NYU Professor Aswath Damodaran, known as the “Dean of Valuation”, had the chefs kiss takedown of ESG:
“I find the purveyors of ESG to be among the most sanctimonious and arrogant twits (and you can quote me on that) on the face of the earth, convinced that they have the right definition of good, that they will thrust down the throats of everyone else. The ESG measurement services, in my view, are a charade, measuring neither goodness nor risk, but they have real effects, since companies take consequential actions to improve these scores.”
but agreed on sentiment and dates. an argument could be made that if the fed had been left with it's original single mandate, minus the contradictory 2% devalue rate of course, things might be different, but then the do-gooder "new" dealers added the ridiculous and totally contradictory "full employment" mandate after WWII, as if the State was the employer (rather marxist, eh?). in any case, today's fed needs to be re-structured even more than today's fbi.
and more importantly, scotus should *never* have found a federal income tax constitutional, as if income *isn't* property!!
Quite on-point. But will anybody be held to account? A new administration needs the power to act like Trump's Schedule F might do. But in reality Congress must create stronger laws to ensure such government overreach is eliminated.
ESG is the front face of the shift while other tentacles take over the criminal justice system and schools, and appropriate ideas and language like decentralization and regenerative farming to camouflage corporate crony control and surveillance of all production. Very little media coverage was given to the pushback by Indian farmers against corporate takeover who were, ironically, driven away from regenerative farming by the corporations backing ESG, luring them into corporate chemical intensive GMO farming. Endless inversions.
I recall listening to one of his 2018 corporate finance lectures in which he always scoffed at this type of nonsense, but I thought at one point he said institutional investors like BlackRock don't get too involved (at least at the board level), because it's not an efficient use of their time. I'll have to see if his recent lectures he clarified or elaborated on the role and impact of institutional investors in addition to his takedown on incompetent board members.
I see the idealists who dream of fascist controls are running many of these investment firms. They then act in ways the individuals who actually own the securities would not. I suspect laws will be needed to restrain their activities. At least it seems that Fink's Blackrock has become more aware of the anger and Vanguard says it is staying clear. I suspect they worry, rightly so, if law must act - Congress can make things worse. I don't see these firms are acting as wise stewards of client's money. I know what is best for me, not them.
We have a way to fix this - our biggest problem - which is the corruption in the systems that govern over our lives. How? A Network State - a new decentralized 4th branch of government that isn't part of the government at all, but rather 100% built and run by the people. This includes a decentralized news network, decentralized science, a safe have for whistleblowers, a decentralized monetary system we all agree to in case the current one collapses, decentralized debates, a parallel transparent voting system, decentralized education , ballot initiatives and more. Consider this: https://joshketry.substack.com/p/lets-build-a-4th-branch-of-government
The deepest disappointment during the Covid era was, for me, the failure of the church to stand up and draw the line. We left our church of 22 years because of their lack of leadership.
I agree but was blessed to have strong church leadership so didn’t need to leave our church. That said I think there were two main factors that led to churches giving in. The first is I think most church leadership felt too ignorant to counter the official narrative. I heard pastors that I generally enjoy listening to saying things like “well I’m not a doctor so I think we should listen to doctors and health officials because I don’t know enough to know if what they are saying is correct or not”. I think many were generally concerned about the elderly in their congregations and they believed the official narrative that this was almost as bad as the Black Death. The other factor is that many churches felt they were allowed viable alternatives. Many thought that live-streaming the worship and sermon was sufficient and a reasonable compromise. Others could meet outside or do multiple smaller services inside. When it came to the vaccines many thought that if the vaccines worked then it was their Christian duty to get vaccinated even at the risk of their own personal health in order to love thy neighbor. None of them had any answers when I asked what if the vaccines don’t work to stop transmission thus don’t protect your neighbor.
The general response of the church was disappointing but I think that’s because many in leadership truly believed the narrative and that they were protecting people as opposed to straight up cowardice.
And I think you are excusing inexcusable behavior. The Bible says and I paraphrase, when GOD starts cleaning house HE starts with congregations and shepherds. I would say most people who knew this was baloney from the first weren't doctors and didn't have letters behind their names BUT DID HAVE COMMON SENSE AND DISCERNMENT THAT GOD GAVE THEM. Anyone who has had an ounce of sense and done ANY research has seen the rapid decline of the medical profession over the last years. We in our country are in this situation because of us. We have not followed GOD whose country we said we are. We have allowed this to be. We are told that sins of the fathers (our ancestors) go down many generations. We have not repented. And no I am not talking about slavery. The original slavery in this country was of the native Americans not people from Africa who were captured and sold by the same color people as themselves. I am talking about our departing from GOD'S laws and ways. We have not sought HIS face. We have not put HIM above all of the other things worshipped in this country. We have not changed our ways. IF we do this, HE will heal or land.
Holding the line comes with a cost. As much as we might wish not to comply, close relationships can challenge our convictions.
I would have preferred to not been vaxed at all. However, my first grandchild was born in May of 2021 and my daughter insisted that anyone who wished to spend time with that adorable little girl would need to be vaxed. Got the first course (two shots 30 day apart) never boostered. Will not. But, on balance, I took the risk, overlooked my daughter's Nanny State Fearmongering, and Held My Infant Granddaughter. Despite my misgivings about its safety and efficacy, I stand sturdily by My Choice.
"There are no solutions. Only tradeoffs."
- Thomas Sowell, another Really Smart Economy Think Stuff Guy like Bastiat
Hopefully we've managed to reconnect with some good friends lost and be thankful for those with whom we stayed connected despite our differences.
Your daughter was part of the "mass formation" Mattias Desmet has talked about. They are not the prime movers of totalitarianism, but they are certainly enablers. I count myself lucky that I was not faced with a choice such as yours, though I've been shunned by many former friends. I'd like to believe I would have made a principled choice and that they would now be reuniting with me.
My stance has definitely impacted some relationships, especially at work where my coworkers are mostly 30s and 40s liberals in tech/e-commerce.
But I had to make a different choice with my family because I'm was not so certain that we'd reuninte easily or in short order. I wasn't willing to make the sacrifice. I do not feel weak for it and stand by it.
As with masking, I'd prefer that everyone be left to make their own choice but, where a potentially ill, definitely smelly and weird-looking old man might be putting his face in the pretty little face of her firstborn infant child and exposing the vulnerable child at risk - while simultaneously being force-fed The Way of The Bien Pensant - I understand why she held that position, and willingly honored it.
