I absolutely believe that m6usk is worth every single penny. He's bringing that value to his company. If he was not there ,they would not be making the tremendous amount of money of which he's only getting a small amount.
Your theory of where wealth comes from is the same one I had when I was young. But that's not how wealth actually works.
The main problem is that Satan wants people to believe in easy problems. Chants. Slogans.
Raising minimum wage would work.... If you also took away company's pricing power, and reduced margins from all time highs, so that the difference between what the minimum wage employee made, the CEO, and the stock holder, would collapse to the normal amount. This isn't an easy solution, and takes pain, and would have to be legislated carefully.
The same with immigration and repatriation. Even just, "They have to go back!" is not an easy solution. It would take pain, and has to be done carefully, or you risk cartel influence, ripping apart families, and getting international countries involved. Ruining the economy. You'd crash the housing market, and up inflation on food. Do you subsidize agriculture to help them with wages or margins? How about the people paying at the store? We need intelligent legislatures. Not ones that care only about pocketbooks, or what Satan whispers in their ears.
But, our Lord Jesus Christ will win, whether the problems are solved or not. We offer up our pains and miseries, knowing they're for God's glory. And we pray for those that hate us, or do evil in ignorance, meaning to do good, but are simply dumb.
Taking away companies' pricing power? Reducing their margins? All this by legislation? That's verging on Communist control of the economy right there! What makes you think any legislature can do this competently?
No. A far more productive and less tyrannical course, it seems to me, is to eliminate crony capitalism. Stop coddling large corporations, stop giving them sweetheart tax breaks and regulative carve-outs. Eliminate the thicket of useless, make-work regulations, and streamline the remaining ones so that they're consistent with each other and so you don't need legal counsel to understand what's expected of you.
Start ACTUALLY supporting small businesses instead of just talking about it! Do it where it hurts, in the tax code - which is currently set up to harshly punish people who work for themselves.
Regulate lobbyists. Treat the many ways legislators benefit from them as what they are: Straightforward bribery. Yes, this includes the cushy speaking tours they get after leaving office, too.
The trouble isn't that the government isn't controlling the economy enough. The trouble is that what control it does exercise, it does so in a deeply corrupt way.
Every time a solution to the problem is presented, you have been propagandized to see the solution as communism! rah! or Socialism! rah! by the very people that are controlling you, that have the highest margins in history, the highest wealth gap ever, the largest corporations ever, and would make AT&T blush when we broke them up for being a monopoly. If you want something to break up the big corporations IT MUST, by DEFINITION, be stronger than the CORPORATIONS. That means you have to be comfortable with a strong central government, because your ancestors have been too greedy and weak kneed to deal with the problem before now. Freaking deal with it.
Your definition of tyranny is one where people may violate a businesses 'free will' for the common good. This is literally the definition of what makes a good state. Now, if they abuse that, it would make a republic into an oligarchy. Then yes, it would be oppressive. However, pointing out what would be needed to change the situation is not endorsing giving the people in power the ability to do so - it's saying we need to change the people to virtuous people, then change the system. Assuming that I mean to keep despicable people in power is retarded.
Instead, we changed our monopoly outlook to "if it benefits the consumer" instead of if it actually is a monopoly, or even if it actually is a benefit to society if it is a monopoly.
Also - are you a small business owner? I am.
I can tell you that IN NO WAY is the tax code set up to punish me. It showers me with ability to take deductions. I have to be careful to stay on the right side of the law, and am very harsh on making sure that I do so. I am strict, stricter than needs be, on doing so. I want to make sure that tax man owes me, not the other way, if I get audited. I could literally, at this moment, set up a farm business on top of the two businesses that I have, and have my whole life be a tax deduction.
But, I am telling you, every doctor that works for himself writes off his car. His office. His travel. If they buy a property that can support a few farm animals, they write off all the house and farmland, the tractor, the feed, everything.
The tax is not the issue. Trust me
Laws about diversity, regulatory moats, the lobbyists, etc are a completely different thing. As you say, they're a menace. They're part of why the USSA Empire will fall. And why I think Polities will come.
For further and more detailed thoughts of mine on economics, inflation, and value, here are a couple posts of mine on the topics:
Yes, I do own a small business, as a matter of fact. Not one in which I can claim much in the way of deductions.
