Fascism Weaponized French Early Retirement

French retirement used to be at 65 during the “30 glorious years”, the time of reconstruction which followed World War Two [1]. Then Mitterand became president and lowered retirement to 60. This was a trick to weaken the French People. It worked. Mitterand was a fake socialist and true demagogue: as an authentic fascist, having launched his career wih fascism, Mitterand received the francisque medal from his boss the racist dictator Philippe Pétain, a collaborator of Adolf Hitler, who was condemned to death as a traitor upon liberation from Nazism [2]. Mitterand instead of having been tried as a traitor became a politician. The fascist Mitterand is vastly admired in France, a proof of national derangement.

The socioeconomic theory behind lowering to 60 was that the fewer older people worked, the more young people would go to work. The opposite happened: GDP grew less, and so there were fewer jobs overall. Indeed, older workers have expertise, younger workers do not. Left to the young and arrogant, France became incompetent. Mitterand and his right wing PM, Balladur privatized companies that Mitterand and his Communists had just nationalized, by giving their leadership to young people who knew-nothing, yet viewed with awe, as they came from grandes écoles (where their families’ background had made sure to put them).

The practical result was that the French economy crashed and is still crashing. Art 14.5% of GDP France spends twice more on retirement relative to GDP than the USA. Germany spends 10.4%. While tyrannies are doing their best to launch and win a world war, and hundreds of thousands were killed or gravely wounded as a result in Europe alone, Paris spends only 1.9% of GDP on its military… while leaving Africa to be reorganized by China and Putin’s Wagner “Private Military Corporation”…. Paid in part by a French deficit is 5% of GDP… and more borrowing, at ever higher rates, keeps the state going.

As work got decimated in France, the ultra rich rose to prominence and pulled the levers: France is embellished with the world’s wealthiest man, and the wealthiest woman… The former from selling overpriced trinkets (luxury), the latter from rents (and not paying taxes). 

France has also the second highest taxes in term of GDP, just behind Denmark… taxes for the common person, that is. The ultra rich families mostly avoid taxation, having engineered the tax code that way (as in the USA, but even relatively more so). 

17 million French retirees live from sucking the energy of 23 million workers. As recently as 2014, they earned 106%, that is, more, than the average French wage earner. As the country slowly collapses, from the lack of attractivity of compensated work, this strange dependency has bought civil peace. Ah, but there is a war…. And the war is actually related to the weakness of the West and of France in particular: leaving an entire continent such as Africa, to the mercy of dictators Putin and Xi has consequences: all Africans want to move to France (they get generous social benefits)… while, of course, as most of them can’t do so, hating France.

In 1940, Stalin was allied to Hitler, and brand new French planes were not armed because authorities were afraid that the Moscow addicted workers would seize the guns. Consequence? The defeat of May 1940… Which put Mitterand and his ilk in power…

A spectacular spiral of evil.

UlTRA WEALTH IS FASCIST And UNEMPLOYMENT ITS FRIEND:

The power of hyper wealthy families has been growing in France enormously (that can be measured in their size in the financial markets). Following North America and Asia, Europe is controlled by the ultra-wealthy . In 2021, the top countries for the ultra-wealthy were France (30,000), Germany (28,000), U.K. (25,000) and Italy (17,000). Each of them has more than 30 million dollars of net worth, the level at which the 100% Roman Republic wealth tax applied. France, relative to population has nearly 1/3 more ultra wealthy than Germany… No wonder all the strikes…

The power of the ultra-wealthy is inversely related to the power of We The People. So to grow and prosper, the ultra wealthy need to weaken We The People. And how do they do that? As under the Roman Empire, successor to the Roman Republic: they deprive We The People of employment. So send the jobs to China, de-industrialize: in 1946, any little French town had a factory. Now, of the 20 or so so-called French car models sold in France, only one is really made in France. (Similarly US electric cars would not exist without Chinese manufacturing as the fundamental elements of batteries are made there.)

Early in the Roman Republic, 25 centuries ago, to get more rights, the Roman Plebs went on strike, retiring to a hill. Rome completely stopped functioning. The Plebs got its rights. Why? Because without the Plebs, Rome could’t not work. This is why the tyrannical empire made sure that the Plebs had no work, or at least no important work. In the modern Western world, the employed Plebs is in China, making important devices, and China is where the power is, and the French Plebs has little residual power: it goes on strike, but cars are made somewhere else.

***

David Mcmahon: “The socioeconomic theory behind lowering to 60 was that the fewer older people worked, the more young people would go to work“That is a key part of the flawed socialist outlook – they believe in a zero sum economy. In other words, there is a fixed pie, and for young people to work, old people have to exit the workforce. That is inaccurate, in fact reality is the opposite.

PA: Absolutely! I have a friend who is a senior French executive (C suite) long detached in the USA in a fully owned subsidiary company of a major international French company. When he decided to return to France he discovered that all his mentors had gone into “pre-retirement”. So those senior executives retired at a time when their expertise had fully matured! Their US equivalent had 8 years of maximum productivity, leadership and mentorship to contribute. My friend then discovered he had nothing to return to….

I think to call that self-destructive behavior “socialist” is too nice a euphemism. It’s more like vampirism: suck the blood until the victim collapses. Epic failures are multiplying in France and much of the rest of Europe. Some are totally self-inflicted, like the ban on gas fracking in France: French ecologists believe gas is OK, as long as it comes from Putin, Qatar, or Wyoming… Ironically, but as a direct consequence of these nonsensical policies, France is more and more controlled by the… hyper rich… thanks to the stupidification they generate…

***

AS FRANCE GOES, SO DOES THE REST 

Some will say: oh, but the retired French just want to party. However, it’s not that simple: France was the core of Western civilization, over a millennium, creating in the process Italy (freed from the Lombards, 8C, and Islamists, 11C), Spain (north freed from Islamists circa 800 CE), Germany (christianized, civilized and unified by Frankish conquest, 400s to 800 CE), England (conquered and re-romanized, 1066 CE), the Netherlands (80 year war against Spain in the Netherlands, part of the 200 year war between France and Spain, which Spain finally lost). 

France is also the geographical core, the crossroads, in more ways than one. 

As France goes, so does the rest (with the notable exception of the US, child of Britain and France, with its own teenage personality…. 

Actually Britain has been going through a similar process of deindustrialization, no better than France (better GDP behavior in the UK was correlated to more input from Russian oligarchs and their ilk… the result of which was the Brexit insanity ). Italy has been even worse.

Right now, the French population is clueless. It has been clueless before in similar sitation of grave danger.

In 1939, courageously, the French government declared war to Hitler who was allied to Francoist Spain, fascist Italy, Imperial Japan and the genocidal Stalin… among others. However, thereafter, France sort of relaxed: the mood, deep down inside was grim, but superficially all about dancing and the good life. It was called the “Drole de Guerre” (Fynny War). 

Well, come Spring, the gory Norwegian campaign started, with victory but severe Franco-British losses to the invading Nazis. Then came the catastrophe of May 1940, when the french army was sent on a foo’s errant, while the Nazi army fueled by Stalin cut it from behind. 

Let it not be the same!

Patrice Ayme 

***

[1] For more background see WSJ: The Party Is Ending for French Retirees
All advanced economies face demographic strains, but France’s stand out; now President Macron wants to raise the legal retirement age to 64.

***

[2] Pétain  was a complicated figure, and he had a hopeless task. Pétain had to navigate among the fascists (Pétain told Franco not to collaborate with Hitler to the point of letting Hitler’s army through Spain…). After Allied landings in November 1942 in North Africa, Pétain secretly ordered Admiral Darlan, then in Algeria, to merge the French forces in Africa with those of the Allies. But, at the same time, he published official messages protesting the landing.

Pétain’s double-dealing was probably necessary. But Mitterand embraced only one side of the double-dealing, the fascist side (although, like many fascists he proclaimed later it ain’t what it looked like… enough French believed him to elect hi president.)  

The inventor of retirement at sixty, Mitterand, on the right (of course!) receiving from Marshall Pétain, the fascist-in-chief, the highest medal of the Vichy junta. From Travail, Famille, Patrie to Chomage, Famine, Party.

No Science, No Existence: Why Roman Tech And Science Was Parroted and Imported Too Much

Roman Republican ARMY equipment was PURCHASED in Celtic lands (swords, helmets, etc.). Talk about depending upon the enemy… When fighting allies of Carthage in Spain during the first Punic War (264-241 BCE), legions met, and then adopted the gladius Hispaniensis, the “Spanish sword”.  

Then in time for Second Punic War, the Roman gladius was made with the finest-quality steel then available in western Europe, the ferrum Noricum, from the Alpine kingdom of Noricum (roughly modern Austria).  The Roman conquest of Cisalpine Gaul in the period 220-180 BC exposed legionaries to the Celtic lorica hamata, or mail coat. It replaced the bronze cuirass they wore previously.

“Imperial Gallic” helmets were made of fine steel, forged in one piece. They were the products of Celtic craftsmen in Gaul. Featuring a pair of distinctive embossed eyebrows reinforcements in different metals on the forehead region, they were carefully made and elaborately decorated. “Imperial Italic” helmets  were weaker, not made of steel. They lacked the eyebrows and were roughly made, with chisel metal work appearing, by less-skilled copycats in Italy and elsewhere in the Empire.

The Celts had better metallurgy… and this would keep on being true all the way until Frankish steel confronted the three Muslim massive invasions of 721 CE (Toulouse) to 748 CE (Narbonne). To pursue the Gallic tradition, the “100 years war” with the Anglo-Norman-Angevin monarchy finished badly for the English when two engineers, the Bureau brothers, invented field guns.. No doubt another metallurgical exploit. 

Notice also that Spain had also been taken over by the Celts. So the Spanish glavius, which became the main weapon of the Roman legions, was also a Celtic weapon.

