21st Century Monarchy: The "Kings" and "Queens" of Financial Accumulation
In centuries gone by, "the people" often wanted to overthrow and depose the rulers of their time because they were seen as greedy landowners who taxed the peasants and working people into poverty and destitution, just so they could swim around in unimaginable riches.
Consider French King Louis XIV of France who essentially bankrupted a nation through his opulent plans and desires.
A number of the people who came to "The Colonies" — here in the new world today known as the United States — rebelled against the rule of Great Britain and declared Independence.
When we look around the world, we can find a number of examples in which the people of a nation get tired and fed up with feeling oppressed and trampled on by corrupt and powerful leaders, and so we end up with revolutions.
History Repeats... and Repeats...
When you look back over centuries and millennia, it seems like we humans aren't particularly clever. The patterns just keep repeating themselves over and over... albeit sometimes with new window dressing.
One of the most poignant examples I can think of is actually here in the US of A where many pride themselves on the freedoms we gained and the freedoms we have, and yet... do we really?
Seems to me that 250-ish years ago people rebelled against the British monarchy, in the process laying the groundwork for creating the freedom to instead give rise to a new "Monarchy" of powerful corporations and the billionaires who started them. Now it's 2021, and the new kings and queens aren't called George, Henry or Louis, they are called Apple, Amazon, Exxon-Mobil, Microsoft, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and others.
As I said, "new window dressing," but are things really any different?
Do (Most) People Actually WANT Freedom?
Seems like the problem we have — as a species — is that we in the broadest sense of the term don't really want freedom. We may not think so on a conscious level, but our collective actions suggest that what we want is "parenting" and "guidance."
In the mind of idealists, perhaps what we want is "BENEVOLENT Guidance."
The giant gaping hole in the entire notion of "Freedom" is that when we grant this "freedom" we also grant freedom to people to behave badly, greedily and psychopathically.
We don't really like to look at that particular wrinkle in the equation... instead we hand out some strange "hall passes" to these new rulers citing opinions like it "being OK" because they earned their places, rather than had them bestowed by governmental or royal decree.
History will tell us that — no matter which age we live in — there will always be those who "want to rule the world." They are not generally looking to rule the world because they can create a "better" place for all... they typically just fancy themselves as GODS of some kind.
Is that harsh?
Whereas I'm all in favor of the broader idea that "hard work" and the freedom to create your own success is a positive, I start questioning it when that success reaches a point when someone starts to believe that they have not only earned billions, but with that also freedom from the CONSEQUENCES of their actions.
Don't get me wrong here. I have a double honors degrees in both Finance and Marketing from a top US business school, and I'm all about entrepreneurship and business. But does the desire to succeed sometimes cross the line into mental illness when left unchecked... does it become toxic? An addiction of sorts? Is the "need" to make a few more billions... at the expense of ever worsening conditions for your workers... still within the realms of the "mentally stable?"
It's a question for me to ask, but not a value judgment for me to make.
As the old truism goes: "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Be that as it may, does a sane person stand behind that level of absolute corruption, purely in the name of "freedom?"
Of course, there are those who'd argue that this "really ISN'T freedom, at all." That might be true, but freedom created the situation...
Meanwhile, our latter day "Kings" and "Queens" are busy making a lot of their subjects very frustrated and angry with their abuse of power.
Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!
What do YOU think? Are the power billionaires and mega corporations the "Monarchy" of our times? Should they be "free" to do as they wish, because they "earned" it? Does that "freedom" extend to include using MILLIONS of people as their personal pawns in their "reindeer games?" Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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