Years ago, I read the Water Thief, a dark parable about the privatization of everything from water to air and all things in-between, a most frightening scenario without question as this take on 1984 is now turned into a profit driven entity with the great majority of the populace totally controlled by the power elite instead of Big Brother through the con of renting instead of buying all things needed to survive.
Rent for life ...
If you walk into the average mattress store or a furniture behemoth like IKEA, you can pick up a pretty standard queen-sized mattress for around $600.
But what will happen to the price of mattresses when they become investments?
Let’s pretend you run a $10 trillion multinational investment monopoly like Blackrock. You do the math and realize you can rent a mattress to poor suckers for $99 per month on a 36-month contract.
That $600 mattress is worth $3,600 in revenue to you, $3,000 of which is hard profit.
But the reality is that right now, most working people can afford to buy a $600 mattress, whether they save up for a few months or put it on a credit card.
If you’re a multinational money monopoly like Blackrock, you need to create market demand for mattress rentals by pushing mattress prices higher.
So you go to IKEA headquarters, or directly to their major mattress manufacturers and say, “Hey, retailing to consumers is for chumps. I’ll pay you $3,000 for all one million mattresses you were planning to make this year, and I’ll pay cash upfront.”
The manufacturer is happy because he has a guaranteed buyer for all his mattresses this year, he has zero headaches with returns, and he gets five times the revenues and profits.
(Or Blackrock just buys all the major mattress manufacturers outright.)
Either way, because of investor demand for a consumer good, retail prices start to soar. Because everyday consumers are now competing with multinational investment monopolies for mattresses.
How many people do you know who can afford to pay $3,600 for a mattress?
Pretty soon, no one can afford to own a mattress, and everyone has no choice but to rent one instead. Now, instead of paying $600 every decade to own a mattress, consumers have to pay $99 per month for the rest of their lives — $60,000 over 50 years — just to sleep in a bed.
If this sounds like the biggest scam in economic history, it’s because it is.
And it’s the reason you will own nothing by 2050.
If we let it ...
The great reset to feudalism
There is a name for an economic system in which the vast majority own nothing and have to slave their entire lives just to stay alive.
It’s called serfdom.
Banksters + investors + rent-seeking = Serfdom 2.0
Memorize and understand this formula. This is why your economic life is getting harder and why the working world is suffering economically:
Banks loan trillions to investment monopolies.
Investment monopolies devour corporations.
Corporations financialize industries and shift to the rent-for-life model.
This is the equation that will define our lives and our children’s futures.
This is the new economic model that will obliterate democracy, finish destroying the planet, and put an end to the human rights and freedoms so hard-won by World War II.
Because everything is just a commodified investment now.
It's all about the money - Robert E.
Addendum: The word assume is in play here as by 2050, thanks to GW and other such niceties, the scenario may be altogether different as one cannot predict the future thanks to the vagaries of reality.
No comments:
Post a Comment