Showing posts with label regulation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label regulation. Show all posts

Making Sense, Looking at What Happens: The War Against Democracy by Extractive Industrial Political Power: Wealth vs Nurture.

Making Sense, Looking at what happens: The War Against Democratic Regulation of Toxic Industrial Practices by Extractive Industrial Political Power. The Power Wealth vs Healthy Societies. 

Ordinary people, especially the low income workers, make most of the real wealth through daily toil, and the largest proportion of the wealth they generate is extracted and accumulated. The poor are a permanent externalised cost. 

How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century."― Aneurin Bevan

Freedom is not the absence of limits. What I have sought always is to live the tension, the contradiction, between authority and freedom so as to maintain respect for both. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

Everyone knows we're in serious, serious trouble. And there's no need to panic. Really. We've got this. 

Let me take you through my world view, in which the future is always unfinished, not least because I, as a human being living with this culture which conditions me, becoming aware of that situation I come to the realisation that I have options to undo that conditioning. In other words I become aware that I am unfinished, I can change and grow. It doesn't have to be this way.

Fatalism is a lie the ruling class, the neoliberals and the bullies inculcate in those they hold power over. Because fatalism blocks growth, inhibits hope, limits one's perception of the future.

Destiny is an illusion. Nothing is over. The future is open to possibility.

Our world is on edge, yet not at a precipice.

The Scene

The Extractive Industries : Oil, Gas, Meat, Plastics, Mining, Lumber, Fishing and all those other organised extractive activities - extracting raw materials from the natural domain - that cause pollution, environmental degradation, climate change and poverty (industries that rely on cheap labour are a leading cause of poverty, and low wages is all about maximising wealth extraction). 

These industries, their owners and activist operators extract wealth from natural resources, and from human resources. They accumulate their wealth, and hoard it away from the rest of the population. They use that wealth as a political weapon.

These industrial groups, they engage in political corruption as part of their day to day operations.

Oligarchs and companies funding a think tank that lobbies politicians who are given funds - donations and sinecure jobs - by oligarchs and companies is inherently corrupt because it is buying influence, and intervenes unfairly in democratic deliberation. Politicians implementing policy papers designed by the oligarchs, for the oligarchs interests, beyond democratic examination and oversight is corrupt. If those policy papers were set for examination by the electorate, and the electorate given equal weight and power over the decision to adopt the policy, plus the ability to over see implementation and correct any errors or harms, then that would be democratic. That does not happen.

Then there's the producers, those who make things, and whose industries also cause pollution, environmental degradation, climate change and poverty and who engage in political corruption as they accumulate their wealth, and hoard it away from the rest of the population, and use it as a political weapon.

Then there's us the consumers, who use the products, who work in their industries and in our use and in our work, which we must do or we die from starvation, lack of shelter - we too cause pollution, environmental degradation, climate change, we accept poverty as long as it is other people, and we are profoundly influenced by political corruption and conditioning.

Then there's the end of use disposal. We fill our trash bins every week, we throw away old electric goods as new ones arrive, we cast aside so much material. We flush our excrement away.

Where does all the 'waste' go?


I like to be human because in my unfinishedness I know that I am conditioned. Yet conscious of such conditioning, I know that I can go beyond it, which is the essential difference between conditioned and determined existence. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom


The Accumulated Extracted Wealth Party

The Oligarchy, who are politically, economically, culturally and socially organised as The Accumulated Extracted Wealth Party, have all waged social, economic, political and cultural wars against those who point out the harms caused in the processes that generate that accumulated wealth, and who ask that the harms be reduced, or better still prevented, who dare suggest that reparations must be made for all the harms knowingly caused. How dare they?

The Accumulated Extracted Wealth, that pile of cash that is extracted via these industries and their sales, is accumulated and concentrated away from the rest of humanity  and it sits as the treasury of a sleepless political hegemon, a political force that infiltrates and influences every political party of note. It is used to build institutions and networks, it is used to fund workers and activists, it is used to promote, propagandise, manipulate, persuade and influence the populations from which that wealth is also extracted. War is an expensive business.

The reach of Accumulated Extracted Wealth as a political agency is immense and beyond the capability of the average electorate to counter. The asymmetry of power is real.

