Yo, Oligarchs and Masters of the Universe! You have a VERY simple choice:

[TygrBright]

Option One:
Keep your death grip on all the money and all the power you can grab, keep grinding ordinary people (especially the brown ones) into dust, fomenting division between everyone who isn't you to cover up your manifold crimes and injustices, and then watch the tumbrils pulling up outside your doors with the massive mobs behind them and no, you won't be allowed to escape to your funkholes and private islands.

Option Two:
Support an economic path to moderated, managed capitalism balanced with social democracy, pay taxes, stay wealthy but lose some of the obscene overkill, live out your natural span, leave a decent legacy to your offspring who will pay estate taxes to continue living in a peaceful, pleasant, secure polity.

wearily,
Bright

[Leith]

1. That's about the size of it

Too bad they think they will be lords of their own serfdoms.

[Newest Reality]

2. I think the general rule of thumb is...

You can never have enough money and more is certainly better, especially at the going rates for power.

Oh, and many of them have the dichotomy you expressed covered with contingency plans. Doomsday can be of many types and economic is one of them. The Captains will not go down with the boat and they would be long gone before the throngs of Mad Max-style vigilantes got to them. How long that will work out is anybody's guess if they do escape. I wouldn't put to much trust in the paramilitary, for hire guards. Too tempting!

Isn't that nice to know? They could mess everything up and we get the results and they split. We need to make sure they don't have the incentive to do that, but they hold the all the cards and we have another reason it has to change.

Morlocks!


https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/29/silicon-valley-new-zealand-apocalypse-escape

[world wide wally]

3. The only thing there is no limit to is greed

[wiggs]

4. Oligarchs have always looted the world, always will unless stopped. nt

[SharonAnn]

5. Revolution often stops them. (If reform is impossible, then revolution is inevitable)

[FiveGoodMen]

14. Yes! We need to form a political party to oppose them

[ancianita]

6. Rhetorical, right?

[smirkymonkey]

7. None of them seem to have ever studied history.

If they had, they would be very frightened right about now.

[Wounded Bear]

9. No worries, this time it's gonna work out better...

[smirkymonkey]

10. They can only push so far before society rebels.

These things have a tendency to snowball. It won't work out better. It will be a nightmare for all of us.

[TygrBright]

11. Yes, that's the down side.

There will be collateral damage. And opportunists taking advantage. And the next generation(s) of wannabe Oligarchs trying to grab the tiger's ears...

Last time, in the early 20th Century, it came close. But there were enough level heads to prevail, and let the changes happen.

So they lived, and kept most of their fortunes.

And all of their resentments, which their sons and grandsons nursed in turn.

resignedly,
Bright

[Hotler]

8. Can hear the people sing, singing the songs of angry men........ nt.

[TygrBright]

12. And there will be nowhere to hide.

[kentuck]

13. Well said, Bright!

[Ingersollman]

15. Learned

a new word today. Tumbril. Thanks for that. We might need to start constructing guillotines now. There's a lot to be done.

[True Blue American]

16. I have heard discussions with CEO's

Who say they have concentrated too much on the shareholders and they need to take care of their employees first. That is a start.

[Moral Compass]

17. Well said.

Nick Hanauer (and you) are absolutely right. If these idiots don’t pull up—the pitchforks and the tumbrils and the guillotines will come.

There’s lot more of them than there are of you obscenely rich folks.

Don’t be like the Bernard Marcus (co-founder of Home Depot) and John Catsimandis who achieved their let-them-eat-cake moment in the Wall Street Journal arguing that they should pay very few taxes as only they can wisely spend their money on what they deem important.

These fat fucks will probably be dead of natural causes soon, but their children may have to face the rage of the impoverished citizenry if they also inherit these sneering, oligarchic attitudes along with generational money.