If central command of pricing and profits isn't socialism at minimum, then I'm at a loss to know what would be. That's not the result of propaganda, it's the result of definitions of words. How would you define 'socialism' in a way that your proposal wouldn't qualify? Or if you're okay with it being 'socialism', that's fine, please explain why it's going to work this time when it hasn't ever worked before. How is a legislature supposed to be able to make one-law-fits-all for every company in every industry in existence? And if it isn't one-law-fits-all, we're right back to cronyism and lobbying to get the best deal.
That said, I think more robust protections for workers are certainly a good idea. Nor do I have a problem with, say, the Clean Air Act. I'm not saying government regulation is always bad, nor that the market should be completely unfettered.
What I think might have a chance of working out in the long run is new models of corporate governance. Joint stock corporations have been been very successful in many ways, but they definitely incentivize everyone to focus on the shortest-term and to maximize immediate profits. If we can find ways to incentivize better behaviors, I'm all for it. But of course the devil is in the details.
Look, If you increase labor prices, and tell companies that they can't raise prices, then they have to decide where to cut costs. They can try to cut the bottom as long as they can, but really all that does is lose them people that are actually making them money. It's stupid. What they have to do, eventually, is have the CEO's, board, and upper management take a pay cut and cut their margins. It's simple math. A company that decides to do that, and does it early, will out compete it's competition hand over fist because it will have a happy work force that isn't overburdened like the rest. Or if you simply regulate that they can't pay their CEO's and board more than X times their lowest paid worker, and include all compensation such as stock in it. But there has to be some form of addressing the problem, and it has to have teeth to it. It has to raise wages in comparison to the upper class, without increasing the prices of goods, and likely maintaining or reducing margins. That is the truth, and without solving that you will have a revolution sooner or later, no matter what you call the solution.
This is in the same thinking that we were ok with the legislature making laws about CEO compensation, but then they were stupid enough to let through the back door of Stock compensation, haven't done anything about it, haven't taxed it, or anything. It's obvious that it is a form of income, that the can borrow against it and thus get free income, leverage it up, etc. We didn't blink then, but we'd have crying in the street about socialism this and communism that about it now, if we tried.
What you have issues with is an EMPIRE. Empires are extremely inefficient, it's true, and cannot, as a matter of fact, make laws to govern the entire empire without being extremely intelligent about it, and regulating the enforcement or specifics of the laws to the individual Polities of the Empire. I think calling ourselves a single country is insane and ridiculous, and have gone so far as to argue that companies are individual Polities that are laws unto themselves. But that's getting off topic.
For instance - Say that companies are not allowed to pay CEOs beyond a certain amount above the median wage within the area that the company is based, and that the company is limited to operations within a certain region, and include stock compensation and other forms within that pay. This breaks up companies so that we don't have Walmart gobbling up Mom and Pop stores, reduces CEO pay relative to the median wage, doesn't inflict central planning on the company, but only says what their margins will be.
Then you solve the issue of median wage vs upper wage, you open the doors to a flourishing of local business, and you don't have people from coasts working offsite and wrecking Mid-west economies. You do it in a phased in manner, so as not to dislocate the economy all at once, and get the assets sold in an orderly way.
Also, what they can do, is make laws that say that companies cannot make money through slave labor. The Catholic doctrine, and natural law, is that work is to be able to provide for one's family. Any labor that is not able to provide for all the goods of life that are necessary is not Just. It is either a job that should exist or it is one that is unjustly paid - pick one. But there is no job, none, where a man or woman should not be able to pay for everything on one job without a second person working in the family.
In total, if you have issues with our government being able to plan and make laws to do this, there are a few options.
1. Either you individually lack the capacity to properly submit to any just authority that should rightfully rule.
2. You have issues with our Empire being corrupt, and that it lacks legitimate authority, it should be overthrown, and a new government put in its place
3. The current Empire simply needs a new head,
4. It needs a new head, but also needs to delegate more to the local governments
5. The current form of government is bloated and going to fall, whether corrupt or not.
No where did I say that the government fixes all problems. But it does need to be involved in these we're discussing.
What I advocate is not rule by systems
But rule by People.
Virtuous people must be rulers, no matter what form of government you have. There is no laws that are made, no rules that you can have, that will change this. Every single law, every single rule, can be gamed. It can be broken. It can be bypassed.
