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Episode Summary:
In Revolution Now! Episode 38, Peter Joseph opens with a poem by Gil Scott-Heron, “Whitey on the Moon,” which critiques the unequal allocation of resources in society. He builds on this theme, arguing that racism is deeply intertwined with classism, rooted in economic inequality and scarcity. Joseph explains that economic pressures and competition create a divisive group mentality, fostering systemic racism over generations. He critiques the resurgence of “critical race theory” denial and underscores the long-term effects of historical racism on modern institutions.
Joseph discusses how the U.S. wealth gap, especially between white and Black communities, stems from the history of slavery and economic exploitation. He points out that true reparations for marginalized groups should focus on providing stable economic foundations for all, not just the oppressed.
He critiques modern billionaires like Elon Musk, Bezos, and Branson for wasting resources on ventures like space exploration while ignoring urgent global needs like poverty and environmental sustainability. Joseph argues that these billionaires’ actions, driven by selfish ambition, divert resources from solving critical issues, and that society must hold the ultra-wealthy accountable for the consequences of their wealth hoarding.
The episode emphasizes that systemic change, not just individual reform, is essential for addressing inequality and creating a more just society.
Transcript:
Voice: Gilbert Scott Heron
The truth is that the politics that we discuss are not partisan politics in terms of Democrat or Republican. I am a member of the common sense party. And for the longest kind of a time, I have felt as though people who said that they did not care anything about politics or were not interested in it were making a political statement in and of itself. The new poetry that evolved in our society concerned the fact that folks wanted to use both words that people could understand as well as talk about ideas that people could understand. One such poem, at least an early poem of ours that went in that direction, concerned the fact that millions and millions of dollars are continually sent into outer space. While we continue to face the same problems here on the ground.
Poem said: A rat done bit my sister Nell, with whitey on the moon. And her face and arms began to swell and whitey’s on the moon. I can’t pay no doctor bills, but Whitey’s on the moon. 10 years from now. I’ll be paying still while Whitey’s on the moon. You know, the man just up my rent last night, cause Whitey is on the moon. No hot water, no toilets and no lights, but Whitey’s on the moon. I wonder why he’s up in me. Cause Whitey’s on the moon? I was already giving him 50 a week and now whitey’s on the moon. Taxes taking my whole damn check. The junkies, make me a nervous wreck. The price of food is going up and as if all that crap wasn’t enough, a rat done bite my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon. Her face and arms began to swell and Whitey’s on the moon. Was all that money I made last year for Whitey on the moon? How come I ain’t got no money here? Hmm. Whitey’s on the moon. You know, I just about had my fill of Whitey on the moon. I think I’ll send these doctor bills, air mail special to Whitey on the moon.
Peter Joseph:
Good afternoon. Good evening. Good morning everybody. This is Peter Joseph and welcome to Revolution Now!, Episode 38. The opening voice was Gilbert Scott Heron, a musician, poet, and activist who I believe died in 2011 and he is introducing and reciting a poem: “Whitey on the moon.” A delightful little piece describing through the lens of class and race, the deep imbalance of priority and disproportional nature of resource allocation on this planet. And I would like to build on this today as a change of pace because I was kind of inspired listening to it. So first we should remind ourselves that racism is an outgrowth of classism. Classism, meaning the economic dynamics of inequality. Something I spent a great deal of time covering in my book, “the new human rights movement.” The most fundamental root of racism today is scarcity by way of economic inequality, not in an immediate sense where you simply introduce the condition of economic inequality and suddenly everyone becomes bigoted and racist, but rather as a sociological consequence over time, due to the divisive factors inherent to our scarcity based social system. The perceptual problem with this kind of phenomena is that it’s long term and usually counterintuitive.
In other words, people tend to attribute direct racist behavior to the individual rather than the culture they have been born into. A culture that unfortunately has now taken on a life of its own becoming detached from the origin point. I spent some time on this subject in a recent discussion with Abby Martin on her new podcast. And it’s a very difficult sociological consideration. Certain forms of stress generate patterns of behavior over generational time that persists without the need for that exact stress influence anymore. If you were to ask somebody what makes a person racist, they would probably say something like, well, the parents probably were racist and that taught the child to be racist. Which may be true and often is. But of, of course, what made the parents racist? It can’t just be the parents’ parents or the parents’ parents’ parents’ parents because you get lost in the infinite regress.
