As important as it may be, I get fatigued by the woke criticism, which is probably a good sign, in that it's working. This piece, however, felt more poignant and enlightening. Thank you!
Bari, you should interview Catherine Austin Fitts about the Central Banks, etc, also look at wrenchinthegeers.com. Alison McDowell has solid research on this blog.
How to Make A Billion Dollars (in One Easy Step ;)
Read it and weep.
:
:
I don’t recall where I read this. Mebbe the Whole Earth Catalog, back in the day. But suppose You made $1000 per day. That would be a very good income. For most Americans, that would be an OUTSTANDING income. A FABULOUS amount of money to make.
Now, suppose You made that every single day of the year. No days off for the weekend. No holidays. That amounts to $365, or $366,000 a year. PHENOMENAL, right?!
Now, suppose You did that from the time You were born to Your dying day. How much wealth would You end up with? Somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 to $35 million? Anyway, a lot.
Now… Suppose You did that starting from the times of the American Revolution. Now how much wealth would You end up with? More than You currently have, right? ;)
Suppose You did that, as if You were born in the time of the Renaissance. Or, even more, since the time of King Arthur. How much?
…But let’s get ridiculous:
Suppose You made $365,000 every year of Your life, and You were born on the same day as Jesus… TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO YOU STARTED MAKING $1000 PER DAY, EVERY DAY, DAY-IN AND DAY-OUT. A *LOT* OF WORK.
How much wealth would You have accumulated? You would be Absolutely, Phenomenally, RIDICULOUSLY wealthy, right!? That’s an UNTOLD amount of money.
(Well.. I’ll TELL Ya. ;)
You would have accumulated a little less than three-quarters of a billion dollars.
So the question is, what could one person do in one lifetime to be worth a billion dollars? Sure, it happens. But is that person WORTHY of it? What do You think?
Another right-wing freakout over nothing. Corporations are people––people who want to be perceived in a positive light. As they have always done, they do lots of things to portray themselves in a positive light so that people will feel good about doing business with them. And, as always, if doing the right thing involves taking huge financial losses, they will balk at doing the right thing. If you're worried about this, you have too much free time on your hands, or you're just a natural worrier about life in general. This is nothing new.
Anyone who looks past the surface of The CRT MACHINE sees one-a they're main aims is to destroy Democracy. People will SAY, "Oh, CRT isn't MARXIST." M. Ibram Kendi's first book? ANYONE read is FIRST book? The hero of the story was ANGELA DAVIS, fer heaven's sake!
Actions speak louder than words and there is absolutely no doubt that the progressive American left forgets all about their righteous outrage once a dollar is involved or an election needs to be won (pronounced "stolen" in some circles).
Weeeel, I dunno about "stolen." I would also "correct" You on this point, because even the moderate left doesn't talk about a dollar (they only know the word "TRILLION" when it comes to dollars ;).
I don't know what else You'd call it, M. Mullen. When white kids in K - 12 are taught that they're racist, because of the color of their skin. Kindergardeners, some-a them. And telling Black kids they'll never accomplish anything, because they're held back because of "systemic racism."
If that doesn't describe a reeducation camp, I don't know what would.
I don't know where you live, but that's not happening in any schools I know of. I think you're confused about what they are actually teaching. No teachers or parents would teach that garbage.
They help a BIRACIAL kid sue school in Texas, I think it was. He was FORCED to confess his "white privilege" and wouldn't take the course that was required for graduation. School failed him, until FAIR help BLACK mother sue the school.