Well you guys got your Efriends on Gato's Stack. Else some schools were Forcing returning students to mask up upon return from "Covy illness" (you know, positive fake test and all), and I asked the administrator if that reminded her of "The Scarlett Letter". Blank Stare. Don't other me Bro! (or my kids).
I was not and do not judge you. As I wrote, "I'd like to believe...," but there's no telling what my choice would have been. Fortunately, no close relatives took that stand.
I wore masks in order to get hospitalized due to diabetic cellulitis. I've worn it since to get my prosthetic after losing a leg to diabetic cellulitis. I've worn masks on Uber rides, and in doctor's offices.
I have never been vaccinated, but would I if I had been gainfully employed? Would I have vaccinated if I had a wife and children? I don't know.
My penance is at least regretting the decisions that I made. Would they have thrown me out of the doctors office had I refused to wear a mask? If I didn't wear a mask in the hospital hallways would I have found myself carted away?
There are consequences though.
I think my immediate family knows of what I have done on twitter, though they don't mention it. After all, at least my sister has a twitter handle, and I bet my brother at least monitors it. He has early and often said that I should personalize and block all social media in order to get a job.
... do almost everything we did in public for a couple years. I was confident masks were useless by about April 2020 but just couldn't afford to have the "Let me show you the data *points to PowerPoint Slide Thirty-twelve*" when all I need from inside the Wegman's is some cilantro to make my Fish Tacos Salsa. I grumbled but it just wasn't worth it.
Maybe I should have pressed harder there but I pressed pretty hard in a lot of situations where thoughtful contemplation might have been more sensible. I don't think an iota less of you for it, especially owning it.
Ironically the two groups I hold most accountable are doctors and educators. If there are two segments of society that should not have been pushing the nonsense, it is those that should know better, shouldn't they?
My dad told me his dad stated the bottom 10% od any graduating class became bankers. I think nowadays, they become teachers. The ones who should be the vanguard of education actually know the least about masking and vaccines, and doctors are only marginally better.
On my second trip to the doctor following my amputation, the doctor tried to convince me to get the vaccine. When I said I hadn't gotten it, she asked me why. There was a moment there, I stood there and I think I said "personal reasons..." and then thought to myself "f it, she needs to know why." So I gave her a list.
• The vaccine is experimental. They had yet to rest for long term symptoms.
• I already had Covid twice...natural immunity.
• It doesn't stop the spread or infection
• It doesn't stay in the injection site.
I think I left out that Covid wasn't that dangerous anyway. Her response:
"It's ridiculous to think that a vaccine would stay in one place." Sh thought that assertion was ridiculous, but that is one of the very things the narrative pushed. She hem and hawed about it being experimental. She also tried to say that because I was diabetic it made me vulnerable. and my response was I already had it twice, so no I am not vulnerable."
I think she thought I was going to come at her with some MAGA hat wearing one syllable reason why I didn't want the vaccine. The next time I came after that. No mention of the vaccine at all, but still they pushed masking. Always with the masking.
I never excused the behavior, I just offered forward the thought processes of some godly Christians that I disagreed with on this matter. I agree with you about the underlying problem.
You look at what Lewis said about the Tyranny of Caring, and therein is also the temptation. There are the moral busybodies out there that saw Covid as a "fire sale" of moral busybodying.
While I don't think it was predominant and everywhere in the church, it nonetheless was a factor.
There's a Biblical Q&A site I read last week that gave a labored justification for masking and other measures to "prevent" COVID. There wasn't explicitly a tone of trusting experts. Instead, they cited Biblical obedience to authority (i.e., government), and then they reconciled the obvious question that begs by not answering it at all. Instead, the pivoted to telling us we should comply with things, even if they're not necessary, if it prevents others from sinning, because we "offended" them.
Yes, they mentioned we're not supposed to live in fear, yet these measures were done deliberately out of fear, and these actions, using their own logic, led to "offense" and thus sin. The fact that some of the churches I know personally later on started preaching nakedly immoral sermons (ESG-related subjects) that were similarly political and following governmental narrative bolsters that argument.
On the vaccine issue, I remember listening to a pastor during his live-streamed sermon encourage everyone to get vaccinated. He stated having a "friend the works in healthcare" who told him they were "safe." The language sounded an awful lot like what came from that one "COVID-19 Community Corps" FOIA request dump. I strain to say that churches "gave in." Of the ones I know personally, it seemed more like they willingly acceded to show they were doing what was "Biblically correct."
We're not out of the woods yet, but the rising tide of boycotts is a beautiful thing to see. May it come for BlackRock's trillions ... which looks like a lot, and is, but importantly is "under management", not their actual holdings. BlackRock is a paper tiger roaring atop a house of cards.
Hope so, Gato. Worrisome to see the rapid loss of retail diversity, the mergers of chains, others on the brink of bankruptcy. Still seeing talk of Kroger and Safeway/Albertsons merging and the owner of the latter, Cerberus Capital, also floating the acquisition of Sprouts. Cerberus mentioned this weekend in WSJ as one of the entities ramping up foreclosure threats from recent resurrections of "zombie" second mortgages. Appropriate Cerberus being the 3-headed dog guarding the gates of hell. What a name!
We did the same. While it may not seem like much to them, if enough of us do it, it makes an impact, as we’ve seen with Anheuser-Busch. I liken us to ants. One ant alone is weak, but look what an entire hill of ants working together can accomplish.
All Merrill Lynch did was confirm exactly who they are! That attitude is precisely what should drive customers away from using their services ever again! The nerve of those people.
I've had an exceedingly difficult time separating my work-based 401k from ESG funds like BlackRock. The best I've been able to do is to dump BR completely but still be stuck using the non-ESG versions of other funds (e.g., Vanguard). The list of fund offerings that I can choose from is fairly short.
I did one better - cashed in my 401K. All cash now, which I know will be worthless in the future. The whole IRA "put 100 a month away and in 30 years you will be a multimillionaire!" is a scam.
Not a viable option for me, unfortunately. It's a Roth 401k that the company matches. If I were to cash out at my age, there would be a tax hit. I do only contribute the percent they match and invest the rest in land, which has seen a far higher increase in value for me.