Rather once again, it links back to structure. And from that causal chain going backwards, you end up with the precondition of economic scarcity and competition and related fear and insecurity. This then triggers group identity and cultures of in group – out group dynamics are formed. Yes, as an aside, there are some genetic propensities that have been documented by sociologists and behavioral biologists regarding the group identity problem, but like everything, there has to be a context for those propensities. And this is why capitalism and bigotry go hand in hand. And frankly, if you really think about it, it’s really not that counterintuitive. Of course, a system like this is going to generate a kind of mafia gang, group versus group mentality, along with assumptions of inferiority and superiority between groups. Of course, the world today is overrun with group versus group bigotry, that’s precisely what capitalism fosters due to its very competitive, scarcity based structure.
But failures of intuition aside, it is fascinating to see the resurgence of denial when it comes to this subject in the form of what’s being termed “critical race theory.” Conservative folks are basically denying the effects of racial oppression and slavery. When the blatant reality is that the long term causal effects of historical racism upon institutional development, policy formation and of course culture itself cannot be understated. It is no doubt absurd to see people pretend that racial factors are not in play when it comes to many repeating patterns from police brutality, judicial punitiveness, to being simply criminally profiled to restricted bank loans, the vast wage disparity, income gaps, and wealth inequality in general, to more broadly, differences in life expectancy itself and the disproportional amount of health problems, prevalence of violence and so on that persist by forces direct or indirect overtime upon black and minority communities. Today while the life expectancy gap certainly has gotten better over the years, for now, black folks still die faster than white folks.
And it doesn’t take too much investigation to understand why when you look at the difference in economic circumstance, the evolution of this fundamental class oppression and lack of opportunity, of course. Hence all the things that fall under the umbrella of structural violence as has been talked about numerous times before. And it’s worth pointing out that while we tend to differentiate between direct racism, meaning, you know, direct human to human racism, bigotry and violence – and systemic racism, meaning the long term repercussions unfolding that generate biases within institutions and of course cultures, in reality, all racism is actually systemic. Even the most vile offensive behaviors, such as lynching have origin points that move beyond the perpetrators. And that’s unfortunately a very complicated subject because it requires a kind of systems thinking. For example, let’s take lending discrimination in the United States. Lending discrimination against the black community is very consistent statistically to this day.
Yet most people working in banks do not realize that they are contributing to bigoted outcomes due to the confluence of existing policy, decision making metrics and of course, unconscious bias. Why has it been historically that when black folks move into a white neighborhood, the property values tend to drop. Decades ago upon the rise of suburbia, white communities would literally protest black families moving into their suburban neighborhood. Not because they necessarily fely uncomfortable, but because they knew it would lower their property value. In fact, just a few years ago, the Brookings Institute found that houses in black neighborhoods are worth about 23% less than equivalent homes in white neighborhoods. And I’m sure if you ran that statistic again today, it would be more or less the same. So I asked you, is that an example of racism or is that an example of classism?
In reality, it’s both as this linkage is very consistent and hence my core point, once again: you really can’t talk about racist outcomes without talking about the economic preconditions that gave rise to them or the economic dynamics that preserve them. Racism in the United States, for example, goes back to the core inflection point of slavery. And if you follow the evolution from abject slavery to abolition, to reconstruction, to the 20th century civil rights movement to today, it’s easy to understand how we ended up where we are from a sociological, structuralist perspective. Remember racism was legally codified. Race distinctions were legally codified for effectively elitist class preservation. And it went on for so long that people began to actually believe that there were true differences between the two skin colors. Once again, I recommend Martin Luther King’s commentary on the subject because he understood it quite well and wrote about it eloquently pitting newly freed black slaves against poor whites, because if they decided to come together against the rich, well, the rich might actually have a real problem.
