The Race to A Brave New World

"Welcome to Walmart! You bring dollars, yes?"

Two-thirds of the world’s Top 100 economies are not countries or governments at all: they are corporations. Half of the Top 40 are corporations. Walmart is in the Top 10. Let that sink-in for a moment: Walmart. In fact, the mega-retailer more than doubles Russia’s economy. The Top 20 corporations combined are richer than the U.S., which happens to be the world’s richest economy.

The US Democratic Party may be one of the few left wings in the world not to understand this very essence of the global balance of power. Ironic, since it holds a sizable share of the world’s richest economy. As a London-based wealth manager told The Guardian last month, “I think what people fail to realize is that governments are now just little parishes. Who do you think is more powerful: Procter & Gamble or the government of France? P&G, of course. They can set down their business anywhere in the world they please. And high-net-worth individuals are the same way.” The problem was, he said, that onshore governments – particularly some in Europe and North America – didn’t yet understand their place in this new hierarchy. Thus, he added, “Social democracy is creating too big demands on the wealth creators.”

Some truth in the wealth manager’s view, though somewhat overstated. First of all, Cincinnati’s own P&G would be so honored to take over La Patrie, but at only 5% of France’s revenue it would fall a diaper or two short. Still, point taken, especially when it comes to multinational agility and the tapping of global markets. P&G is certainly better poised than France to penetrate the globe, if market virility were still a Freudian thing. Coûter les yeux de la tête, a wise Frenchman might say. Too high a price to pay for global domination. And therein lies the greatest of all human paradoxes: The less we do, the more we demand of others; the more we do, the more we demand of others. I’d like to meet these “others”. Apparently they’re the ones who get shit done.

Meet “the others”. The top three Chinese corporations combined could be in the G8. Hell, China would make the G2, never mind the G8 - IF it were invited to the Capitalist's Club.  But perhaps it’s that age-old Chinese wisdom that empowers them to brush off the snub: “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member!” (from the Tao of Groucho).

Let’s slow down here for a moment. Something is not adding up... China? In the G2? Three of the world’s top four corporations are Chinese?? To quote from a more streetwise Tao: WTF? Surely the ONE thing (hold up Curly’s “One Thing” finger when thinking of this), the ONE reason China has traditionally been dissed from The Club has to do with the S-word. You know, “Socialism”.

Let’s cut to the chase: it’s the over-the-top repression that keeps China from The Club. That would be all good and great if it weren’t for the elephant in the room of America’s prisons. The U.S. incarcerates at a rate of more than SIX times the average G8 nation. Let that one sink in for another moment. It almost doesn’t matter who represses more, they are both on a collision course with shame and unsustainability. 

The number one and the number two economies of the world are on an amazing race to the next seismic paradigm shift: Socialized Capitalism vs Capitalized Socialism. Who will win? I can’t say for sure, but at the rate they are both repressing their citizens the race is starting to look more like a dystopian novel than a quest for a better world.

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“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

-Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"

The Bracket Club

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had not been born yet when “The Breakfast Club” was released. That was back in ‘85, though by itself the timeline is irrelevant. I mean, let’s keep it real: generational bragging rights are lame. So when the dog-whistlers at FOX News recently “outed” AOC’s celebration of the film, AOC’s reply was refreshingly well played. As dancing goes, her interpretive middle-finger to false conservatives was a welcomed breeze of fresh air in swamp-land. Her brief reenactment outside her D.C. office was a classy je ne regrette rien STFU to the rage peddlers at FOX. Way classier in fact than her freshman colleague, US representative Rashida Tlaib, with her “motherfucker” crosshairs remark. Nothing to do with the language by itself, gender, or ethnicity - Donald Trump doesn’t sound smarter when he says it either.

The reason it is relevant that Ocasio-Cortez had not yet been born in ‘85 is key context. Since we are talking about a powerful American tradition here - the induction of an incoming political freshman class - the dance bit was poetic-assist in AOC’s case. Whether she was aware or not, she was being introduced to the old Potomac Two-Step. 

