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Would switching to Communism work?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Would Communism actually work if every nation on the planet switched to it?”

Making a switch to an entirely new system is never as simple as a change of clothes.

Every significant change to an extensive system, such as a complete switch to a new form of governance, always comes at the cost of widespread chaos and rivers of blood coloured by horrors of every shade of nightmare.

That people keep talking about switching to new or resurrecting old systems because they’re overwhelmed by how broken our current system seems to be is, on one hand, understandable in their frustration and desire to restore sanity.

On the other hand, it’s horrifying to contemplate how little people understand how our current system should be working and why it isn’t working as intended.

It’s frustrating that people can see why our system is broken, as they get slapped by those reasons every day and remain utterly blind to the simple fixes that would right the upturned ship of state we all depend upon.

It’s the same kind of broken reasoning that claims we should hedge our survival bets by creating extraterrestrial colonies instead of focusing a fraction of those resources on restoring our world to a sustainable balance for life.

The simple answer to this question is that we should stop thinking about throwing the baby out with the bathwater and fix the leaks in the tub to more quickly return to struggle-free baby bathing with far less pain and suffering.

We can borrow elements and concepts from communism (and other systems) to modify and incorporate into our current systems of democracy and capitalism. Hybridization of systems has already occurred worldwide and has proven itself a successful strategy without mass casualties.

The Social Democracies developed in the Nordic nations are prime examples of the superiority of evolving systems over replacing them wholesale.

Let’s take a moment to think about an analogy that might simplify the concept of evolution over replacement.

Redesigning and building an engine from scratch still requires a lot of after-the-fact adjustment. No new engine design is fault-free from its first iteration. There are always necessary improvements to make following its first release, if not outright fatal flaws that could end production altogether.

Software applications are generally considered immature and buggy until at least the third major release. As an analogy, software development is an excellent model for understanding how social engineering can work when deliberately planned to accomplish long-term goals.

Software applications generally begin by focusing on core functions to meet various needs for various use cases. Minor updates are made to improve operational efficiencies, while new versions expand on core functionality and incorporate new features that are usually the highest in demand.

Social systems are far more complex, while system crashes cost lives. There’s not much wiggle room for errors when hundreds, thousands, and potentially millions of lives are affected by minor disruptions.

Have a look at these pictures:

Below are the same docks in L.A. that, currently, are mostly empty and without traffic. During the program this aired on (The Beat with Ari Melber — 2025.05.12), Representative Robert Garcia mentioned that before the tariff wars that Donald Trump (the deal-making artist) began, it would usually be too busy to walk where they walked without being run over by trucks due to a flurry of activity.

This is today’s result of the trade policy changes implemented three months ago. It took three months for a simple policy change to filter down to the port level. It will take a few more months before this effect trickles outward to impact every home nationwide.

It was mentioned in this report that hundreds of dock workers were out of work or had their hours cut back. The problem is much worse than a few hundred lost jobs, though, and they touched on the implications without adequately explaining what this all means.

When I see these photos and hear them speak, I see a domino effect of thousands of bankruptcies picking up steam throughout the nation, to become hundreds of thousands of lives displaced and destroyed before escalating into millions of lives by next spring.

Donald Trump’s casual dismissal of the serious concerns of real people trying to survive while working multiple jobs to raise their families and pay for their living needs showed a sociopathic disregard for their struggles. When he responded with nonsense about parents needing to cut back on buying 30-plus dolls for their kids for Christmas, while he’s raking in hundreds of millions on cryptocurrency scams and spending $3 million taxpayer dollars on every day he golfs and another $100 million on a military parade for his birthday, it’s mindboggling how people can be so frustrated with their lives and not be livid with him.

Every callously self-serving decision he makes carries implications that dramatically affect lives for years. This is the impact one person can have on hundreds of millions of people in their nation. We may currently joke about memes like this. If the U.S. becomes his latest and greatest bankruptcy, very few people will laugh — and it won’t be the millions suffering the consequences of one man’s corrupt thinking.:

People worldwide will feel its impact even if it’s contained and doesn’t erupt into a global catastrophe. Millions will die. Some people still haven’t recovered from his first term in office.

This is the impact one person can have on a system that is so complex and tightly integrated that no one escapes the effects of its disruption. Imagine how dramatic the impact on people’s lives would be if, instead of a simple tariff war and an illegal immigration round-up to concentration camps orchestrated by one leader, chaos were ramped up to a full-scale restructuring of society as a whole.

If a simple Constitutional amendment requires decades of debate and challenges by competing interests, imagine how disruptive it would be to dismantle a centuries-old system and replace it with an untested one. You can claim Communism was implemented before, but it wasn’t. Perverted forms of it were implemented by despots who killed millions as they tried to remake their nation in their image, using that system as a tool for them to leverage, like Donald Trump and several others are doing today with capitalism.

There’s no way to ensure the Communism you or anyone imagines will be the Communism that would be implemented. Marx’s vision of Communism was never implemented before, and the perverted versions of his vision were worse than failures. Meanwhile, democratic governance with a capitalist system has already transformed the world. It has become so successful that several people have and do support Donald Trump’s perversion of it to become a monstrous betrayal of what it was designed to accomplish.

