Time. The greatest commodity and resource. Time is limited for us all, unfortunately at any point; we just don't know how much time we have left. In the context of worker based capitalism that is shifting scarily to a point where workers won't even have to work anymore and machines will take over; entrepreneurs enjoy the value of time. And they enjoy the value of this time ten fold compared to any other position in society. As an employee, you put in 40+ hours a week (for some it is double and they still don't come out on top, that's what employee means), to end up with a paycheck that by when you finally receive it, its not enough and your work and time feels devalued based on the remuneration.
I am a privileged, straight, white male. Even with my incredible leg up in this post modern society, it seems ridiculously hard to get by. Fortunately for me, I am amazing at being poor (I can also enjoy the value of time, albeit a drastic difference). The mind is a hell of a lot stronger than your external environment, but who wants to spend their entire life with the same shitty, external environment? I don't think anyone does, and I don't believe that the poor are lazy, on drugs, or chose bad sectors of the economy to work in. Even arguing the concept of economic dynamism and that people need to adapt is completely egregious (Ben Shapiro, I'm pointing a finger at your dumb ass). Yes, by the nature of humanity and progression forward, some dynamism is inevitable and is bound to happen. But we've reached a point in our collective history where there is a mind boggling amount of money to go around. We're in the digital age, money scarcity basically doesn't exist. We're not a resource based economy, we are an information and technological economy. And since information travels faster than we ever could or will. It is extremely naive to think human beings will continue to exchange time for money in the ways we have since the industrial revolution.
We all should know by now that Reagan's trickle down economics plan was a complete farce. Because as history has shown; as the technocrats get more money, that money doesn't find itself back into the hands of the average American, who more than likely spent that same money on a product they didn't need, to funnel up that transaction to the top of the food chain. Entrepreneurs right now are essential, with out them, there wouldn't be this plethora of capital. But now that we've arrived at this point, we need to create a system that benefits the employee. Or ultra capitalists will continue to do what they always have done...hoard like a dragon aka a billionaire. An entrepreneur creates a system of wealth generation that is HEAVILY reliant on employees to act as functional arms of the pyramid so that every dollar eventually accounted for allows the company to be profitable. Yes, the entrepreneur must be intelligent enough to design the system, which is why many have god like complexes because entrepreneurship requires a ridiculous amount of self belief. But... just like any symbiotic relationship, the system of wealth generation falls apart completely without the teamwork of the employees. The problem with our current stage of capitalism is (previous stages too, see child labor laws); employees across so many industries are over worked, and under paid. The backlash of the nation's COVID response is evident of all of this, if it wasn't already before. Take 2 weeks of consistent pay from any number of us, we are fucked.
All one has to do is open their eyes to the disparities of wealth. Take a drive in your car from the Gold Coast in Chicago to the Lower West Side. Are the people living in the Lower West Side of Chicago inherently lazier than their prejudiced GC counterparts? Hard to make an argument that they are. The answer is never an Occam's Razor. Certain platforms of the media keep mentioning the economy is in a boon or the stock market is growing, or that bitcoin is almost back up to 10k. The problem with continuing to look at charts and numbers, GDP, etc as evidence of a good healthy economy is; it completely ignores and fore goes the human element. The emotional element. We have feelings, we are not just social security numbers plugging into a system collecting checks....unless...that is of course, how our technocrat overlords see us. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Who knows. Jeff Bezos made 25 billion over the shutdowns, but he gets brownie points for virtue signaling and posting a picture with Lizzo. Bill Gates made a killing during this time too, but he's off the hook because his money is working on a vaccine. Everyone during lock down was mostly likely using Google or FaceBook so yes, Zuckerberg and the largely absent from spotlight, Larry Page, all made off like bandits as well.
This brings me to the reason I was such a vocal Andrew Yang supporter. He seemed to be the only person in any room that understood exactly where this economy is going to go, and I fear that by the time we wake up to his prophecy, it will be too late to reverse the damage to people's livelihoods. We need to rethink an entirely new way of commerce. Do I know what exactly that looks like? No. Do I think its possible the smartest people in the world could come up with something new? Yes. Could it be a crazy concoction of capitalist, socialist, and communist attributes? Sure! But human beings naturally love to defend the way things have always been done, rather than to search for innovation and create a new path forward. Its our nature to be comfortable and repetitive. Something the technocratic class understands impeccably or we wouldn't keep giving our money to Amazon (convenience is a shit argument here because; convenience of product acquisition hasn't led to increased qualities of life).
So yes, tax the fuck out of every tech giant. But only if the money actually comes back as monthly checks and freedom dividends for every American. The employees give up their precious time so that the people at the top can sit comfortably and continue to collect profits. Now the employees need more back in order for our society to function equitably. The police brutality, riots, and looting all could have been avoided if people were properly compensated for their actions as Americans. Most other countries continue to have racial issues, but you don't see black youth get gunned down in Europe like you do here. Could it be people in Europe are better taken care of? Yes. And they still take to the streets and demonstrate. The whole world protested George Floyd, and some of those countries haven't the reason to, like we do.
I am glad that billionaires have generated so much wealth, now they need to be taxed. It is heinous that 30% of a paycheck will get deducted out of a total of 1k, when mega corporations continue to avoid all taxes completely. We are living in a technological dystopian feudal era. I hope we can see that before the buildings start crumbling and we pay for bread with bails of cash.
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