Thanks El gato...its all a grift. Black Rock puts pressure on Anheiser Busch (sp)to go woke.......while Bill Gates, quietly investst in Heineken...then after Busch tanks and Heiineken soars, he sells, makes his money, Then BlackRock is scoops up the Busch shares at fire sale prices.Because you know, they will own everything, and you will own nothing. Rinse and Repeat...they did it with Coke/Pepsi (remember BLAckrock vanguard and SS own the vast majority of shares in these twin companies)...then moved on to AB and then TARGET, and it is a BIG GRIFT. WHERE the hell is the FEC/SEC?
It will go on until the country crumbles. Meantime they will continue to buy farmland and huge swaths of real estate and gold. While pushing to have cows killed...can you imagine the price of beef in a year?
And someone was likely making money on shorting the shares as well. It never made sense for big capital to push wokeness - your explanation is clear and obvious
Pride month. Meh. It’s so 1980s. We should be over it by now. Most people don’t care about your sexual preferences, but they do care about it being stuffed in your face.
This month, that month…it seems these days, there is a month for all kinds of stupid stuff. It’s creepy. And, why do we always hear about a month for black people? What about other races of people; say, Japanese? Latinos? And notice there’s never a month for Caucasians, or heterosexuals. Not that I want one! I don’t think there should be designated days or months for any of this ridiculous crap. Who creates these designations, anyway? If it’s state legislators, I wish one of them would stand up and say, ‘we’ve got more important stuff to work on’.
Lol. "Middle-aged White Guys with Dad Bods Who Like Geometry"...a group that could include many gay men, btw, who might be happy to ditch June to join...
Brilliant, of course, but you're missing a key element: zero interest made this possible. In a zero interest environment, stocks/bonds become the only possible source of return, but money flows in creating enormous "beta." (This also creates further concentration of wealth as big business can take advantage of this free $ more easily than small businesses, which can't issue securities as easily & as rich people, who own financial assets, benefit from the eternal rise of financial assets.) When beta's this high, who needs to perform? Neither corporate managers nor people investing other people's money cared - beta covered all their sins. (Free money always leads to corruption.).
What this means, of course, is that the system CANNOT allow interest rates to rise - they will be forced to print $ until the currency collapses because rising interest destroys the whole thing. Look what our pathetically low interest rates have done to the banking sector already!
They can't stop inflation because they can't raise interest rates & they can't stop printing $ to cover all their losses.
And it's why Rs spend as much as Ds when they're in power: the point of government spending isn't so much to do whatever they claim as it is to keep spending - the spending is the point because spending = borrowing = money printing & money printing is everything. The Fed hands newly printed $ to banks, which give them financial assets in return. This means the financial assets rise in value as they have a market that pays full price for assets that aren't worth much (if anything). The fact that you can always dump these assets on the Fed = they're very safe = interest rates are very low & that keeps the whole thing going.
It's all about the interest rates, which have corrupted us & forced our leaders to keep cheap $ for ever. It ends when the $ collapses.
Bingo. What we have here are government economists who got into Harvard because they checked a box and bankers who didn’t understand what interest rates do to bonds.
"If the mood is sour even among US allies, we can be sure that much of the global south is ready to jettison this rules-based order, default on their debts to western financial institutions and possibly even renationalize their industries and resources. This would be the "bottom falling out" moment for the western financial system."
Pay attention to your 401(k), banks, and where you shop. Voting with our wallets to defund the Woke is just as important as for whom we vote with our ballots.
Yes I agree with Gato “i generally dislike the politicization of commerce, but today such a course seems needful.” I think the boycotts are strongly supported precisely because people feel disenfranchised at the ballot box after all the shenanigans, including midterm election outcomes that were simply lacking in credibility.
I don't know about that. People who are "educated" with children and are somehow fine with the plandemic and 2020 have a big problem with the trans agenda. It's the only thing we agree on. Pretty sure they won't stop shopping at Target, and they probably never drank AB anything, this perverse push for sexual anarchy has got their attention. It's a start.
Probably more. Since elections are so often manipulated so the people become selected not elected. At the same, time the big corporate / investment players have been killing off the small businesses so the choices to buy are more from the big corporations they own and control. They just haven't completely gotten there yet
Seriously hes in the polymath pantheon of all time greatest minds rubbing shoulders without Newton, Franklin, Tesla, Galileo, da Vinci, John von Neumann, Feynman, Faraday and Copernicus.
It's amazing that Bastiat is no longer required reading in college. That dude changed my life.
I didn't even know about economics until I was an adult, working, wife+kids+house. I should note that I consider myself to be a Recovering Democrat. That should cover a lot of wordy back story crap.
But the internet became a thing, circa just post 9/11, and I someone on Instapundit or Reason linked to Bastiat's "That which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen" on FEE: https://fee.org/articles/the-broken-window/
"It happened gradually, then suddenly."
- Some guy, Ernie something, had a writing problem when he drank
Watching the plunder escalation until it’s collapse.
There is nothing new under the sun…until there is!
Clif calls it Galactic Center Emanations (GCE). Our cozy little solar system is moving (after a 25,000+ year cycle) into greater exposure to the radiance of a higher quality of GCE….”a higher quality of intelligence being available throughout the Earth biosphere at all levels, including that of human intelligence” (from Clif High’s latest substack).
I imagine that being so consumed with the plunder game they, in their arrogance, have walled off their ability to benefit from the ‘higher quality of intelligence’. A superiority complex became like a shield against their ability to evolve.
They squandered their access to The Great Awakening ❤️🇺🇸🌎
I read that post, and since I have been interested in astronomy since I was a kid, spent a bit of time looking into it. That 26,000 year cycle Clif mentions is the precession of the Earth's axis relative to its orbital plane around the Sun. Like a spinning top. Basically, in 13,000 years Polaris, the North Star, will no longer be near the North Pole. Nothing in this cycle moves the location of the Solar System (and Earth) 'up and down' relative to the galactic plane, which is what would have to happen to change the amount of 'GCE' received by Earth.
There is a cycle that can do that, and that is the orbit of the Sun (and solar system) around the galactic center. That cycle (orbit) no doubt has some eccentricity, which would do what Clif talks about. But this cycle is 230,000,000 years long and these effects will be felt (if indeed they exist on a meaningful level) only over a time frame of tens of millions of years.