Note that the public dishonesty drives two parallel destructive developments: 1) to cultivate brand loyalty/gullibility by positioning these hypocrite companies as virtuous when they are actually doing lockstep bidding for the worst-acting patron-stakeholders, and 2) to shift massive investment allocation to these hypocrite companies’ equity treasuries by faking compassion under faddish, fuzzy “ESG” movement (think “manipulating the US News college rankings”). Both trends reward and the same dishonest organizations with advantage over their customer-focused competitors
Thank you for shinning a light on this topic Bari. I just finished Woke, Inc. and enjoyed it very much. The author makes a few critical points that I want to emphasize: (1) Governments like China and the US are using corporations to accomplish what they cannot do themselves. (2) Corporations were invented to protect shareholders from liability for the pursuit of profits only, and were restricted from engaging in political and social activities because of their perceived power. (3) Corporations are teaming up with the Woke in order to distract the public from learning about things they are doing in their business that are not virtuous.
The book was very well written. The author even suggests an interesting legal argument as to why the Civil Rights Act should apply to prevent corporations from discriminating (canceling) against employees for political speech (i.e., adding political speech to the protected class of sex, race and religion).
Here's a simple question for those who consider themselves "stakeholders" in a company and therefore have the right to weigh in on corporate decisions: "Your" company needs to build a new factory and as a stakeholder your share of that investment is $100,000. Where are you going to send the check?"
"Stakeholder Capitalism" is a steaming pile of ....
Very nice essay. These multi national corporations only look out for themselves. Appreciate you shining a light on this nefarious group. I am positively predisposed to capitalism but prefer small, Main Street businesses(which must be responsive to their communities) to these multi national behemoths.
We get what we vote (with our dollars) for. That's the beauty and the terror of capitalism.
If people want small business back, local businesses, they will pay a little more for the products from those places than the cheapest Walmart or Costco options.
Those on the left bemoan the "big business" aspects of capitalism, but no one is forcing anyone to buy anything from Amazon.
Agreed. I am trying to be much more conscious of who I am supporting. I do think there is an opportunity for well made American products(higher in cost) to succeed.
no one is forced to buy anything from Amazon or Walmart. wake up. If people cared enough, Amazon and Walmart would go out of business. All of their money comes from people making voluntary decisions in the marketplace.
I believe capitalism is the best system for allocating capital, goods, and services. It has serious downsides. I believe a lot of the “anxiety” in our otherwise cosseted population is secondary to the anxiety created by capitalism. Do you have the right car? Eating the right bread? Etc. it can and should be resisted
Currently live in the ghetto. The great majority of people homeless here are tied into drugs. There are countless government programs addressing these needs. I strongly disagree with your bleak assessment of our country and capitalism
All you need to know is that Amazon's supports the $15 minimum wage but NOT labor unionization in its facilities. Why? It can afford the $15/hour that mom and pop stores can't. What it can't (or won't) tolerate is the costs associated with allowing people to piss without clocking out.
I remember in early-ish 2013, Lloyd Blankfein, then CEO of Goldman Sachs, publicly stated his support for gay marriage. No doubt his sense of justice came into play, but I realized that there was another critical reason for his public pronouncement.
In 2013 supporting gay marriage was the most expedient way to essentially ingratiate oneself with the American cultural/economic left. A left that at that point most conspicuously instantiated itself via Occupy Wall Street, a direct result of the 2008 devastating, and still virulent, financial crisis.
And Occupy Wall Street favored the kinds of policies, like Sanders and Warren, that would truly have crippled the reckless money making business models of big banks. And gay marriage was one of the many conduits for beautifying banks' tattered image.
As a note, Eric Holder, Obama's attorney general, declared the banks at the center of the financial crisis to be "systemically important" in the summer of 2013. To my knowledge no bank executive went to jail or was charged in any way. And as we know, those banks are now more powerful than ever, due in no small part to the extravagant bailouts lavished on the industry by the American government and Fed.
While I appreciate these kinds of opinion pieces, what this country (and the world) desperately needs is something like the Italian Clean Hands, or the Brazilian Lava Jato - an independent entity that would investigate, expose, and eventually topple this untenable and corrupt system. I mean, in what country, other than the US would a tragedy like Purdue Pharma end without not just the Sacklers, but multiple executives and governments officials serving untold number of death sentences?