In fact, the more laws, rules, and bureaucracy you have, the easier it is for the unscrupulous to hide behind the byzantine nature of them. For the common man is unable to see behind the maze, while the lawyers, lawmakers, and lobbyists can. The tax man can. The politician can.
Mrs Wright. Natural law says that we are supposed to be paid based upon the value of our work. The electrician the maintains your ability to use this computer likely gets paid along the median wages - 35-40 /hr. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is paid 1.6 million an hour. Does he do things that are valuable? Maybe; I'd debate whether rockets in space and Teslas are worth child slave labor in Africa, Uighurs in China, the rampant desolation and pollution caused by creation of lithium batteries, etc. But certainly I don't think that he creates value of 1.6 million an hour, especially while sleeping! That means that he is stealing that value from someone else.
So, is it envy to want to stop theft? No, it is Justice.
Can some fall into the Vice of Envy in that pursuit? CERTAINLY!
Do many do so, when they are less informed of the world, and the powers that be put them at each other's throats in a Marxist worldview, with the goals of tearing down society, enacting state controls, and, ultimately, damning souls to hell? Yes!
Does that mean that we should not see the underlying issues, because the Truth is that there would be nothing to Envy if there was no theft in the first place? No, we should pursue Justice
Does that mean that we should be careful in how we do so, because weak souls would see this and fall off the narrow path? YES!
Each side, Republicans and Democrats, uses words very specifically to get the other side to lobotomize their thinking so that they can't think their way out of a mental box. We must, must apply the old terms, in the old definitions, in order to think our way out of this mess. If we don't, the uniparty wins, Satan wins, and we all lose.
Too nitpicky to remember Michael's recall of John's worship in Rev. 22: 9? "Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God."
I absolutely believe that m6usk is worth every single penny. He's bringing that value to his company. If he was not there ,they would not be making the tremendous amount of money of which he's only getting a small amount.
Your theory of where wealth comes from is the same one I had when I was young. But that's not how wealth actually works.
The main problem is that Satan wants people to believe in easy problems. Chants. Slogans.
Raising minimum wage would work.... If you also took away company's pricing power, and reduced margins from all time highs, so that the difference between what the minimum wage employee made, the CEO, and the stock holder, would collapse to the normal amount. This isn't an easy solution, and takes pain, and would have to be legislated carefully.
The same with immigration and repatriation. Even just, "They have to go back!" is not an easy solution. It would take pain, and has to be done carefully, or you risk cartel influence, ripping apart families, and getting international countries involved. Ruining the economy. You'd crash the housing market, and up inflation on food. Do you subsidize agriculture to help them with wages or margins? How about the people paying at the store? We need intelligent legislatures. Not ones that care only about pocketbooks, or what Satan whispers in their ears.
But, our Lord Jesus Christ will win, whether the problems are solved or not. We offer up our pains and miseries, knowing they're for God's glory. And we pray for those that hate us, or do evil in ignorance, meaning to do good, but are simply dumb.
True. There are no easy answers. Wisdom, reason, and patience is required.
Taking away companies' pricing power? Reducing their margins? All this by legislation? That's verging on Communist control of the economy right there! What makes you think any legislature can do this competently?
No. A far more productive and less tyrannical course, it seems to me, is to eliminate crony capitalism. Stop coddling large corporations, stop giving them sweetheart tax breaks and regulative carve-outs. Eliminate the thicket of useless, make-work regulations, and streamline the remaining ones so that they're consistent with each other and so you don't need legal counsel to understand what's expected of you.
Start ACTUALLY supporting small businesses instead of just talking about it! Do it where it hurts, in the tax code - which is currently set up to harshly punish people who work for themselves.
Regulate lobbyists. Treat the many ways legislators benefit from them as what they are: Straightforward bribery. Yes, this includes the cushy speaking tours they get after leaving office, too.
The trouble isn't that the government isn't controlling the economy enough. The trouble is that what control it does exercise, it does so in a deeply corrupt way.
LOL.
Every time a solution to the problem is presented, you have been propagandized to see the solution as communism! rah! or Socialism! rah! by the very people that are controlling you, that have the highest margins in history, the highest wealth gap ever, the largest corporations ever, and would make AT&T blush when we broke them up for being a monopoly. If you want something to break up the big corporations IT MUST, by DEFINITION, be stronger than the CORPORATIONS. That means you have to be comfortable with a strong central government, because your ancestors have been too greedy and weak kneed to deal with the problem before now. Freaking deal with it.