Regardless of all this, the plunder escalation will continue... and astronomy will have little if anything to say about it. 😎
Everything in the universe operates on one or more cycles. Nothing is fixed in place; the motion of the heavenly bodies is a function of the forces acting on them. Any object in the Milky Way Galaxy will rotate around the galactic center with an orbital velocity and cycle which are a function of two things: (1) the mass of the galaxy; and (2) the distance of the object to the barycenter (center of mass) of the galaxy. The same rule applies to the orbits of the planets around the Sun.
Note that while many orbits are circular or nearly so, that is not required and indeed some objects (like comets, in the solar system) have highly eccentric orbits, and some may indeed follow 'one-pass' hyperbolic or parabolic paths -- they travel through the solar system, approach the Sun, 'slingshot' past it, and then depart never to return.
Geeze, you explained that precession of the equinoxes very well!! I first learned about that reading Graham Hancock’s book Fingerprints of the Gods many years ago, but I’ve never been great at retaining the finer (mathematical) details.
Everything is frequency. I believe a powerful energetic frequency is traveling towards us from the universe. For those with the minds to perceive, it will be a time of enlightenment.
So dawns the Age of Aquarius, an age of Knowledge and transparency. NCSWIC ❤️
Exactly. Sometimes I lean towards the idea that it really is a simulation. You've got the fine-tuning of the universe, the Goldilocks zone, and cosmologists saying there must either be multiverses or a god/designer, and all these little Easter eggs like Dr. Nass' license inquisitor, some clone Pfizer camp follower MD named "Faust," with another abuser named "Fault", Larry FINK???, and my own personal favorite, Adam Blight being the CEO of Monsanto in Australia back a few years ago. One possibility is that it is being created by hacker incel thirteen year old boys in 2100 trying to get revenge on their parents (or the trans womb they sprung from) and getting little dopamine hits from our suffering.
I’m not convinced it’s sheer myopia... for once it may not be about profit, but rather the destruction of corporations, jobs & the acceleration of Communism 2.0 ...
Depending on the boycott it may be a joke on us to these nutjobs. "The transaction, which occurred on Feb. 17, involved Gates purchasing 10.8 million shares valued at $939.87 million, according to the filing by the Netherlands’ Financial Markets Authority (AFM). The acquisition coincided with the significant sale of Heineken shares by FEMSA, the company’s major Mexican shareholder"
“so let us starve these noxious beasts and reclaim for we the people our lives an livelihoods.”
Yes. Like any internet troll 🧌 you come across. Just stop feeding it.
What does this look like? It will be different for each individual. For some it is simply to stop buying whatever they are selling (Fox News, Bud Light, Target/China, Inc., Coca Cola, MLB, NFL, Netflix...etc.
For others it will be pulling their kids out of the pubic school system, not volunteering to fight in their wars, selling stocks and buy/hold real estate, voting against whatever “the current thing” is...etc.
just to confuse things I can add that boycotts, DoS (denial of service), and taking control back of any system (including the current authoritarian woke one), will not, in and of itself solve the problem. Historically these solutions just create the opposite problem…but…baby steps…right? 🤪
“We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”
Excellent summary! This is a trend that has been in motion since the early days of modern civilization. Everyone's favorite Broadway-bound Treasury secretary set the stage for this by putting Washington in bed with Wall Street, and the concentration of power and money has been a vicious cycle ever since.
NYU Professor Aswath Damodaran, known as the “Dean of Valuation”, had the chefs kiss takedown of ESG:
“I find the purveyors of ESG to be among the most sanctimonious and arrogant twits (and you can quote me on that) on the face of the earth, convinced that they have the right definition of good, that they will thrust down the throats of everyone else. The ESG measurement services, in my view, are a charade, measuring neither goodness nor risk, but they have real effects, since companies take consequential actions to improve these scores.”
Calculate your ESG score here: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-raise-your-esg-score
agreed. it's a classic "break the market then blame market failure on capitalism" cycle.
True Capitalism has never been tried.
It never will so long as the people allow governments to exist. But it was damn close in the US from 1870-1913...
not *exactly*.
Capitalism is *not* anarchy.
but agreed on sentiment and dates. an argument could be made that if the fed had been left with it's original single mandate, minus the contradictory 2% devalue rate of course, things might be different, but then the do-gooder "new" dealers added the ridiculous and totally contradictory "full employment" mandate after WWII, as if the State was the employer (rather marxist, eh?). in any case, today's fed needs to be re-structured even more than today's fbi.
and more importantly, scotus should *never* have found a federal income tax constitutional, as if income *isn't* property!!
Energy science research can get you into trouble....
Please read, i feel endangered.:
https://arcanus.substack.com/p/the-suppression-of-energy-science
https://arcanus.substack.com/p/the-christ-psyop
Governments are people, too.
That's why they fail all the time.
I don't think so. The new Current Thing is Censorship on Steroids. And more crony capitalism, which is getting us closer to fascism.
I agree with those who think Missouri v. Biden might be the most important legal case in U.S. history ...
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/missouri-v-biden-might-be-most-important
Quite on-point. But will anybody be held to account? A new administration needs the power to act like Trump's Schedule F might do. But in reality Congress must create stronger laws to ensure such government overreach is eliminated.
Very well stated!
ESG is the front face of the shift while other tentacles take over the criminal justice system and schools, and appropriate ideas and language like decentralization and regenerative farming to camouflage corporate crony control and surveillance of all production. Very little media coverage was given to the pushback by Indian farmers against corporate takeover who were, ironically, driven away from regenerative farming by the corporations backing ESG, luring them into corporate chemical intensive GMO farming. Endless inversions.
I recall listening to one of his 2018 corporate finance lectures in which he always scoffed at this type of nonsense, but I thought at one point he said institutional investors like BlackRock don't get too involved (at least at the board level), because it's not an efficient use of their time. I'll have to see if his recent lectures he clarified or elaborated on the role and impact of institutional investors in addition to his takedown on incompetent board members.
I see the idealists who dream of fascist controls are running many of these investment firms. They then act in ways the individuals who actually own the securities would not. I suspect laws will be needed to restrain their activities. At least it seems that Fink's Blackrock has become more aware of the anger and Vanguard says it is staying clear. I suspect they worry, rightly so, if law must act - Congress can make things worse. I don't see these firms are acting as wise stewards of client's money. I know what is best for me, not them.
oh, thank you for this, M. Bezmenov!!
