Since nobody knows everything but everyone knows something …
To explore root causes for the mess our world is in and to observe if you are ready for a paradigm shift from “Control” to “Empowerment,” I have been writing a series of articles I call “Hacking Mindsets.”
As I connect systemic dots, the key challenges I keep observing are the lack of context and people being too info-fatigued to relate to what’s happening in plain sight.
Because although the Internet can directly connect us, all the key decisions that impact our lives are made by people behind “corporate raiders” doing their jobs at the institutional/corporate/state/international levels.
Is that how our hearts, minds, bodies and souls are being colonized?
Are you living your life acting rationally to a world we recognize and understand but that no longer exists?
The water we swim in
We are born into a Business-as-usual (BAU) paradigm presided by corporate persons with no greater god than growth as they dangle wages, jobs and opportunities so you voluntarily surrender your time, ideas, energy, skills — YOUR (INNATE) VALUE — to them for money. Much like Voluntary Servitude?
This has especially been prevalent since the 1970s, when US President Richard Nixon unleashed the greatest fiat currency experiment ever on humanity and Milton Friedman rallied American CEOs to make profit their social responsibility.
Modelled on the original corporate raider, these “legal fictions” we now call the modern corporation increasingly privatize profits and socialize losses.
In a 2011 video, Thom Hartmann, author of Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights explains that corporate personhood has made corporations “the new kings.”
They are NOT individuals but are MADE UP of individuals with self-serving interests. To survive, they have to appear to outcompete others. Legally, they have no greater god than growth.
Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary defines corporations as “an ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.”
Trilateralist George Ball recognizes that for corporations to be free to pursue “the true logic of the global economy, global corporations are the best means yet devised for utilizing world-resources according to the criterion of profit: an objective standard of efficiency.”
Using our hard-earned money from working for “corporate raiders” ?
Consider this: What are our financial sector’s two biggest cash cows? Answer: the housing market and pensions. Both are markets in which many of us are deeply invested.” Rutger Bregman
“ … there are 3 giant financial companies that the global elite use to control 88 percent of the corporations that are currently listed on the S&P 500. The three financial companies that I am talking about are BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street.” Michael Snyder
Vanguard, a private company, is BlackRock’s biggest shareholder.
Vanguard is the largest shareholder of BlackRock. Vanguard itself, on the other hand, has a unique structure that makes its ownership more difficult to discern, but many of the oldest, richest families in the world can be linked to Vanguard funds.” Dr. Joseph Mercola
Marshalling our social constructs?
According to the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, a social construct is
“an idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society.”
Among others, social constructs include money, corporate persons, the “cradle to grave” business plan we live and nation-states. However:
“In our current money system, it is mathematically impossible for more than a minority of people to live in abundance, because the money creation process maintains an absolute rent extraction-based systemic scarcity. One man’s prosperity is another man’s poverty.” Charles Moore
Because to survive in this legally more pro “corporate raiders” than real people matrix built on rent-seeking, you (still) need money. In this BAU paradigm of control through manufactured scarcity, money largely self-organizes our behaviors to manifest predator/prey dynamics:
“Punishment and reward proceed from basically the same psychological model, one that conceives of motivation as nothing more than the manipulation of behavior.” Alfie Kohn
Very broadly, as money reinforces skin in the Iron Law of Oligarchy game, control and power addicts with “god complexes” lord over the bullied who have “learned helplessness” but are also prone to fight, flee, freeze and fawn behaviors.
As data becomes the future of (no) money/programmable money, check out these deliberate, planned and sustained “top down” efforts:
• On June 13, 2019, the United Nation quietly signed a broad agreement with the World Economic Forum (WEF) to jointly accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This new agreement allows transnational corporations to influence matters of global governance.
“All multistakeholder governance groups are largely composed of a self-selected group of multinational corporations and those organizations and individuals that they want to work with. They work without any common internal rule book to protect the views of all who might be impacted by the group.” Harris Gleckman
· On August 19, 2019, America’s CEOs led by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon under the influential Business Roundtable (BRT) banner announce they want to rewrite the rules of doing business on Fortune’s cover. In December, 2018, Sen. Elizabeth Warren had told CNBC, “Then let’s make that the law.” (She was referring to her Accountable Capitalism Act.)