Changes to any system that hundreds of millions rely on for stability require predictability in their systems more than anything else it can provide.

Without knowing what’s coming next, when people don’t know what to do, they naturally do and risk as little as possible while rationing out reserves to ensure they can survive in a repressed state over an extended period.

Completely shutting down the tariff wars and restoring trade policy to where it was only a few months ago would still take several years to return the economy to a state resembling it only a few months ago.

Replacing an entire system with another system means several decades of adjustment would be required to arrive at a state of equilibrium where people could finally feel comfortable predicting their futures and making decisions with confidence in their predictions.

Several decades of adjustment would be required to switch from the current system to a system of communism that would be stable enough, where the cost in lives could be mitigated.

In the meantime, periods of chaotic transition create incentives for the parasitic predators among us to leverage the confusion in ways that benefit them at the expense of everyone else. This is precisely the dynamic we are struggling with today. Without addressing the core problem of a corrupting influence in society, we would simply be porting a virus that weakens us today to a new system to continue infecting our society while adapting their strategies to the new system.

The flying monkeys who enable their corruption would be ported along with them because that’s the nature of power. When power is concentrated in the hands of the few, they no longer need to act directly, while their supporters do all the heavy lifting of “massaging a system” to cater to their needs.

We can see that occurring primarily within the MAGA community as they’ve been frustrated with how much they’ve had to endure and are struggling ever more over the last few decades, instead of experiencing a general improvement in their quality of life, like their parents and grandparents before them. They are righteously angry because they have been betrayed. They can’t face the truth of who has been betraying them, so they accept easy targets to vent their frustrations onto.

We have all been violated on deep and visceral levels, leading us all to take desperate action to fix what we know is broken. The problem is that far too many people leverage their anger and ignorance of how systems work to further the oppression rather than mitigate it.

The people who are selling easy solutions are the same people who are responsible for creating the problems. Donald Trump embodies that scam. Many billionaires are billionaires precisely because of that scam. There isn’t one private prison billionaire who hasn’t specifically leveraged that scam. Insurance billionaires and weapons moguls are the most popularly recognized culprits of the fraud of benefiting from the problems they create. Elon Musk’s DOGE was an abomination of a scam that many still believe was an honest attempt at addressing waste and fraud rather than facilitating it all while giving Elon and many others an escape hatch from accountability for their criminal behaviours.

We can and should be fixing the bugs in our current system by eliminating exploits, such as placing a global cap on net worth and instituting UBI. No one should have more wealth and power than a small nation. If an individual can afford a personal army, then they are a threat to global stability. However, everyone in a system that produces more than what we can consume is entitled to the basics of survival while given access to whatever means are available to improve one’s status through tools of opportunity like housing, education, and healthcare.

That IS precisely what “promote the general welfare of the people” means.

What we can do is ensure distribution systems are equitable and maximize opportunity so that everyone has an equal chance to create some form of meaningful success for themselves. No one needs more than the basic implements to carve out a modest life for themselves by applying their efforts toward achieving goals. No one should be denied these basic tools in a post-scarcity society of abundance, particularly not when we’re on the verge of becoming a fully automated society.

No one should be permitted to hook up to major arteries in a system and drain wealth from it while doing nothing else but watch their hoards grow without restraint or limits.

People like Jeff Bezos and the Walton family spend hundreds of millions to thwart unionization efforts so that their underpaid people don’t have to rely on taxpayer dollars to make up the difference in being short-changed on their income.

We must restrain greed, not rebuild a new system for greedy people to continue exploiting the desperate and the gullible.

Changing our system doesn’t solve our problems when we’re not prepared to deal directly with the cause of those problems.

We still have time to address the causes of those problems before they escalate and find ourselves repeating a bloody history of correction.

Avoiding the cause of our problems by pretending we can gloss over the obscenity of gluttony with a rebuilt system from yesteryear means we’re just lying to ourselves and begging for chaos.

Why do MAGAts refer to people as ‘the radical left’?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Why do MAGAts and so called ‘conservatives’ refer to sane people as ‘the radical left?’ Why don’t they just call them ‘radical centrists’ who rely on logic and facts?”

Hyperbole is a core part of the strategy applied to extremist dialectics. Referring to the left as “radical” allows them to position themselves as rational and puts the left into a defensive position where they are forced to justify themselves. Meanwhile, the extremist right continues its rage-farming activities to enlist more people to push the left to justify its existence.

As the momentum against the left grows, they are forced into justifying rational positions like universal healthcare, which benefits everyone, including the most vulnerable in society. Universal healthcare is increasingly viewed as radical, while the beneficiaries of a privatized system are increasingly positioned as victims of a dastardly socialist agenda.

All of it is based on empty slogans that the illiterati ignore because they’re more interested in feeding their addiction to rage than they are in thinking things through.

Thinking about issues in depth forces people to set aside their addictive emotions and calm themselves down enough to develop a comprehensive enough understanding of the conflicting positions and eventually prompts them to abandon their rage addiction.

The billionaires feeding the culture wars don’t want this to happen because they will lose their cash cows.