We have a way to fix this - our biggest problem - which is the corruption in the systems that govern over our lives. How? A Network State - a new decentralized 4th branch of government that isn't part of the government at all, but rather 100% built and run by the people. This includes a decentralized news network, decentralized science, a safe have for whistleblowers, a decentralized monetary system we all agree to in case the current one collapses, decentralized debates, a parallel transparent voting system, decentralized education , ballot initiatives and more. Consider this: https://joshketry.substack.com/p/lets-build-a-4th-branch-of-government
The deepest disappointment during the Covid era was, for me, the failure of the church to stand up and draw the line. We left our church of 22 years because of their lack of leadership.
Good on you. Kudos for being a person of integrity.
I agree but was blessed to have strong church leadership so didn’t need to leave our church. That said I think there were two main factors that led to churches giving in. The first is I think most church leadership felt too ignorant to counter the official narrative. I heard pastors that I generally enjoy listening to saying things like “well I’m not a doctor so I think we should listen to doctors and health officials because I don’t know enough to know if what they are saying is correct or not”. I think many were generally concerned about the elderly in their congregations and they believed the official narrative that this was almost as bad as the Black Death. The other factor is that many churches felt they were allowed viable alternatives. Many thought that live-streaming the worship and sermon was sufficient and a reasonable compromise. Others could meet outside or do multiple smaller services inside. When it came to the vaccines many thought that if the vaccines worked then it was their Christian duty to get vaccinated even at the risk of their own personal health in order to love thy neighbor. None of them had any answers when I asked what if the vaccines don’t work to stop transmission thus don’t protect your neighbor.
The general response of the church was disappointing but I think that’s because many in leadership truly believed the narrative and that they were protecting people as opposed to straight up cowardice.
And I think you are excusing inexcusable behavior. The Bible says and I paraphrase, when GOD starts cleaning house HE starts with congregations and shepherds. I would say most people who knew this was baloney from the first weren't doctors and didn't have letters behind their names BUT DID HAVE COMMON SENSE AND DISCERNMENT THAT GOD GAVE THEM. Anyone who has had an ounce of sense and done ANY research has seen the rapid decline of the medical profession over the last years. We in our country are in this situation because of us. We have not followed GOD whose country we said we are. We have allowed this to be. We are told that sins of the fathers (our ancestors) go down many generations. We have not repented. And no I am not talking about slavery. The original slavery in this country was of the native Americans not people from Africa who were captured and sold by the same color people as themselves. I am talking about our departing from GOD'S laws and ways. We have not sought HIS face. We have not put HIM above all of the other things worshipped in this country. We have not changed our ways. IF we do this, HE will heal or land.
Holding the line comes with a cost. As much as we might wish not to comply, close relationships can challenge our convictions.
I would have preferred to not been vaxed at all. However, my first grandchild was born in May of 2021 and my daughter insisted that anyone who wished to spend time with that adorable little girl would need to be vaxed. Got the first course (two shots 30 day apart) never boostered. Will not. But, on balance, I took the risk, overlooked my daughter's Nanny State Fearmongering, and Held My Infant Granddaughter. Despite my misgivings about its safety and efficacy, I stand sturdily by My Choice.
"There are no solutions. Only tradeoffs."
- Thomas Sowell, another Really Smart Economy Think Stuff Guy like Bastiat
Hopefully we've managed to reconnect with some good friends lost and be thankful for those with whom we stayed connected despite our differences.
Your daughter was part of the "mass formation" Mattias Desmet has talked about. They are not the prime movers of totalitarianism, but they are certainly enablers. I count myself lucky that I was not faced with a choice such as yours, though I've been shunned by many former friends. I'd like to believe I would have made a principled choice and that they would now be reuniting with me.
My stance has definitely impacted some relationships, especially at work where my coworkers are mostly 30s and 40s liberals in tech/e-commerce.
But I had to make a different choice with my family because I'm was not so certain that we'd reuninte easily or in short order. I wasn't willing to make the sacrifice. I do not feel weak for it and stand by it.
As with masking, I'd prefer that everyone be left to make their own choice but, where a potentially ill, definitely smelly and weird-looking old man might be putting his face in the pretty little face of her firstborn infant child and exposing the vulnerable child at risk - while simultaneously being force-fed The Way of The Bien Pensant - I understand why she held that position, and willingly honored it.
--
"You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help, no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold"
- Zappa and The Mothers, "I'm the Slime"
As it ever was.
Well you guys got your Efriends on Gato's Stack. Else some schools were Forcing returning students to mask up upon return from "Covy illness" (you know, positive fake test and all), and I asked the administrator if that reminded her of "The Scarlett Letter". Blank Stare. Don't other me Bro! (or my kids).
-Edit- for typos
I was not and do not judge you. As I wrote, "I'd like to believe...," but there's no telling what my choice would have been. Fortunately, no close relatives took that stand.
Energy science research can get you into trouble....
Please read, i feel endangered.:
https://arcanus.substack.com/p/the-suppression-of-energy-science
https://arcanus.substack.com/p/the-christ-psyop
I don't stand by my decisions, but I do own them.
I wore masks in order to get hospitalized due to diabetic cellulitis. I've worn it since to get my prosthetic after losing a leg to diabetic cellulitis. I've worn masks on Uber rides, and in doctor's offices.
I have never been vaccinated, but would I if I had been gainfully employed? Would I have vaccinated if I had a wife and children? I don't know.
My penance is at least regretting the decisions that I made. Would they have thrown me out of the doctors office had I refused to wear a mask? If I didn't wear a mask in the hospital hallways would I have found myself carted away?
There are consequences though.
I think my immediate family knows of what I have done on twitter, though they don't mention it. After all, at least my sister has a twitter handle, and I bet my brother at least monitors it. He has early and often said that I should personalize and block all social media in order to get a job.
"I wore masks in order to"
... do almost everything we did in public for a couple years. I was confident masks were useless by about April 2020 but just couldn't afford to have the "Let me show you the data *points to PowerPoint Slide Thirty-twelve*" when all I need from inside the Wegman's is some cilantro to make my Fish Tacos Salsa. I grumbled but it just wasn't worth it.
Maybe I should have pressed harder there but I pressed pretty hard in a lot of situations where thoughtful contemplation might have been more sensible. I don't think an iota less of you for it, especially owning it.
Ironically the two groups I hold most accountable are doctors and educators. If there are two segments of society that should not have been pushing the nonsense, it is those that should know better, shouldn't they?
My dad told me his dad stated the bottom 10% od any graduating class became bankers. I think nowadays, they become teachers. The ones who should be the vanguard of education actually know the least about masking and vaccines, and doctors are only marginally better.