The Romans were excellent engineers. And they invented at least one remarkable product: Roman concrete. It mixed in volcanic material from south of Rome. Modern scientists have been trying to reproduce it, as it solidifies at low temperatures and produces much less CO2 than 20 C cement. To this day, the largest non metallically reinforced concrete building in the world is the Parthenon in Rome. 

Pantheon, Rome: Still the largest non reinforced concrete building in the world, 19 centuries later…

However, in other mental matters of the highest standing, the Romans were superb at DUPLICATING the technologies and ways of others, and making technological improvements: they copied admirably Carthage military ship tech. 

But mostly the Romans copied others’ tech (it’s no accident that the Gregian fire, as its name indicates, was a Greek invention). Copying worked well, until the Romans terminated the Greek city-states socio-economy and freedom, thus creativity and motivation (Second and First Century BCE). Then the Romans found themselves unable to copy anybody but themselves. Monkeys without masters to inspire them, soon to the jungle returned. Seriously: there is no Roman science (Alexandria was a Greek city). 

This came back to bite them: Barbarians caught up in military technology. There was a general military tech stagnation: actually even the Germans got caught up in tech by the Mongols. The Huns invaded the Germans (in what is now Ukraine, Russia), because they had slightly better composite bows… with arrows which could penetrate Roman armor. Yet, eight centuries later, when the Huns were back, after costly victories in Poland and Hungary, top Mongol generals remembered what had happened to their ancestors in France (a succession of defeats, the first one inside Aurelianium/Orleans, at the hand of Celts and Francks). They thought their weapons would not be good enough… and went back to Mongolia (under the pretext of the Khan’s election; the Golden Horde stayed to occupy Ukraine and Russia…)

So what went wrong with Rome? … Besides allying itself with the Huns (at some point; paradoxically, when Attila, king of the Huns, died, it reduced the pressure on the Germans, and Rome was unable to recover North Africa, seized by the Vandals…) There was something wrong with the Roman notion of what it meant to be noble and intelligent. Simply, Roman standards were not high enough, they were barking up the wrong tree. They barked up the tree of vaingloriousness, instead of the tree of knowledge. .

The Romans were expert rhetoricians. The Romans were long expert sociologists: they ended up with the world’s largest Democratic Republic (and basically the only one, as Hellenistic regimes were mostly authoritarian oligarchies, or oppressed by tyrants as Athens or the island of Rhodes were…)… The Roman Republic lasted five centuries greatly because it had been smartly engineered, with a number of wealth limits… When those failed, so did the Republic. 

What Romans didn’t have was philosophical and scientific ambition. The Bureau brother invented field guns… But that was generations after Buridan in Paris had overthrown Aristotelian physics… Jean Bureau led research efforts into a more potent powder that could fire projectiles at a much greater velocity, without mixing in the field. Innovations in casting created stronger barrels that were less likely to explode… Four centuries later, when the french Republic got attacked by the coalition of plutocracies known as Europe’s monarchies, the Polytechnique School would be created, precisely to improve the world’s best artillery (which defeated the invading Prussians at Valmy in 1792, not far from Paris).

Also the Franks had learned to forge (with force multiplying hydraulic hammers) massive steel, centuries prior. When the enormous Amiens cathedral started to slowly bulge, crushed by its own mass, a massive steel belt was devised to hold it together. The cathedral is still standing….

What was missing with the Romans was to desire the stars. This is also, perhaps why, when Caesar rolled the most ambitious military plan to insure the safety of the Republic (seize Iran, ram through the Caucasus, take Germany from behind)… He got assassinated by traitors who didn’t have the safety of the Republic foremost (although they pretended that this was their main motivation). 

As it turned out, the Parthians attacked Rome a couple of years after the assassination of Caesar, and Antonius, with around a small fraction of the Roman forces that Caesar would have had, was defeated in north-west Iran during the counter-attack, a few years after that. After that, it was pretty much downhill: the war with Iran would go another six centuries… Until those crafty desert Arabs (by opposition to more civilized Arabs, to the north…) won it….

The Republic needs to be defended, but it’s best defended by understanding. And understanding has no limits, no “limes”… This is what the dictators of China have all too often forgotten, as all dictators are wont to… And why China spent most of the last millennium occupied, or managed by foreign invaders, and their descendants…

Roman existence was not intellectual enough. This is why, ultimately the Roman state collapsed… A headless chicken can’t run out of trouble. 

The Franks, empowered by Roman Consular Imperium, were smarter (or at least elected kings and imperators Childeric and his son Consul Clovis were). The Franks first, concentrated on what was wrong with the Roman dominant ideology known as Roman Orthodox Catholicism. It turned out that Christianism was making children stupid, by outlawing secular education. That, in turn, became the greatest military advantage, and in no small measure why the Franks were able to conquer Europe, including the Eastern Europe which had eluded Rome. 

There is such a thing as the culture of innovation. The Romans had it in many ways, including engineering, under the Republic… But excluding science, philosophy and most other highest intellectual pursuits… Once the Principate ruled, innovation, and the debates which precede it, were increasingly focused on ever deeper and better fascism. The last time the People’s Assembly took a decision was in second part of the First Century…

Science is not just about the honor of the human spirit. 

No science no existence…

Patrice Ayme

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2017/09/09/why-the-roman-state-collapsed-contemporary-analogy-quick-version/

Why Didn’t Roman Emperors Reestablish The Republic In Full?

Augustus won the last Civil War. But then he didn’t bring back the Republic in full, but only partially, and not at the top. Why not? Because of a particular web of complex causalities. One doesn’t choose history, history chooses you.

The prominent Roman historian Suetonius (who died around 125 CE) said the following of Augustus on his book De Vita Caesarum:

“He twice thought of restoring the republic; first immediately after the overthrow of Antony, remembering that his rival had often made the charge that it was his fault that it was not restored; and again in the weariness of a lingering illness, when he went so far as to summon the magistrates and the senate to his house, and submit an account of the general condition of the empire. Reflecting, however, that as he himself would not be free from danger if he should retire, so too it would be hazardous to trust the State to the control of more than one, he continued to keep it in his hands; and it is not easy to say whether his intentions or their results were the better. His good intentions he not only expressed from time to time, but put them on record as well in an edict in the following words: “May it be my privilege to establish the State in a firm and secure position, and reap from that act the fruit that I desire; but only if I may be called the author of the best possible government, and bear with me the hope when I die that the foundations which I have laid for the State will remain unshaken.” And he realized his hope by making every effort to prevent any dissatisfaction with the new régime.”

A first problem with internal constitutional reform was that the Roman empire was at war to secure a safety zone around itself after 29 BCE, when Augustus became “Senatus Princeps“. In other words, Augustus augmented (hence his title of Augustus) the empire, pursuing his great uncle and adoptive father’s work. Marius and Sulla had saved Rome from annihilation at the hands of a coalition determined, hell-bound Germanic tribes, not even a century earlier… by the skin of their teeth.

Extent and expansion of the Roman Empire under Augustus; the yellow legend represents the extent of the Empire in 31 BC, the shades of green represent gradually conquered territories under the reign of Augustus, and pink areas on the map represent client states. (High Resolution!)

Basically, if Augustus had given up power, to whom, or what would the power have gone? The Roman oligarchy, its global, international plutocracy, was immensely more influential, because of its wealth and patronage, than the Roman People. Augustus knew it would have gone back to them. This is basically what happened after Sulla.

To reestablish the Republic, Augustus would have had to weaken both the prerogatives of the military and of the plutocracy, simultaneously, and delicately, while restoring the powers of the Roman People… which, after a century of butchery, had become more interested in pax rather than libertas. All the more as Augustus profited from the aura of populism of Caesar. And, considering what had happened to Caesar, a good bodyguard was in order, everybody had to admit. Under Tiberius a new actor came on the scene, a powerful Praetorian guard, strong enough to rule the City of Rome all by itself (as the guard got used to kill and install emperors, or sell the throne, it got dissolved by emperor Septimius Severus, 200 years later…)

Indeed, there was a precedent for the restoration of the Republic: after a horrendous civil war, with more than 100,000 young men killed in combat, Sulla exerted his dictatorship. However, still middle aged, he retired from public life, without any protection, after reestablishing the powers of the Tribunate of the People. Sulla died, from natural causes, soon after getting to enjoy his country estate. He was given a national funeral (although so many had been his victims, in the end most celebrated him after his death!)

***

So what of Augustus? Why didn’t Augustus, such a learned young man, with much philosophical inclination, reestablish the Respublica, as Sulla had done? It was a question of character and convenience, or maybe simply the flow of history, the sum of all histories, just as in Quantum Mechanics (Feynman way). Octavian/Augustus life was incredibly adventurous and bold… But Sulla’s life, which was quite comparable, was even more so. Appian said Sulla renounced power, because, after his astounding adventures, from Africa to Gallia, to Asia, and conducting a civil war in Italy he was sated with power.

Augustus may have thought that to renounce power, and reestablish the Respublica as Sulla had done would just relaunch the civil wars. Also Sulla renounced power, soon after having acquired absolute power. Sulla was middle aged. Augustus instead acquired absolute power when he was in his twenties. By the time Augustus was middle aged, he had been in absolute, not to say outrageous, power, for thirty years: he was used to it.

Another event happened. Once after Sulla became an ordinary citizen without any bodyguard a young man followed him all day, ostensibly bombarding him with insults, and provocations. However the once hyper violent special ops agent, general, imperator and dictator passively received the abuse all day long and then pointed out, “This bully will ensure that no-one else will ever relinquish supreme power.”

Also Octavian/Augustus was immensely shocked by the death of his adoptive father Gaius Caesar. It was not just that he loved and admired Caesar, who was launching his military career, and treated him as a son. After Caesar’s death, Octavian himself had to fight back, not just to save his inheritance, but his life. It’s likely that, if he had done nothing, and had never risen to the occasion, he would have lost his life.

