It's not about competing political ideologies, it's not about the fallout of shutting down, it's not even about a couple million dying from a pandemic, it's all about the money.
The great social lubricator of the enormous machine of modern civilization is losing fluidity because it's not flowing downward as fast as is necessary. It's gummed up at the top and the gov can't give away our share to the investor class fast enough. Without movement, it loses viscosity and causes the financial system to grind to a halt. And somewhere from about 2021 to 2022, it will start to become obvious how true this is.
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, recently said, "It is my fervent hope that we use this crisis as a catalyst to rebuild an economy that creates and sustains opportunity for dramatically more people, especially those who have been left behind for too long. The last few months have laid bare the reality that, even before the pandemic hit, far too many people were living on the edge."
"An inclusive economy - in which there is widespread access to opportunity - is a stronger, more resilient economy," he added. "This crisis must serve as a wake-up call and a call to action for business and government to think, act and invest for the common good and confront the structural obstacles that have inhibited inclusive economic growth for years."
Did humanity use up all our natural resources, not quite yet. Did we screw up the environment from modernization and overpopulation? That's part of it. Or did we get so collectively lazy, mindless, and greedy that we didn't plan on what an economic model based on continuous growth would ultimately do? It's all three. Money is power and the majority of people don't have it. We live in a system owned, leveraged, and controlled by a minority of wealthy elite and they have no intention of sharing its bounty.
What's wrong with a capitalistic system that rewards incentive, hard work, and the desire to excel, absolutely nothing. But what happens when that system has no upper or lower limits and can only reward the wealthiest if it continues to expand? The impoverished increase in numbers and the system collapses from a top-heavy imbalance. The rich use the masses in every unethical way to gain and increase their fortunes. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, already the world's richest man, has personal wealth somewhere in the region of $145 billion. He may well be on his way to becoming the first trillionaire. Why?
The movie Matrix had a great scene where an Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) tells Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure." Agent Smith was an extension program of conscious A.I. telling Morpheus the human this. A film concept from 1999, 21 years ago, and we could already identify its inevitability.
Actually, the first known theory of this situation came from Thomas Robert Malthus. Malthus believed there were two types of "checks" that in all times and places kept population growth in line with the growth of the food supply, "preventive checks", and "positive checks", which lead to premature death such as disease, starvation, and war, resulting in what is called a Malthusian catastrophe. The catastrophe would return the population to a lower, more sustainable, level at a tremendous cost of life and living standards.
The point is, I believe we've attained this scenario, which is leading to a Malthusian catastrophe.
Worldometer - real time world statistics
The great social lubricator of the enormous machine of modern civilization is losing fluidity because it's not flowing downward as fast as is necessary. It's gummed up at the top and the gov can't give away our share to the investor class fast enough. Without movement, it loses viscosity and causes the financial system to grind to a halt. And somewhere from about 2021 to 2022, it will start to become obvious how true this is.
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, recently said, "It is my fervent hope that we use this crisis as a catalyst to rebuild an economy that creates and sustains opportunity for dramatically more people, especially those who have been left behind for too long. The last few months have laid bare the reality that, even before the pandemic hit, far too many people were living on the edge."
"An inclusive economy - in which there is widespread access to opportunity - is a stronger, more resilient economy," he added. "This crisis must serve as a wake-up call and a call to action for business and government to think, act and invest for the common good and confront the structural obstacles that have inhibited inclusive economic growth for years."
Did humanity use up all our natural resources, not quite yet. Did we screw up the environment from modernization and overpopulation? That's part of it. Or did we get so collectively lazy, mindless, and greedy that we didn't plan on what an economic model based on continuous growth would ultimately do? It's all three. Money is power and the majority of people don't have it. We live in a system owned, leveraged, and controlled by a minority of wealthy elite and they have no intention of sharing its bounty.
What's wrong with a capitalistic system that rewards incentive, hard work, and the desire to excel, absolutely nothing. But what happens when that system has no upper or lower limits and can only reward the wealthiest if it continues to expand? The impoverished increase in numbers and the system collapses from a top-heavy imbalance. The rich use the masses in every unethical way to gain and increase their fortunes. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, already the world's richest man, has personal wealth somewhere in the region of $145 billion. He may well be on his way to becoming the first trillionaire. Why?
The movie Matrix had a great scene where an Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) tells Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure." Agent Smith was an extension program of conscious A.I. telling Morpheus the human this. A film concept from 1999, 21 years ago, and we could already identify its inevitability.
Actually, the first known theory of this situation came from Thomas Robert Malthus. Malthus believed there were two types of "checks" that in all times and places kept population growth in line with the growth of the food supply, "preventive checks", and "positive checks", which lead to premature death such as disease, starvation, and war, resulting in what is called a Malthusian catastrophe. The catastrophe would return the population to a lower, more sustainable, level at a tremendous cost of life and living standards.
The point is, I believe we've attained this scenario, which is leading to a Malthusian catastrophe.
Worldometer - real time world statistics