Your definition of tyranny is one where people may violate a businesses 'free will' for the common good. This is literally the definition of what makes a good state. Now, if they abuse that, it would make a republic into an oligarchy. Then yes, it would be oppressive. However, pointing out what would be needed to change the situation is not endorsing giving the people in power the ability to do so - it's saying we need to change the people to virtuous people, then change the system. Assuming that I mean to keep despicable people in power is retarded.
Instead, we changed our monopoly outlook to "if it benefits the consumer" instead of if it actually is a monopoly, or even if it actually is a benefit to society if it is a monopoly.
Also - are you a small business owner? I am.
I can tell you that IN NO WAY is the tax code set up to punish me. It showers me with ability to take deductions. I have to be careful to stay on the right side of the law, and am very harsh on making sure that I do so. I am strict, stricter than needs be, on doing so. I want to make sure that tax man owes me, not the other way, if I get audited. I could literally, at this moment, set up a farm business on top of the two businesses that I have, and have my whole life be a tax deduction.
But, I am telling you, every doctor that works for himself writes off his car. His office. His travel. If they buy a property that can support a few farm animals, they write off all the house and farmland, the tractor, the feed, everything.
The tax is not the issue. Trust me
Laws about diversity, regulatory moats, the lobbyists, etc are a completely different thing. As you say, they're a menace. They're part of why the USSA Empire will fall. And why I think Polities will come.
For further and more detailed thoughts of mine on economics, inflation, and value, here are a couple posts of mine on the topics:
Inflation - https://barbarianscorner.substack.com/p/economists-dont-understand-inflation
On value vs profit - https://barbarianscorner.substack.com/p/rent-seeking-profit-seeking-value
On usury - https://uncouthbarbarian.substack.com/p/heres-the-money-shot
On why Polities are important, and our Empire is crumbling - https://uncouthbarbarian.substack.com/p/the-polis-perspective
On how one could found a Polity in the modern age - https://uncouthbarbarian.substack.com/p/the-foundational-polis
Yes, I do own a small business, as a matter of fact. Not one in which I can claim much in the way of deductions.
If central command of pricing and profits isn't socialism at minimum, then I'm at a loss to know what would be. That's not the result of propaganda, it's the result of definitions of words. How would you define 'socialism' in a way that your proposal wouldn't qualify? Or if you're okay with it being 'socialism', that's fine, please explain why it's going to work this time when it hasn't ever worked before. How is a legislature supposed to be able to make one-law-fits-all for every company in every industry in existence? And if it isn't one-law-fits-all, we're right back to cronyism and lobbying to get the best deal.
That said, I think more robust protections for workers are certainly a good idea. Nor do I have a problem with, say, the Clean Air Act. I'm not saying government regulation is always bad, nor that the market should be completely unfettered.
What I think might have a chance of working out in the long run is new models of corporate governance. Joint stock corporations have been been very successful in many ways, but they definitely incentivize everyone to focus on the shortest-term and to maximize immediate profits. If we can find ways to incentivize better behaviors, I'm all for it. But of course the devil is in the details.
Look, If you increase labor prices, and tell companies that they can't raise prices, then they have to decide where to cut costs. They can try to cut the bottom as long as they can, but really all that does is lose them people that are actually making them money. It's stupid. What they have to do, eventually, is have the CEO's, board, and upper management take a pay cut and cut their margins. It's simple math. A company that decides to do that, and does it early, will out compete it's competition hand over fist because it will have a happy work force that isn't overburdened like the rest. Or if you simply regulate that they can't pay their CEO's and board more than X times their lowest paid worker, and include all compensation such as stock in it. But there has to be some form of addressing the problem, and it has to have teeth to it. It has to raise wages in comparison to the upper class, without increasing the prices of goods, and likely maintaining or reducing margins. That is the truth, and without solving that you will have a revolution sooner or later, no matter what you call the solution.
This is in the same thinking that we were ok with the legislature making laws about CEO compensation, but then they were stupid enough to let through the back door of Stock compensation, haven't done anything about it, haven't taxed it, or anything. It's obvious that it is a form of income, that the can borrow against it and thus get free income, leverage it up, etc. We didn't blink then, but we'd have crying in the street about socialism this and communism that about it now, if we tried.