Therefore taxing Accumulated Extracted Wealth - a slogan that has gained some traction in recent times - is already too late in that it faces the Sisyphean difficulty that by the time that much Wealth is accumulated it has become a political hegemon, a political party within and without all other political parties, groups, think tanks and movements that can and does counter any and every move to rein that power in, to address the harms caused and make just adjustments to the situation.

I repeat myself.

The point needs to be made, repeatedly. Unlike a lie, this does not become more true by repetition. Even if it was never expressed, it remains true. Repeating this is one way to shake off the dust of the prevailing fatalism. Accumulated Wealth is a Political Party.

Accumulated Extracted Wealth is a political force that is now in a position that it is stronger than many democratic States and it is currently stronger than electorates who do not understand that Accumulated Wealth is a political force.

It has to be said that there are some among the wealthy whose accumulated wealth is not party to the power struggle who make some efforts to rebalance the situation, and that in confronting this we must be careful to pay due attention to the detail and avoid generics. Slogans cannot take the place of detailed and fair analysis. 

Hope is not just a question of grit or courage. It's an ontological dimension of our human condition. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

Taxing the Rich is too late.

We need to get in before that Wealth is extracted and accumulated as a political force. AOC and her dress have a point, of course. There is something deeply unfair in the way taxation operates, and there is something profoundly ugly in the maintenance of poverty, in such a wealthy country, where close to 10% of US population cannot meet their most basic needs because they simply do not have the money to pay for those most basic needs. She's not 'wrong', she's just too late.


Taxing the really rich, the Accumulated Extracted Hoard of Wealth. does not deal with the externalised costs, and  therefore it lets them off the hook, and for very little in return, in social material terms.

Externalised Costs

I don't know if you know this : the top 20 Industries would all be unprofitable if they paid all their externalised costs. You might want to pause and just let that sink in. Where does the profitability come from? 

Who, then, pays the price of all the externalised costs?

What are all those externalised costs?

Climate Change, Environmental Damage, Air Pollution, Poverty, Low Wages. Warfare, Racism and Misogyny are all part of the externalised costs domain, in one way or another.

How can we address this problem set?

A brief outline.

Here I present a very brief, simplistic line out of I think what needs to be done. I am, of course, well aware that achieving these is both complex (there are many needs to be met, and balances to be crafted between different needs, to do all of this safely for everyone involved) and it will be complicated (the addiction to power and status will get in the way of every possible action taken to solve the problems we face, and that addiction to power and status and wealth will be a point of friction, a force of resistance, a source of recalcitrance, presenting as sulky passive aggressive reactionary behaviours by the addicts and their supporters).

The Environment. - we must clean up how industry operates, repair damage done, prevent further damage. This is all eminently possible, it will mean less profits for shareholders, etc as more investment is put into the clean up and prevention dynamics.

The Low Wage Workers. - make lowest possible wage well above any measurable poverty line, globally.  Again absolutely feasible. And again, reduced profits to shareholders as we invest in happy workers who are no longer struggling, stressed out because they lack money.

The Vulnerable Poor - Abolish poverty and destitution, look after the vulnerable. That's a factor of State and currency, and can be done irrespective of day to day taxation. By investing in care systems where care professionals are well trained, well paid and well resourced, Governments will be injecting currency into the economy and increasing happiness, decreasing chronic stress.

If after that, wealth is accumulated, then tax it fairly. 

Bearing in mind that taxation no longer funds day to day business of any Government that operates within a State that has a central bank that issues that States currency. So there's no pressure, right?

Some Democratic governments are taking steps to confront the Extractive Industries and the Accumulated Wealth Party to regulate them so as to stop further harm and setting up processes to ensure that they pay something for the harms already caused.

Everyone knows we're in serious, serious trouble.

To recap : The Extractive Industry owners are a political party called Wealth. Their vast Wealth is what gives them political power - they can fund think tanks, news papers, TV stations and online misinformation with which they can and do influence voters; they can 'donate' money to politicians and they can hire psychologists and other mercenaries, and they do. They do this to protect their ability to amass wealth which they need to be able to maintain and exercise the political power to protect their interests.

