Games Oligarchs Play

Games Oligarchs Play

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Mark 8:36

By J.M. Hamilton (8-5-2018)

Alas, greed and an unquenchable lust for power makes the world go round.

Maybe a more modern version of the aforementioned Bible passage would be as follows:

What profit it a man, if he shall gain all the money in the world, and economic & political domination, at the risk of losing: his bank account; his government & country that protects him; and even the world, itself?  And w/ a nod to believers … perhaps, one’s very own soul?

These are no longer mere idle speculations, or prognostications of doom.  We are seeing, throughout the West, the limits of untrammelled greed - as an economic & political model - play out in real time, before our very eyes.

Billionaires and multinationals own and operate our democracies for their own gain, at the expense of many and future generations.  Call it Oligarchy, call it Kleptocracy… but the impact is the destruction of our economic and political system, and more importantly, the world itself.  Nihilism - among the elite & oligarchy - appears to be in vogue.

As a result, citizens are losing faith in democracy, and mainstream political parties, which have been wholly revealed as malignantly corrupt, and entirely owned.

Here’s three very recent examples of multinationals & oligarchs gone bad:

The NY Times ran several pieces on climate change last week, outlining how insufferable, and uninhabitable, parts of the world are rapidly becoming, due to fossil fuel emissions.  And yet, the elites, multinationals, and oligarchs have zero plans to deal with the issue, in earnest.  As with seemingly every other problem, our politicians – operating at the behest of their masters, the donor class – kick the can down the road (setting interminable deadlines for various Climate accords, agreements, & protocols, while the world bakes). Everybody pays lip service to it: The DOD calls it a national security threat; Exxon swears it’s on the same page, that climate change is real (in the face of litigation from several state attorney generals); and in the ultimate acknowledgement, citizens around the globe are dropping dead from the heat.  Meanwhile, the first official trip POTUS Trump made – w/ many US CEOs in tow – was to the Oil Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (perhaps the most morally bankrupt country on the planet, and that’s pretty hard to achieve).

At the current rate of contamination and resulting climatic devolution, how long before the world gives out?  That is if Monsanto – and their new owners, Bayer – doesn’t destroy our farmlands & natural resources first.

Of course, one cannot talk about Big Oil, and planetary contamination, w/out bringing in the Koch Brothers.  The Kochs inherited a fortune, compounded it via Big Carbon, and going huge into financial services, namely derivatives and swaps.  The combined net worth of the Kochs is estimated to be north of $100 billion.  They are not content to own: governors' mansions, state legislative bodies, the Federal government, think tanks, and academia… the Kochs must control and rule all.  And despite POTUS Trump placing w/in his cabinet Koch cronies, dismantling the EPA, and enacting a GOP led tax-cut law that only an oligarch could love, et al.… it’s still not enough for the Kochs.  Charles Koch recently spoke out against Trump – like Reagan before him – for having the audacity to defy him on free trade.  What constitutes “free trade” to Mr. Charles Koch are closed door/crony government deals, whereby multinationals dictate the terms and divide up the spoils, in a never ending game of global labor, regulatory, and tax law arbitrage.  You guessed it: this brand of free trade is great for our rulers, the oligarchs, and bad for just about everyone else.  It’s no accident that the rise of free trade, as presently practiced, from the late eighties forward, saw the rise of wage stagnation and an exponential increase in wealth inequality.

Perhaps one of the few decent things the Trump administration has done - for the long neglected American worker - is to push back on failed free trade dogma, that has crushed: US labor, the tax base, and clearly demonstrates how neoliberalism, w/out proper guardrails & management, metastasizes into cartel, monopoly, and ruinous rent-seeking utilities.  Charles – with his brother, David, ailing – pledges to fight on, in search of the Holy Grail, the POTUS who will be the perfect supplicant.

Mr. Pence stands at the ready.

One cannot talk about free trade & insatiable greed, w/out talking about Silicon Valley and Big Tech.  Apple reached a milestone last week, by having achieved a trillion dollar market cap.  The first company to achieve the trillion dollar benchmark.  Apple achieved this mark, not only by providing great products & services, but through strategic acquisitions (blocking competition) & organic growth, and thanks to free trade, as presently practiced, exploiting highly inexpensive Chinese labor.  Apple is the classic example of what free trade has become: abusing subcontracted labor, via Foxconn; exploiting tax loopholes, around the globe; and cozying up to dictators, like China’s communist leader, Xi (China, ironically --- despite its fondness for protectionist measures, history of currency manipulation, engaging in commercial espionage, and operating a highly repressive regime that has zero respect for human rights, and is presently engaged in genocide --- now claims to be the free trade champion).

There’s your first trillion dollar multinational, America… the poster-child for everything that is wrong w/ free trade today.

Hot on Apple’s heals, in terms of market cap, is Google.  And we learned last week that Google was willing to sell its soul to Dictator Xi, by creating a search engine for China (complete with all the oppressive totalitarian editing features to better keep China’s citizens and journalist in the dark). 

In support of the communist government, Google will perhaps have to shorten its motto to: Do Evil.

Interestingly, there was a time where American corporations wouldn’t do business with communist or totalitarian regimes.  There was also a time when both Dems and GOP administrations had robust antitrust enforcement… it was part of the social contract.  But avarice, corruption, myopia, and oligarchs rigging elections w/ dollars have eliminated all that.  And so retrograde industries, like Big Oil, and behemoths, like Big Tech, threaten the social order & our economic and political systems, back despots and tyrants, and particularly in the case of Big Oil, contaminate & destroy the planet.

This, my fellow Americans, is what it is like to be ruled by quarterly statement.

As much as the term “industrial policy” is reviled by the C-Suite class, America has had an industrial policy for the last thirty-eight years: it’s called the jungle, or laissez faire, which has created an Ayn Randian wasteland (throughout the Midwest and America’s once great industrial centers).  And we are seeing the fruits of that neoliberal industrial policy in: a poisoned planet; mass migration away from the equator & war zones; the rise of dangerous nationalist & right-wing populist movements; and dictators, & their authoritarian/totalitarian reign, further strengthened by US multinationals.

Clearly, America needs a new industrial policy, with a foundation based upon: consistent and expanded antitrust enforcement; leveraging US economic might and markets, not just for fairer trade, but insisting upon democratic reforms w/in authoritarian/totalitarian regimes; an industrial policy that places human rights, and fair & equitable global wages, above monopolistic profits; and we need to dump Big Oil & Coal, not in a matter of decades, but within a matter of years.  (Rolling back the financialization of the economy, where seemingly many companies are all too often leveraged to the hilt, so that shareholders can obtain immediate gratification, should also be high on the list of reforms.)

The next recession is, likely, around the corner, and what better way to pull the economy out of a slump than by creating an alternative energy grid across the nation (and rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure).

Couple a nationwide renewable energy infrastructure w/ the introduction of a universal basic income, so as to mitigate the loss of Big Carbon jobs, and who knows, America just might contain the populist revolt, the scapegoating of immigrants & minorities, and become a role model for planetary sustainability.  Now that's leadership.

Some might call this saving capitalism from itself.

Finally, the argument that the stock market needs Big Oil equities for the sake of 401Ks, pension & retirement plans… simply does not hold water, if these very industries are turning the world into an inferno. 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2018