And this rather naive idea by the oligarchy or their political pawns that some performative bull can save them?
As per the whole capitalism talk: capitalism is what you have in places like Germany, where it used to be that more than half of the workforce was employed by firms with less than 50 employees, where the owner is a family friends and all are equally affected.
All these "too big to fail" multinationals are more political than economic entities, similar to the Kombinats in the old USSR. Similarly, their success or failure does not follow any real world or market logic, as we are currently witnessing, but is a product of political decisions and deals.
It's mostly a bunch of gigantic leeches sucking value and vitality from a society.
Wait a minute. You’re lambasting the movement for stakeholder capitalism, which stands for ethics beyond cut-throat profitmaking for shareholders, because it’s not ethical enough? It’s “terrible for America” because the few big companies you focus on aren’t fully opposing China? Therefore, let’s scrap the movement and stay with the norm of no-holds-barred for shareholder profits? This is pure right-wing propaganda.
The movement for stakeholder capitalism is not about being woke or politically correct. It’s a movement that thousands of businesses, small and big, are experimenting with to honor ethics beyond ruthless profit-making. The sensational issues about China this article focuses on as a reason to kill the movement has nothing to do with these many businesses and the many books on the movement by scholars and dedicated business people, many of them with much skin in the game of doing business ethically.
Articles like this are giving me regrets about investing in Common Sense.
As important as it may be, I get fatigued by the woke criticism, which is probably a good sign, in that it's working. This piece, however, felt more poignant and enlightening. Thank you!
Bari, you should interview Catherine Austin Fitts about the Central Banks, etc, also look at wrenchinthegeers.com. Alison McDowell has solid research on this blog.
Nov. 30, 2020
How to Make A Billion Dollars (in One Easy Step ;)
Read it and weep.
:
:
I don’t recall where I read this. Mebbe the Whole Earth Catalog, back in the day. But suppose You made $1000 per day. That would be a very good income. For most Americans, that would be an OUTSTANDING income. A FABULOUS amount of money to make.
Now, suppose You made that every single day of the year. No days off for the weekend. No holidays. That amounts to $365, or $366,000 a year. PHENOMENAL, right?!
Now, suppose You did that from the time You were born to Your dying day. How much wealth would You end up with? Somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 to $35 million? Anyway, a lot.
Now… Suppose You did that starting from the times of the American Revolution. Now how much wealth would You end up with? More than You currently have, right? ;)
Suppose You did that, as if You were born in the time of the Renaissance. Or, even more, since the time of King Arthur. How much?
…But let’s get ridiculous:
Suppose You made $365,000 every year of Your life, and You were born on the same day as Jesus… TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO YOU STARTED MAKING $1000 PER DAY, EVERY DAY, DAY-IN AND DAY-OUT. A *LOT* OF WORK.
How much wealth would You have accumulated? You would be Absolutely, Phenomenally, RIDICULOUSLY wealthy, right!? That’s an UNTOLD amount of money.
(Well.. I’ll TELL Ya. ;)
You would have accumulated a little less than three-quarters of a billion dollars.
So the question is, what could one person do in one lifetime to be worth a billion dollars? Sure, it happens. But is that person WORTHY of it? What do You think?
Another right-wing freakout over nothing. Corporations are people––people who want to be perceived in a positive light. As they have always done, they do lots of things to portray themselves in a positive light so that people will feel good about doing business with them. And, as always, if doing the right thing involves taking huge financial losses, they will balk at doing the right thing. If you're worried about this, you have too much free time on your hands, or you're just a natural worrier about life in general. This is nothing new.
thanks for this Bari. in short: capitalism makes a wonderful servant but a terrible master.
It's a weird coincidence that the SJW agenda never conflicts with the CCP agenda.
Anyone who looks past the surface of The CRT MACHINE sees one-a they're main aims is to destroy Democracy. People will SAY, "Oh, CRT isn't MARXIST." M. Ibram Kendi's first book? ANYONE read is FIRST book? The hero of the story was ANGELA DAVIS, fer heaven's sake!
