Money money money money money money money
Money and blood. Lots of both.
Here's an odd thing. Yesterday afternoon I walked into the room where I keep my two guitars on their stands, and noticed the one that's my daily driver (that I hadn't gotten to play in three or four days) had a busted A string. They usually break while you're playing or tuning, not just resting in the stand.
So straight to Amazon to order the same set as last time. When I gave my Wife the obligatory heads-up that I've added the ten dollar purchase to the shopping cart, by way of conversation she mentions that She had an email from Amazon the other day asking about something. I suggested it was a scam, and of course She already had surmised the same thing, and had ignored it. No sweat. But it led me to think about the economics of the various kinds of thievery that abound during this extended shopping season. (Shopping season—just sounds wrong.)
Our news broadcasts have lately mentioned about the need to not answer the various come-ons that sound legit but that are actually theives phishing. They recount the sad stories of innocents being bilked out of their savings. We had just seen a news story about how brazen theives fish envelopes out of US postal boxes, sort through to find those which contain a check someone has written to pay a bill, and then use chemistry to 'wash' the check before re-writing it with a substantially larger amount, for cash.
Which led me to consider this: every year, in fact every day, and not just during 'the season,' retailers deal with massive amounts of losses due to shoplifting. Combined with the various sorts of other types of thievery, the smash and grabs, the phishing etc. our economy sustains a ginormous, astronomically, geologically large hit due to theft. Regular ongoing theft. By pros and amateurs. If you add in things like real estate swindles and other high toned fckery, the hit is probably something truly atrocious, like a tenth or a quarter of the GDP. Whatever the number, I am sure the average person never thinks of it that way. Retailers and other businesses constantly struggle and pay for ways to stop or reduce the hit. And of course, all of that loss gets passed on eventually to the consumer.
It occurs to me, and this is purely fanciful, that if we could somehow end all that theft, magically—and keep the deep and powerful pockets from simply profiteering off the difference, that biggest of all theft—it would be enough to pay for all kinds of things to remediate our economy and society. We'd have enough in that 'surplus' to feed the hungry, home the homeless, solve the climate crisis, etc, and even pay the various theives to not steal from us.
I am so disgusted and angry with our society for this simple fact of life, assumed to be the natural default and the way things have to be, as if ordained by God, that ninety-eight percent of people are subject to, and live their lives under the tyranny of the greed of a handful of uberwealthy, who mostly got their advantage through inheritance of the plunder of previous generations. They didn't build that.
The whole world is subject to this uneven power of money, every country, every village, the democracies and the communists, and I ask the same question I've been asking myelf for at least the last forty years—why in God's name have we not gathered ourselves up and invented a better way and established it with a bloody righteous revolution? Can we ninety-eight percent not manage to overcome the two percent? Every moment we continue to let this go this way, we are condemning our progeny, everyone's, to the same slavery.
And don't kid yourselves, even those fortunate enough to be way above poverty, to have a comfortable lifestyle and secure investments for their retirement and their heirs, are subject to, and pay for, this evil. It doesn't have to be like this, even though it always has been. Think of it as the 'greedy rich tax on life.' And this tax isn't withheld from your paycheck, and you don't have to account for it on a government form once a year—you pay from the moment you're born to the moment you pass, every moment in between.
WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, NEED TO END THIS AS SOON AS WE CAN.
And we can to do it the same way we've gotten together in locations and times past to invent new government and end political tyranny of various stripes.
It is way past time to have a revolution. We are all so far down the poisoned shaft that the very idea of changing it is beyond the average person to even consider.
Let us meet in the street and take back our lives from the evil un-elected powerful. Let us gather our smart people and invent a way to be unburdened by the historical greed that has driven everything for millenia.
I expect a knock on the door after posting this.
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Originally Posted by Jim Mahan