The ownership class has cultivated the extreme divisions we live with today to distract the public from their wealth-chasing priorities. The MAGAt movement could not otherwise sustain itself without the economic desperation created by the historic levels of economic inequity existing today, which fuel their rage-fests.

MAGAts are justifiably angry. Everyone has a justifiable reason to be angry today: the economic stability we once enjoyed has been stolen. The main problems with the MAGAts are not only that they are angry at the wrong people, but they are also defending the people they should be angry with.

MAGAts should be out on the streets today demanding DonOld’s head on a platter, and they would if they could get past the blinders of their hatred enough to understand how humanity can survive only when we unite in a common cause and not divide ourselves into warring camps.

Our enemies are the same people they have been throughout history and the dawn of human civilization. We have been at this crossroads many times throughout our history. Yet, here we are again as if human history were pointless stories we tell each other for entertainment, not lessons in survival for our species.

It is time again for us all to stand up and say, “I am Spartacus!”

It is time again to dethrone those who dare to be kings among us.

It is time to be radical with the few who have stolen so much from the many.

It is time to stop asking nicely for them to restore economic justice and start taking it by force if they insist on it as a survival necessity.

From 1932

Bonus Comment (A Response to a Related Comment from Another Thread): “I’m starting to see a second shift in MAGA responses. It’s a far more conciliatory tone.”

To borrow from a boxing strategy, don’t look at the opponent’s eyes, but their chest. Their eyes will misdirect your attention, while the chest cannot help but move in the same direction as the body.

If this were an eleven-dimensional chess game, they would not have needed to use a “flood-the-zone” strategy because the nation has been desperate for positive change… even the MAGAt army is angry because their needs have been overlooked.

Bernie Sanders has been the only prominent authentic leader pointing to a horizon with a better future for all. It’s not that there aren’t others in the offing, just that the DNC has been so polluted with conservadroids for so long that they can’t find their way to recognize how appeasing the right is the wrong strategy.

They need to strengthen their spines and be provocative right back while directly challenging the MAGAt shit. They still have too many spineless and ethically challenged NeoLiberals leading them. This may be primarily a war of words and legal jargon. However, it is still a war… until the Reich gets dialectically hammered into submission, they will continue to use whatever ruse they can to throw their enemies off guard, including feigning sincerity.

They won’t stop until they rule the roost with an iron hand. They have proven that time and again and for decades.

This is a real-life game of thrones, not a board game that resets after the match is won. If they succeed, America’s character will be defined by the defeat of democracy for well over a century afterwards.

Compassion is ultimately a human strength, but they have none and will use that against you. Reserve it for when they’ve been so defeated that they’ve given up fighting for dominion and are just begging to hang onto survival.

They’re addicted to power and, like all addicts, they’re manipulative on the most heinous of levels.

Conciliatory tones can’t be trusted until they’ve been demolished and defanged… and that won’t happen unless they lose every seat for at least the next two election cycles.

Wouldn’t a corporate income tax system be better than tariffs?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Wouldn’t a better option than tariffs be to have a corporate income tax system that would create incentives for companies that hire domestically and penalize them for hiring in other countries?”

A “better option” is an alternative strategy for accomplishing what tariffs are intended to achieve. Tariffs protect local businesses and industries that can be overwhelmed out of business by foreign exports, which would otherwise dominate market niches to evolve into monopolies without constraints.

Tariffs are not helpful for much of anything else. The way Trump is using tariffs as a negotiating strategy would be the equivalent of using a scalpel to carve up a side of beef. Inevitably, that scalpel becomes dull and easily broken. People unfamiliar with scalpels would at first marvel at how clean it would cut, then become frustrated with scalpels altogether from misuse.

That’s what’s happened with tariffs.

Trump has misused tariffs as a club for negotiations and, consequently, has created a misperception of their function in a reasonable trade deal that would otherwise be used to protect local industry. He has lied about tariffs stimulating manufacturing, or is so incompetent that he sincerely believes his nonsense.

What this question suggests was already in play during the Eisenhower years, when corporate taxes were high. See the chart below:

The tax rates highlighted by the red outline comprise the years in which the economy was most stable and grew steadily, while the middle class flourished.

The higher tax rates on the upper end incentivized corporations to reinvest in their operations by increasing their hiring to reduce their tax burden. (Other laws were also in place to support this economic growth, such as prohibiting stock buybacks to increase dividends, which were eliminated along with several protections throughout these last decades.)

This stable dynamic changed because the wealthy class wasn’t satisfied with being the richest. They wanted more and continue to want more, such that we have repeated the economic disparity that has repeatedly destroyed stable societies throughout history.

The problems we are struggling with are made incredibly easy to understand once one adjusts their perceptions to realize our struggles are the consequence of a centuries-long class warfare against the people by those who seek dominion in this world.

We will experience a correction in one of two ways:

1. Through a reasonable form of relenting by the wealthy class, who collectively restrain the twenty percent of them who comprise a psychopathic psychological dysfunctionality, and re-establish the rich and influential among us as ethical leaders for humanity, or

2. By continuing to allow the corruption to influence public policy in the way that has encouraged fascism to grow out of control and repress economies while stripping people of their rights, until a tipping point occurs and societies collapse upon themselves in such a dramatic fashion that chaos rules the day. At which point, the people will reassert their power over the powerful in the traditional manner established throughout history by violently deposing the corrupt among us.