You think the SJW agenda involves reeducation camps for persecuted minorities?
Yes. They have stated it out right multiple times. Though not for minorities, just people with different opinions.
Actions speak louder than words and there is absolutely no doubt that the progressive American left forgets all about their righteous outrage once a dollar is involved or an election needs to be won (pronounced "stolen" in some circles).
Weeeel, I dunno about "stolen." I would also "correct" You on this point, because even the moderate left doesn't talk about a dollar (they only know the word "TRILLION" when it comes to dollars ;).
I don't know what else You'd call it, M. Mullen. When white kids in K - 12 are taught that they're racist, because of the color of their skin. Kindergardeners, some-a them. And telling Black kids they'll never accomplish anything, because they're held back because of "systemic racism."
If that doesn't describe a reeducation camp, I don't know what would.
I don't know where you live, but that's not happening in any schools I know of. I think you're confused about what they are actually teaching. No teachers or parents would teach that garbage.
links from off of this article which was featured this past week: https://areomagazine.com/2021/07/19/212494/
https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1403297459992944642?s=20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxu3wdiXRF0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTQZdoT87RM
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1405624322643873798
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiqF23eYHqw
Naw. You're confused. Sign up for newsletter of these folks. https://www.fairforall.org/
They help a BIRACIAL kid sue school in Texas, I think it was. He was FORCED to confess his "white privilege" and wouldn't take the course that was required for graduation. School failed him, until FAIR help BLACK mother sue the school.
Evidently, it doesn't present any conflicts.
Not to anyone who has been paying attention, if it weren't for double standards, the progressive American left would have no standards at all.
No matter how old You are, Broncojohnny, You're wise beyond Your years! :)
Note that the public dishonesty drives two parallel destructive developments: 1) to cultivate brand loyalty/gullibility by positioning these hypocrite companies as virtuous when they are actually doing lockstep bidding for the worst-acting patron-stakeholders, and 2) to shift massive investment allocation to these hypocrite companies’ equity treasuries by faking compassion under faddish, fuzzy “ESG” movement (think “manipulating the US News college rankings”). Both trends reward and the same dishonest organizations with advantage over their customer-focused competitors
Bari, Please, please, please interview Vivek! Thank you for your contribution to truth!
Thank you for shinning a light on this topic Bari. I just finished Woke, Inc. and enjoyed it very much. The author makes a few critical points that I want to emphasize: (1) Governments like China and the US are using corporations to accomplish what they cannot do themselves. (2) Corporations were invented to protect shareholders from liability for the pursuit of profits only, and were restricted from engaging in political and social activities because of their perceived power. (3) Corporations are teaming up with the Woke in order to distract the public from learning about things they are doing in their business that are not virtuous.
The book was very well written. The author even suggests an interesting legal argument as to why the Civil Rights Act should apply to prevent corporations from discriminating (canceling) against employees for political speech (i.e., adding political speech to the protected class of sex, race and religion).
Here's a simple question for those who consider themselves "stakeholders" in a company and therefore have the right to weigh in on corporate decisions: "Your" company needs to build a new factory and as a stakeholder your share of that investment is $100,000. Where are you going to send the check?"
"Stakeholder Capitalism" is a steaming pile of ....
Very nice essay. These multi national corporations only look out for themselves. Appreciate you shining a light on this nefarious group. I am positively predisposed to capitalism but prefer small, Main Street businesses(which must be responsive to their communities) to these multi national behemoths.
We get what we vote (with our dollars) for. That's the beauty and the terror of capitalism.
If people want small business back, local businesses, they will pay a little more for the products from those places than the cheapest Walmart or Costco options.
Those on the left bemoan the "big business" aspects of capitalism, but no one is forcing anyone to buy anything from Amazon.