And so today the young black male exists as the most stigmatized and oppressed entity in American society and the overall national black community still struggles to emerge from the long term chain reactions of early exploitation, lack of opportunity and oppression in general, all born from the structure of market capitalism, make no mistake. While also, even though there is general improvement over time, it seems, it’s kept in place by the divisive nature of the system in the modern day as well, perpetuated by the system. So going back to Whitey on the moon, someone might see the racial aspect as antiquated. “Why does it matter that the person is white?” Especially since the poem, most notably focuses on the problem of economic inequality? That’s because whites both historically and still today are fundamentally advantaged, systemically, and still own most of the wealth and resources, not to mention levers of power, not because of racism in and of itself per se, but because of the economic unfolding, since the slavery period, at least in the specific case of the US. Even though the same structured dynamics, pitting group against group by force of long term and short term economic conflicts, has occurred across the world to one degree or another. Frankly, it’s quite shocking to look at the history of group versus group bigotry and conflict.
This kaleidoscope of ever shifting hatred between nationalities, religions, ethnicities, fraternities, or whatever. So the term Whitey is a poetic symbol of the upper elitist class and sorry to state the obvious to poetry readers out there. But a lot of people are so over literal today. It’s really bizarre. Remember the “all lives matter” backlash? People literally offended by the phrase black lives matter because they interpreted it as exclusionary as if no other lives matter, but black. And it should be no surprise that it’s mostly privileged white conservatives out there trying to silence so-called “critical race theory” or any information that explains systemic bigotry because such education undermines a critical self preserving establishment narrative. If it becomes understood that there is indeed structural oppression working against the lower class, the lower class being predominantly non-white demographics by extension historically not only domestically in the US, but also internationally, obviously, as a result of colonialism, people might begin to realize that larger order change is required in the name of civil and human rights, which is exactly why I called my book, “the new human rights movement.”
The only true activism at this stage is challenging the system through radical modification of its structure, because without doing that, we’re just gonna continue this unbearably slow grind to improve race and group relations, to improve general conditions for those that are suffering and have been oppressed. As of course, we mentioned to very new territory where all of that is going to get a whole lot worse and rapidly so, due to the environmental crisis, as it accelerates. You think you see reactionary, xenophobia and bigotry now? Just wait until the climate refugees start piling up from the global south and Eurasia. So anyway, to finish my subpoint here: to preserve, elitism, money and power, the mostly white, male power establishment intuitively pushes the narrative that racism isn’t really a problem anymore and desperately downplays any evidence that there is, unless of course they’re attacking affirmative action and integration policies, but that of course just reinforces their overall disposition.
And again, you don’t need a formal conspiracy for this kind of collective self preserving behavior to arise. All it takes is a certain perception of identity combined with fear. And as an aside, this kind of social mythology, this establishment preserving narrative building; these stories that have been accepted by much of society functioning to obfuscate the truth, has no shortage. And as a secondary, but related example, since I brought up colonialism, there is a longstanding myth that assumes the affluence and prosperity that exists in the US, because the US consumes most of the world’s resources by comparison, produces most of the world’s waste and so on. And so on. It’s assumed that this resulting high standard of living must come from some core American ethic; this drive to innovate and work hard and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, embrace the free market and something to do with the constitution, dedicated to the pursuit of the American dream or whatever, as if all of this affluence and prosperity arises from within the US social system itself.
When the truth is US affluence has been built in the long and short term through colonial exploitation and effectively robbery and conquering. The global Northwest itself is largely the way it is because of years of exploiting the global south. Black civil rights advocate Stokely Carmichael often discussed the concept of internal and external colonization and how while Africa as a continent was colonized by Europeans, in a way so are those of African descent that have been abused in Western countries, such as during abject slavery in the US. It’s a fair parallel. If you abstractly define colonization as strategic exploitation and dominance. We could split hairs with terms like colonization or colonialism, but at the end of the day, the goals are fundamentally the same. You know, a lot of people talk about reparations for the black community. If you were to try and put a price tag on the systemic wealth building that started with the cotton industry in America centuries ago during slavery, which is almost impossible to calculate, it’s probably something like a hundred trillion in value was on the back of that exploited labor.
