Blog 7 Four Ways to Derail The Law of Money train.
First, a short digression: why do we buy what we do not need? This would best be dealt with in a friendly discussion circle, but it does relate to the law of money and the growth imperative.
Remember those 20,000 pairs of additional shoes our company made and sold last year? Who is wearing them? Previously shoeless people in central Africa? Hmmn. No. Most of them are just on the closet floor with ten other pairs. Now, the average human being has only two feet to put shoes on. So why does she, or he, need ten (or twenty, or more) shoes taking up closet space? Think about it. It is part of the explanation why in rich western cities near me the houses in each new subdivision are larger than the last lot. Why? Because people need more room for their excess stuff. I think we are getting on to something bigger here than shoes.
Why do we buy more things than we need?
Tick your choice of the right answer
/A Because we have the money.
/B Addiction. We get a high from shopping.
/C Because the media have relentlessly burned this message into our bunny brains until it has become a subconscious song:
“Buy and you will be happy.”
/D All of the above
Well, food for thought. Now let’s get on to the law of money blog, but with a more significant topic.
I promised to tell you the four ways of obstructing or diverting the inevitable flow of wealth from the many to the few. What measures or devices can counteract the law of money?
#1 Noblesse oblige. (Pronounced no bless oh bleej)
This is a French mediaeval term meaning that if you have wealth, you have a moral obligation to put some of it back into circulation. It comes from a period in Europe, when land was the principal basis of wealth. Much of the land was owned by the “nobility”. (By 1789, in France, they owned most of it. See Item #4.)
In the present century, there is still some noblesse oblige. Even some of the super-rich display it. I might name Soros, Buffet, Gates, in America
#2 Government redistribution.
This is done by taxation; but it must be graduated taxation. That is, “the more you make, the higher thepercentage taken in taxes.”
A “flat tax” — such as a 20% across the board value-added (VAT) or retail sales tax (GST)— has no effect on the upward flow of money. The richest still benefit and the poorest lose most.
So how does government redistribution work? A social-democratic government levies the tax and then distributes it to the general population via education, and health care (the two big ones), pensions, public utilities, and other subsidies that benefit citizens more equally than the law of money does. They also enact laws enabling workers to organize. (See #3, next.)
Corporatist-Fascist governments, on the other hand enable the law of money to operate. But I’ll try to unpack that political topic in a later blog.
#3 Free collective bargaining by workers.
Two parties compete for the profits of a commercial, industrial or financial enterprise: the workers and the shareholders/owners. They are always on opposite sides of the table at feeding time.
Individually, the owners are more effective than the workers in securing a larger share of the profit pie.
Workers are stronger when they have the right to bargain collectively.
Note that shareholders are lenders; workers are more likely to be borrowers. So by the law of money they are at opposite ends of the pipe, when it comes to the flow of money.
#4 Innovative technology, like, this overhead device developed for the French Revolution (1789).
These devices come into play when the law of money has reached a certain critical extreme. The art of politics is to prevent that extreme from being reached.
Well, this has been a heavy blog. If your mind has gone to mush, try re-reading the Four Ways part later.
But I will return to some of that political stuff in, shorter, future blogs.