On my second trip to the doctor following my amputation, the doctor tried to convince me to get the vaccine. When I said I hadn't gotten it, she asked me why. There was a moment there, I stood there and I think I said "personal reasons..." and then thought to myself "f it, she needs to know why." So I gave her a list.
• The vaccine is experimental. They had yet to rest for long term symptoms.
• I already had Covid twice...natural immunity.
• It doesn't stop the spread or infection
• It doesn't stay in the injection site.
I think I left out that Covid wasn't that dangerous anyway. Her response:
"It's ridiculous to think that a vaccine would stay in one place." Sh thought that assertion was ridiculous, but that is one of the very things the narrative pushed. She hem and hawed about it being experimental. She also tried to say that because I was diabetic it made me vulnerable. and my response was I already had it twice, so no I am not vulnerable."
I think she thought I was going to come at her with some MAGA hat wearing one syllable reason why I didn't want the vaccine. The next time I came after that. No mention of the vaccine at all, but still they pushed masking. Always with the masking.
I never excused the behavior, I just offered forward the thought processes of some godly Christians that I disagreed with on this matter. I agree with you about the underlying problem.
I agree with you.
The danger is the almost casual categorization of others, and "othering" them.
Some of the smartest people and best people I know wore masks and got vaccinated.
Energy science research can get you into trouble....
Please read, i feel endangered.:
https://arcanus.substack.com/p/the-suppression-of-energy-science
https://arcanus.substack.com/p/the-christ-psyop
Those “true believers” will get you every time! So will the “thought leaders.”
Except I was going to an Adventist church with a lot of doctors and health professionals.
It isn’t ignorance if you lack spiritual discernment.
It isn’t ignorance when you are a coward.
Uneducated, ignorant people can have wisdom, faith, spiritual discernment and they can be brave.
You look at what Lewis said about the Tyranny of Caring, and therein is also the temptation. There are the moral busybodies out there that saw Covid as a "fire sale" of moral busybodying.
While I don't think it was predominant and everywhere in the church, it nonetheless was a factor.
There's a Biblical Q&A site I read last week that gave a labored justification for masking and other measures to "prevent" COVID. There wasn't explicitly a tone of trusting experts. Instead, they cited Biblical obedience to authority (i.e., government), and then they reconciled the obvious question that begs by not answering it at all. Instead, the pivoted to telling us we should comply with things, even if they're not necessary, if it prevents others from sinning, because we "offended" them.
Yes, they mentioned we're not supposed to live in fear, yet these measures were done deliberately out of fear, and these actions, using their own logic, led to "offense" and thus sin. The fact that some of the churches I know personally later on started preaching nakedly immoral sermons (ESG-related subjects) that were similarly political and following governmental narrative bolsters that argument.
On the vaccine issue, I remember listening to a pastor during his live-streamed sermon encourage everyone to get vaccinated. He stated having a "friend the works in healthcare" who told him they were "safe." The language sounded an awful lot like what came from that one "COVID-19 Community Corps" FOIA request dump. I strain to say that churches "gave in." Of the ones I know personally, it seemed more like they willingly acceded to show they were doing what was "Biblically correct."
I feel compelled to mention this.
My mother, as a child, was beaten so badly by the local priest (at school) that one of her post earrings flew out of her ear.
He had some excuse but the reason was that her family hadn't joined the Nazi party.
The Catholic Church and ministers sided with those vicious socialists for protection
The methodology continues
Lack of leadership and a lack of courage, probably because they truly lack faith.
Sad but you realized they aren’t real and will turn on anyone who can see
So true
Which Church are you talking about? Stand up for what exactly?
John Macarthur's church stood up for the word of God throughout that period for example.
If you mean stand up for our freedoms or something else. I would ask two questions:
1. Was Rome in Jesus' time better or worse than the period you talk about?
2. Did Jesus stand up for the things you are talking about?
We're not out of the woods yet, but the rising tide of boycotts is a beautiful thing to see. May it come for BlackRock's trillions ... which looks like a lot, and is, but importantly is "under management", not their actual holdings. BlackRock is a paper tiger roaring atop a house of cards.
consumer sovereignty will reassert itself.
this idiocy has gone too far into the mainstream and people do not want it.
Hope so, Gato. Worrisome to see the rapid loss of retail diversity, the mergers of chains, others on the brink of bankruptcy. Still seeing talk of Kroger and Safeway/Albertsons merging and the owner of the latter, Cerberus Capital, also floating the acquisition of Sprouts. Cerberus mentioned this weekend in WSJ as one of the entities ramping up foreclosure threats from recent resurrections of "zombie" second mortgages. Appropriate Cerberus being the 3-headed dog guarding the gates of hell. What a name!
Plus, sky high inflation in every sector.
Consumer death by a thousand cuts?
You made me feel a glimmer of hope. I sold all my Black Rock stock (not much but) and received a wagging finger from Merrill Lynch as I did it.
We did the same. While it may not seem like much to them, if enough of us do it, it makes an impact, as we’ve seen with Anheuser-Busch. I liken us to ants. One ant alone is weak, but look what an entire hill of ants working together can accomplish.
"One ant alone is weak, but look what an entire hill of ants working together can accomplish."
Next up: That Rubber Tree!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJVewWbeBiY
Classic, both the comment and the song!
you are so right. thank you. I did feel like an ant doing it, and the "You are not politically correct notice" bummed me out.
All Merrill Lynch did was confirm exactly who they are! That attitude is precisely what should drive customers away from using their services ever again! The nerve of those people.
Excellent.
I wonder how well all those pension funds are doing with ESG investments...
I've had an exceedingly difficult time separating my work-based 401k from ESG funds like BlackRock. The best I've been able to do is to dump BR completely but still be stuck using the non-ESG versions of other funds (e.g., Vanguard). The list of fund offerings that I can choose from is fairly short.
I did one better - cashed in my 401K. All cash now, which I know will be worthless in the future. The whole IRA "put 100 a month away and in 30 years you will be a multimillionaire!" is a scam.
Not a viable option for me, unfortunately. It's a Roth 401k that the company matches. If I were to cash out at my age, there would be a tax hit. I do only contribute the percent they match and invest the rest in land, which has seen a far higher increase in value for me.
That's alarming.