We are very close to widespread chaos ruling the day around the globe, while the Canadian election has provided us with a slim glimmer of hope. Meanwhile, the corruption that has fueled this fascist resurgence continues to corrupt the best of humanity.

MAGA is the public face of organizations like the IDU, the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, and an ideological movement self-described as a “Dark Enlightenment” which feed the economic distortions that threaten the integrity of democratic societies worldwide by favouring corporate power and fascist governance through targeted disinformation to manipulate election outcomes based on negative campaigning.

Our best option today is to mitigate the corruptive power of these hatemongering groups and of the psychopaths within the one percent who seek to reestablish a two-class society of rulers and serfs.

Corporations are allowed to exist to serve the people, not rule them. We have eliminated kingdoms from our societies because they are toxic and destructive, limiting our potential as a species. We can restructure corporations into democratic institutions, and we must because the trajectory they are taking us all on is inviting us to repeat a blood-soaked history.

We are again at a crossroads that we have repeatedly visited throughout history because the corrupt among us have little to no respect for humanity. We now have the benefits of a long history and an established pattern, while the changes we need to make to rid society of this corruptive scourge once and for all are within our grasp. This will be our last time at this crossroads if we unite as a people and assert our power as individuals within a shared community that refuses to bend our knees to incompetent and cruel rulers.

Should Pierre Poilievre remain leader of the CPC?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Question for Canadians, specifically those who are Conservatives. Do you think Pierre Poilievre ought remain leader of the CPC following the loss of two elections and loss of his own seat? No rants please, I am looking for thoughtful answers.”

Have a look at this picture. It’s a photo of the ballot in Pierre Poilievre’s Carleton riding. It contains, I believe, about 91 names of candidates who are mostly independents.

This ballot contains over 85 people in his neighbourhood who were so moved to get rid of him that they chose to run against him.

This speaks volumes well above and beyond whatever national animosity he earned while in the public eye. These are people who know him on a personal level.

They know enough about him and his twenty years of service, accomplishing nothing of benefit for them while cultivating a misanthropic attitude toward them, as he consistently voted against measures that would help them.

They knew that he was no representative of their needs in government and went far above and beyond just voting against him or choosing to campaign on behalf of his opponent.

They wanted him gone and were not motivated enough to support any particular candidate, so they chose the only option they felt they had… to run against him.

This isn’t typical political animosity. This is personal animosity.

These people know him and hate him as a person.

When a leader with integrity loses their seat in a typical competition without this level of animosity toward them, they re-evaluate their success as a leader and do what Jagmeet Singh did — step down.

They make room in the party for another leader to step forward to allow them and the party an opportunity to succeed where they may not have succeeded.

Jagmeet had an uphill battle in this election because Donald Trump and the divisive Conservatives forced this into a two-party election. His party and the country value his contribution as a Canadian who loves his country. Respect for his integrity has only shot up because he decided to step down.

Canada, as a whole, has had enough of Conservative incompetence for a long time now. The ABC (Anyone But Conservative) voting strategy became popular because of Stephen Harper. Harper is arguably the worst PM in Canadian history, who has not only done significant damage to the nation and its safety net but continues to create harm on a global basis while supporting a fascist takeover of governments around the world.

All of their campaigning is focused on divisiveness, fear and hate-mongering while fabricating smear tactics taken straight from the Nazi playbook.

Since losing in Canada, they have escalated their divisive campaigning, and Danielle Smith, the Alberta premier, has just begun a separatist campaign in Canada as a power grab for their hateful ideology.

These people do not put their community, province, or nation’s needs above their desires for power. They don’t care about established law or treaties that predate the founding of their nation or province. (Just like what is happening to an 800-year-old precedent of due process in the U.S.) It shows in every one of them as they ignore the people’s wishes and carve out paths to authoritarianism worldwide.

A true leader of the people understands and respects that they are temporary custodians of a tradition of support for the people.

Everywhere you look where an authoritarian government exists, you see someone focused on egotistical concerns. They don’t put the people they are tasked to and trusted with a sacred responsibility to do their best for the people above their desires.

To them, the people are a means to an end, not the end itself.

Poilievre shows he is cut from the same cloth as Donald Trump, who was so upset with losing the prior election that he encouraged an attempted coup of the nation. Even now, he and his minions work toward having him succeed in being elected for a third term.

Poilievre is following in Trump’s extremist footsteps by insisting he remains the leader of the party and will likely try to supplant another party member to continue hanging onto power.

This should be a time of reflection for the Conservatives, to rethink their values and strategies for doing right by the nation they serve, but that’s not the case these days with Conservatives worldwide.

We are in the throes of a fascist resurgence as a direct consequence of the economic disparity forcing people into extremes of thought and action.

Everything we are struggling with today is precisely due to a distorted economic landscape. Consequently, Canada is now dealing with a mania for power that would almost appear cartoon-like were it not so threatening to global stability.

