L. M. Lloyd

So, a while back I talked about how the very nature of the role of government had changed, and we no longer found ourselves in a democracy, but a corporate feudal state, ruled completely by a fiscal aristocracy. I didn't get much response from that, and no one seems to really believe it has really gotten to that point, so I guess it is time to rouse some rabble. Luckily, all I ever have to do is turn on the news, and I am provided with plenty of grist for the mill. I could go on about the $23 trillion we are giving the Wall Street crowd, but honestly I think people have become so desensitized to massive corporate welfare that numbers like that just cause them to shrug. Their health and well-being though, that is something people still seem to care at least a little about, which is why the latest story so jumps out at me.

Now, everyone knows that Swine Flu vaccine is in short supply, but what most people don't know is that the reason your grandmother, child or half the state of California can't get any, is because the big firms on Wall Street are more important than you. Here's how it works. While the government is having a hard time getting enough of the vaccine that they paid to develop for the normal citizenry, and the Center for Disease Control is advising that only those at risk should be vaccinated, Goldman Sachs was given 200 doses, Morgan Stanley received 1,000 doses and Citigroup has received 1,200 doses, before the vaccine had even made it to hospitals! What is even more incredible, is that these doses were given to them by their state government. Of course, everyone has become so inured at this point to the idea that in modern society that you are either rich or you are garbage that I doubt even this will shock some. However, stop and think about this for a moment. Your tax dollars went to fund the development of a vaccine, which by the way is actually owned by a private company, even though you paid for it to be researched, and then when they finally start producing it, they can't keep up with demand. Since they can't keep up with demand, the federal government gives an allotment to each state, with instructions that it only be given to at risk patients. When those doses get to New York, the state government decides that the richest financial institutions are more 'at risk' than the patients of hospitals, pediatricians, and geriatrics specialist, all on your dime.

I'm not going to pretend I can even guess at what rationale or deals were worked up to make all of this happen. What I will talk about though, is what it says about our society. As I also mentioned about some time ago, the concept of American Exceptionalism, has been perverted into an odd kind of social Darwinism, where the people of this country have not only accepted, but come to embrace the idea that those who are financially successful are somehow more entitled to everything life has to offer, than those who have "failed to achieve." Clearly, this idea has extended to the point now where the infant or grandmother of one of these 'failures' is not as valuable to society as the infant or grandmother of one of the exceptional fiscal aristocrats, and so when resources are scarce, the relative of the 'loser' can be sacrificed in favor of the relative of the 'winner.' That, as somewhat odious as I find it, is nothing new to American society. There is something that is a new twist here though. You see, previously the assumption has been that the 'winners' were in that position because they had done something of societal value, and as a result got paid handsomely. However today, the 'winners' we are talking about are people getting paid by your tax money, for having completely crashed the economy. Citibank, which pays it's managers an average of $18 million a year, does so with $90 billion of your taxpayer money. Goldman Sachs is paying it's employees an average of almost $800,000 a year, mainly thanks to all the money they made of the $10 billion you loaned them in taxes. Morgan Stanley, who got another $10 billion of of your money, turned around and set aside 72% of there revenue for bonuses, which comes out to almost $4 billion.

And that brings us back to the Swine Flu vaccine. Your tax money paid for it to be developed, your tax money bought it, your tax money paid for it to be distributed, but you can't get it, because the families of people getting billions of dollars of your tax money are more important than you. How can that be, when everything in this entire system ultimately comes back to your tax money and hard work? Simple, because that is the life of a serf. The people of America don't seem to get it quite yet, but you are no longer really people, you are a resource, a pack animal. Sure, the rancher might make all his money off his livestock, but it would be insane to worry about the livestock more than his own family or his own health. You are the livestock in this scenario. Chattel is the old term for it, slave is a more recent term, second class citizen would be the modern parlance, and I suppose it's Orwellian business-speak incarnation would be a human resource. You are a unit of commerce owned by your government, which is monetized in the form of taxes and debt, for the good of the fiscal aristocracy. As long as you continue to prove to be a useful resource, and there is profit potential in you, then you are fed, housed, and allowed to enjoy a passable standard of living. However, if you cease to be useful (like you become unemployable for whatever reason), or you become inconvenient (like your city and all your property are destroyed in a hurricane), or resources are scarce(like only so much vaccine to go around), then you are disposable, because there are hundreds of millions of other in this country, and we are always making more.

Of course I think what I find especially interesting about all this, is how reluctant people are to accept it. Sadly, this is the entire history of our world. These odd notions of the equality of man, freedom, personal choice and a classless society are just flukeish blips on the time-line of mankind. The overwhelming arc of history is one of servitude to masters and institutional ownership of the masses. The sad thing this time around though, is no one had to be slaughtered or subjugated. No military had to be put in the streets. There didn't need to be a revolution or seizure of power. No gods had to be created, or fear put into the populace. All you had to do was tell people how great it was to be better than they are, and then promise them that if they did what you told them to, maybe someday they would have a million-to-one shot at getting their own supercar and private jet. In the meantime, they were happy to sell their freedom for an iPod, cup of Starbuck, and a leased BMW, until they got "their break into the big time" which would probably never come. It is the most amazing form of slavery ever seen by man, because people lined up for it willingly, and were quite happy to work extra hard when you told them their check was in the mail. It is only now, after a couple of decades of slaving away, that a few are starting to figure out that check might not ever be coming to them.