Back in 1985 the Soviet Union was still a very real and present danger. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The mutually assured destruction of our planet as we knew it was something no other generation had ever experienced. It was a world gone m.a.d. indeed (we even coined a clever acronym for it). So, no: the Breakfast Club dance was not exactly the celebration of life AOC interpreted. As the language of dance goes it was a brave new wave - not quite salsa (AOC’s Caribbean roots may have betrayed her there). Our Breakfast Club fab-five were definitely not expressing sensual joy, that’s for sure. It was a time of awkwardness, a time to be tense.

As the gods of evolution would have it, the tension finally blinked. Somehow we survived armageddon. The daily threat of a nuclear holocaust stopped, sometime around the fall of the Berlin Wall. Political pundits like to credit the Kennedy-Reagan era, with fair credit where credit is due. Others may be more pragmatic, calling the Soviet collapse a failure to engage with an inevitable global capitalism. Either way there was a “roaring nineties” feeling in the air, a celebration of sorts as the world watched the implosion of the mighty Soviet. Amidst champagne and red carpets, Hollywood proclaimed that "greed is good".

Enter class warfare, back from the sidelines of nuclear preoccupation. Where there is unbridled wealth, there is greed. And where there is greed, there are tax brackets. No one really ever wonders much about the existence of tax brackets, probably for good reason (watching paint dry, etc.). But it is worth a quick reflection. Let me try to unpack it by keeping it simple: tax brackets are essentially a mathematical punishment on greed. Some American voters who have been around the block more than once might recall the flat-tax proposals, resurrected every other presidential campaign. It is typically presented as a way to fix a convoluted tax system. A system that admittedly has evolved into a god-forsaken hydra monster. Sure, those who make little enough to fit their income into a 1040-EZ form are typically not in the line of fire. But if the 1040-A does not quite cut it for you either, my condolences: off to the serpentine hydra’s mouth you go.

Which brings us back to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and her recent casual remark that the very rich should be subject to a 70% tax bracket. Well. If she ever wanted to be targeted as the enemy of half the people she sure is a smooth-talker. It’s not just the 1% that have rattled their sabres on that declaration of war. They have savvily enlisted an army of 49% to fight on their behalf. A 49% that, to every American liberal, remains an enigma wrapped up in a mystery, inside a puzzle. Just like a Russian nesting doll.

Unless Ocasio-Cortez learns how to dance to the awkward tension of socialized capitalism, her politics will become irrelevant in the evolution of the great American experiment. Her Bracket Club dance reduced to a less-than-memorable flashdance. Back at the Breakfast Club, (spoiler alert)... that dance ends with a fist pump to the sky. Unforgettably frozen in time. A celebration of how five corners of America walked in as irreconcilable differences, and walked out with unspoken respect for each other. It was a fist pump in defiance to all those who grift the life divisive.

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

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The Raging of America

The dark side of our minds is nothing but a kangaroo court. It is a survival-of-the-fittest chamber where every second of our lives checks-in. It is where the gatekeeper of fear protects us within inches of our lives, so that we may live to see another day. 

Human DNA is coded to abhor the unknown, which explains the kangaroo courts. The vast majority of our lives is engulfed by the unknown. It also explains our love-hate relationship with science, and our radicalization of religion. We love science when it provides practical solutions to our problems. But we grow bored when it demands we don’t jump to conclusions. Which is when some turn to faith. Not the “turn the other cheek” religion, mind you. The “cut their babies in half and stone the women to death” religion. The radicalized genre, designed to fit agendas of convenience. 

Off-center politics are a fluid zig-zag between convenience and fear. It’s not that the so-called “left” and “right” wings of society don’t contribute with their share of work and basic values. It’s that their rage-filled pinball lifestyle cannibalizes the lion share of the value they generate. They create and perpetuate an anger-infested netherworld where distortion rules. 

Wing politics are ushering in a new Dark Age of humanity. A Dark Age that introduces the notion that the rich and majority are victims of persecution. A darkness that hides the reality that the poor and minorities are oppressed in part by themselves. An age that escalates an entitlement war to a crusade. A rage defined by our Hollywood romance with revenge-based justice. A dark rage that threatens way more than our lights at night if climate and energy do finally implode: it foreshadows the end of the precious gift of life in our corner of the universe. A wasted life gone dark because it could not figure out how to evolve without choking in the vomit of its own rage.

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