Caesar had tried to pull a trick similar to Sulla… Dictating, but then acting normal (except Sulla didn’t mix both genres: when he ruled, he ruled, when he retired, he retired). Although dictator, Caesar was going about Rome and attending dinner parties as if he were an ordinary citizen. Caesar ostensibly trusted the Senate, entered it all alone, unarmed… And was stabbed in return… After what had happened to Caesar, all could only be understanding of the precautions taken by Augustus. Besides, nobody could seriously disagree, those who had agreed to assassinate Caesar were dead.

Augustus awarded himself with the tribunicia potestas, or tribunician power, which enabled him to: propose laws to the Senate whenever he wanted, veto any laws he wanted, grant amnesty to any citizen accused of crime… There were other tribunes, but because Augustus was Senatus Princeps (First in the Senate), had stuffed the Senate only with obedient Senators, and because Augustus was endowed with the most powerful imperium, other tribunes were of no consequence.

Overall, both the Roman elite and the Roman People were exhausted of the horrendous civil wars which had killed so many. The wars became a memory under Augustus, and economic prosperity came back, as never before, while local elections were held in the quasi confederacy which was the empire.

The fundamental reason for the civil wars had been the rise of a hyper powerful plutocracy. Although Augustus and his fellow triumvirs had killed thousands of their prominent opponents, the plutocratic system was still in place. Only some names had changed and some families had been eradicated. The Republic couldn’t come back, because the plutocracy was still in power.

Moreover, as the Civil Wars developed, because of the military reforms of Caesar’s uncle Marius, men without property to go back to, as in old times, became soldiers. Those soldiers made their careers as followers of their own generals. Their careers was their generals, it was not the farms they didn’t have. Starting with Caesar, the army realized its powers, and developed political acumen. What the army understood is that it had only one interlocutor: the plutocracy.

By the time of Diocletian, an Illyrian native, the army had deprived the Senate of much of its power, and reduced the non-military plutocracy to being its own instrument…

In any case, the empire became a dialogue between plutocrats and the military, and then god was added to the mix, to justify the rule of a “Dominus”, Diocletian’s practice of “Domination”.

Sulla’s restoration of the Republic failed soon after his death, because the Roman plutocracy was the enemy of the Roman Republic and its once all-powerful Plebs. Just re establishing the Republic was not enough. Plutocracy was a cancer. The patient, the Republic, had passed out because of its cancer. Reanimating the patient , without operating on the cancer, could only have an ephemeral effect. So Augustus would have had to reestablish the old Absolute Wealth Limit of the Republic and its “Sumptuary” laws, which prevented the top families to become too powerful, and too vile.

By the time of Augustus, nobody in the elite wanted to see such limits to their power and debauchery to be erected again. Everybody in the elite wanted a good time, et, as French king Louis XV put it:”Après moi, le déluge!” Besides there independent military powers a few hundred miles from Rome and her delicate trading communication networks…

When too few people, their families, descendants, followers, helpers and hanger-ons, in particular if military, have too much power, the only thing which can divest this power from them is foreign invasions. And this is exactly what happened to Rome.

Could it have been different? Those who understood the situation best were a handful of extremely well educated and intelligent courageous aristocrats, most prominent among them the Gracchi and the leader of the “Populares”, Caesar. They understood the need to redistribute wealth, at least to soldiers (they passed wealth redistribution laws; Caesar’s was in 59 BCE, when he was Consul; the Senate never forgave that). The plutocrats (who called themselves the “Optimates”) hated the Populares optimally, assassinating them as well as they could, but not enough (some of the progressive laws survived the assassinations of the reformers).

The Gracchi and Caesar were too isolated from the rest of the elite (although thousands of followers of the Gracchi were assassinated with them). What was missing in the Roman intelligentsia was an understanding of how debilitating the plutocracy would prove to the society in all ways. To achieve that understanding, the Greco-Roman society had to fail first. Now, two thousand years later, we have recovered in all ways… and we should be endowed with that understanding.

Patrice Ayme

***

***

P/S: The causal system which made Augustus act as he did relative to the Republic is an example of a CAUSAL WEB… complete with nonlinear self-acting, exponential loops…

***

P/P/S: Quora, in its latest harassment, informed me (6/20/2020) that they removed a version of the essay above for “plagiarism” (without telling me what was “plagiarized”… just the usual threat that I may be banned). There was no plagiarism, whatsoever, and the main anti-plutocratic drift is clearly mine. But somehow Quora has decided that I better be “banned” (as they threatened me of this for various reasons). All I see is one more entitled monopolistic corporation out of the SF Bay Area with secret black lists…

 

Computation Of Roman Republic Absolute Wealth Limit. Caesar A Revolutionary.

Greed, the power of a few, can’t grow to heavens, all over the solar system, then the galaxy, or we will end with evil so great, we can’t even imagine it.

The Roman Republic had the same problem, and succeeded to limit greed and power for around 5 centuries… This is why it lasted so long, until it was increasing replaced and displaced by the imperial plutocracy known as the Principate. 

By 150 BCE, Roma had a gigantic empire, taking weeks to cross. Plutocracy got out of control, thanks to globalization which, then as now, enabled the wealthiest to escape local laws. 

In -133, the tribune of the plebs Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a very high level military official renounced his (topmost) Patrician status to be elected Tribune of the People. He attempted an agrarian reform in Rome (lex Sempronia) which stipulated that no citizen can personally occupy more than 500 jugeres of the ager publicus (public lands), with a maximum of 1000 (250 hectares) if he had two sons and forbids grazing on the public pasture more than one hundred head of cattle or five hundred of small. The land, taken over by the State from the large landowners (compensated), was to be distributed in inalienable lots of 30 jugeres to the poor citizens. Tibérius hoped to encourage the inactive plebs to return to the land and fight against depopulation of the countryside, and the increasing underclass..

Tiberius passed his law by relying on the tradition (the limitation to 500 jugeres was a return to the agrarian law of Caius Licinius Stolon) and on the liberal fraction of the Senate. The proposal is first supported by the consul P. Mucius Scaevola, the ex-consul Appius Claudius Pulcher, Pontifex Maximus  P. Licinius Crassus, Q. Metellus  and some others. The tribune M. Octavius, who opposes the reform, is deposed of his office unanimously by the comices summoned by Tibérius in violation of the constitution. The agrarian law passed in an aggravated form (no indemnity).

Now think of it. Say one acre is worth 4,000 dollars… 

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/land0818.pdf

The maximum wealth is then 2,000 x 4,000 ~ 10 x 10^6= 10 million dollars.

This gives an idea of the order of magnitude of what Roman Republicans thought was reasonable as wealth limit. Later, under the fascist Principate (the degraded republican oligarchy Augustus set up), individuals worth many billions (of today’s dollars) were many: they would build entire circuses or theaters, organized and financed extravagant, extremely costly “games”…

***

Topmost general, top revolutionary… But too trusting in human nature’s rationality… Iulius Caesar…

Roman censors punished those culprit as what was viewed as extravagant living (and they were busy). When that became not enough, the Roman Republic enacted “sumptuary laws”, limiting extravagant private wealth exhibition: no woman could wear more than half an ounce of gold, for example (Lex Oppia, 213 BCE, passed during the Second Punic War). Lex Orchia, passed three years after the Censorship of Cato the Elder (181 BCE), limited the number of guests at parties, among other things.

SUMTUARIAE LEGES, was the name of various laws passed over the centuries to prevent inordinate expense (sumtus) in banquets, dress, &c. (Gellius, II.24,XX.1). In antiquity, and not just in the Roman Republic, it was considered the duty of government to put a check upon extravagance in the private expenses of persons. The censors, to whom was entrusted the disciplina or cura morum, punished by the nota censoria all persons guilty of luxurious mode of living: a great many instances of this kind are recorded [Censor, p264, a.] 

There were many such laws. An example: Lex Didia, passed 143 B.C.E, extended the Lex Fannia to the whole of Italy, and enacted that not only those who gave entertainments which exceeded in expense what the law had prescribed, but also all who were present at such entertainments, should be liable to the penalties of the law. (Macrob. Sat. III.17.6). But as the love of luxury greatly increased with the immense foreign conquests of the Republic and the luxurious moods of various potentates thereupon infected the Republic, the sumptuary laws went by the way side too.

Nowadays, we could start sumptuary laws by not having We The People subsidize private jets… Or having cruise ships pay tax on fuel, etc. The French put a tax on business and first class air travel…

***

Julius Caesar, Redistributive Revolutionary:

Caesar was elected consul for 59 BC. The most controversial measure Caesar introduced was an agrarian bill to allot plots of land to the landless poor for farming, which clashed with the traditional conservative opposition. In historian Cassius Dio‘s opinion, Caesar tried to appear to promote the interests of the optimates as well as those of the people (POPULARES). Caesar read the draft of the bill to the senate, asked for the opinion of each senator and promised to amend or scrap any clause that had raised objections. 

The optimates were annoyed because the bill, to their embarrassment, could not be criticised. Moreover, passing the law would give Caesar popularity and power. Even though no optimate spoke against it, no one expressed approval. The law would distribute public and private land to all citizens instead of just Pompey’s veterans and would do so without any expense for the city or any loss for the optimates. It would be financed with the proceeds from Pompey’s war booty and the new tributes and taxes in the east Pompey established with his victories in the Third Mithridatic War. 

Private land was to be bought at the price assessed in the tax-lists to ensure fairness. The land commission in charge of the allocations would have twenty members so that it would not be dominated by a clique and so that many men could share the honour. Caesar added that it would be run by the most suitable men, an invitation to the optimates to apply for these posts. He ruled himself out of the commission to avoid suggestions that he proposed the measure out of self-interest and said that he was happy with being just the proposer of the law. 

