In my 18 year history of blogging and writing essays on socioeconomics, most of my analysis details a contrarian view on contemporary society and what is and has gone wrong, often with a warning on what is likely to happen if authentic corrective measures are not taken.
My choice of ‘homes4aussies’ as my website name and blogging ‘handle’ in 2007 is instructive. Some have confused my intention as nationalistic, but anyone who read my material from then or since will know that it is hugely out of character and inconsistent with my views on the value and importance of the global village and immigration and multiculturalism in Australia.
The simple truth is that I chose ‘homes4aussies’ as the name for my blog as a warning to the newly installed Labor federal government under Kevin Rudd that this is the direction that the debate over housing affordability will inevitably take if left unaddressed.
My mistake then was in thinking that Labor authentically supported multiculturalism.
Almost 18 years later Labor is dog whistling xenophobes in seeking to introduce foreign student caps as a measure to address a housing affordability crisis now well into its third decade!
My most recent writing on Xcaps might come across to some readers as a step up in emotion … even angry. In truth it is probably a return to the level of emotion I put into my ‘homes4aussies’ days as well as the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic when I argued on MacroEdgo for the primacy of protecting human life.
The reason for that is that I am genuinely deeply concerned for where our society is heading – I think that any close observer feels the same, and that was heightened this week in seeing how the general public, and very much including the young, had a more nuanced view on the murder of Brian Thompson CEO of a large US health insurer by ivy league graduate Luigi Mangione ranging from seeing equivalency in his murder to the preventable deaths of very many clients of health insurers denied access to life saving drugs in the name of profiteering through to outright praise for Mangione’s actions in an ‘eye for an eye’ biblical sense and calls for his release.
For an especially well-rounded discussion of the state of the medical system and health insurance in America I recommend this article by Dhruv Khullar in The New Yorker (h/t Bob Sutton for posting the link on BlueSky).
In my earlier article defining the term Xcap (Exreme capitalist) and explaining how they have come to control almost all political power in our societies I included a popular cartoon that circulated in the days after the event.
Here is another possibly even more popular cartoon which captures the essence of the moment in a broader way as I have also done in my writing. The cartoon captures how this moment is really about inequality and how Xcaps were up till a week ago salivating at their continued agency at capturing most of the benefits of the dawning of the 4th industrial revolution (through AI) with recent extra surety provided by the imminent return to power of alpha Xcap, President-elect Donald J Trump.
In my essay from 12 January 2024 “The Great Reset: Investment implications” I explained the current state of manipulated markets especially in the US as the cause of growing inequality and what are the factors that will allow Xcaps to continue to grow their egregious privilege:
[Market dynamics are based on] pure speculation because the most important consideration relates to the degree to which the system will be gamed in the future. Will this extreme form of capitalism, or indeed technofeudalism, persist into the future or will society resist the trend and if so, do ordinary people collectively have the power to turn the system towards one fairer to all?
As the cartoon and my posts over the past week illustrates, the public reaction to Mangione’s murder of Thompson increases the perception that ordinary people are so angry with the Xcaps for their domination of our socioeconomic system – through trickle down economics – that they will resist, and potentially in dramatic fashion.
Before moving on, however, and going further than saying just that I am a pacifist and believe in non-violence even in the face of oppression, I want to be very clear that I feel extremely sad that Brian Thompson will not see his two sons’ lives unfold, and that two young boys will not share their lives with their Dad.
That is extremely sad. It is extremely sad whenever it happens through any cause, and there is not ifs, buts or maybes – no qualifications.
One of my earliest essays at MacroEdgo.com entitled “The Authenticity Piece For Leadership Is Right In My Wheelhouse“, in part inspired by the many shocking stories that emerged from the Australian Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking and Finance Industry, discussed how insurance workers must gradually compromise themselves and lose their authenticity, concluding with:
What concerns me most when the Royal Commission is discussed is that there does not seem to be enough accountability directed towards the lower levels. Sure the highest levels should pay a price – a real price – not a golden parachute out. Anybody involved with treating others so despicably really should receive a punitive action which makes them reflect on the poor decisions that they too made.