· The BRT didn’t use the words “stakeholder capitalism” but WEF’s founder Klaus Schwab turns the theme of the 2020 Davos conference into a call for business to “fully embrace stakeholder capitalism”: “Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World.”
· In his 2021 letter to CEOs, BlackRock’s Larry Fink decrees “a net zero economy” by 2050 or sooner: “I have great optimism about the future of capitalism and the future health of the economy — not in spite of the energy transition, but because of it.”
· Anyone knows when BlackRock was crowned “the new King of Wall Street?”
More importantly, in the current paradigm, will any status quo company originate anything that threatens its own gravy train or the power, wealth and status of their key stakeholders?
If so, is the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) like a top-down dictate peddling a change of form, labels and/or players instead of a BAU paradigm shift from “Control” to “Empowerment”?
“What we’re really concerned about is really that this initiative by the World Economic Forum actually looks to entrench the power of those most responsible for the crises we’re facing. In many ways, it’s a trick. It’s a sleight of hand to make sure that things continue as they are; to continue the same. That will create more of these crises, more of these pandemics, will deepen the climate crisis, which will deepen inequality. It’s not a Great Reset at all. It’s a Great Corporate Takeover. And that’s what we were trying to draw attention to.
What we’ve been finding in recent years is that really there is something I would call it a kind of a global, silent coup d’état going on in terms of global governance. Most people don’t see it.” Nick Buxton
So, More BAU Ahead?
So few people already own so much but the “impact” label has also surfaced.
Is that to give “corporate raiders” license to keep raiding our lives because with data and green credits, they can legally now have no greater god than impact?
Our attention is being shifted from the world’s dumbest idea (with money) to transhumanism, the world’s most dangerous idea (with data). Grounded on technocracy that is putting humans at the center of everything, won’t this pave the way for a new type of global governance — orchestrated by BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street via the Public-Private Partnerships dangled by the United Nations/WEF?
· Our individual survival is already baked into feeding ourselves and each other to the insatiable BAU beast.
· With the BAU paradigm of Control consistently manufacturing Scarcity and Fear, won’t the Iron Law of Oligarchy ensure numbers will be used to augment predator/prey dynamics?
· Is that why despite the Bretton Woods agencies, the world wars also never really ended. Today, BAU self-organizes us on “I win, you lose” so we fight each other for rewards/status to systemically keep feeding all and sundry to this insatiable beast.
Amid the latest pandemic — between March 18, 2020 and March 18, 2021 — the world’s 2,365 billionaires got 54% richer, according to the IPS’ analysis of data from Forbes, Bloomberg and Wealth-X.
Crowdsourcing Context from the Ground up
“If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.” Albert Einstein
“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” W. Edwards Deming
The most important part of problem solving is almost always to understand the context. Unless you are aware our troubles are systemically perpetuated by how BAU molds behaviors, will we ever be able to solve our systemic challenges?
Can our 21st century challenges be solved with a mere change of form, labels or/and players based on previous centuries’ feudal thinking and doing?
“The structural challenges to capitalism posed by digital automation and technologies don’t appear to be a sign of its end so much as a fundamental shift towards a more primitive, brutal form of accumulation and assault on the social organization of human society.” Michael Betancourt
That’s why I have been writing to explore the root causes of how we now live a “cradle to grave” business plan. I’m also never sure because the real context is always hidden. But as I connect systemic dots, they appear to reveal patterns of rent-seeking.
Rather than struggle to write in a way that you cannot relate, I would like to attempt crowdsourcing context for my next article. (I now anticipate writing two more for the “Hacking Mindsets” series).