The senators kept delaying the vote. Cato advocated the status quo. Caesar came to the point of having him dragged out of the senate house and arrested. Many senators followed suit and left. Caesar adjourned the session and decided that since the senate was not willing to pass a preliminary decree Caesar would get the plebeian council to vote. He did not convene the senate for the rest of his consulship and proposed motions directly to the plebeian council. 

Appian wrote that the law provided for distribution of public land that was leased to generate public revenues in Campania, especially around Capua, to citizens who had at least three children, and that this included 20,000 men. When many senators opposed the bill, Caesar pretended to be indignant and rushed out of the senate. Appian noted that Caesar did not convene it again for the rest of the year. Instead, he harangued the people and proposed his bills to the plebeian council. Suetonius also mentioned the 20,000 citizens with three children. He also wrote that the allocations concerned land in the plain of Stella that had been made public in by-gone days, and other public lands in Campania that had not been allotted but were under lease. Plutarch, who had a pro-aristocratic slant, thought that this law was not becoming of a consul, but for a most radical plebeian tribune. 

Land distribution, which was anathema to conservative aristocrats, was usually proposed by the plebeian tribunes who were often described by Roman writers (who were usually wealthy aristocrats) as base and vile. It was opposed by ‘men of the better sort’ (aristocrats) and this gave Caesar an excuse to rush to the plebeian council, claiming that he was driven to it by the obduracy of the senate. It was only the most arrogant plebeian tribunes who courted the favour of the multitude and now Caesar did this to support his consular power “in a disgraceful and humiliating manner”.

***

The Gracchi were assassinated. By the wealthiest. Because of the land redistribution law. So was Caesar, leader of the POPULARES… Caesar was in a league of his own. He was not just a fantastic general and a dictator, or, as some have erroneous said, the first “emperor” (there had been many “imperators” before). Caesar was also a genuine revolutionary, just what Rome needed. Like the Gracchi, he took shortcuts (they all may have had to). Their biggest mistake was to have been assassinated.

A few months ago, I was reading a new misinforming book by a famous historian from one of the wealthiest universities (most of the book was good, but that made the misinformation within that much more lethal). The professor pontificated that there was not a shred of revolution in Caesar’s bones. But, actually, the Lex Iulia, Caesar’s agrarian reform, passed… 15 years later, the plutocrats killed Caesar…

The absurd, counterfactual position of this US university professor teaches us that, to this day, the quarrel of the Populares with the plutocrats is ongoing. His wealthy sponsors (through his wealthy university) instilled in that historian, a spirit of dismissal of Caesar, where it could really hurt plutocracy….

Now Elizabeth Warren 2% wealth tax above 50 million dollars is far from the ferocity of the Roman Republic laws against wealth, power, and luxury. But one has to start somewhere…

Patrice Ayme

“Democrats”, “Conscience of A Liberal” & Obamacare Want You To Die ASAP

Scorsese and the New York Times are pondering “Bob Dylan and the Myth of Boomer Idealism“, concluding that “We know now that the real story wasn’t the people at the protests and the concerts; it was all the people who weren’t“.

While Bush Senior was busy killing Columbians whom he accused of cocaine, the likes of Obama were getting ready for the US presidency, by snorting it.

I used to call Obamacare, Obamascare (although I was for insuring pre-existing conditions, of course, as everyone else). Obamacare was written by Plutos from the health care industry, anxious to augment their profit base. Accordingly, Obamacare also known as “ACA” has proven an unfathomable disaster: since 2015, life expectancy in the USA is going down (while the health industry’s profits have augmented). So what are those who were fanatically for Obamacare going to do?

Faced with Obamacare life shrinking, fanatical Obama careerists can do like Paul Krugman, the self-described “conscience of a liberal”, and claim that life extension is a terrible thing. (Or then do like the Democratic Congress, which, last week voted to get rid of the “Cadillac Tax” part of Obamacare). Paint life extension as something by the wealthy, for the wealthy. So, by dying younger, implies the self-described “conscience of a liberal” we are fighting wealth.

Oops! Obamacare lied, but graphs don’t. Most dying while profits for the few towered ever more: this is the American way… That all-American cocaine snorting boy, Obama the Great, made it so, and people will be forever grateful to have been f*cked so deep by the Great…

Coherent with Obamacare apparent effect on longevity, Paul Krugman proposes actually to ban ““life extension” research”. Before my take on it, here is some of what Paul says, supposedly writing from the future, a diarrhea of subrealistic delirium:

 …people generally get worse as they grow older, because they become more like themselves… Even in the early 21st century, a growing number of people realized that America was becoming an oligarchy, with a hugely disproportionate share of income, wealth and power held by a small number of people…

But while the dynasties of the past often endured for a very long time, the dynasts themselves didn’t. Sooner or later, like everyone else, they grew old and died.

Nowadays, not so much.

It was no secret, back in the ’teens, that some tech billionaires, including Thiel and Larry Ellison, were donating large sums to “life extension” research. After all, these men weren’t just immensely rich, they were accustomed to the belief that there was a technological fix for every problem. So why not a fix for this whole get-older-and-die thing?

What few people seem to have thought about seriously was what would happen if the research actually panned out.

It would be one thing if life-extension technology were relatively cheap and could be made widely available. Even that would have created huge problems… most of us prefer the portmanteau “evergarchs,” for oligarchs who seemingly go on forever. But Morgan’s vision of a society utterly corrupted by near-immortal privilege turned out to be all too accurate.

Indeed, until recently it looked as if the political dominance of the evergarchs would extend indefinitely into the future. After all, the wealthy have always had vast influence, and we’re talking about people who were generally power hungry to start with — that’s how they got where they are — and they’ve had an unnaturally long time to build connections and buy influence.

But nothing is forever, even in an era of life extension. Public rage against the evergarchs has been building for decades, and it may now have reached boiling point.

So what should be done? Some are proposing that we simply try to diminish the evergarchs’ influence with steep taxes on huge fortunes, which is a good idea in any case. But there were real concerns about tax evasion even when oligarchs were merely mortal; imagine how good people can get at hiding their assets when they can spend decades, even generations, building their tax shelters.

No, life extension for a privileged few is, by its nature, a socially destructive technology, and the time has come to ban it. Take the evergarchs off their treatments, so that they start aging like everyone else, and don’t let anyone else get started…

***

Life extension, care, is the best, oligarchy, the ugliest, confusing them, the worst: 

Confusing life extension and plutocracy: a new disease, an advanced case of Diversion Derangement Syndrome. In DDS, issues of much less importance are focused on, with strong passions (such as oligarchs living forever!)… allowing to smear notions of high value (life extension). (A famous case of DDS is TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome…) However, life extension is pretty much the fundamental concept of medical progress. Thus, associating life extension and plutocracy, is associating the best of humanity, care, with the worst humanity is afflicted by, oligarchy and plutocracy. 

At the end of the reign of Obama the Great, for the first time in the USA during peacetime, lifespan started to decrease, several years in a row. Shall we congratulate ourselves, that lifespan is decreasing and celebrate that as our latest method to fight against plutocracy? This is what the great liberal Paul Krugman wants us to feel like.

The fact is, life extension is the most human activity. We are fighting death, day in, day out. Without strenuous efforts to keep infants, or very old or very sick or injured people alive, we would kill the best inner core of what makes us human. 

Life extension may also be a few cheap tricks away. Supplements such as NAD may improve mitochondrial breathing, and thus give a better good life extension (so it does on the animal species tested so far). That can be bought for as little as one dollar a day. In general, so far, all advances in medicine have become quickly available to most people. Actually, populations are exploding in parts of Africa, where women have eight children each, precisely because the children are not dying anymore as they used to. 

Viewing life extension as a sinister plot means that the great work of Obama the Great, decreasing lifespan is viewed as an anti-plutocratic positive. Personally, I feel that spite for life is the wrong mood to foster among the masses. 

If one wants to prevent plutocracy, it’s extremely simple: just limit wealth absolutely, as the Roman Republic did.

And then let’s not do the other thing the Roman State did, which killed it; first kill philosophy (but for collaborating stoicism), and then, and it was the next logical step, having killed curiosity, kill science and technology.

Patrice Ayme

***

***

My brother in law died from the Obamacare famous “out of network” trick. First he was kicked out of the hospital after 5 stents and 5 days… Then, as he got another heart attack shortly thereafter, the hospital he drove to refused to take care of him. He died in a parking lot, trying to reach another hospital at 5 am…

GENERALIZED PLUTOCRACY Rules, Or Why We Are Heading Towards Mass Extinction

WHAT IS PLUTOCRACY? Literally, EVIL RULE! The Notion of “Plutocracy” Is Thus Crucially More General Than Is Usually Suspected. The Present Political System Is Intrinsically Evil… Something Rather Foolhardy In The Thermonuclear Age!

This essay is not just about plutocracy in the way it is usually understood. Because therein is, once again, pointed out the fact that “representative democracy” is a contradiction in adjecto, and what we really have, when we talk of “representative democracy”, is plutocracy light, and calling it “democracy” is joining insult, irrealism, to injury.

Plutocracy light, at the local level, this so-called “representative democracy” sustains and supports what we have, de facto, potentially the greatest plutocracy, ever, in the history of the known universe. The maximal rule of hell, ever. As a result, the history of history may turn out rather short.

Verily, “Representative Democracy” is neither “democracy”, nor “representative”.

Plutocracy is instigated by the monopoly of power, made possible by the domination of an evil mentality (“Pluto”). A trivial example is Hitler, Stalin, Augustus, Ceausescus and hordes of other dictators, who, having monopolized outrageous power, could only keep alive with ever more mass murder and mass atrocities. 