For the Accumulated Extracted Wealth Party, this is indeed a vicious cycle. They are addicted, and only a united electorate, a grass roots grounded in evidence and solidarity, has the capability to help them end their addiction, by regulating their behaviour through the agency of Democratic Legislatures taking due responsibility.

The Accumulated Extracted Wealth Party get their wealth by externalising costs, by paying low wages, by thrashing the environment, by refusing to devote the resources needed to prevent the harms associated with their industries, from acquisition of raw material to end of life disposal, and everything in between. This is causing immense avoidable harm. That is not acceptable on any level.

If they are forced, or helped, nurtured and regulated by democratic Governments directed by evidence led caring adult electorates to pay the costs, their industry's would under current measures barely break even, and they would lose their political power. It is the loss of power that keeps them awake a night. That is their biggest fear - without their power they would become ordinary citizens. People just like you and I.

Beautiful People no more - oh dear. 

But actually, they could and would become far more beautiful in depth and humanity than their current imaginations could possible envision. Yes I know someone like Trump or Johnson has no interest in that at all.

To be truly humane is to eschew the leverage of power over others for it's own sake, for egoic satisfaction or for personal gain, to fully share the power to nurture one another, as a conscious choice, knowing one could choose otherwise. Being ethical is as much as possibility as being unethical is. It is that choice, to be ethical, knowing you could just as easily not, that makes for profound humane beauty.

Empathic Civilisation.

Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, : "It takes strength to be an empathetic leader."

Jose Mujica, President of Uruguay  : "If we lived within our means - by being prudent - the 7 billion people in the world could have everything they needed. Global politics should be moving in that direction. But we think as people and countries, not as a species.."

Jeremy Corbyn : “Life is life. Some of the wisest people you meet are sweeping our streets" and "We are one of the richest countries in the world, and there is absolutely no reason why anyone should have to live in poverty.”

Ghandi : "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." 

Martin Luther King: "I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice."

The hierarchy of power and violence cult prefers to inculcate a fatalistic world view in the population it presides over. But that is a lie. We are naturally a learning species.  These leaders chose to learn and grow, and lead as student and teacher. 

I recognise that being born into where I was born, I was exposed to a certain social and experiential conditioning that implanted values which I then internalised. Yet those values are not who I am. They do not define me. Who I am is up to me to define and decide, and I have found that being an ethical humane being, I instinctively choose the path of growth, the way of learning, the life of ethical behaviour, the behaviour of nurture. That is who I am, imperfect as I know myself to be, aspiring towards an unknowable future that is grounded in ethical behaviour in the present, ethical action and the ever present intention for a nurturant outcome

If I am a pure product of genetic, cultural, or class determination, I have no responsibility for my action in the world and, therefore, it is not possible for me to speak of ethics. Of course, this assumption of responsibility does not mean that we are not conditioned genetically, culturally, and socially. It means that we know ourselves to be conditioned but not determined. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom

This is a war

And yes, they - whoever they are - the Accumulated Extracted Wealth Party are waging a war. They see this as a struggle, a fight, a war to protect their entitlement and dominance.

Each of us must face this, as disturbing as it might seem, None of this will be easy. The effort required is immense. The cost of not making that effort and of not obstinately pushing through with it until we succeed to build a nurturing culture and economy, within a healthy polity will be much, much more than immense, it is likely to bring more trauma, more pain, more distress for billions of lovely human beings, and it might possibly be terminal at the species level.

What to do?

Here's an interesting video that tries to take a bigger picture look at systemic change given the problems outlined above. It goes through the various elements and suggests we need, as citizens, to elect legislators who will regulate the accumulated wealth structures so we can reduce harms, repair damages, build in nurturing processes going forwards.


If this work to make our culture a genuinely nurturing industrial economic culture was done and done really well, the owners would likely break even, they could remain in their exalted positions of relative luxury, and they would probably generate three profits - the larger profit would be a healthier system that does minimal damage which it repairs; the day to profit would be a small return to reward their efforts, justly shared across the population and the lasting social and historical profit would the the kudos they'd receive for being eminently reasonable and sensible about the whole thing.