I bought oil and Tesla
Thanks El gato...its all a grift. Black Rock puts pressure on Anheiser Busch (sp)to go woke.......while Bill Gates, quietly investst in Heineken...then after Busch tanks and Heiineken soars, he sells, makes his money, Then BlackRock is scoops up the Busch shares at fire sale prices.Because you know, they will own everything, and you will own nothing. Rinse and Repeat...they did it with Coke/Pepsi (remember BLAckrock vanguard and SS own the vast majority of shares in these twin companies)...then moved on to AB and then TARGET, and it is a BIG GRIFT. WHERE the hell is the FEC/SEC?
It will go on until the country crumbles. Meantime they will continue to buy farmland and huge swaths of real estate and gold. While pushing to have cows killed...can you imagine the price of beef in a year?
And someone was likely making money on shorting the shares as well. It never made sense for big capital to push wokeness - your explanation is clear and obvious
Pride month. Meh. It’s so 1980s. We should be over it by now. Most people don’t care about your sexual preferences, but they do care about it being stuffed in your face.
And they care about it being shoved at children!
This month, that month…it seems these days, there is a month for all kinds of stupid stuff. It’s creepy. And, why do we always hear about a month for black people? What about other races of people; say, Japanese? Latinos? And notice there’s never a month for Caucasians, or heterosexuals. Not that I want one! I don’t think there should be designated days or months for any of this ridiculous crap. Who creates these designations, anyway? If it’s state legislators, I wish one of them would stand up and say, ‘we’ve got more important stuff to work on’.
I'd like to claim April for "Middle-aged White Guys with Dad Bods Who Like Geometry" Month.
I'd probably even settle for the last fortnight.
Lol. "Middle-aged White Guys with Dad Bods Who Like Geometry"...a group that could include many gay men, btw, who might be happy to ditch June to join...
It's a Big Tent, my friend.
I vote for that!
I knew we could count on your vote!
#Pi Guy/Gardner 2024: We probably won't make $#!+ any worse!
I REALLY like that!!
Go for it; it's such a stunning improvement for the month of June that it might become a world-wide game! ; ))
😂🤣❤️
Not March (14th)?
Hmmmm *ponders* That's a fine point.
I think I'd like to change my choice, please.
rotfl April would indeed be the cruelest month.
you said "fortnight".
heh heh heh.
Effin with gamers' heads too.
!
Heh. Shakespeare meets Epic.
The part they left out: “Build back better” follows “Destroy everything first”.
Destroy Everything and Everyone first!
Yes!
🔥
Brilliant, of course, but you're missing a key element: zero interest made this possible. In a zero interest environment, stocks/bonds become the only possible source of return, but money flows in creating enormous "beta." (This also creates further concentration of wealth as big business can take advantage of this free $ more easily than small businesses, which can't issue securities as easily & as rich people, who own financial assets, benefit from the eternal rise of financial assets.) When beta's this high, who needs to perform? Neither corporate managers nor people investing other people's money cared - beta covered all their sins. (Free money always leads to corruption.).
What this means, of course, is that the system CANNOT allow interest rates to rise - they will be forced to print $ until the currency collapses because rising interest destroys the whole thing. Look what our pathetically low interest rates have done to the banking sector already!
They can't stop inflation because they can't raise interest rates & they can't stop printing $ to cover all their losses.
And it's why Rs spend as much as Ds when they're in power: the point of government spending isn't so much to do whatever they claim as it is to keep spending - the spending is the point because spending = borrowing = money printing & money printing is everything. The Fed hands newly printed $ to banks, which give them financial assets in return. This means the financial assets rise in value as they have a market that pays full price for assets that aren't worth much (if anything). The fact that you can always dump these assets on the Fed = they're very safe = interest rates are very low & that keeps the whole thing going.
It's all about the interest rates, which have corrupted us & forced our leaders to keep cheap $ for ever. It ends when the $ collapses.
Bingo. What we have here are government economists who got into Harvard because they checked a box and bankers who didn’t understand what interest rates do to bonds.
*air quotes* Experts *closes air quotes*
https://alexkrainer.substack.com/p/what-if-you-threw-a-rules-based-party
"If the mood is sour even among US allies, we can be sure that much of the global south is ready to jettison this rules-based order, default on their debts to western financial institutions and possibly even renationalize their industries and resources. This would be the "bottom falling out" moment for the western financial system."
Thanks for very insightful comment & reference!
Pay attention to your 401(k), banks, and where you shop. Voting with our wallets to defund the Woke is just as important as for whom we vote with our ballots.
This is a very important point. Just went through that exercise.
Thanks for pointing it out.
Yes I agree with Gato “i generally dislike the politicization of commerce, but today such a course seems needful.” I think the boycotts are strongly supported precisely because people feel disenfranchised at the ballot box after all the shenanigans, including midterm election outcomes that were simply lacking in credibility.
I don't know about that. People who are "educated" with children and are somehow fine with the plandemic and 2020 have a big problem with the trans agenda. It's the only thing we agree on. Pretty sure they won't stop shopping at Target, and they probably never drank AB anything, this perverse push for sexual anarchy has got their attention. It's a start.
It's the kids. sexualizing kids
be suspicious of anyone who wants that
"and are somehow fine with the plandemic and 2020 have a big problem with the trans agenda."
"Everyone's conservative about what they know best."
Conquest's 1st Law of Politics
https://www.isegoria.net/2008/07/robert-conquests-three-laws-of-politics/
Probably more. Since elections are so often manipulated so the people become selected not elected. At the same, time the big corporate / investment players have been killing off the small businesses so the choices to buy are more from the big corporations they own and control. They just haven't completely gotten there yet
Excellent essay! You had me at Bastiat.
Top 5 smartest people to put pen to paper.
Now what would Bastiat do in today's current environment:
I have a feeling he would mock the absurdities unrelentingly at every given opportunity.
Be like Bastiat!
"You had me at Bastiat."
Same
#FanboiForFrederic
Seriously hes in the polymath pantheon of all time greatest minds rubbing shoulders without Newton, Franklin, Tesla, Galileo, da Vinci, John von Neumann, Feynman, Faraday and Copernicus.
It's amazing that Bastiat is no longer required reading in college. That dude changed my life.
I didn't even know about economics until I was an adult, working, wife+kids+house. I should note that I consider myself to be a Recovering Democrat. That should cover a lot of wordy back story crap.