Indeed, this is true even at the individual psychopathic level: the crazed neurology of the low lives serial murderers craves for ultimate power, that of destroying others, and even oneself. Fatally, the same exclusive craving for that same subjugation characterizes most of those who aspire to the highest positions of power [1]. 

Plutocracy is the monopoly of power. All the more dangerous, as power becomes ever more powerful, to the point it makes minds as it wishes, logically, cognitively, emotionally. Thus, in an age where monopolies grow, and when monopolies grow on minds, so does plutocracy. 

Plutocracy lives from the assent of the upper classes, which, as in the fascist Roman empire, are part of it, profits from it, and are occasional victims of it (see Putin’s Russia for the clearest examples). 

A US cartoon from 1911 (when the US still had a class struggle consciousness). The Pyramidal Organization of Plutocratic Society. This not human, because humans are not ants, bees, or termites. Humans are not meant to live at the bottom of the pyramid.

It is illustrative that, as the French Republic just took tax action against the tech monopolies, a bipartisan effort in US Senate screamed “injustice”. This bipartisan defense of monopolistic plutocracy shows how much sold to plutocracy and monopolies, US politicians are that they find French politicians unfair to US plutocracy, and want to legislate [2].

The full concept that the word “plutocracy” depicts, is not just what is usually assumed. That assumption, per se, is misinformation. According to a partial, and actually minor, interpretation of the concept “Pluto” as the god of wealth, plutocracy would just be the rule of wealth. 

For example when the Macedonian fascist Uber dictator Antipater, senior successor of Alexander took control of Athens, he decided that only wealthy individuals could vote… On the surface, that looks like just this: only the wealthy took part in government. But, actually, it meant that those not part of the oligarchy, such as non-collaborating philosophers, such as Demosthenes, were executed at will. So the government of a few wealthy ones was extremely bloody. And so it always will be, as human beings are not made to be treated as things.

*** 

Thus, in full, PLUTOCRACY IS THE RULE OF HELL: 

This is clearly the case etymologically and historically speaking: Pluto is the god of hell, not just wealth. Plutocracy, rule of hell, corrupts everything, not just finance and the economy, but also psychology, morality, an even rationality, cognition, and motivation. How one wants to move, what moves someone, is different under plutocracy.

Conventional wisdom constrains the concept of plutocracy to only be the rule of the wealthy. Then plutocracy is only viewed as “excessive wealth disorder”. Viewed this way, plutocracy has mostly economic impacts. Big money has been able to imprint the multitudes with big lies, capturing the judiciary, misinforming about global warming, immigration, fossil fuels, the ecological crisis, even nuclear energy (which is not a friend of fossil fuels). 

Plutocracy is much more than a type of economy, or politics, it’s a power obsessed sadomasochist mental derangement so friendly to oligarchy that only perfusion with the Darkest Side makes it sustainable. 

So naturally, plutocracy verses in the cruellest activities, such as torturing youth. As the second Roman emperor, Tiberius, adoptive son of Augustus, did on the island of Capri. Or as billionaire Epstein, a personal friend of Clinton or Trump, did on the island of Manhattan [3]. Media (such as the New York Times) don’t understand why Epstein left so many proofs of his illegal tortures of children… but absolute power is made to be flaunted absolutely. Only then does it subjugates.

Real wisdom, in full cognizance of the mental panorama at our disposal: Plutocracy is much more than the rule of wealth, it’s the rule of hell. 

***

A bit of revealing etymology: 

How the word plutocracy, in Greek “ploutokratia” arose is tells much. Initially Πλούτος (Ploutos) means wealth in Greek. Πλουτων or Πλουτωνας (Plouton, Ploutonas) was means “he who gets rich/wealthy” and was another name for Hades the God of Underworld.  “Hades”, the god of the underworld, acquired such a terrible reputation, that no decent Greek would dare to utter His original name anymore… However the wealthy were obviously felt to be hellish, so the word “Pluto” came to be used… to designate Hades. It all made sense in more ways than one: wealth was associated with precious stones and other underground riches. 

Associating hell, wealth, power, the underground and obscurity was not new: Angra Manyu, the Babylonian god of obscurity, the Dark Side, had been fighting Ahura Mazda, the god of Enlightenment, for millennia, right in the middle of Mesopotamia. (The equivalent Jewish concept is Satan, and it was passed to Christianism and Islamism through the Bible.)

A characteristic of Pluto is that he can make Himself invisible. So, naturally, its contemporary admirers denies the Dark Side, Pluton, is of any importance; nothing to see here, move on: the free market is an intrinsic good.

Jesus declared the wealthy had as high a probability to end in paradise as a camel through the eye of a pin. Summing up, all the mythologies of the Dark Side agree that wealth and hell are intimately tied together. 

Philosopher scientist Hypatia teaching a class. The philosopher was destroyed by the divinization of the spirit of Roman plutocracy grandly called “Catholic Orthodoxy” (Common Opinion Universalism), Christianism, then in full bloom. Christianism brought us extremely close to the total destruction of civilization in Western Eurasia.

How does the tie up between wealth and hell work? 

Money is part and parcel of power: it enables us to get other people or institutions to do what we want them to do. Thus huge money is huge power onto others. Reciprocally, huge power is the equivalent of extreme wealth. 

However, having huge power onto others is a violation of fundamental violation of the conditions enabling normal, evolutionarily anticipated human behavior: human beings didn’t evolve to do whatever other human beings wanted them to do. In other words, huge power on other human beings is intrinsically evil… by god given, that is evolutionary given standards.

However, there is a side of human nature which, given huge power of some individuals on humanity, makes matters much worse: human beings come equipped with a Dark Side… more or less present, according to individuals. 

In other words, although human beings come equipped by standards of good and evil, there is a meta system controlling simple goodness and badness, where all values become inverted. Good becomes bad, bad becomes good. This is how the divine species, Homo, prevents Homo to ruin it all for us, by massacring enough Homo, as needed. In other words, not only is demonicity strong in human beings, but, like Pluto, it is buried and knows how to make itself invisible. Moreover, it appears preferably as a bait and switch. 

***

The present political system selects for psychopaths, perfect operators for plutocracy:

All variable natural phenomena, are situated on a Bell Curve (exp – (x^2)). For the examples at hand, plutocracy and demonicity, this means that the evl streak is more or less represented in human beings. However the Will to Power itself acts as a filter: it will be stronger in the most evil ones. 

For example, many individuals become billionaires because they want power onto other individuals more than normal people do: the Dark Side, the Will to Power Onto People, is stronger in them (think of the characters at the head of the Galactic empire in Star wars; human history is full of them; actually in Star Wars the head of the Senate conspire to become emperor… just as Octavian really did when he became Augustus…). 

Enabling, and a fortiori encouraging, the occurrence of immense wealth, and immense power thus fosters the Dark Side, Pluto, Hell, in part by encouraging preferentially psychopaths to reach the greatest power. It is only natural: exerting maximum power onto others is intrinsically evil, psychopaths fit the job description best. 

The psychopathic leeches who lead us (to Armageddon and Mass Extinction) enjoy their power on us, including that of playing with the law, throwing basic decency to the winds. Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Epstein… seriously why has nobody noticed this? because they didn’t want to notice we are under plutocracy, the power (kratia) of evil (Pluto)… The pundits who massage and brainwash our minds are paid for us NOT to notice, or even suspect this. Like they didn’t notice that Obama landed in a big private jumbo jet in another tax free private island next to Pedophile Island… Clinton was accompanied with up to ten secret service agents on some of the Lolita express flights….

The characters so encouraged are often going to be among the silliest of men, most full of themselves: Trump is an example… but, once again, history is full of them: most monarchs had that streak of self-obsessed babyhood (it’s not just Caligula and Nero, it’s also Constantine, etc.)

That sort of organization percolates down society. The Nazis called it the “Guide Principle”… but it’s not just the Third Reich which is organized that way. Lack of Direct Democracy is thus pervasive in the entire socioeconomic organization… which depends upon a hierarchy of little chiefs all the way down. One problem with that is that the collapse of the biosphere is everybody’s business. Another is that Artificial Intelligence and the concentration of Instruments of Mind Manipulation threatens to turn all into slaves, without them even suspecting it…  .

***

Remedies: Limit Absolutely Wealth, Power, Privileges…

Accordingly to the preceding fundamental observations, the Roman Republic limited both power and wealth strictly, and at a very low level. This is probably why it lasted 5 centuries in unadulterated form. 

However, globalization, from Roman military conquests enabled the wealthiest Romans to go overseas and escape Roman law, stricto sensu, as this extended only over Italy (not Spain, nor Africa, nor Gallia). Thus the limits on wealth and power were circumvented. Roman  plutocrats thus created, became so powerful, they were able to make it so that anti-wealth laws were not applied anymore. Then their power increased to the point they could employ private armies and kill progressives (such as the Gracchi). 

Plutocracy is an effect of the power chain reaction which enables a small elite to enslave the majority, thanks to the intrinsic leverage that civilization provides. Thus, it’s a danger in all and any civilization, at all and any time. 

Once again, plutocracy is, first of all, a psychological, one should say spiritual, phenomenon. Plutocracy corrupts minds, often by example. As most people see what the higher ups get away with, they themselves engage in something similar, to the much smaller case that is their adobe.

 

Hence, after Roman emperors came to be seen as living gods, and then representants on Earth of the one and only god, most people tried to emulate them in Christian fanaticism… and go further (see the death of Hypatia by torture, at the hands of a Christian mob).

Civilizations die from plutocracy. Any civilization is a balance between the necessities of the multitude (law, order, etc.), and the human ethology, which evolved for small human groups. Plutocrats can only enslave the multitude by persuading it, brain washing it, conditioning it, to not think and feel right. Thus, an effect of plutocracy is that the entire civilization it affects is impacted in all ways and methods which require reason, and a correct sentiment.  