It is simply not good enough to say it was the company that made them do it – it was many human beings doing bad things to other vulnerable human beings.
The full text of that section is reproduced below.*
Of course COVID-19 was the ideal cover for Xcap politicians to conveniently forget about this Royal Commission which unearthed so much harm done to people in the name of corporate profits, and with most recommendations still unactioned, given that the banking and financial industry is one of the most politically powerful lobbies in Australia, there remains little hope for meaningful reform to stop egregious profiteering and mistreatment of vulnerable people.
Now I am going to turn to talk about something that I mentioned in a comment to a post on BlueSky in recent days – and which is a key difference between my writing and the cartoon above – that being the cartoon referring to ‘wealthy elites’ and my writing over the past week talking about Extreme capitalists, Xcaps for short.
Steve Rattner, a very well known veteran of the US fund management industry, and currently managing the philanthropic fund of Michael Bloomberg, showed a graph of corporate profits versus Americans’ income as a reason – correctly – for their growing inequality saying this is why many Americans are ‘unhappy’. Of course my substantive point was that the social media outpouring showed Americans were more than ‘unhappy’.
Concluding my comment I ‘teased’ that I would be writing again on Xcaps, in part to explain why not all wealthy Elites are Xcaps, and why not all Xcaps are wealthy.
In my writing, too, I have frequently used the general term of ‘wealthy Elites’ extensively, but over the past week I decided now is the appropriate time to differentiate and be more specific in referring to Xcaps.
As early as May 2020 when talking about insufficient responses to COVID-19 by especially conservative politicians in an essay entitled “Your Life: Something the elites have always been prepared to sacrifice for their ends” I felt the need to clarify that there are wealthy Elites whom I do respect. These people I described as:
those who authentically understand the privilege that they have enjoyed, usually from birth by virtue of the luck of being born in a developed country or into middle class even if they consider themselves ‘self-made’, as well as respect and appreciate relationships with other human beings especially the people who loved and guided them.
In another essay later in 2020, “How Might Milton Friedman Respond To The COVID-19 Pandemic“, I elaborated on this in detail and that discussion is reproduced in full below.^
Though among the wealthy Elite they clearly are outnumbered, there are people who have become wealthy in this period of Extreme capitalism who are good and decent and who try to do good by (all?) other human beings
For a start, any wealthy Elite prepared to point to growing inequality in America must have an open enough heart to have a mind willing to recognise and acknowledge it.
Most Xcaps deny inequality or justify it on the basis of their desire and aggressive advocacy for increasingly Extreme capitalism.
The greatest capitalists of the Extreme capitalism era, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, are two of the most decent, authentic, and warm-hearted human beings of any era. Warren has long argued to pay more tax noting that he pays a lower percentage of his earnings in tax than the people who work in his office, and he is giving away the majority of his wealth in a manner – unlike Xcaps – where he is not seeking to acquire additional privileges or influence from it. Charlie, who passed last year, was so aggrieved at the poor state of the American medical industry that he got personally involved and tried to sort out chronic problems.
Charlie’s hilarious take downs of another alpha Xcap in Elon Musk was another service to all of humanity that has left a void even if many others on social media now are doing a great job at it.
The simple reality is that the voices of the fair-minded wealthy Elite are largely drowned out by the aggressively outspoken Xcaps, and that is magnified by their owning of the majority of politicians, and especially the power brokers, who must also be considered Xcaps.
Now anybody who supports the continuation of Extreme capitalism, who shouts down on social media or in person attempts to strengthen meagre social safety nets with rhetoric that such measures are socialist or even Marxist has to be considered an Xcap.
Yes, many of these people are foolishly supporting a system which has hurt them and they are unwittingly supporting the continuation of their own vulnerability, but they are doing the work of embedding Extreme capitalism and the privilege of Xcaps.