A leader who loses not only an election they should have won by a massive margin, but also one they would have won by 30 points according to the polls only two months ago, is a rank failure in leadership. If he were a person of integrity who cared about putting the nation first, he would have already announced his intention to step down. Instead, we are saddled with this cartoon of egotistical buffoonery.

One would assume the Conservative Party of Canada wishes to be taken seriously by Canadians as a party that cares enough to put country over party. If so, they must push Pierre Poilievre to step down.

Canada is not the U.S., which gives Conservatives a pass when they lie about putting Country over party and then proceed to betray the country for decades upon decades to allow a depraved monster to tear down what we have all worked hard and sacrificed much to build.

If Americans no longer want to lead the world in what it means to be a democracy, then Canada will handily step up to the plate and show the world that we will not allow another fascist regime to threaten our future as a people.

We will do whatever TF it takes to ensure the will of the people consistently overrides the will of any would-be king.

What strategies could eliminate extreme poverty?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “What are the most promising innovations or strategies today that could sustainably eliminate extreme poverty within the next generation?”

Thank you for the A2A, Faux-Bill. It is well beyond obvious that you are not the OG Bill Gates but a pretender. Whatever motivates you to disguise yourself as him and pose questions that he never would in such a forum is rationalized as a strategy for gaining attention that you believe you would not otherwise get.

I don’t believe questions like these require the kind of “celebrity boost” you’ve attached to them because I’m sure many people are thinking about these issues. Many politicians sadly believe people’s thoughts on these issues are irrelevant to their societal role. Nothing could be further from the truth because most of the world’s citizens sincerely desire an end to unnecessary strife across the globe.

Only the most psychologically scarred members of society wish harm to people on the other side of the globe or in the dingiest parts of their cities.

Even though people know this is a fake profile and that many would overlook this question based on precisely that, some people will still step forward and offer their views. Their answers support what I just said about people wanting to see change for the better, particularly when it is within our means to eliminate extreme poverty today.

Sadly, many politicians fail to comprehend that we are in this together, and that together means all of humanity must work toward common goals, such as eliminating poverty for it to happen. Even worse is that success requires our politicians to play the role of leader in society in earnest rather than as a performative lark to disguise their motivations for personal gain.

Far too few view their role beyond the boundaries of gamesmanship within the local jurisdiction of interpersonal dynamics of cliques, such as those commonly found in high school environments. They perform for each other and to the public at large. At the same time, their functional contributions are limited to shuffling game pieces in a subsection of the larger gameboard of their political community. Forget about communities elsewhere. That would constitute effort in thinking about and doing something about something elsewhere that isn’t directly connected to the influential factors governing their daily lives. Indirect connections don’t factor into their minds.

Here’s an obvious example of the complexity of dynamics that not enough people consider in their thoughts about how to improve our world and address issues like extreme poverty on the other side of the globe:

In this simple description of consequences, ten interconnected steps are outlined to arrive at the fundamental message that closing a door to a trading partner out of spite hurts oneself more than it hurts the trading partner.

China’s economy will contract briefly as it adjusts to a new reality. Americans, however, will suffer more in the long term because this attitude of bullying one’s partners closes off many doors of opportunity.

The same is true with the global tariff tirade and betraying a long-standing alliance with a supportive partner. Isolationism hurts the isolationists more than it hurts anyone they reject, and that’s where we’re at when considering issues of extreme poverty on the other side of the globe.

It is, unfortunately, too easy to rationalize how those problems “over there” are not one’s concerns here, but the reality is that poverty exists here as well. It’s just an arguable point about which is the easiest to ignore.

As you can see from the variety of answers given to this question and the variety of questions similar to this one, along with all the many other answers given to those questions, people want to solve this problem.

This brings us to the core problem at the heart of why the problem identified within this question persists.

The sad reality is that the core problem is YOU, Bill.

You and the existence of centibillionaires in today’s world are the reason why extreme poverty persists.

I understand how easy it is to rationalize your business successes as justification for having superior insights that can function like a paternalistic entity that can guide the little children of humanity toward a brighter future. I understand your rationale for the sheer capitalization required to provide the world with ecologically superior toilets. Still, you already know how you managed to distribute millions of life-saving nets in underdeveloped environments only through synergy. You relied on many people to rally behind your cause and donate whatever small amounts they could to solve a serious problem affecting millions of lives.

You made that happen, not with your capitalization but by leveraging some of your resources, connections, and celebrity status to mobilize people worldwide to provide a simple solution to a destructive problem.

Suppose you and the rest of the world sincerely desire an end to extreme poverty. In that case, there is only one solution, which begins with triage to stem the bleeding of resources that could collectively resolve the problem instead of exacerbating it, as has been the case due to extreme economic disparity.

The most successful way we have been in eliminating poverty worldwide as a society and a species has been through the massive growth of the middle class, as we experienced following the Second World War, FDR’s New Deal, and the development of unions.

By empowering the middle class with disposable income, we boosted economic performance along many vectors that were also boosted by force multipliers, which spread outward in orders of magnitude beyond what is possible today with coalesced wealth.

The existence of centibillionaires has made the goal of eliminating poverty impossible because this historically destructive concentration of wealth creates poverty through a contraction of available economic resources once wielded by hundreds of millions of people.