A civilization with metastatic plutocracy is thus unable to handle any crisis: it becomes as stupid as possible. So plutocracy is characterized with dementia; all sorts of bad decisions are taken. It is even worse than that, because the will to stupidity is deliberate under plutocracy: the way plutocrats see it, bad decisions distract people, and are actually good, if they subjugate, hurt and weaken We The People.

In particular, a plutocracy will have a bad economy, as plutocratic Rome got, in the Third Century CE. A further example is the Late Roman empire, which became such a plutocracy that it was too stupid to solve around 200 different crises which were allowed to fester… and then the Roman empire was fatally weakened by a resource crisis and pressed by the Germans themselves pushed by the Huns… Another example is the Maya, struck by a very severe drought, who took the wrong decisions, making the ecological crisis worse, bringing total war.

The usual concept of plutocracy needs to be generalized, to see it for what it is: plutocracy is a rotting of minds. Only rot makes it possible, only ever more rot makes it sustainable.

Society could be organized differently, say as real Demos-Kratia, real People Power, with Referenda all over the place. Thus, one further question is why do people tolerate to be living like worker ants, insignificant termites? 

In other words, why nihilism, sadomasochistic society, etc? Because human beings are made for these behaviors. The Darkest Side is always how ecological overstretch was handled. Lebensraum for real. A result is that human beings are, potentially, to some extent, Machiavellian in the worst possible ways [4]. Moreover, a plutocratic mood, as presently pervades society, encourages the darkest of the Dark Side.

And this is why we have “Launch On Warning” (LOW)… and nobody of significance seems to care, let alone even seems to know about it…. 

Patrice Ayme

***

***

[1] … With the quasi-exception of those who really purely crave to implement some progressive political Revolution. Solon, the Gracchi, Marius, Caesar (!), Emperor Julian, Queen Bathilde, Charlemagne (!), William the Conqueror (!), Henry V, Henri III & IV, Louis XVI (!) are such possible counter-examples… The point is not that they didn’t destroy people (perhaps more than one million Celts in the case of Caesar… however he didn’t start it…), but that those means were imposed on them, and the ends they aimed for were laudable (and partly achieved; Caesar, as head of the Populares, had identified Rome’s most major problems: Germans and Parthans).

***

[2] US President Trump ordered an investigation into France’s tax on tech monopolies – a move that could result in retaliatory tariffs… with full approval of the so-called “Democrats”.

The tax will target around thirty (30) firms such as Google and Facebook with a 3% levy on revenue made inside France. The tax is expected to raise about €400m ($450m) in 2019. Any digital company with revenue of more than €750m – of which at least €25m is generated in France – would be subject to the tax.

“[Mr Trump] has directed that we investigate the effects of this digital services tax law and determine whether it is discriminatory or unreasonable and burdens or restricts United States commerce,“

The inquiry was welcomed by Republican Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senator Ron Wyden, the senior Democrat on the panel.

Senior Democrat? Senior People-Power person is all for tech monopolies which pay no taxes?

“The digital services tax that France and other European countries are pursuing is clearly protectionist and unfairly targets American companies in a way that will cost US jobs and harm American workers,” they said in a joint statement. Protectionist? US companies, including the GAFA are crawling all over France, where they have achieved monopolistic powers, tax exempt. So much for “Democrats” being against plutocracy. 

The digital tax is a risk for France, for the country at the origin of the Human Rights Charter, is now isolated. Talk of a Europe-wide tech tax, faltered thanks in part to opposition from countries such as Ireland, Luxembourg or even the Netherlands, which benefit from being able to attract tech firms to set up quasi tax-free bases through which to launder their world profits. This is reminiscent of the plutocratization of the Roman empire.

***

[3] Wealthy plutocrat Epstein connected to the greatest,was condemned for among other activities, soliciting sex from 12 year old girls: 

in full knowledge of what he was doing, Epstein was on first-name terms with two presidents, Bill Clinton (“Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist,” Clinton once said) and Donald Trump (“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Mr Trump said almost two decades ago, in a wink to pedophilia). 

Since Epstein was charged in 2006 both commanders in chief distanced themselves from Mr Epstein. However, shortly before that, Bill Clinton had taken at least 26 trips on the “Lolita Express”, Epstein’s private jet. Top democrats (Cyrus Vance, etc.) intervened on behalf of Epstein to reduce his status of sex offender. It’s not just Tiberius who tortured people on his island of Capri… Much of the present highest level society is entangled with sex trafficking… in no small reason because individuals such as the obscure and mighty Maxwells are pulling the strings. (As PM Shamir of Israel said when Maxwell senior was buried, he couldn’t reveal all what he did; Maxwell owned media and made a killing from huge margins on scientific publishing… One more way in which the university system reveals itself to be plutocratic as public funds are used to finance astronomical private wealth…) 

The world in general, and the US in particular, should reconsider the enormous powers it institutionally gives to psychopaths… 

***

[4] As Balances of Good and Evil, Human beings are intrinsically Machiavellian. So Machiavellian, they play themselves, and only by some of their distant acts, sometimes, their true nature is revealed… to themselves 

Many love some of the advantages plutocracy provides, or could provide them. So they pose as if they were pure, fanatical opponents of the system, but actually are there to sabotage opposition, by exhibiting crazed fanaticism.

Politics is a war, not just of classes, but of ideas. Not all ideas of Trump are bad and against the times. French socialist PM Michel Rocard said: France can’t welcome all of the world’s miserable people. 

Enabling mass immigration to the West is not the panacea, the global solution for billions of people living in less fortunate circumstances. One can’t just say: it’s criminal to reject those who have no legal right to live here. 

Similarly, in a country which doesn’t provide free healthcare, why should unlawful immigrants, and the whole planet be told, in advance, that they would be treated better than US-born citizens? 

Such silly declamations will insure a Trump victory. Way worse: they are will foster ever more plutocracy. The way to insure progress is by focusing on a few points, such as Medicare For All, or a Public Option… A wealth tax, a transaction tax, breaking monopolies, etc. while leaving alone outrageous racist accusations and the like.

Posers who are keen to destroy any chance of serious progress, know they will be rewarded by the powers that be. That’s why they pose. Treachery and backstabbing, to be sustainable, has to be well rewarded…

***

Yes, published on July 14, 2019… 230 years after seizing the Bastille, symbol of executive privilege… 😉

 

 

 

Plutocracy Is A Cancer, And It Strikes Minds, Hearts, Cognition. Tax It To Death

Tax Plutos To Death, Don’t Listen When They Say They Love Men, Remember What Happened With The Roman Republic:

Plutocracy is a cancer affecting civilization. It turns up in civilization after civilization. Sometimes it turns metastatic and it kills its host, the clearest example being the Roman State. But there are many other detailed examples, for example the fall of Mayan civilization, which was a combined ecological-plutocratic-military crisis, just as befell Rome [1], or China.

Plutocrats love to be called “philanthropists”… lovers of man… As if they were the only ones to love people. The concept is as old as the fascist, authoritarian, cruel, extremely unfair and demented Roman empire: the wealthiest people in Rome used to organize games to entertain most of the population (the Plebs) and distribute to them money… just as one distribute crumbs to pigeons, to make them friendly.   

What “loving men” means, in practice, is that the power of the wealthiest is augmented further by patronage. “Patron”, from the Latin patronus “defender, protector, former master (of a freed slave); advocate,” from pater (genitive patris) “father” was a central concept under the fascist Roman empire: a hierarchy of wealthy masters own all the power of society… 

How Brexit Started: with the Brexit of the British Pound, Thanks To A few Men. Brexit, to this day, is there just to profit a few men from the world Plutocratic (read Satanic, if it helps) conspiracy, holder of all media, most public opinion, the most prestigious universities, among other things…

An example: Bill Gates personal wealth is above 110 billion dollars, but that is augmented further by the power of his Foundation, a “charity” which he controls, and which is worth more than 60 billion dollars… Without counting all what said Foundation spent in the past, now converted into the influential networks of power and gratitude it built over the years. 

Indeed, Money is power. But power is also influence, and reciprocally. Don Corleone, in the Godfather, exerts his power through influence. Influence is what made senior beings powerful over the millennia, even as their forces wane from age. Gates used to own Monsanto, which pushed GMO compatible with Roundup (glyphosate) which, besides being carcinogenic, impoverishes the soil irreversibly. The Gates Foundation, another instrument of power influenced states to invest in that same  GMO-Roundup combo.

The Roman Republic used to limit both wealth and power drastically, with all sorts of interdictions. Consuls exerted full power for just a month, alternating with their colleague for a year, and couldn’t be re-elected for years. Their powers didn’t overlap with the “sacrosanct” tribunes of the People, who proposed legislation. And so on.

Above a limit, today’s equivalent of $50 million, the tax on a family was 100%. So immense wealth was unlawful in the Republic. Most people were taxed only 1%.

The Republic degenerated and collapsed because globalization caused by Roman conquests enabled the wealthiest Romans to escape Roman law by going overseas. 

If we want democracy to perdure, let alone grow, it’s time to do the same.

I suggested, years ago that the Roman Wealth Limit was around 50 million dollars in today’s currency. Now Elizabeth Warren has suggested to tax it, with a special wealth tax (which is very small in percentage). The idea has now been embraced by a number of Plutos… Including Soros. Soros, all by himself, is the grandfather of Brexit: Soros pushed the British currency, the pound out of the “European snake” (of currencies). This is symbolic of how much damage too much power in a single man can bring to bear. Now Sorors whines PM Orban of Hungary will not allow him to have his own university system there… And all the EU leadership whines with Soros, because those Euro doggies are all anxious to please their master. 