Forging the very means toward the industrial revolution and the rise of the American empire itself upon the age of oil. In terms of geostrategic economic trade power and all of that, cotton was the original oil in function. And even after European nations abolished abject slavery, they still purchased cheap cotton made by American slaves. US slave made cotton dominated the global market. And this is why repeated appeals for reparations for the black community in the US Isn’t really the way to go if you want to help people that are suffering systemically from that period. If you want to help the black community in America or any community for that matter, that has been marginalized and oppressed in the world, give them a viable, stable economic foundation. And if you’re gonna do that, then you might as well just give everybody a viable economic foundation because the result will be even better.
And I know I’m a broken record with all this, but if we could simply end general poverty on this planet, the systemic repercussions would be outstanding. While I’m, of course in favor of system redesign because you can’t just, say, install universal basic income, and everything’s gonna be fine as the structural problems run much deeper, but by whatever means sociologically speaking ending poverty would have immeasurable positive effects. Not only in the immediate sense, but over generational time, downstream, healing many levels of damage caused by long term socioeconomic inequality and exploitation and deprivation and all of that. In fact, I should probably do an entire podcast on just that subject, even though I’ve probably covered most everything here and there over the course of this series, I just can’t emphasize enough how positive the public health ramifications would be. And of course, in the context of group versus group dynamics, such as racism, that stuff would improve quite well over generational time as well.
If you remove that fundamental economic stress. And honestly, I have to say, it’s shocking to me that anyone in the black community or any historically oppressed group for that matter could ever support market capitalism. A clear understanding of what the root socioeconomic orientation of this system has done to such marginalized lineage should motivate total revolution right there, but people just don’t understand it. This is why one of the most important yet forgotten activist organizations in the US, but not limited to the US because they had chapters all over the world was the Black Panther party. All organizations have their flaws and dated perceptions in hindsight, but at least the Black Panthers explicitly went after capitalism in a way that no other civil rights organizations historically have. As much as I love Martin Luther king Jr. and that side of the civil rights movement, he was still very measured and rather timid by comparison in how he approached the subject of needed economic revolution.
Granted the “poor people’s campaign” in the 1960s, seeking an economic bill of rights and universal basic income was an excellent theoretical step and it’s too bad he was killed before that got underway. I do think if King had lived longer, he would’ve become far more radical on the anti capitalist front, over time. That appeared to be the direction he was moving. So if you wanna actually improve once again, the problem of structural violence that has debilitated, numerous oppressed groups across the world, in this kind of long term class subjugation, the best form of reparation you could ever apply would be giving a true economic foundation where people do not have to strive for a paycheck every week just to pay the light bill or put food on the table. And for those that aren’t familiar with the “resource based” economic concept, which has different interpretations like any such phrase, this is about deviating away from market dynamics on the whole. The true solution to the core problems out there isn’t more money being allocated or more equality through money.
It’s actually devising systems of direct life support through efficient resource management and design, encapsulated by effectively economic democracy in community. And as I’ve acknowledged before, a lot of people are tired of hearing about the nuanced problems and the system structure as explained continuously as of now in this podcast. But remember I’ve actually written a great deal on the subject of the new system in the two books that are behind and me. And of course in films and I’m working diligently on the new film, along with a new program, as I’ve mentioned a number of times, which a peer review formatted paper will be put out before this new venture, by which the new system will be described along with a transitional system process to move us from point A to point B. But I have to reiterate that if you don’t fully understand the dynamics of the market system, as we experience it, like for example, all the Bitcoin proponent people who think they’re involved in some kind of revolutionary act when they’re not…
So how can you get where you want to go if you don’t understand where you are? And believe me, after 15 years of promoting this stuff roughly, or almost 15 years, I think, I have heard it all. I have read endless proposals and treatments and alternative visions. I’ve tried my best to digest all of that. And hopefully all that experience and information can be turned around usefully. The fundamentals will be contained in the peer review paper, which I will actually submit to the peer review journal that I’m associated with. And I will speak more about all of this in the future. And since I brought this subject up, I want people to understand that this isn’t some kind of unilateral expression. I get really exhausted by that kind of accusation. In other words, this isn’t Peter Joseph imposing the total system transition and that’s that. I will be the first to admit I don’t have all the answers.