As data becomes the future of (no) money and you mull over what it means to be in a BAU matrix that’s legally more pro “corporate raiders” than real people, I’ll really appreciate if you can share what you know below (supporting links MOST appreciated) and/or ping me details of patents, funding calls, regulations, etc. that are in the works for “corporate raiders” to have no greater growth than impact:
- Who really own(s) the Internet? Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet
2. Who own(s) the different browsers we use?
3. Who owns domain registries and ICANN?
4. Since the first dotcom bubble (as your personal data and personal preferences build your unique digital profile), have you been addicted to FREE, unaware that you’re probably the product to get your skin in the early game of building your digital twin?
5. Isn’t that how we have blissfully been growing FAATMAN platforms like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Alphabet and Netflix)?
“The combined market cap of the FAATMAN stocks is now over $8 trillion. To put it into perspective, that’s about equivalent to Germany, Canada, and France’s GDP combined …no one can quite rule out FAATMAN getting fatter.” Aran Ali
6. Remember Fink’s “not in spite of the energy transition, but because of it”?
What if the 4IR is really about deploying digital technologies to harvest humans as renewal energy for a new global system to govern countries, control populations and that completely re-hardwires us?
Five ways we can harness the original renewable energy source — human power
Wall Street wins signal the start of a synthetic biology revolution
Is this the context of where we are truly headed?
“You are not the product, you are the abandoned carcass.” Shoshana Zuboff
Can the ultimate agenda be for the rich to explore how they may live forever as they plot for their corporations to have carte blanche to (quoting Jeremy Rifkin in The Corporation circa 2003): “own the blueprints of life” in a Global Brain?
Because until the late 1970s, the US Patent Office (USPTO) was clear:
“You can patent anything in the world that’s alive, except a full-birth human being.”
“What the public doesn’t know is now there’s a great race by genomic companies, and biotech companies, and life science companies, to find the treasure in the map. The treasure are the individual genes that make up the blueprint of the human race. Every time they capture a gene and isolate it, these biotech companies they claim it as intellectual property.
The breast cancer gene, the cystic fibrosis gene ⎯ it goes on, and on, and on. If this goes unchallenged in the world community, within less than ten years, a handful of global companies will own, directly, or through license, the actual genes that make up the evolution of our species. And they’re now beginning to patent the genomes of every other creature on this planet.” Jeremy Rifkin
“Artificial life, the stuff of dreams and nightmares, has arrived.”
On May 20, 2010, The Economist proclaims that a team of scientists headed by J. Craig Venter announced that it had replaced the natural DNA in a bacterial cell with DNA they had artificially synthesized.
7. Have you been addicted to “wanting to win at all costs” because that’s all you know to survive/get ahead? Has control through the incumbent notion of Success rendered you systemically blind?
“Never expect someone to understand change when their livelihood depends on not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair
8. At the systemic level, how will your life change between now and 2030 since the UN has been calling for a “comprehensive blueprint for the reorganization of human society” since 1992 and a Davos elite has told us that, “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.”
Is merging our physical and digital worlds fait accompli?
Last December, Oilprice.com shares that BlackRock was looking to fuel a $120 trillion transformation on Wall Street. Then in April 2021, wire service Dow Jones heralds:
“If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund.”
The Great Reset: BlackRock Is Fueling A $120 Trillion Transformation On Wall St.
Blackstone Is Making a $6 Billion Bet on the Housing Market
9. If a social construct is truly “an idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society,” why isn’t our world legally more pro real people than corporate raiders?
Because manufacturing consent is a huge industry and Klaus Schwab has even declared that 2021 is the year the elite must “rebuild trust” with the public?
Ask yourself whether you are still acting rationally to a world we recognize and understand but that no longer exists.
I hope you will ponder over the questions. With your participation, I hope my last article for the “Hacking Mindsets” series can propose guidelines for how we may go from “Control” to “Empowerment.”
Stop fighting and falling for labels and start understanding that a social construct is “an idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society.”
Many thanks
References
Why Social Constructs are Created
11 Things That Are Social Constructs
Revisiting the Business Roundtable’s ‘Stakeholder Capitalism,’ one year later
What Is the Impact Economy Anyway?
Catalyzing the growth of the impact economy, a 2018 article by McKinsey