Wealthy Xcaps want their gravy of obscene privilege from their wealth to continue flowing and will go to extreme measures to protect and grow their privilege. Xcaps that are not wealthy have been brainwashed over their lifetimes into a deep belief and support for a system that offers a level of privilege beyond their wildest dreams to the few who somehow ‘hustle’ ‘enough’ to make it into the 1% of wealth in society, and they are prepared to defend that ever-shrinking chance while narrowing their sense of civic fairness in doing so.
We human beings are imperfect but I steadfastly retain an enormous optimism in the goodness at the core of the human condition which with quality leadership could build such a beautiful and kind global society.
Xcaps and their conservative news media chastising ordinary people for lacking compassion to people who have lived increasingly comfortable lives by profiteering from the misery of others, while themselves creating division and promulgating a less compassionate society where selfishness is not just excused but venerated, is rich to say the least.
Xcap exuberance at the incoming XXcap White House administration was not so much shattered by a brutal and calculated murder but a more jarring public response in support of those actions.
Everyone would do well to note the signs inherent within the events of the past week and a bit.
The difficulty is that when so much populism and division is created within societies, as the Xcaps have generated as epitomised by the January 6 2021 insurgence of the US capitol, the path of least resistance – the path that cold and calculating politicians will always choose – is to continue to drive people further to the extreme.
If Xcaps do that then civil war is not just a possibility it is the most likely outcome. This conclusion disturbs me and I hate saying it – in fact I feel like Mel Gibson’s character in the motion picture “The Patriot” – but sadly my logic leads me to that inescapable conclusion.
In fact, the cold civil war that has been raging in the US and other Western nations turning into a hot war is more likely than the same happening between America (and allies?) and China, according to my uncanny prescience …
*What I have come to realise is that most of us from our earliest times are taught what is ideal behaviour for the society in which we live, and co-operation and generosity is universal in human societies.
At some point in a person’s development, however, we begin to understand that not everyone behaves in an ideal manner. And we notice that, whether it is when they are driving or while at sporting events, even our own parents do not always behave in a manner consistent with those lofty ideals that they espoused when we were younger, and most likely they still encourage them from us.
We all learn, some earlier than others, that those who “get ahead” often compromise on these ideals. And gradually we become desensitised to those little compromises and deviations from the ideal that we all make.
So let’s imagine one day you join an organisation, and maybe that is an Australian bank, perhaps in the insurance arm which has developed a culture of selling some policies which are essentially worthless as they are almost impossible to claim on, and delaying on legitimate claims by terminally ill patients thereby decreasing the probability that the claimant will live long enough for an automatic policy reset to occur so that the estate can claim under the death benefit. These are all issues that were raised during the Royal Commission with the terribly sad stories attached.
After a while you realise what is occurring and you have a moral dilemma on whether you will continue on with the employer or leave. Now this is a large organisation, one of the best-known companies and one of the largest listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and you enjoy a good remuneration and other benefits which make you feel secure. You decide to stay.
After a while you move into an area that is selling the worthless policies which is an open if infrequently discussed secret. You’ve already made compromises in staying with the employer because you realised that what the business is doing is not consistent with your morals when you joined. You have told yourself that others are doing it – and they seem like good people, so it cannot be that bad what you are doing, right? – and anyhow, what good would you be doing in making a moral stance by leaving, especially when that would decrease the security of your own family? Afterall, the experience has already taught you that there are unfortunates in our society and you really would not want to fall into the have-not category. But you are not an executive anyhow – it’s they who are making the decisions and must take the majority of responsibility for the actions of the organisation.
You notice a creep in how you feel at work, and you have a few drinks most nights with your partner to take the edge off, and are a bit more snappy with the children, but you generally feel (mostly) proud when you explain your career progression in your social circles.