And as Donella Meadows would say, you have to kind of dance with the complexity of system dynamics. None of us really know what’s going to happen in the outrageous complexity of the mass dynamics pushing us into the future. We certainly know what the trends show and we can recognize the feedback loops, which all point to overall negative an debilitating outcomes for civilization. And we can certainly generalize the most ideal sustainable system. But this kind of process of theorizing how to move from point A to point B, finding leverage points within the system that we can embrace to take us through- is the most sociologically complicated thing humanity has ever faced. Changing, not only the behavior but the general values of literally billions of people is a project that has never, ever been undertaken, but it’s going to have to be if we expect future generations to survive.
Okay, there are a few other small points of concern on the race issue worth addressing before we move on. First systemic racism is counterintuitive and complicated and influence can arise in ways that seem innocuous are even positive. Separatist behavior, group loyalty and observed consistent outcomes that are accepted are all fundamental, mentally biased. With the very notion of there being a problem, rarely if ever questioned, consider, say statistics for romantic partnership and the lack of integration while things have improved over the past 50 years, interracial partnerships are still rare. Statistically. It was about 6% of the us population in the 1960s. And today it’s only about 15% and similar statistics can be found in pretty much every country. So if we’re supposed to be a color blind society, then why are we consistently partnering in a homogenized way? Naturally people have cultural familiarity with their upbringing and their family, and they become conditioned to seek out others that are familiar.
Cultures and groups become homogenized over time. Coupled with the consequence of years of regional segregation, buttressing group concentration, both by legal decree in many cases in the past, now preserved and perpetuated by unfolding economic issues, class forging, divisive forces that we’ve already described. And so such feedback loops persist generation after generation, developing circumstances and a kind of pattern of intuitive preference consistently leading to such imbalance. And by the way, I’m not putting down anyone that’s in a relationship with somebody that’s of the same ethnicity or whatever. I’m just pointing out the observation. Yet, unfortunately, there are no doubt subcultures that actually still think that loyalty to their group is a positive thing. I’m aware of traditions in Italian culture, Jewish culture, Arab culture, and many others where people are encouraged to stick with their own so-called tribe. And I’m sorry to say those values are no doubt destructive, make no mistake.
I know it sounds extreme when we consider how common the pattern is, but it is absolutely racist to view the world through the lens of group loyalty. Such casual racism as it could be called, as innocuous as it may seem, once again, serves as a foundation by which far more malicious bigotry and bias arises. As I’ve said many times, group identity is nothing but dangerous on all levels, just as “separate but equal” does not work. And it’s tricky because in the process of activism, which leads me to my second point here, group solidarity does become a natural reaction and it makes sense. Galvanization is an important strategy, but that’s precisely where it should stop once conditions change. There should be an inverse relationship between group loyalty and overall human rights progress, which is about inclusion.
And of course I can absolutely understand the logic of say, teaching a bullied minority child that they should not feel ashamed of their skin color or ethnicity if they are suffering emotionally. We see this word “pride” thrown around a lot in such circumstances. “I’m proud of my heritage. I’m proud to be this or that.” But if that contrived pride continues, which is exactly what it is contrived, it may very well lead to a kind of elitist loyalty to race or ethnic group. In fact, one of the things I always really appreciated about how Dr. Martin Luther King worked is how he diffused extreme interpretations of the Black Power movement and countered black segregationists. Obviously segregation is not a solution, even if instituted by the oppress themselves in protection. While at the same time, the use of this Black Power symbol was diffused to highlight the fact that really we’re pursuing inclusion and mutual power and respect, not elite power, once again. It may seem subtle, but these are very important qualifications when it comes to activism even today.
