Utilitarian Argument Favors Political Interests of the 99% vs. the 1%

If 2500 billionaires on the planet-a small number equal to the population of a very small town such as I once lived in at Wrangell Alaska, can control 33 trillion of the world’s 250 trillion dollars of capital assets and if the 30,000 Ultra-High Net Worth individuals on the planet control perhaps 150 trillion together what are the prospects for egalitarianism in democracy for the United States? Isn’t it most likely that the 1% will manipulate the politics of the 99% and that the bought and paid for media will support the interests of the 1% prevalently?

I was thinking about the odd situation comparable to if the politics of the United States revolved around the city of Wrangell and if political theory and economics existed to support the right of the billionaires to have low low taxes and through Wall Street networking own much of everything in the nation and plenty of stuff abroad. That would be rather silly I think, and if the citizens of the United States had any of the stuff of the revolutionary founders of the nation they wouldn’t lay down for that.

I ought to say that the people of Wrangell are ordinary people except for a few perhaps and there aren’t any billionaires. In fact some Alaskans have built remote huts without electricity, running water and so forth without even power tools or a road to get building materials out to it. Instead they packed everything in themselves. Even so, the rights of those poor Alaskans are supposed to be equal politically to those of the billionaires of the nation (that total is less than the 2500 maximum in the world though, yet to be equitable, not all the people of Wrangell are registered voters).

In order to reform capital practice and advance preferred socially beneficial methods of political economy the electorate needs to actually have the power of self-determination. That term, self-determination is seldom used in political discourse these days. Formerly in cold war times against the evil empire self-determination was a prime rational for liberating the people of the Eastern bloc from communist government authoritarianism. The East bloc states of the Democrat Party (e.g. Massachusetts, New York, Vermont etc) seem to favor authoritarianism and concentrating wealth simultaneously-not especially political progress.

To reform political economy a polity of citizens needs to be sovereign and not ruled by expensive bought and paid for UHNW representatives, senators and Presidents. It is not enough to select non UHNW politicians, they must actually have an idea about how to reform the economy so competition is restored, sovereignty of the people and their borders are secured and the environmental disasters ahead over-ruled. It is possible to locate such individuals yet the prospects for electing any are nil today. Ralph Nadir was the last candidate with as much as 30% of the qualification for such a task.

I should say something about the straw man argument of socialism as the alternative to oligarchic irresponsible dialectical evolution of capitalism as is developing today in the class networked mode; its only one of an infinite number of possible reforms to capitalism. Examples of reform formats are limiting the size of corporations to 3000 employees, capping the number of corporations an individual may invest in directly or through mutual funds at three and indexing minimum wage to mean salaries of the top 25% of at something like a limit of 50:1. There is more motivation for the poor to invent and become rich than for the rich to invent or allow others to invent-instead they have a trait of networking, repressing inventors, repressing rival free enterprise and co-opting politics to their advantage.

The 99% cannot just redistribute income from the 1% as if everyone got it existentially from a practico-inert fairy cheese of the Universe with a finite size and everything will be hunkie dory. One must reform capitalism along real functioning principles such that it would produce full employment, satisfy the material and spiritual needs of the 99% (a good utilitarian argument exists for preferring the interests of the 99% over the 1%) including the freedom to allow worship of God without coercion from any sort of authority.

There may be an approaching economic disaster stalking the world like a vast tidal wave over the horizon in an era before electronic communication and when sailing ships were the fastest boats on the sea. Unlike that period when it took months to cross 5000 miles today that distance is just a few hours away and for an economic tsunami much closer; it could occur at the speed of light through electronic trading and financial collapse or biological designer weapons could be unleashed from the increasing arsenal of Pandora’s vast bio-research box. Global warming could transition the world into a proto-Venus through a cascade of doom as CO2 levels steadily rise with sulphurous tar sands and perpetual reliance on automobiles and roads to kill off bio-diversity threatening the rich tapestry of life on Earth that is interwoven and inter-dependent for its evolution.

It is believed that the 2008 Wall Street meltdown was just a vague outline of the economic collapse lurking inn the shadows for Americans and even the world economy. Innumerable writers and economists have described several of its parameters as the blind men once described the elephant. It is time to consider restoring national economic independence and the well being of the 1% even as the nation helps with good Christian neighborliness our friends in the world.