You know this. At least, the real Bill Gates does… as does every billionaire around the globe.

You cannot become a billionaire and be oblivious to how your concentrated wealth is a deprivation of wealth for others.

None of you is blind to this.

Since it’s taken decades of erosion of the gains that took a capitalist system decades of growth to achieve the highest level of poverty elimination, reversing that damage would mean decades of effort we don’t have the luxury of taking without experiencing a system-wide collapse.

We need bold efforts and fundamental changes to the economy and structure to meet a rapidly changing employment dynamic. We have no choice but to retool our economy before an increasingly rapid transformation toward fully automated societies where most production is performed in dark factories.

Suppose we don’t institute bold changes today. In that case, the transition will result in massive numbers of collateral damage that will be responded to with system-wide chaos because people will not shut up and die quietly as they find themselves starving for food and made homeless. When people have nothing left to live for after having their means of survival stripped from them, they become radicalized to such a degree that they are like cornered animals and will bring much destruction to the world before they exit it.

We need to reverse course on the corrosion done to our economies through the problem of wealth disparity yesterday. This should not be a debate today; if you were the real Bill Gates, you know this.

There isn’t a single billionaire who doesn’t understand this. You are all also hedging your bets while, like every cowardly politician who doesn’t want to risk their comfortable positions, none of you want to be the first to acknowledge what needs to be done. Your reticence is understandable because your community is primarily dominated by sociopathic thinking. It would behoove you to remind your peers that each passing day this nightmare of disparity remains unaddressed is a day closer to the massive unrest that brings out the guillotines.

This brings us to the core concern driving this question.

Which strategy is the most effective resource to invest your attention?

What singular and most expediently implemented solution can effectively stave off and resolve the growing pressure leading to widespread chaos?

That’s easy, and you already know the answer… if you were the real Bill Gates.

Reset capitalism like a Monopoly board.

There’s been enough testing to know this is THE solution to restore economic justice and dramatically impact poverty worldwide.

You already know this.

The only real issue at stake is the best means of implementing it.

Here’s a link introducing the various issues to consider with costing strategies that can be discussed earnestly. These are just details to work out. The result, however, is a stable economy that can eliminate poverty worldwide while eventually making performative forms of altruism moot.

However, every one-percenter should champion this solution in principle in earnest today, particularly if they want to avoid the chaos that risks them losing everything.

How to Calculate the Cost of Universal Basic Income (Hint: It’s Not As Easy As You Might Think)

Update:

Does economic nationalism create global divisiveness?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Is economic nationalism the solution to preserving jobs, or will it create deeper global divisions?” Responses to follow-up questions are included along with the answer given to this question.

Economic nationalism is economic isolation in a highly interconnected world.

It means shutting a nation off from the rest of the world.

It means North Korea.

It means a complete restructuring of an economy to adapt to an impoverished and repressive existence without access to a diversity of goods, services, and technologies that permit a nation to evolve and organically create jobs.

In today’s world, it means dropping out of the global trend toward automation for the citizenry. It means the people learn to adapt to functioning as disposable serfs to an elite class that avails itself of all the perks the rest of the world enjoys.

It means a government focuses on conscripting the able-bodied to serve primarily as military drones to eventually become cannon fodder with expansionist strategies to keep their economy from collapsing altogether.

The global divisions are the ones that a nation makes as it shuts itself off from functional relationships with other countries.

The rest of the world will continue to develop and strengthen its international relationships to become a united entity that can push back on expansionist regimes.

For the U.S., it means going from being a global power to being a global radioactive zone until it can be fully isolated.

Follow-up Question #1:

Is there any scenario where a nation can balance economic nationalism with global trade, or is full integration the only path to prosperity?

The term “full integration” implies a loss of identity and sovereignty. Neither of those is true. In Canada, an external threat to national identity immediately rallied the people into a unified front to protect their sovereignty.

Meanwhile, you can drive around Canada and seldom see the performative patriotism you can see everywhere in the (highly divided) U.S.

Follow-up Question #2:

Do you think Canada’s approach is unique, or have other nations successfully balanced global ties with a strong national identity?

I can’t speak for other nations, but I have long recognized the distinction between a melting pot and a multicultural mosaic.

For all the reverential lip service American culture displays toward individuality, its practice of homogeneity runs counter to that professed ideal.

On the other hand, Canadian culture promotes community through a practiced respect for individuality.

This contrast addresses the difference between a genuinely profound love of country organically cultivated versus a performative love of country cultivated through grooming.

It’s the difference between a deeply held but silent personal belief versus the cultivated optics of shallow regard for something that can be leveraged for sociopathic motivations through attention-focusing performances.

How can a society allow everyone to succeed?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “How would you design a society where everyone has the opportunity to succeed?”

Until Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, humanity was well on its way to perfecting that democratic society in which everyone had a reasonable opportunity to achieve class mobility and a basic form of success that permitted a life of dignity with what was characterized as the “American Dream.”

A mortgage on a house with a surrounding picket fence, a vehicle, a family with 2.5 kids and an annual vacation wasn’t only possible but virtually guaranteed to anyone who made the effort to earn it.