I’ve even recognized overlap in the #metoo movement. And the more radical feminist approaches where you sense a kind of gang mentality of women that are angry at men, holistically. None of this is healthy. So just to make sure I completely run all this into the ground, my point here is that anything that moves away from total human inclusion is always going to result in conflict and systemic bigotry. And we are surrounded by this sickness, not only in obvious negative forms as talked about, but also in the cultural dynamics that seem normal and innocuous and fine. But in reality, those group loyalties are ultimately caustic and destructive. And if we don’t recognize that the global culture will continue to generate division and conflict, even without legitimate causal stress, this is also why people that object to “cultural appropriation” need to rethink their position.
People that see others behaving like their own group identity, and they take offense by it as if it infringes on their copyright. And we’re not talking about blackface or something, which of course is offensive. But rather when a group ostensibly credited with some advent like fashion or custom whereby another group comes along and absorbs it, expressing it as their own. In my prior film Interreflections, I had a hip hop song I wrote and actually originally performed, a recording no one will ever hear, but it was ultimately handed off to my friend, Kellee Maize, a known artist. And I actually received an email with somebody complaining that because the singer Kellee was white and it was a hiphop song, it was offensive. And that I should have been loyal to the origins of hiphop and had a black singer. Such is a bigoted disposition, rejecting inclusion.
Culture isn’t there to be preserved. It’s there to expand and grow and change like everything else on this planet. The more we share the diversity of our origins and cultures, the richer we all become on the whole, not to mention smarter. The overlap of diversity is extremely important. Progress, in the same way genetic diversity creates stronger human beings as opposed to in-breeding. So anyway, contrived, ultimately fleeting social conventions have become normalized as if they are imutable when really they’ve existed for political reasons. At the end of the day, I am not a white person. I’m a human being. I’m not an American citizen. I’m a citizen of the world. Even more. I am existing in an ecosystem in total inter-relational reliance. I am the ecosystem in effect. And so are you whether you like it or not. And it’s this kind of revolution of thought and revolution of values, association, and identity that is desperately needed.
And unfortunately, once again, back to my core point, our market driven economy, our capitalist social system keeps our separatist divisions in play, holding us back from human unity, stability, sustainability, ultimately limiting our progress as a whole. And as a final note for your consideration, group based victimhood has now become commodified; status oriented. It’s now marketable to be a victim. There is a nasty subculture of folks out there faking or exploiting their own victimhood, whether it’s racial, ethnic, feminism and so on, because it allows for a kind of status or defense that wasn’t really there before, not like today. Such as for example, that actor that recently faked a hate crime against him for the sake of his career. So all that said, I think we’ve covered enough of this. And I want to go back to that poem to discuss the second point, which is probably the most dominant point.
And that is about resource allocation on this planet, income and wealth allocation on this planet and the fundamental problem of wealth inequality and the suffering that results. My favorite part is when he says, “how come there, ain’t no money here? Mmm Whitey’s. On the moon.” And I think that gets to the heart of it. Now, mind you, I am a card carrying Carl Sagan fan. And I agree with the philosphy of working to understand the cosmos in the same way we explore our tiniest particles or cells. We learn more about life and ourselves and nature by learning about the cosmos, needless to say. What a profound revelation to understand that we are all made of elements that came from exploding stars. We are all star dust. And when you look at these vast images from, say, the Hubble telescope, we see a window for all of humanity to look into the history of our universe, allowing for greater wonder, and of course, scientific revelation. Sagan’s work “pale blue dot” highlights the epiphany of all of us being one family in the sea of species as one giant earthly organism.
That understood the question when it comes to this or any kind of venture of such is what is the benefit to the whole of humanity? And how is that proportional to the resources and time spent? Specific to the actual moon landings decades ago it was certainly a feat, technologically. But everyone knows that it was fundamentally political in a mastubatory space race with the Soviet Union, which was really a proxy battle between competing social systems. And the ultimate question becomes, when we understand that every human being relies and the resources of this planet and the planet is governed by markets, mirrored in value through money, as money is embraced as a kind of energy, if you will -to do work- what money is spent on always has a social relationship.