Having individuals with too much wealth, or, more generally, too much power, is an impediment to the progress of civilization, because:

1. Plutocracy amounts to having eight billion people to be led by eight brains (to schematize a bit; in the case of fascist imperial Rome, it was just one brain, thus resulting in crushing imbecility). So the brain index, instead of being one, is one billionth, namely one divided by a billion. Just watch Bill Gates claiming to be a “friend of man” as he pushed for GMO friendly to soil murdering glyphosate, to understand how large the imbecility. These eight idiots are right now deciding how to prevent the collapse of the biosphere. I made one of their subordinate (and friend, of course) cry and enrage twice in the last month… Why? Because they are weak minds, anxious to be always flattered…
2. The preceding constitutional idiocy is conducive to the following behavior: all citizens waiting for The One and Only Man to think for them, and tell them what to do, what to think, what to expect, what to feel, what to care about. As happened during the fascist, militaristic, idiotic and collapsing Roman empire (in contradistinction with the preceding Republic which had made it possible). This leads to mental collapse, curiosity, nobility, basic human decency and initiative collapsing with it. We saw it when Rome fell, when China fell, when Baghdad fell (to the Mongols and their Christian allies… and as the Mongol commander himself said at the time!)

3. 

   Admiring such smiling good looking, good nature thieves, is corrupting for souls and hearts. It corrupts minds, telling them thievery brings good things. The crime itself is great, transforming it into something to look for, worse. But that’s the whole idea and emotion the corrupt Pluto media are pushing for. The (pictured) Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s home was renovated with £2.4m of taxpayer-funded costs, royal accounts show. Frogmore Cottage in Windsor was turned into a single property for Prince Harry and Meghan, from five separate homes.
   The Queen’s Sovereign Grant from the Treasury was £82m in 2018-19, with £33m set aside for maintenance, including major work on Buckingham Palace.
   The Sovereign Grant is funded by profits from the Crown Estate.

Stopping the collapse will require brains, and that means absolute, direct democracy, as when tiny Athens stopped, mostly all by herself, the gigantic Achaemenid Persian corrupt imperial plutocratic juggernaut (at the Battles of Marathon, Salamis, in Egypt, etc.). A

Absolute, direct democracy means lowering the powers and wealth of individuals. Rome did it for five centuries, early on, let’s learn and duplicate. Now a number of Plutos have asked their taxes to be brought up. See in the New York Times, June 25, 2019:

I’m in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes.
Wealthy people like me should commit to reducing the ravages of economic inequality.

By Eli Broad (Mr. Broad is a philanthropist and former entrepreneur).

Well, it’s not just a matter of reducing. Plutocracy has to be annihilated, under all its forms. And many of them there are…

Patrice Ayme

***

***

[1] The Roman rise coincided with a climatic maximum: war temperatures, but more rain over the Mediterranean (200 BCE to 400 CE). Rome was rising militarily, due to its semi-direct democracy… But the fascist empire certainly collapsed in part because of cooling. In 406 CE, something never seen before happened: the Rhine froze so much the Germans could gallop across. That took the Franks, in charge of imperial defense of Gaul, by surprise. Although the Franks had defeated the Germans many times prior, that time, they let them through: Vandals, Alans, Burgonds, Goths, galloped across. That was the invasion fatal for the Occidental empire. All those Germans (and the Scythians) were trying to escape the Huns, who, themselves, had come all the way from Mongolia, and were perhaps pushed by adverse climate change…

 

The Mayas confronted an, multi centennial epic drought. Instead of reacting appropriately (as Japan and the European states did around 1300 CE), political panic and military solutions imposed themselves, and the two great power system saw a third power rise, and the ecology and human capacity to adapt to it, collapsed. 

Emptying The Core Through Unemployment: the Plutocratic Way

There is no democracy, without an economy flush with employment. A society which doesn’t employ people disempowers them: they can’t even go on strike. Thus those who don’t want democracy, can destroy the economy first. That’s sneaky, and most efficient,  

This is exactly what has been happening in the last three decades, as employment and economy has been sent increasingly from the wealthiest countries to developing countries… This brought decreasing employment in those wealthiest countries. Thus it disempowered workers while empowering the investors, owners and managers who employed dirt poor workers overseas unprotected by social laws… basically slaves. The more the owners and the international elite were empowered, by this displacement of the economy overseas, the more they manipulated the ruling ideology which they controlled through the media they own and the universities they finance.

This is not the graph I was looking for, which was world trade versus inequality. However, that’s a good proxy, as patents tended to be deployed in places like China… as the economy was displaced there!

…Actually the US Supreme Court, starting in 2006, and boosted by Obama after 2008, gutted the US Patent System: it’s always the same idea: favor the giant monopolies (patents are micro, temporally limited monopolies…) and overseas production… Disempower normal US citizens…

We saw it all before, with the Roman Republic. It disappeared when its elite escaped the absolute wealth limit taxation by going overseas, and sending the economy there, while controlling the political process. This voided Rome, and later Italy, of employment, thus power. They remembered that, early in the Roman Republic, to protest the elite, the Plebs had gone on strike… forcing more equalitarian laws.

Beijing just accused Washington of “economic terrorism”. China can self develop now. Time to bring jobs back to the USA, the EU. That will bring back not just employment, but democracy.

Patrice Ayme

***

***

This was a comment to the NYT, which was approved so fast, they couldn’t possibly have read it (do I have friends?) Here is the beginning of the article:

“Trade War Starts Changing Manufacturers in Hard-to-Reverse Ways
ControlTek, which makes circuit boards in Vancouver, Wash., has begun shifting supply chains out of China and designing products that don’t require Chinese parts.

The New York Times
By Ben Casselman
May 30, 2019

PORTLAND, Ore. — When the Trump administration first imposed tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese imports in July, Andy LaFrazia figured it was just another curveball for his company.

“Everyone was saying: ‘Oh, it’s a negotiating tactic. It won’t last long,’” Mr. LaFrazia recalled.

But nearly a year later, the trade war shows no sign of cooling off. So ControlTek, the electronics manufacturer that Mr. LaFrazia runs near Portland, is taking steps to protect itself, a strategic shift that has been repeated in boardrooms and executive suites around the world in recent weeks.

ControlTek is rewriting contract language to make it easier to pass the cost of tariffs on to its customers. It is shifting supply chains out of China where possible, and redesigning products to avoid Chinese components where it isn’t. And as a tiny player in an enormous global industry, it is discovering that there is only so much it can do.

“We’re very much at the end of the whip getting thrown around,” Mr. LaFrazia said.

Despite dire warnings from economists, Mr. Trump’s trade war has so far done little to derail the decade-long recovery from the Great Recession. Economic growth has remained strong, and the unemployment rate last month hit a 50-year low.”

 

 

Heil Zuck! Heil Bill! Your Pet President Will Do As You Say!

There is this shocking video just out of Barack Obama. Now Obama is supposedly an ex-civil servant. Somebody who is supposed to serve the public. Instead, Obama spent his presidency consulting plutocrats to find out what they recommended to do (as the plutocrats control the media, they conditioned the general public to opine that, if Obama was getting his advice from plutocrats, he was getting advice from the world’s wisest people… Nevermind that many of these plutocrats became wealthy thanks to governmental plots, some of them more than a century old). Obama is still best friend with plutocrats, but Obama wants everybody to know that the advice was not all one way. It’s also in the best interest of plutocrats to pretend that Obama was not just a puppet, but capable of opinion on his own.

Bill Gates (III) founded Microsoft, thanks to his mom being on the Board of IBM (which gave college dropout Bill a golden contract). Now one of the world’s wealthiest men, showered by Obama with honors and responsibilities, Bill Gates wants the world to know that he calls Obama for advice… On nothing (how to treat their mysterious, capricious, superficial spouses happy). So get that: Gates wants us all to know he calls Obama to get advice on the most stupid stuff imaginable.

In truth, of course, it’s the reverse, and the exact opposite which most significantly happened: Bill gave important advice to so-called Barack on important stuff. Just as PM Thatcher was made by the Murdoch family (yeah, they came from Perth, Australia, small world isn’t it? There, they controlled media…).

I was touched when Melinda asked me to introduce her at her #MomentofLift book tour stop in Seattle tonight. I wanted to do right by her but wasn’t sure what the best approach was — so I turned to someone with some expertise in this area… pic.twitter.com/AYKp6MPC6E

— Bill Gates (@BillGates) May 10, 2019

And when Barrack needed more friends, to get advice from, it was not Bill, it was Elon, or it was Warren, or it was Jeff, or Marc… How many times did Marc go to the Elysee Palace? Can he count that far? Probably not, you see, marc has plenty of PhDs, but he studied just a few months in College… And then, of course there are all those plutocrats smart enough to stay out of the lights.
They breathed together (conspirare), or at least, phoned together… we have the proof now and they are so arrogant that they think that, by flaunting their relationship, the joke is on us….

Billionaires deserve the “Medal of Freedom” (that’s the child ribbon and star offered by Obama)Obama) to those who own the world, precisely because only them have freedom, and we have to watch while they destroy the world, claiming to save it, as the mighty maniacs enjoy to add insult to injury and annihilation…

The instantaneously wealthy banker who leads France has sent his goons to Marc’s Facebook in the San Francisco Bay to figure out together how to mold the minds through the Internet. I am not making this up, it was published just yesterday:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-to-give-special-access-to-french-regulators-1542049089?mod=article_inline

Hey, Barrack was going there every two weeks, why not macron, then. Aren’t they all friends? A Palo Alto friend of mine was suffering below the presidential helicopters every two weeks… If Marc the Ignorant doesn’t like what you publish, Marc the Ignorant will delete you:

Facebook Deletion Center, Berlin, Germany. There Botticelli gets condemned and executed by Ignorant and Unappreciative hypocritical robot pigeons paid crumbs by Facebook, with Macron, Obama, Trump, NSA, CIA, and company watching over. Of course, they don’t really care about censoring Middle Ages paintings, they are just doing this, according to the Red Herring technique, which the pigeons invented without even noticing. Heil Zuck!

