(Foot)Notes on a Pre-Apocalypse

Decoupling Wealth and Power

It seems obvious that there is a link between wealth and power in modern human civilization, and in the United States, in particular. If you have power, you probably also have wealth. And vice-versa. The more you have of one, the more you have of the other.

 

The thing is that most of us don’t have much of either. And yet, wealthy/powerful people have a lot of say over our lives, even in a putatively free country like the United States. Think about all the decisions wealthy people in both houses of congress (and, yes, most of them are wealthy — especially in the senate) make that have major impacts on our everyday lives. 

 

Think about all the CEOs that make decisions that either affect us as workers or as customers or even as innocent bystanders. They can control when we work, what we do at work, how much we get compensated, the benefits we may get (or not), whether our workplace is safe, whether we can have a work-life balance. And many corporations are now even tracking their employees efficiency. Corporate CEOs can also control the options we have when we need or want to buy something. They control nearly all of our food options. Or, try living without buying plastic for a day — nearly impossible. And, they can control whether their company pollutes our air, water, and bodies even if we have no business with that company. It happens all the time, at least in the United States. 

 

And it is not just decisions that congresspeople and CEOs make. Apparently, according to our Supreme Court, money is speech. So, the wealthy can amplify their voices in terms of making certain politicians’ campaigns viable through contributions. Or, they can influence legislation through campaign contributions and lobbying. Or by having trade groups write legislation and coerce actual legislators to adopt it. That is how wealth translates into power for many people. 

 

I find this all unsettling. Do you?

 

It occurs to me that this is not the natural order. It is a human-generated order. As such, that implies that we humans can generate a different order. 

 

What if we tried to create a society where wealth and power were decoupled? What would that look like? How would it be different from the current status quo?

 

I know this is completely unrealistic, because no wealthy/powerful people will ever let this happen, right? I mean, they have all the power and money. They have everything to lose and seemingly nothing to gain. How could such a change even come about?

 

That’s a different question. Maybe for another day. This really would be a revolution, if it were to come about. 

 

But let’s consider it. How would things be different if wealth and power were decoupled?

 

Would congress be in a constant state of gridlock? Would a small faction of lawmakers be able to hold the country hostage by refusing to approve a budget? Would they actually have to do their job? Or at least worry about losing their jobs/getting voted out because they need their income just like the rest of us working schleps?

 

Would there be people working for poverty wages? Would there be people working in unsafe conditions? Would there be workers who had to work with dynamic scheduling because they had no other job opportunities? Would it be as easy to exploit people’s labor? Would we even need labor unions? Or would we have government policies that truly protected workers and ensured fair, living-wage compensation?

 

Would people who work for their income pay a higher tax rate than people who passively receive income from investments? Would corporations pay their fair share of taxes? Would we be able to balance the budget? Or afford to fully fund educational and social welfare programs? Or, would we not even need social welfare programs anymore?  

 

Would everyone be able to afford their rent? Would anyone ever be priced out of the housing market? Or priced out of more desirable neighborhoods? Would there be such things as adjustable rate mortgages? Predatory lending? Would gentrification exist anymore? Would we still have a high degree of residential segregation? Would we still have people experiencing homelessness? Would we finally end the mortgage interest deduction?

 

Would everyone have access to quality educational opportunities? Would there still be an achievement gap? Would school segregation persist? Would we finally end standardize testing because we have known for a while that it gives advantages to wealthy and middle class students? Would everyone be able to get into colleges if they wanted to? Would everyone be able to afford college? Would there still be a student loan debt crisis? Or, would college even be mostly free, like it is in many European countries? 

 

Would social media companies be able to sell their data profiles of us for profit? Would they be able to continue creating platforms that exploit our evolutionary psychology to keep us glued to their so-called “services”? Would we finally be able to hold the social media companies accountable for aiding in the spread of disinformation and for helping to radicalize extremists? Would we be able to protect our children’s mental health from the ill effects of social media? Would we even need social media anymore? (Do we need it now?)

 

Would we still allow discriminatory practices in the workplace? Would there still be a gender pay gap? Would employers still be able to fire employees for being gay or trans, like they can in most states?

 

Would everyone be able to afford the medical care and the prescriptions they need? Would people have medical debt? Would insurance companies be able to deny coverage even if a doctor says the treatment is medically necessary? Would there even be a need for health insurance? Or, would we have some single payer or government provided medical care? Would everyone have access to mental health care?