What you have issues with is an EMPIRE. Empires are extremely inefficient, it's true, and cannot, as a matter of fact, make laws to govern the entire empire without being extremely intelligent about it, and regulating the enforcement or specifics of the laws to the individual Polities of the Empire. I think calling ourselves a single country is insane and ridiculous, and have gone so far as to argue that companies are individual Polities that are laws unto themselves. But that's getting off topic.
For instance - Say that companies are not allowed to pay CEOs beyond a certain amount above the median wage within the area that the company is based, and that the company is limited to operations within a certain region, and include stock compensation and other forms within that pay. This breaks up companies so that we don't have Walmart gobbling up Mom and Pop stores, reduces CEO pay relative to the median wage, doesn't inflict central planning on the company, but only says what their margins will be.
Then you solve the issue of median wage vs upper wage, you open the doors to a flourishing of local business, and you don't have people from coasts working offsite and wrecking Mid-west economies. You do it in a phased in manner, so as not to dislocate the economy all at once, and get the assets sold in an orderly way.
Also, what they can do, is make laws that say that companies cannot make money through slave labor. The Catholic doctrine, and natural law, is that work is to be able to provide for one's family. Any labor that is not able to provide for all the goods of life that are necessary is not Just. It is either a job that should exist or it is one that is unjustly paid - pick one. But there is no job, none, where a man or woman should not be able to pay for everything on one job without a second person working in the family.
In total, if you have issues with our government being able to plan and make laws to do this, there are a few options.
1. Either you individually lack the capacity to properly submit to any just authority that should rightfully rule.
2. You have issues with our Empire being corrupt, and that it lacks legitimate authority, it should be overthrown, and a new government put in its place
3. The current Empire simply needs a new head,
4. It needs a new head, but also needs to delegate more to the local governments
5. The current form of government is bloated and going to fall, whether corrupt or not.
The Prince of Darkness comes in the form of beautiful lies.
These lies say government can.fiz your problems. Government can make it so you don't have to work so hard....
Government can make.it "gair" by taking bis stuff away.
But listen carefully. What you will hear is: Envy! Be envious! Take yheir stuff! Give me! Give me!
Do not comply..
No where did I say that the government fixes all problems. But it does need to be involved in these we're discussing.
What I advocate is not rule by systems
But rule by People.
Virtuous people must be rulers, no matter what form of government you have. There is no laws that are made, no rules that you can have, that will change this. Every single law, every single rule, can be gamed. It can be broken. It can be bypassed.
In fact, the more laws, rules, and bureaucracy you have, the easier it is for the unscrupulous to hide behind the byzantine nature of them. For the common man is unable to see behind the maze, while the lawyers, lawmakers, and lobbyists can. The tax man can. The politician can.
Mrs Wright. Natural law says that we are supposed to be paid based upon the value of our work. The electrician the maintains your ability to use this computer likely gets paid along the median wages - 35-40 /hr. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is paid 1.6 million an hour. Does he do things that are valuable? Maybe; I'd debate whether rockets in space and Teslas are worth child slave labor in Africa, Uighurs in China, the rampant desolation and pollution caused by creation of lithium batteries, etc. But certainly I don't think that he creates value of 1.6 million an hour, especially while sleeping! That means that he is stealing that value from someone else.
So, is it envy to want to stop theft? No, it is Justice.
Can some fall into the Vice of Envy in that pursuit? CERTAINLY!
Do many do so, when they are less informed of the world, and the powers that be put them at each other's throats in a Marxist worldview, with the goals of tearing down society, enacting state controls, and, ultimately, damning souls to hell? Yes!
Does that mean that we should not see the underlying issues, because the Truth is that there would be nothing to Envy if there was no theft in the first place? No, we should pursue Justice
Does that mean that we should be careful in how we do so, because weak souls would see this and fall off the narrow path? YES!
Each side, Republicans and Democrats, uses words very specifically to get the other side to lobotomize their thinking so that they can't think their way out of a mental box. We must, must apply the old terms, in the old definitions, in order to think our way out of this mess. If we don't, the uniparty wins, Satan wins, and we all lose.
https://barbarianscorner.substack.com/p/the-words-they-use-are-cunning
Yes. And Revelation 12.
Maybe pray to the Lord himself?
Too nitpicky to remember Michael's recall of John's worship in Rev. 22: 9? "Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God."
Michael's name meaning "Who is like God?"
Ideally, the prayer should say: God, send Michael to defend us in battle.
:-)
🤺