Yelling about money

I see a lot of feel good stories about people coming together to help each other, folks who overhear someone's trouble on a plane and start a GoFundMe, or medical bills being covered by strangers, a homeless guy who was kind to a stranger being given an apartment, or a kid who walked twenty miles to his first day on the job being given a car by his boss. You've seen them, you've probably shared or at least talked about them, they made you feel good for a minute right? They do for me, and then if you are like me, you also should then be getting mad that this had to happen at all.

I hate this shit, we shouldn't have to crowdfund basic necessities one at a time for people, we CAN'T do that, those medical bills shouldn't be so high that thousands of people from around the country have to pay them, that homeless dude shouldn't have been homeless in the first place, that kid should have been able to call and say "My car broke down, I'll be in tomorrow." Without fear of retaliation.

The system we live under loves these stories, it gives people hope that they to might be helped one day, and shows that us little people can in fact do something to make a difference, except it doesn't really and anyone with real power or wealth knows that, a system where thousands must donate their extra to help one person is ideal because those thousands can't use their extra to improve their life, upward mobility being the enemy of late stage capitalism. Oh, it can handle a few at a time with no trouble, but the system as it is now does not approve of the poor getting rich, or even middle class, in any great numbers because the system does not encourage the circulation of wealth, not wealth as it applies to day to day life anyway. Move it around in the stock market with no trouble, land is good too, but the masses living comfortably and being able to do things like think about stuff other than long term survival is abhorrent. And the sad thing is that there isn't really a good reason for that.

We know, we've seen, that "A rising tide lifts all ships" The United States greatest periods of economic growth have historically been much the same as periods of expansion in the middle class, regulation doesn't keep the economy from growing, it keeps certain individuals from expressing their power in whatever way they deem fit.

Remember after a certain point money is pretty meaningless, having ten million dollars or a billion in the bank is of negligible impact on ones day to day life, there is only so much you can live comfortably doing in a day, assuming outrageous excess isn't your goal. At this point it is less of an expression of wealth than it is of power, wealth of that level allows influence, it sustains itself so the only problem facing the billionaires is what to do with that power. They have uniformly chosen to squander it.

Even the "Good ones" The Soros's, or the Buffets, are, at best, cowards afraid to pursue any real change. They make political donations which turn into economic policies that help them, they set up a foundation or two for causes they care about, using other people's money to make tiny, incremental improvements to small areas of society so they can feel good about themselves, but Flint Michigans water problems could have been fixed for perhaps 55 million dollars, which any one of those fuckers wouldn't even have noticed missing. Jeff Bezos says he doesn't know how to spend his money, he makes so much, but one or two of these gormless assholes could end homelessness in America, or create a not for profit healthcare company with enough weight to actually provide proper care for people. The fact that they don't, that they don't even think of it, means that this piece of cap economic system is irredeemable.

Where are the titans of industry that will fix all of our problems if only the government would get out of the way? Folks, the fucking government is so out of the way it will literally pay you to be rich, and yet nothing changes, if you assholes aren't going to use it then give it to someone who will.

Hell, net neutrality is another good example, all the big tech companies where against killing it, their higher ups made statements, we got a Google Doodle I think, the whole nine yards, and yet it was done anyway. With that kind of opposition on the surface I would have expected more of a struggle, it's almost as if they weren't really trying that hard isn't it? Now that the rules have been rolled back, where are the statements from these titans about it? How come none of these fantastically influential and wealthy entities aren't strong arming corporations and governments to keep things as they are even though the rules have changed. The answer of course is that they get paid either way. Fuck You, Got Mine.

I don't know what the answer is short of a massive and mandatory redistribution of wealth, I am just mad that we see headlines like "thousands of blankets donated to school because kids are cold" and have our hearts warmed by it, rather than chilled.