But the internet became a thing, circa just post 9/11, and I someone on Instapundit or Reason linked to Bastiat's "That which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen" on FEE: https://fee.org/articles/the-broken-window/
"It happened gradually, then suddenly."
- Some guy, Ernie something, had a writing problem when he drank
Hahaha
"Newton, Franklin, Tesla, Galileo, da Vinci, John von Neumann, Feynman, Faraday and Copernicus"
"Let me put it this way, have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? . . . morons."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUg2cp23rGE
Watching the plunder escalation until it’s collapse.
There is nothing new under the sun…until there is!
Clif calls it Galactic Center Emanations (GCE). Our cozy little solar system is moving (after a 25,000+ year cycle) into greater exposure to the radiance of a higher quality of GCE….”a higher quality of intelligence being available throughout the Earth biosphere at all levels, including that of human intelligence” (from Clif High’s latest substack).
I imagine that being so consumed with the plunder game they, in their arrogance, have walled off their ability to benefit from the ‘higher quality of intelligence’. A superiority complex became like a shield against their ability to evolve.
They squandered their access to The Great Awakening ❤️🇺🇸🌎
I'll check out Cliff's Stack.
I betcha they'd get more intelligent if they had to worry about where they'll find their next meal.
Probably the reason cro-magnon had larger brain cases than modern day humans.
I don’t keep up with Clif as much as I used to but I did like his latest:
https://clifhigh.substack.com/p/conspiracists-guide-to-the-great?
I read that post, and since I have been interested in astronomy since I was a kid, spent a bit of time looking into it. That 26,000 year cycle Clif mentions is the precession of the Earth's axis relative to its orbital plane around the Sun. Like a spinning top. Basically, in 13,000 years Polaris, the North Star, will no longer be near the North Pole. Nothing in this cycle moves the location of the Solar System (and Earth) 'up and down' relative to the galactic plane, which is what would have to happen to change the amount of 'GCE' received by Earth.
There is a cycle that can do that, and that is the orbit of the Sun (and solar system) around the galactic center. That cycle (orbit) no doubt has some eccentricity, which would do what Clif talks about. But this cycle is 230,000,000 years long and these effects will be felt (if indeed they exist on a meaningful level) only over a time frame of tens of millions of years.
Regardless of all this, the plunder escalation will continue... and astronomy will have little if anything to say about it. 😎
P.S. I never heard of that 230,000,000 year cycle.
Everything in the universe operates on one or more cycles. Nothing is fixed in place; the motion of the heavenly bodies is a function of the forces acting on them. Any object in the Milky Way Galaxy will rotate around the galactic center with an orbital velocity and cycle which are a function of two things: (1) the mass of the galaxy; and (2) the distance of the object to the barycenter (center of mass) of the galaxy. The same rule applies to the orbits of the planets around the Sun.
Note that while many orbits are circular or nearly so, that is not required and indeed some objects (like comets, in the solar system) have highly eccentric orbits, and some may indeed follow 'one-pass' hyperbolic or parabolic paths -- they travel through the solar system, approach the Sun, 'slingshot' past it, and then depart never to return.
Johannes Kepler first described the motion of objects in space mathematically a bit over 400 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_orbit
You definitely know your astronomy : )
Thanks for the lesson!❤️
https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question18.html
Thanks. Fascinating!
Time will tell. 😊
Geeze, you explained that precession of the equinoxes very well!! I first learned about that reading Graham Hancock’s book Fingerprints of the Gods many years ago, but I’ve never been great at retaining the finer (mathematical) details.
Everything is frequency. I believe a powerful energetic frequency is traveling towards us from the universe. For those with the minds to perceive, it will be a time of enlightenment.
So dawns the Age of Aquarius, an age of Knowledge and transparency. NCSWIC ❤️
Yup ... uncompromising.
Larry fink. The name says it all. Does anyone watch Fox News anymore? No, I didn’t think so. MSM just like a fink, past it’s best💕💕
Exactly. Sometimes I lean towards the idea that it really is a simulation. You've got the fine-tuning of the universe, the Goldilocks zone, and cosmologists saying there must either be multiverses or a god/designer, and all these little Easter eggs like Dr. Nass' license inquisitor, some clone Pfizer camp follower MD named "Faust," with another abuser named "Fault", Larry FINK???, and my own personal favorite, Adam Blight being the CEO of Monsanto in Australia back a few years ago. One possibility is that it is being created by hacker incel thirteen year old boys in 2100 trying to get revenge on their parents (or the trans womb they sprung from) and getting little dopamine hits from our suffering.
I’m not convinced it’s sheer myopia... for once it may not be about profit, but rather the destruction of corporations, jobs & the acceleration of Communism 2.0 ...
Depending on the boycott it may be a joke on us to these nutjobs. "The transaction, which occurred on Feb. 17, involved Gates purchasing 10.8 million shares valued at $939.87 million, according to the filing by the Netherlands’ Financial Markets Authority (AFM). The acquisition coincided with the significant sale of Heineken shares by FEMSA, the company’s major Mexican shareholder"
The power of the purse starts with the individual.
The most egalitarian institution man has ever devised is free enterprise...
this is precisely why the authoritarians hate it so much.
“so let us starve these noxious beasts and reclaim for we the people our lives an livelihoods.”
Yes. Like any internet troll 🧌 you come across. Just stop feeding it.
What does this look like? It will be different for each individual. For some it is simply to stop buying whatever they are selling (Fox News, Bud Light, Target/China, Inc., Coca Cola, MLB, NFL, Netflix...etc.
For others it will be pulling their kids out of the pubic school system, not volunteering to fight in their wars, selling stocks and buy/hold real estate, voting against whatever “the current thing” is...etc.
"It will be different for each individual."
An All Options approach is best. Let people pick from amongst all the ways and the market will respond.
You want Diversity? I've got your Diverity right here.
just to confuse things I can add that boycotts, DoS (denial of service), and taking control back of any system (including the current authoritarian woke one), will not, in and of itself solve the problem. Historically these solutions just create the opposite problem…but…baby steps…right? 🤪
“We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”
~Albert Einstein
impressed with your troll
An especially witty instalment. Great work here.
Excellent summary! This is a trend that has been in motion since the early days of modern civilization. Everyone's favorite Broadway-bound Treasury secretary set the stage for this by putting Washington in bed with Wall Street, and the concentration of power and money has been a vicious cycle ever since.
https://gomakeitreal.substack.com/p/hamilton-tells-half-the-story