Then you get a tap on the shoulder and are promoted to be a manager in the claims department. The claims department is quite separate from the sales department, so you were not all that familiar with how things worked there, but it became clear in the first few weeks that upper management is forcing on you and your subordinates a go slow on claims by seriously and terminally ill people. You manage people who have to deal with claimants on the phone and it’s a high stress position. But they are well paid, relative to remuneration from other employers, to compensate them for the stress and you all share in a generous bonus pool which is related, either explicitly or implicitly, to how well the flow of claims is slowed.
You realise that sleeping well is a thing of the past and it takes a little more alcohol to take the edge off these days. But you rationalise in the same ways as earlier – and if you did not do the job then somebody else would only be too keen to step up and take it on, and you have those school fees and the mortgage to pay. Honestly, would it really be any different for those claimants regardless of whether you are in that position or somebody else? Your employer is just going to keep on doing the same thing anyhow.
I have no experience of working in a bank or for an insurer, but the actual progression for the human beings who were the employees who carried out the actions which were detailed in the Royal Commission had to be something along those lines. At least it would have been for the ones who possessed some sort of moral compass when they joined the organisation – the completely inauthentic psychopaths, the scoundrels, did not have the empathy and compassion to give a second thought right from the start.
What concerns me most when the Royal Commission is discussed is that there does not seem to be enough accountability directed towards the lower levels. Sure the highest levels should pay a price – a real price – not a golden parachute out. Anybody involved with treating others so despicably really should receive a punitive action which makes them reflect on the poor decisions that they too made.
It is simply not good enough to say it was the company that made them do it – it was many human beings doing bad things to other vulnerable human beings.
Moreover, the authentic whistleblowers should absolutely be venerated and celebrated!
^I do not identify with those who list very wealthy individuals saying that it is obscene that they have accumulated such wealth. If they hurt people, either knowingly or by choosing to remain ignorant to it, in accumulating that wealth, then I would certainly consider them as deplorable.
Of course I prefer that everybody on this Earth does what they can to assist other people, so obviously I would hope that people of greater means undertake genuinely significant philanthropic activities aimed at making a difference for others (rather than just promoting themselves in social circles, or only engaging in egotistical and vain projects with lesser returns to humanity, or to gain goodwill which will be cashed in later for personal advantage.) I must admit, however, that in my day to day life in the suburbs I regularly encounter people who say that they can not afford to donate to charities or give of their time or in some other capacity.
I believe that giving is relative to what you have, and I have learned many times over through my life and on my travels, especially in developing countries, that one has something to give as soon as one has something, and even before that we have ourselves to give.
While perhaps it is a greater pity that somebody with means to make a more significant difference, whether that is due to their wealth or their public profile or position, declines to do so, I do not care for any mean-spirited person irrespective of their means.
Foremost among the many undeniable elites who I admire would be Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, Bill Gates, and George Soros. I also know, for certain, that there would be many, many more who I would like and respect if I were to know them personally or observe them often and closely enough to be able to develop an informed opinion.
As I look at that list it strikes me that they are all white American men. There are some Australian men I might include such as John Hewson (I mentioned my admiration before on these pages) and probably Mike Cannon Brookes (but I do not really know that much about him).
Interestingly much of the elite political leadership that I admire presently are women including Jacinda Ardern, Christine Lagarde, Ursula von der Leyen and Kristalina Georgieva – so mostly white European women.
I also have to say that I have been impressed by some more of these individuals, who belong to a very fortunate and privileged group within society, in how they have responded to the outpouring of emotion and drive for societal change through the Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd. Here I would make special mention of the African-American businesswoman Ursula Burns, the former CEO of Xerox, who I knew little of before but who I found extremely impressive. But there were also other white men whose response was impressive and suggested that real, durable change is finally possible.
The truth is that I like people, and I want to believe the best in all people, so it fills me with pride when I see good people stand up to be counted and try to be the best version of themselves to the benefit of humanity. And I tend to be fiercely loyal to someone once they have shown themselves to be authentic.
Gained value from these words and ideas? Consider supporting my work by contacting me on LinkedIn.
© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2024
MacroEdgo 
You must be logged in to post a comment.