Agreed. I am trying to be much more conscious of who I am supporting. I do think there is an opportunity for well made American products(higher in cost) to succeed.
no one is forced to buy anything from Amazon or Walmart. wake up. If people cared enough, Amazon and Walmart would go out of business. All of their money comes from people making voluntary decisions in the marketplace.
I believe capitalism is the best system for allocating capital, goods, and services. It has serious downsides. I believe a lot of the “anxiety” in our otherwise cosseted population is secondary to the anxiety created by capitalism. Do you have the right car? Eating the right bread? Etc. it can and should be resisted
Currently live in the ghetto. The great majority of people homeless here are tied into drugs. There are countless government programs addressing these needs. I strongly disagree with your bleak assessment of our country and capitalism
All you need to know is that Amazon's supports the $15 minimum wage but NOT labor unionization in its facilities. Why? It can afford the $15/hour that mom and pop stores can't. What it can't (or won't) tolerate is the costs associated with allowing people to piss without clocking out.
I remember in early-ish 2013, Lloyd Blankfein, then CEO of Goldman Sachs, publicly stated his support for gay marriage. No doubt his sense of justice came into play, but I realized that there was another critical reason for his public pronouncement.
In 2013 supporting gay marriage was the most expedient way to essentially ingratiate oneself with the American cultural/economic left. A left that at that point most conspicuously instantiated itself via Occupy Wall Street, a direct result of the 2008 devastating, and still virulent, financial crisis.
And Occupy Wall Street favored the kinds of policies, like Sanders and Warren, that would truly have crippled the reckless money making business models of big banks. And gay marriage was one of the many conduits for beautifying banks' tattered image.
As a note, Eric Holder, Obama's attorney general, declared the banks at the center of the financial crisis to be "systemically important" in the summer of 2013. To my knowledge no bank executive went to jail or was charged in any way. And as we know, those banks are now more powerful than ever, due in no small part to the extravagant bailouts lavished on the industry by the American government and Fed.
While I appreciate these kinds of opinion pieces, what this country (and the world) desperately needs is something like the Italian Clean Hands, or the Brazilian Lava Jato - an independent entity that would investigate, expose, and eventually topple this untenable and corrupt system. I mean, in what country, other than the US would a tragedy like Purdue Pharma end without not just the Sacklers, but multiple executives and governments officials serving untold number of death sentences?
And this rather naive idea by the oligarchy or their political pawns that some performative bull can save them?
As per the whole capitalism talk: capitalism is what you have in places like Germany, where it used to be that more than half of the workforce was employed by firms with less than 50 employees, where the owner is a family friends and all are equally affected.
All these "too big to fail" multinationals are more political than economic entities, similar to the Kombinats in the old USSR. Similarly, their success or failure does not follow any real world or market logic, as we are currently witnessing, but is a product of political decisions and deals.
It's mostly a bunch of gigantic leeches sucking value and vitality from a society.
Ideally the free press would hold these corporations and government accountable. But it’s the DNC press now and is only the media wing of the left.
Word. Stakeholder capitalism is a Trojan horse. Pax Americana watch out. Troy fell because of failure to scrutinise a gift horse.
Wait a minute. You’re lambasting the movement for stakeholder capitalism, which stands for ethics beyond cut-throat profitmaking for shareholders, because it’s not ethical enough? It’s “terrible for America” because the few big companies you focus on aren’t fully opposing China? Therefore, let’s scrap the movement and stay with the norm of no-holds-barred for shareholder profits? This is pure right-wing propaganda.
The movement for stakeholder capitalism is not about being woke or politically correct. It’s a movement that thousands of businesses, small and big, are experimenting with to honor ethics beyond ruthless profit-making. The sensational issues about China this article focuses on as a reason to kill the movement has nothing to do with these many businesses and the many books on the movement by scholars and dedicated business people, many of them with much skin in the game of doing business ethically.
Articles like this are giving me regrets about investing in Common Sense.
I wonder, Ron, what Your experience is in WORKING for a business?