is the inequality that matters for the functioning of capitalism – the concentrated power of capital. And because inequality of wealth stems from the concentration of the means of production and finance in the hands of a few, and because that ownership structure remains untouched, then any redistributive policy based on increased taxes on wealth and income will always fall short of solving the ‘economic problem’.
Inequality is the result of the private ownership of capital and governments dedicated to sustaining their power and wealth. If that does not end, inequality of income and wealth globally and nationally will remain and continue to worsen, and climate change will reach irreversible tipping points.
I have never seen that perspective before and I appreciate you taking the time and energy to clearly articulate how we need to go back to a country that builds and owns things. Couldn't of said it better myself.
Great words. This is the best response to not having a wealth tax. The term alone seems to imply it's for the people, but it's really just a cheap way for the Billionaires to appear to be giving us more crumbs. We must not settle for it! Thanks,Corbin!
A rocket company that makes ZERO PROFIT AND IS 100% SUBSIDIZED BY THE US TAXPAYER.
WE ARE AND WILL NEVER SET FOOT ON MARS .
Why do we measure the worth of everything in money?