Modern-Day Parallels to 20th Century Business Plots
We’ve lost interest in democracy and have become enamored with the glamour of technocrats and kleptocrats abetting the rise of modern-day fascism. If you really would like to understand how far right the United States has shifted then look no further than building schools and roads which are now largely considered “socialism” in America. Soon democracy may be considered “socialism” in America. In this day and age, a radical idea by the great Dwight D. Eisenhower to build a government highway system would be considered a socialist. “A high-speed rail system? More government control? European socialism? Who needs that?”
Traditionally billionaires gamed our democratic institutions to their benefit, but today’s newly minted class wants to replace them. This is a sizeable shift in tradition. The modern billionaire class doesn’t know when to stop indulging in its need for more power. The metaverse is a future simulated universe where emperor god Mark Zuckerberg dreams of dictating the rules and laws. A colony on Mars is Elon’s upcoming holy grail of building his own civilization. Even celebrities such as Kanye West are intimate with voter suppression. And the crypto titans want to dissolve regulated banking and restore the shadow-banking mechanisms from before the Great Financial Crises. These will be places, both virtual or physical, where the little guy will have no legitimate mandate nor say.
Because individuals have a strong sense that they will one day join them, there is a widespread psychosis that stardom should be left untaxed, unregulated, and unchecked. Never before have there been tools as powerful as those available in the current era for continuously pounding and sedating the populace with a constant drum of adoration.
Who are you kidding if you don’t believe some of these billionaires aspire to be more than a symbol of god? Take a dive into Mark Zuckerberg’s twisted obsession with Roman Emperor Augustus. Many billionaires are a clear and present danger to our democratic institutions. The plot by the modern-day orange emperor without clothes, on Jan 6. 2021, to overthrow our institutions can be echoed by similar attempts by fascist goldbug bankers of the past against FDR.
It all ties back to the money. It used to be gold and now cryptocurrency is home to libertarian and technocratic fascists. The fallacy of “sound money” can be traced back to Mussolini’s Battle for the Lira when Italian businessmen pressed him to implement such said policy. These ideological beliefs in the golden goose called “sound money” have remained cemented with fascist sympathizers ever since.
Congress must act quickly to ban corporations from creating their own currencies. Congress must issue sanctions against “black-box” stablecoin cartels and cut them off from SWIFT. Like the jurisdiction over interstate highway networks, congressional and institutional control of the money supply is a constitutional mandate to keep corporate power in check.
The diplomatic world was rocky, unstable when companies were allowed to issue their own legal tender, levy taxes, declare informal war, and even become nation-states. Mass human atrocities were orchestrated by corporate neo-colonialism nation-states. A nation-state corporation such as a British or Dutch East India Company or the Belgian Congo should never be allowed to rise again, not even in virtual cyberspace. After all conflict in modern cyberspace can be as potent as the kinetic version, and we don’t want to have corporations participating in them. If corporations need financing, they can already issue stock and debt instruments. They definitely don’t need the power to create money.
As workers’ rights movements became more powerful in the early 20th-century corporate entities felt their interests were threatened. Modern-day businessmen plots and the subversion of our democratic institutions parallel the early rise of fascism from a century ago. These include Mark Zuckerberg’s recent attempted takeover of the money via the Libra Project and a rising threat from certain stablecoin issuers who dare to try to defy congressional hearings. Even spookier is a project such as World Coin which aims to scan retinas from billions of people.
A defining question for the 21st century is whether liberal democracy can once again defeat technocratic fascism hopefully this time sooner rather than later. An increasing appeal for strongmen leaves a worrying prospect as we try to figure out our digital identity politics.
