Monday, January 21, 2019

The passing of governance to corporate oligarchies serving the top 10%?

Three recent articles suggest to me a direction for our future. Bret Stephens' article describes the U.S. and Great Britain as rudderless and scarcely able to govern themselves, never mind shape world order. Several other Western democracies are facing crises in governance. Into this void steps Larry Fink (the chief of BlackRock and the world's biggest investor) whose annual letter lectures corporations that it is now their duty to look beyond profits, and contribute to society, serving a social purpose. The mega-corporations that dominate the U.S. and international capital flows are now a more stable buffer against chaos that any individual governments. BUT, ultimately who do these titans serve? Not the top 0.1%, but, as matthew stewart documents in excruciating detail, a more broad aristocracy, in America the top 9.9%. His article presents a mind-numbing list of the hundreds  of ways, both through legal and social customs, that the meritocratic class has mastered the old trick of consolidating wealth and passing privilege along at the expense of other people's children.

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