They betrayed the entire middle class around the world to curry favour from the wealthy who have long desired a return to a barbaric age of kingdoms with rulers and disposable serfs.

We failed to modernize the one institution that has proven itself the greatest threat to the goal of an egalitarian society, industry.

Almost every other entity in society is a democratic body. Corporations, however, are holdovers from a medieval structure of rigid hierarchy fraudulently appointing members to an inner circle of power, allegedly based on merit, while elevating those who support their corrupt application of power.

We can repair this mess of corruption with only a few fixes, but one of the most important and most easily overlooked solutions will be a difficult challenge to implement. It will (and has been) meet(ing) massive resistance by those who most adamantly refuse to give up their power, as it involves restructuring how corporations exist and do business in society.

We can quickly implement numerous initiatives today, such as UBI, Universal Healthcare, and Universal access to education, that will have long-term implications leading toward much more stable societies that can guard against corruption.

Other initiatives, such as a global cap on personal net worth and restructuring industry into democratic institutions, are potentially much more disruptive to society. We are, however, fortunate to find ourselves amidst a radical transformation into full automation throughout every level of society. This transformation will allow us to restructure political systems while increasingly democratizing society and flattening global power structures.

The only way to ensure society can facilitate opportunities for everyone to succeed is to flatten power and spread it across the globe to the people. At this stage in our history, our existence faces an existential threat due to the corruption of disproportionate power running rampant throughout society. It may be the case that we will have to rely on historical inspirations to repair the damage the wealthy class has done to society and make reparations for their betrayal of the social contract.

Where did Pierre Poilievre go wrong?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Where did Pierre Poilievre go wrong? How did he blow it?”

Rather than answer this question directly because it’s already been answered well enough, I want to explain why Reich-wing politics has been going wrong for a long time.

In a nutshell, they offer nothing beyond rage bait. They offer no vision, no solutions, no analyses. They offer no ideas for anything not based on imposition and an upward redistribution of wealth.

They have been wallowing in a cynically misanthropic view of their constituents and the system of governance they pretend to represent as wolves in sheep’s clothing for several decades now.

Trudeau may not have been perfect in every respect, but he came through when it counted. His heart and mind were in the right place. He is a man of integrity who realized that the public develops fatigue after a decade.

He chose to do what Joe Biden did by reading the room and putting country over personal aspirations.

He chose to do the honourable thing that a selfless person would do when they love their country. He made way for the next leader, who would be the right person to carry the torch for the next cycle.

Poilievre had a winning hand that he could have used to coast into leadership. All he had to do was offer the people some uplifting and inspirational ideas. Had he been capable of extolling the benefits of a vision that could align a nation in solidarity against a rapidly changing world where a long-standing alliance suddenly threatened our nation’s sovereignty, he could have been viewed as a potential hero for the people.

The trouble is that he’s not a people person. He cannot care about people, and he repeatedly demonstrates his misanthropic disdain for the people through numerous heinous examples, like denying the pain and suffering of families who have endured horrors like the residential school nightmare.

Instead of contrasting against the orange enemy to the south, he echoes him in attitude and virtually guarantees a similar destruction of Canada that Trump has created for our neighbours.

Poilievre, Trump, and CONservative notables worldwide have embraced this same ethos of disdain for the people and the democratic principles they have sworn to uphold.

Instead of presenting solutions to problems, they point fingers of blame at an opponent they treat like a foreign enemy and hurl confessions as accusations to stir up divisive public ire rather than messages of unity or a path to solidarity.

About four or so decades ago, Conservative campaign strategists discovered the effectiveness of negative campaigning and took to it like ducks to water.

Choosing that simplistic and simple-minded but winning strategy allowed them to abdicate their responsibility to devise productive strategies for motivating a nation to grow together.

Over time, they lost their ability to develop sound policy while focusing solely on attacking their opposition with increasing hyperbolic negativity.

Watching how that strategy has played out in the U.S. has made it clear to many Canadians that we don’t want to import that destructive nonsense. We’re better than that.

We’re getting tired of the negativity and want authentic leadership.

When a genuine leader stepped forward to present Canadians with a real vision, real solutions, solid ideas, and the courage to face down a legitimate enemy and tame him, it was immediately apparent to many Canadians that Poilievre wasn’t even in the same league of leadership.

It’s like comparing a junior league hockey player with a Stanley Cup champion.

The entire world has also been running out of tolerance for the childish antics of the narcissistic incel troglodytes and their perpetual nasal drip of toxic spew.

The endless hate-mongering is tiresome and emotionally draining. Living in a fog of pollution reminds me of the wafting odours I grew up with in a town with multiple pulp mills. There were days when the smell caused headaches.

I remember how people who were employed by the pulp mills expected shortened lifespans from their jobs, but extolled the benefits of getting a fresh coat of paint on their vehicles every couple of years because of the damage to the paint by just being parked in the lot while they worked their shift.

CONservatives today remind me of that toxic gas that one learned to endure as it filled the town’s air to overwhelm one’s senses. We learned to carry on with our days despite it. We also knew its long-term effects were destructive. We endured it because those mills were essential to sustaining our town’s economy.

