The Rich Are Eating Themselves

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Riddick
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The Rich Are Eating Themselves

Post by Riddick » 03-18-2023 04:15 PM

Beware of plutocrats bearing gifts. The annual clown show at Davos epitomises how today, the global elites have embraced an unholy trinity of ‘progressive’ doctrines: climate-change apocalypticism, a belief in systemic racism and racial ‘equity’, and radical gender ideology.

The super-rich hope by genuflecting to these causes, they can buy themselves political protection and fend off activists lurking in the ranks of their own companies. Yet, in the long run, this could end up fuelling their demise, as oligarchs may find the environmentalist left has little sympathy for the corporate leaders who fund them.

Indeed, the red-green contingent typically agrees with the view of Barry Commoner, a founding father of modern environmentalism, that ‘capitalism is the Earth’s No. 1 enemy’. Bernie Sanders, after all, believes that ‘every billionaire is a policy failure’, a view also espoused by ‘Green New Deal’ architect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

For the oligarchs, kowtowing to radical groups like BLM or CRT prophets like Ibram X Kendi may prove no more effective. Racial activists similarly decry capitalism as the root of racist evil. Yet the oligarchs continue to fund woke initiatives on race, policing, education and gender that seek to replace merit and competition with the equity agenda of an ‘enlightened’ state regime.

Tech oligarchs and woke Wall Streeters are playing a dangerous game by pouring trillions into woke causes. They see themselves as what progressive writer David Callaghan calls a ‘benign plutocracy’. Yet eventually they may well find they have been financing people who threaten their own rights and even their existence, rather like the French aristocracy before the revolution.

This starts with their lockstep support for a Democratic Party in which more people support socialism than capitalism, a trend strongest among the young. It is doubtful zealous young activists will tolerate ultra-rich climatistas like Michael Bloomberg & Bill Gates for long, as their private jets emit greenhouse gases in amounts reportedly almost 500 times what the average American emits in a year.

An idle bourgeoisie supporting destructive ideologies has been a trend throughout modern history, one Joseph Schumpeter predicted would lead to capitalism’s overthrow. In the 20th century, this manifested in members of Britain’s upper class embracing Communism and even working for the Soviet Union, the sworn enemy of Britain and the capitalist West.

Stalinism may be out of style, but obsessive zealotry is not. Yet, as spiked’s Brendan O’Neill notes, rather than embracing red authoritarianism, today’s green elites tend to embrace a ‘culture of misanthropic dread’ about the climate that strips hope from all other classes and the next generation.

Ultimately, the very forces funded by the oligarchs could turn out to be their undoing. Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen may see a universal basic income as the ‘social vaccine of the 21st century’. But once the idea of an expanded welfare state is proposed, some on the left logically see no reason to leave the ultra-rich untouched.

Many hope to fund a work-free world powered by technology & financed by the oligarchs' lucre. This leftist dystopia will certainly not herald a bright future for the masses, but for the witless billionaires encouraging it, it does have a ring of historic justice.

FULL STORY
A mind should not be so open that the brains fall out; however, it should not be so closed that whatever gray matter which does reside may not be reached. ART BELL

Everything Woke turns to Image
-Donald Trump Image

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