Could a character like Koch or Johnson or Xi imagine being written about in future histories as one who helped the culture retreat from harm causation to engage in a nurturant culture? 

I know that right now, given the current narrative of the Establishment, this looks seriously unlikely. 

However we are all unfinished beings and the future is likewise unfinished. Hope springs eternal. The well of evolutionary mutual aid is deeper than civilisation, older than the human species. We can do this, and we must.

Does that make sense?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

Wealth as a Political Hegemon, Brexit, War Crimes and Private Cities



What really drives Brexit?

Put it another way.

Pose a pertinent, topical question about what is happening across Earth's States at this time.

What is the largest scale global scale dynamic event that is happening? Change and resistance to change?

With climate change and particulate air pollution now proven, with the need for meaningful social and material action to address the harms these present, who are the people who would fear potential class actions and intense state and international regulation to address the accumulated harms and to prevent further harms?

Who is responsible for the most harms in these areas?

Who has known of these harms for decades and done nothing about it, and worse has actively impeded or denied knowledge, understanding and remedial action that is need on these matters?

Wealth as a Political Hegemon, a dictatorship, a tyranny.

When it comes to Wealth as a political party, a global hegemon, the extractive industries are the largest group, or faction, and they have huge influence over politicians, globally, through the wealth they deploy as a political weapon that serves their interests and frequently undermines the interests of ordinary working folk and the stability and survival of indigenous nations.

Iraq had many layers of purpose, one of which was a 'war for Oil'.

Oligarchy and War as a utility.

Iraq, Libya and Syria are cases of administering a very public beating, a demonstration to any that might imagine standing up to the global bullies.

If that Wealth is threatened, if the extractive industry Oligarchy are forced to spend their profits on preventing harms, if they are regulated to pay for the previous harms of the externalised costs of their activities, then their industries will cease to be profitable, and they will also lose their political power.

What would they do to avoid that?

How far would they go?

How far to the ruling class of any oppressive situation go?

Israeli Apartheid.

We only need to see what is happening in Israel, what the Israeli State and Military are doing every day, 24/7 to Palestinian people. That is how far the Ruling Class of the Israeli State is willing to go.

They will murder, bomb, evict, demolish, close off, entomb, shoot, imprison, starve and in what ever way they can devise, extirpate a people whose tenure on the lands of Palestine is proven, undoubted, long established.

We only need to see what happened in England as the covid19 epidemic rolled in, and on. They rejected Zero Community Transmission strategy, which is proven to prevent more harm than the let spread and try to control the spread policy.

Take a look at two interesting takes on this, with regards to interfering with Democracy.

Extractive Industry pre-empting State legislation on Climate, Environment, Pollution.

Charles Koch and Gina Rinehart, Robert and Rebekah Mercer and others associated with the extractive industrial complex have been and are funding the organisation and activities of a myriad of think tanks, lobby groups, media campaigns and the operations of adverse election influence in 68 countries, covering more than 100 elections, deploying digital microtargeting campaigns interlaced with traditional electioneering methods in order to alter peoples perception and behaviour.


SCL, a company involved in 'Electioneering' as a business, and the countries they worked in.

Politically motivated grooming operations directed against populations in order to inhibit democratic regulation of their industries. Both SCL and Cambridge Analytica have been shut down by their owners. The people who staffed them have moved on to other similar operations and the business of influence continues apace, not least with regards to COVID19 misinformation and lobbying in support of Governments rejecting zero community transmission strategies.

Brexit, Bolsonaro and Trump

Brexit  and the election of Trump in USA and of Bolsonaro in Brazil, among many others involving embedded news media political grooming operations via traditional media, and in the latter stages deploying industrial scale digital micro targeting operations designed to alter voters and non-voters behaviour through the repeated use of emotional trigger content, amygdala hacking and neuro-marketing propaganda techniques at an industrial scale. Grooming.

Setting international precedent at the state level by breaking treaties unilaterally. Walking away from Climate Agreements. Disposing of environmental regulations to protect wilderness. 

The same networks funding and organising covid misinformation campaigns and anti-zero community transmission strategy lobbying globally.  Grooming.