And this stands in stark contradiction to a core mythology of the free market, which implies we have infinite resources, hence no linkage between differential human action. In other words, when somebody spends money over here, it’s considered irrelevant to somebody else spending money over here, as if there’s no connection; as if there’s nothing else to regard. Such as a finite planet or problems to be solved. And hence, as the philosophy goes, people can just do whatever they want to whatever degree. And we call that freedom. And if you wanna split hairs, yes, you could argue that to a degree, Adam Smith’s invisible hand concept of market self-regulation and the idea that individual selfishness leads magically to positive collective social outcomes is a viable idea, which of course it is not. But that’s really a different angle. And of course, once again, it’s magical thinking. We’re talking about the incentive and philosophical structure of capitalism, which has nothing to do with that assumption.
And, you know, we’ve talked a great deal about negative market externalities on this podcast- those things that happen systemically, consequential of various economic behaviors, which in turn, can’t be addressed by the same kind of economic behaviors, hence being “external” to the system. So you can’t, say, be loyal to the market system and solve poverty because poor people don’t have money to spend into the system. And that is the core root requirement. And while that’s important to recognize- negative market externalities, because it highlights the endogenous flaws of the system as a whole, in fact- it’s also important to recognize what the system doesn’t do or what the agents within the system simply don’t do for incentive based reasons. All the things out there we could solve, but we just do not: the possibilities, the potential. Our dominant human and institutional behaviors for whatever reason have decided to outright ignore ongoing detrimental characteristics of civilization, looking the other direction.
In other words, the decisions that a single person or company make that use the Earth’s resources do not exist in a vacuum, obviously. Therefore social responsibility is inherent to virtually all economic behaviors. So it’s not just what we’re doing, it’s what we’re not doing. And obviously this distortion of priority is what “Whitey on the moon” emphasizes. The free freedom of the free market has created a perverse kind of selfish worldview that is systemically detached from all consequences, is my point. So many problems can be solved right now, but we don’t. Instead state power does the bare minimum to keep stability, at least stability in terms of maintaining their power; corporate operate with the first priority of achieving profit long before any concern about what purpose they’re going for; and the extreme wealthy minority hoard trillions of dollars, focusing their attention on fundamentally selfish goals. Then we know the games, we know how these people hide their money as shown in leaked Panama paper style documents and beyond. We understand the tax havens and charity fronts, enabling them to bypass any of that money returning to the public coffers.
And so on. While of course they present this image that they actually care about civilization. Elon Musk of course is the richest man in the world and is seen as a hero by some and a capitalist vulture by others, exploiting his way to something like 260 billion of on paper wealth. I say on paper, because in reality, if it’s in stocks, it’s actually not real. All of that is fake valuation that moves up and down based on activity. So for example, if he actually decided to sell all of his stock, it would not be sold at that value because the influence of that selling would push the price down. And for those that have been desensitized by such numbers, remember 260 billion is 260,000 million. Elon Musk has 260,000 million dollars, technically on paper. And as much as libertarians in their philosophy would like to convince themselves that he and all the other billionaires earned that money and therefore it’s their right to do whatever they want without any type of pressure…the reality is the billionaire class must be held accountable for their actions.
They’re like many states. They are like mini industries, in fact. There’s simply too much monetary energy that could go to better problem solving things. And that’s putting aside the obvious inappropriateness of it all. That everyone should be offended by anyone that maintains that level of wealth. Given that today 60% of the world is actually in poverty, based on honest metrics, not the United Nations. It’s appropriate to be offended by what these people choose to do or not do with their resources, given the dire state of the world. And all of this ambitious garbage, such as terraforming another planet or creating commercial space flight, is pretty much the lowest of the low in terms of social priority today. Whitey on the moon. And yet billions upon billions are being spent towards such ends with Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, of course Musk and others.
And in all sorts of arenas, not just the focus on space exploration. It’s right to say such folks are actually wasting humanity’s resources and time, in a dire situation of need. In the end, there are two areas of relevant focus to improve the world. And this isn’t my opinion. It’s a fundamental epidemiological and physical fact: we need “A” increased environmental sustainability rapidly and “B” the reduction of destabilizing and inhumane socioeconomic inequality. At least -at least- to the extent of working to eliminate poverty and homelessness itself. None of the billionaires are seriously focusing on these issues. They know what to say because they’re not stupid, in the same way JD Rockefeller decades ago, during the great depression, if I remember correctly, would walk around in tattered clothes and drive old cars. He knew not to flaunt his wealth while everyone around him is suffering, basically building an image of humility, and that’s what all these other folks are ultimately doing.