We lived off the gas that poisoned us.

That’s what Conservatives have become for society and the people they revile as “woke” are waking up to how they hate being lied to and played like puppets for the benefit of a few who laugh at our naivety as they rip us off while calling us losers and suckers.

This is who and what they are. Until they can be incentivized to be better humans, they will continue to fill the air with life-threatening toxins.

Pierre didn’t “blow it” because he can’t be anything but a product of his grooming. He’s not a leader and never has been anything but a mouthpiece for those who gave him his marching orders.

The people responsible for blowing the lead they had been given on a silver platter are those who convinced a nation of 350 million people that a 34 times convicted felon would be a saviour of a country.

The toxic people who are motivated by hatred blew it because they presume everyone is as broken and toxic as they are.

It’s like every racist believes everyone else is racist. That’s the only way they can justify their hate-mongering and live with it. If they woke up one day and honestly faced the ugly truth about themselves, many would be so horrified by the ugliness in their nature that they would break into pieces.

We’re done with the negativity and want something to live for, not fight against.

Why are you a liberal (left-wing)?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Why-are-you-a-liberal-left-wing/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

I’m not. I hate ideologies because they kill brain cells and destroy one’s critical thinking skills.

I prefer focusing on issues, learning about them, determining the best solutions, and then identifying who tries to do the same. I also look for those who have developed agnostic ideas and proposed solutions that work best for everyone, especially the people, because the wealthy often don’t need help. The government has favoured them so much over the last several decades that they’ve become a threat to the rest of the world.

What I identify with in the founding principles of liberalism are the values of “liberty, fraternity, and equality,” which often align me with liberalism, but not always. The only political party I’ve ever been a member of is the now-defunct National Party, also known as the Progressive Conservative Party. That party no longer exists. Their views have been stripped from them to become the Frankenstein’s monsters of humanity called the Maple MAGAts in Canada. They are a “light version” of the American MAGA movement, and mainly because the Koch parasites who have corrupted the American political landscape have been doing the same in Canada while focusing on Alberta and its oil wealth.

The results have led to corruption in that province in ways that run counter to Canadian values. Their current Premiere is an example of toadying for power, and how it perverts community values and cultivates a misanthropic attitude toward the people they’re supposed to serve.

My thoughts align with the direction the Canadian Liberal Party has taken, and I’m pretty excited about a full Prime Ministerial term with Mark Carney at the helm. I was initially hesitant because he was an unknown, but his interview with Jon Stewart quickly won me over. The more I see him in action, the more I like him.

While Jack Layton was the leader of the NDP, I was drawn to his party because his values focused on everyday Canadians. Governments have focused far too much on developing the corporate sector, which has been a detriment to the people and the nation.

No nation can exist without its people. Corporations are supposed to serve the people, not rule them. It severely disturbs me that what should be a community development function for governments has become a sociological corruption, supporting a sociopathic, profit-chasing national development model.

If I were to encapsulate my political views, I would describe them as a community development-oriented vision for politics and social leadership at all levels (and most notably, at this stage in my life because of specific issues that have been draining my attentions in an incredibly destructive way involve “encouraging” the police to review their function in society to align themselves with the ethos of protecting and serving more closely. I’m of the mind that they’ve become so corrupt in a heinous militarization strategy that they’ve become little more than a government-sanctioned domestic terrorist organization.)

Why are Republicans now against tariffs?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Why are elected Republicans now saying that tariffs previously led to the worst depression our country has ever seen after supporting them just recently?”

Instead of asking why they “are now saying,” you should ask, “Why didn’t they say so before?”

The answer to your question is easy to figure out through simple “pocketbook logic.” It can be endured if something affects someone, be it health, mood, or anything.

The moment something affects their pocketbook, however, it becomes a serious matter.

Up until now, they believed their pocketbooks were safe. Now, they no longer believe that.

They now believe that their pocketbooks are being severely damaged. Now they think their long-term economic future is in jeopardy. They now fear losing their jobs and being forced into the poverty they have been creating for their constituents for decades.

In many ways, sadly, this harsh dose of life-threatening reality might be the kick in the butt of the complacency of a nation.

Nothing can motivate 350 million people into united action more effectively than all fearing for their lives.

The longer the public and the authorities allow this economic destruction to continue, the more likely the entire world will experience a severe depression. If that happens, there will be no placating the massive chaos that will ensue without taking dramatic steps to reign it in, such as by instituting Martial Law.

If Trump can maintain his power while instituting Martial Law, the odds are excellent that democracy will be set back one hundred years. We can then expect a return to an almost primitive social existence with gated communities for the elites and the rest of humanity living like herd animals.

If Martial Law is instituted through a military coup where Trump is hauled off to prison or shot for treason, then it will take the rest of this century for the world to restabilize. We will experience a dramatic restructuring of government processes, such as through a modern version of a “grand new deal.”

On the back end, for those lucky enough to survive the nightmare, humanity will earnestly face the environmental challenges we’ve been postponing.

The sooner we can reassert sanity, the sooner we can adjust our behaviours and restructure our collapsing societies as we transition into a fully automated system for human civilization to thrive.