An alternative to the State - the Private City

Free Cities  - a campaign to create Privatised City States, the future of liberalism for the next century and beyond that are run by Corporations, as locations to park Wealth and to evade Democratic State regulation and and to undermine State taxation systems that fund social programs, health care, education for the grass roots.

A libertarian utopia where wealth as a political hegemon is recreated as a protected species - protected from democratic, evidence led regulation and taxation.

Charles Koch, a fossil fuel industry leader worth an estimated $47.5 Billion believes in a world with no taxes, no health service, no state pension, no minimum wage, no sick leave, no disability support, no welfare system, no police, no foreign aid, no financial or climate change regulation.

“The Sovereign Individual” by William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson, published in 1997 articulates this ideology. Published as Blair took a Thatcherite version of the English Labour Party into the 21st Century, his policy position laid the ground work for the destruction of the social contract where the State acts with a duty of care to the citizen.

Rees-Mogg & Davidson’s dystopian vision, along with the condensed edition of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom’ (PDF download), published in 1945 are considered pivotal texts of the ‘bible’ of the NeoLiberal or Libertarian authoritarian-right, the alt right etc.

Following the doctrines in these books, powerful libertarians all over the world including the controversial Peter Thiel, Koch, Rinehart and many others are working with much energy to introduce, implement and expand the radical concept of Enterprise Cities in various formats known as SEZ’s, Charter Cities, Freeports and ZEDE’s.

Moneyland

"Moneyland is a country I invented; it doesn't exist in the way that any normal country does. But it's basically the place where you can put your money, you can put your reputation, you can put your children, if you are rich enough to afford it services. And it is essentially a hybrid country that exists outside of ordinary nation-states, where the reach, the power of law enforcement, doesn't stretch to. So essentially, it's a secret country, a private country for anyone rich enough to afford its services, and it's essentially government, sort of, of the rich, for the rich, by the rich."

Oliver Bullough, Author of  Moneyland: 
Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How To Take It Back

Quote taken from this interview with NPR.

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/01/719001286/moneyland-reveals-how-oligarchs-kleptocrats-and-crooks-stash-fortunes

China - the exception?

Whereas China is doing the exact opposite!  China is by no means perfect. No such state of perfection exists in the industrialised world at this stage of development, globally. The entire industrial system has huge dysfunctionality, not least in the areas of externalised costs.

Nonetheless, China is embarking on a remarkable program of alleviating poverty, expanding health care and education, eradicating destitution and imposing strict transparency on the activities of commercial corporations to detect, punish and prevent corruption and in that way reduce the harms associated with corporate fraud and other externalised costs. 

War Crimes

The invasion of Iraq, a sovereign State, in 2003 was a War of Aggression. As such it was the supreme War Crime, the Act of Aggression, which contains all war crimes within it.

Two States are most culpable in the commission of this War Crime  - England and The United States of America, who drew on NATO states and others to provide 'assistance'.

It follows that the political leaders who drove the prosecution of this crime are War Criminals, and their administrations and Military Chiefs are also War Criminals, and that the civilian officials and the News Media that ran propaganda in support of this War Crime are all liable under the Laws that prohibit Wars of Aggression for conduct ancillary to the commission of a War Crime.

Nobody has been indicted for these War Crimes.

Israel is engaged in war crimes on a daily basis and is allowed to operate with utter impunity.

In England, the Labour Party is the primary political organisation responsible for the move to wage war against Iraq. As such it is a War Criminal entity, until it finds the courage to indict those Labour politicians who prosecuted the War against Iraq.  The English Government likewise is a war criminal entity.

The English Government 'stands with Israel. Starmer is a Zionist, by his own words - but does he even understand what he is saying? Does Starmer understand? Is that why he persecuted Julian Assange while he was DPP,  and now refuses to come to Assange aid as he languishes in an English jail cell, accused of no crime? Because he understands all too well his role as a member of the Establishment?

There is a group with the Labour Party who have been protecting Tony Blair ever since 2006.  Starmer is part of that group, a Johnny come lately to the Blairite war criminal collective.

Protecting a known war criminal.

Ugly....


 





Kindest regards

Corneilius

 "Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."