They are pretending. And of course, unfortunately, the cultural effect of these people, this fame and wealth culture, draws respect and admiration from the general public, an elitist value system is cultivated. And the more people like these people and want to aspire to be like them, the more they preserve their very existence. When in truth, all of them should be shamed into oblivion. And as a final point, that comes up a lot. It all begs a fundamental question. Where do we draw the line in the inequality debate? Isn’t the average westerner ostentatiously wealthy by comparison to say poor African village. There is always a gray area in this kind of continuum from one extreme to another, but it’s the extremes that settle the actual argument. I think most everyone would object to an idea where there’s an island with X number of people, but one person has absorbed all the wealth; lives in a giant mansion on a hill while countless others toil.
And they have very little because all the resources are being hoarded by the person in the mansion. Is that a morally acceptable scenario? Of course not. And that is precisely overall what is occurring on this planet? When we see vast allocations toward things that have no real social benefit, we are effectively seeing negligence that negligence can harm people. And it does. The poorest half of the global population owns just 2% of global wealth while the richest 10% own almost 80% and it’s getting worse. And I’m gonna stop there. I’m gonna close out today’s show with the short scene, audio excerpt, from my film interreflections with Omar Padillo, when he wins the Nobel peace prize, angry at the billionaire class, this program is brought to you by my Patreon, and I will be back very soon to continue this dialogue. Thanks everybody be safe out there.
OMAR PADILLO: Thank you.
And while I’m happy for those, we have helped over the past few years taking about 75,000 homeless off the Los Angeles streets. I must say that the problem at hand runs much deeper than the poverty we see around us. When I created this program focusing on just this one regional crisis, my long term hope was that it would set a new precedent; that those who disproportionately benefit in this world would be inspired, step up ,and help take responsibility for the plight of the less fortunate. After all, what I have done here is merely a patch that can only help a few. For the true source of poverty – our social system – continues to go unaddressed.
We live in a world of stories and myths, and we’ve been told that the vast inequities that we see is the price we must pay for innovation and progress. Well, innovation to what end and how do we define this notion of progress? Fourth progress is about how much one can own, the availability of jobs, the state of a nation’s GDP, the rise of the stock market, or the development of some gadget to entertain and distract you. Then we face a serious existential crisis. I submit that true progress can only be measured in the health, stability, integrity, and responsible freedom of a civilization. Responsible to our selves, responsible to each other, and responsible to the earthly habitat we all share. And by those measures, my friends, there is now little progress to be found as we all sit idly by presupposing that the way society works is the only way it ever could. That said, if it’s true that we must persist in this inhumane economic order, an order that has proven it can only create affluence for a minority at the cost of destitution for the majority – then our only choice Is to seek a new level of humanitarian effort.
Today, three people have more wealth than the bottom 75% of the world’s population, 6 billion people. The total wealth of the 4,000 billionaires out there have the means to end global poverty a hundred times over. And yet if you study their philanthropy, it is clear that they are far more concerned with their own interests, their own comforts than working to counter this ongoing structural violence. You see, there’s a deeper kind of poverty here, a spiritual poverty. A poverty that grows a culture of sociopaths and the more they have, the more they want and the less they seem to care otherwise. Moral bankruptcy hiding behind this age-old story, that one can have a billion dollars in the bank while others starve is somehow natural to the human condition. In a number of months, my program will end As the funds will be gone. And to date, not one wealthy so-called philanthropist has offered to help keep the program running. Now, I know this event is about peace, but it must be understood that the wealthy of this world, those at the root of true political power are sick. Their priorities have nothing to do with true progress. And the time for tolerance is over.
The billionaires of this world are not symbols of success.
They
Are symbols of
Violence.
And until that violence ends, There will be no peace on this planet.