I have been already deleted many times, in many Internet outlets… More than one thousand and one (1,001) times… For just thinking better and more progressive. Many deletions were outright mysterious. The top was when The Guardian in London (long secretly financed by the friend of Barack, Bill) banned me, after telling me I was Jihadist… As Hitler said, paraphrasing, the bigger the lie, the more it works.

George Orwell’ 1984 has arrived. What is cleared is that all the characters mentioned above have hijacked the Republic.

What to do? Simple, the Roman Republic did it (until the Roman plutocrats hijacked it). Limit wealth absolutely, limit political power absolutely. Presidents, plutocrats and elected representatives have way way way too much power. They could burn the entire planet in way less time than it took to burn Notre Dame. This Davos crowd is the number one culprit of the mass extinction out there. When the planet gets out of control, all too soon, they should be sent to the guillotine of public condemnation.

Obama, thanks to his control of media, has augmented enormously the CO2 emissions of the USA, relative to what they should have been, by deliberately augmenting fracking in the USA. Yes, most US citizens enjoy the ride (and so do I: my state of the art car is large by Euro standards). Obama’s friends told him to just call fracking a “bridge fuel”. So US citizens adore their funny Obama, and their fuel. More fuel than ever. More fuel than any other country.

How long will the laughter last?

Not too long.

When the sea starts to go up an inch per year, question will come. But then of course, a distracting nuclear war could come in handy…. Right now Obama’s and Gates’ kindergarten jokes and spirit are enough to keep the naive out there in check. But when that’s not enough anymore, watch out…

Patrice Ayme

 

Plane Smart, Not Plain Stupid: The Evil Ones Hurt Equality, The Environment With Private Jets… And They Love It!

I have mentioned this many times over the years, here and there. Now The Economist tied it all up together in a neat little essay, which uses many of the concepts I used over the years, such as “plutocrats”, “subsidies for the rich”, “Isle of Man” (a European tax haven, Pluto friends of mine use it…), So I will quote, in extenso, this magazine to which I subscribe.

The Economist: “PLANE STUPID. Private jets receive ludicrous tax breaks that hurt the environment. Scrap them

Print edition | Leaders, Mar 7th 2019

The blue jeans and t-shirts of the global elite are no more comfortable than those worn by the middle class. They drink the same coffee, watch the same films and carry the same smartphones. But a gulf yawns between the rich and the rest when they fly. Ordinary folk squeeze agonizingly and sleeplessly into cheap seats. The elite stretch out flat and slumber. And the truly wealthy avoid the hassles and indignities of crowded airports entirely, by taking private jets. This would be no one else’s business but for two things. First, private jets are horribly polluting. Second, they are often—and outrageously—subsidised.”

Plutocracy rules the world, all the security we need: girls and jets for Plutos!

Let me notice in passing as I have done in the past: the truly wealthy do not pay, overall, taxes. Instead, it’s the other way around.  The truly wealthy are subsidized by the governments they are entangled with. The hold individuals have on the state is very clear in Russia, for all to see… because Russian economic plutocracy was created, ex nihilo from the Soviet plutocracy in the 1990s, a pretty blatant event; Western plutocracy is a much more convoluted affair, and the hiding is much better.

For example descendants of French aristocrats are very powerful and networked in France, but, for obvious reasons, they have become experts at modelling the minds of the simple folks in such a way that those simpletons in their yellow jackets can’t detect how much they serve the descendants of their old masters, through a state carefully tweaked, just so…

The Economist pursues what few media have dared to even approach, the obvious subservience of so-called democracies to global plutocracy. Because global it is: EU plutocrats serve wealthy masters, not just in Europe, but globally. The case of private jets makes that clear. The Economist:

“Private aviation was hit hard by the global financial crisis, when both companies and individuals sought to pare expenses. But now private jets are booming again. This is partly because new booking services and shared-ownership schemes are cutting the cost of going private and luring busy executives away from first- and business-class seats on scheduled flights (see article). But the boom is also a result of tax breaks, which are even more generous than those lavished on ordinary airlines. In Europe firms and individuals can avoid paying value-added tax on imported private jets by routing purchases through the Isle of Man. This scheme has cut tax bills by £790m ($1bn) for imports of at least 200 aircraft into the European Union since 2011. America’s rules are loopier still. Donald Trump’s tax reform allowed individuals and companies to write off 100% of the cost of a new or used private jet against their federal taxes. For some plutocrats this has wiped out an entire year’s tax bill. For others, it has made buying a jet extraordinarily cheap.”

And this is The Economist pointing at the outrageous subsidizing of plutocracy by statocracy. So why is it that European Union legislative process gave a billion Euro rebate to IMPORTERS of private jets? Surely, it’s not to improve European industry: those jets are imported, not made in the EU. Nor does this subsidy benefit any class of Europeans, except plutocrats. This is a particularly clear case where legislators are caught giving hot blow jets to their beloved plutos, source of their comfy future.

The Economist then dares to develop a particular example of how the full mechanism of plutocracy amplifies the Dark Side… the fact that plutocracy is not about just about abuse of power, wealth, subsidies for the rich, or jets, but about becoming more evil. Pluto_Kratia is really Evil-Power. Using private jets render individuals evil, and The Economist has the numbers to prove it:

“The case for flying on a private jet is that it can save time for someone, such as a chief executive, whose time is extraordinarily valuable. Hence companies can offset the cost of these flights against their corporate-tax bills. In some countries the use of a private jet is a tax-free perk for executives. But a growing volume of research suggests that flying the boss privately is often a waste of money for shareholders. One analysis, by icf, a consultancy, found that the jets are often used to fly to places where corporate titans are more likely to have holiday homes than business meetings, such as fancy ski resorts. A study by David Yermack of nyu Stern School of Business found that returns to investors in firms that allow such flights are 4% lower per year than in other companies. Users of such planes are also more likely to commit fraud: a careless attitude to other people’s money sometimes shades into outright criminality, it seems.“

In general user of evil mechanisms are also more likely to become ever more evil. This is not just a case of “qui vole un oeuf vole un boeuf” (who steals an egg steals an ox). This is the case of who abuses a child, and gets away with it, is enticed to destroy the planet. Nothing to do with fear, quite the opposite. It’s the (all too human) will to destruction unleashed.

The more they get away with it, the more they do it, because destruction is what they are longing for. An example is Brexit. Plutocrats of all sorts paid (illegally) to prop the Brexit campaign, using everything from private jets to hypnotists and paid Labour officials. And murder was no problem, for them Plutos, naturally:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/08/arron-banks-ignored-deal-to-stop-pro-brexit-ads-after-jo-cox-death

Actually Member of Parliament Jo Cox didn’t just “die”. She was murdered by a right wing extremist unemployed loser, driven mad by anti-European propaganda, one week before the Brexit vote. He targeted Cox, long a volunteer at Oxfam, a “passionate defender” of the European Union and immigration, because he saw her as “one of ‘the collaborators’ [and] a traitor” to white people.^[1]

But back to We The People subsidized private planes, now that we have evoked People subsidized plutocratic media, and subsidized plutocratic abuse and arrogance (I am repeating myself, Plutos being all over opinion is formed). Says The Economist:

“The environmental effects of corporate jets are dire. A flight from London to Paris on a half-full jet produces ten times as much in carbon emissions per passenger as a scheduled flight, according to Terrapass, a carbon-offset firm. New supersonic business jets under development will make that a lot worse. On one estimate, their emissions will be five to seven times higher than for today’s models. Amazingly, these emissions are largely unregulated. Aviation is not covered by the Paris agreement to limit climate change, and most private jets are excluded from corsia, a carbon-offsetting scheme involving most airlines. All in all, private planes could produce 4% of American emissions by 2050 compared with 0.9% today.”

All air travel is bad for the environment. Business class is worse than economy class, because it burns more jet fuel per passenger. Private jets are more damaging by an order of magnitude. The tax breaks for cooking the planet in this way cannot be justified. They should all be scrapped. Carbon emissions should be taxed, not subsidised by the sleepless masses in steerage and the even less fortunate souls who never fly.“

[This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Plane stupid”]

Thus spoke The Economist! it’s nearly as if reading yours truly. Or when even the pro-plutocratic press has had enough…. of plutocracy.

All air travel is bad for the environment? Yes. And it’s going to get worse: within two decades, air travel, from growth of air traffic is supposed to become 25% of total CO2 emissions (a technological solution would be to go hydrogen, or hybrid… but either requires much more work.)

Private jet service offers many advantages to plutocrats: it’s much faster, there is no security, one can be driven to the door of the aircraft (thus a hijacked private jet can thus be flown into the White House… and then pundits and politicians will declare nobody could imagine that…). However, the more society offers to plutocrats, the more they want: greed is the specifically human oldest instinct. Greed means our ancestors were not satisfied living in the trees, they needed to conquer the savannah. Good. However, too much greed kills, it always has. And now it’s the planet which is getting killed.

The situation with private jets subsidies demonstrate how grotesquely bought our politicians are.  It’s not because Obama and his friend the Plutos fly private, that’s a good thing. There are plenty of private jets in Nigeria, a desperately poor country. It’s related: extreme poverty is caused by plutocracy: it’s the lake plutocrats love to reflect on. Clip their wings.

Hurting humanity is plain smart, and what doctor Planet Earth ordered. At least plain smart for the winners. However, that has to be done in moderation, and the alternative to mass destruction is to navigate out of excess before the former becomes necessary, or unavoidable. This way winners and losers can share destiny… in those times of unfolding mass extinction.

Patrice Ayme