 

Would there be an obesity epidemic? Or a type 2 diabetes epidemic? Would agribusiness be able to control our diets so easily? Would they still be able to engineer foods designed specifically to take advantage of our evolutionary biology? Unhealthy foods we biologically can’t resist and that are cheap and ubiquitous? Would there be factory farms and overuse of antibiotics and pesticides in agriculture? Would agribusiness still be able to exploit hard-working farmers and force them to go into debt to make a living?

 

Would corporations be able to use endocrine disrupting chemicals in household items, food containers, clothing, and cookware without having to prove the chemicals were safe first? Would the air be full of pollutants in low-income neighborhoods? (Would there still be low-income neighborhoods?) Would the majority of our drinking water sources contain PFOA chemicals and pharmaceuticals? Would the fossil fuel industry still be able to blast undisclosed proprietary chemicals into underground rock formations to release natural gas while polluting local water and air? Would oil companies be able to to drill in deep water and other sensitive environments risking spills? Would coal companies still be able to blast the tops off of mountains to get every last bit of coal? Would we even need coal? Or, would we have switched to clean, renewable sources of energy?

 

Would our legislative, executive, and judicial branches actually look out for average people rather than wealthy and corporate interests that have lobbied and funded campaigns? Would we as a society be able to solve problems that affect regular people? Problems often created or allowed by policies that are essentially written by industry groups and passed by legislatures? Would corporations get away with “self-regulation”? Or, if they had no influence over government, would we be able to ensure that their processes and products were safe for workers, customers, communities, and the environment? 

 

Would we still have wars? And war profiteering? How many wars throughout history were started by wealthy/powerful people? How many people who weren’t wealthy or powerful were conscripted to fight in those wars? How many wars were started to wrest power from the wealthy and powerful? Would we find a way to make war obsolete?

 

Would we be able to pass sensible gun regulations that most Americans support? Would the NRA still have a stranglehold over congress and state legislatures? Would there still be mass shootings? School shootings?

 

Would there be such extreme wealth/income inequality? Or, could tax codes and labor laws help protect workers and help make everyone middle class? Would the incentive to accumulate vast wealth diminish because it doesn’t confer the power that it did before the decoupling?

 

Would we as a society be able to afford to take care of everyone because there is a fairer tax code with no loopholes the wealthy can exploit?

 

Would power be more distributed? Like it is supposed to be in a democracy? Even a representative democracy? If the wealthy/powerful couldn’t use their money to amplify their messages, would that equalize the power dynamics? Would many of our problems go away? Because we could structure our society in such a way as to help people live healthy, safe, and happy lives, rather than giving wealthy/powerful people and corporations the means to control everything to preserve their own wealth and power?

 

Have we been duped into believing that things are the way they are because that is how they are supposed to be? As if it were the natural order? Or that some people deserve more than others based on some inherent quality, like the color of their skin or their sex?

 

Is our society based on these kinds of myths? Do some people still believe these myths? Or, do they just pretend to because it protects their wealth, power, or status? Are they just intellectually dishonest?

 

I’m not the first person to point out that there are a lot more of us than them. It may take millions of us to overpower just one billionaire, but at least there are hundreds of millions more of us than there are billionaires in the U.S. 

 

What is stopping us? The low wages that cause us to work two or three jobs? The complete distraction that the media and social media play in our lives? The divisive rhetoric that politicians use to convince us that we have competing interests? The stress from all of the problems enumerated above that we all endure to some degree, just to get through each day? Is this a bug in the system or a feature of its intentional design? 

 

What if all of us who don’t have wealth and power said, “NO!” What if we tried a new social experiment? One where wealth and power are decoupled. How do we do that? What if we decided NOT to elect leaders at all levels of government who are wealthy? Or leaders who will always side with the wealthy/powerful. What if we only voted for candidates that supported term limits and a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United and to end corporate lobbying? What if we demanded judges and supreme court justices that side with citizens/human beings rather than the corporations? What if we only vote for candidates who support open primaries and rank choice voting? What if we could actually elect people that most of us want as leaders rather than those whom the media deem electable because of their ability to raise campaign funds? Maybe we could actually vote for candidates we trust and believe in, instead of voting for the candidate we distrust the least. I’m not sure it could work, but what do we have to lose?

 

I wonder how things might be different.