Crony Capitalism: Everything Has a Price

Supplemental industries for sale

When I was a boy, an obese boy when obesity wasn’t cool, I never dreamed that one day we would all know the glory of paying for water. I would bring a thermos with ice water to baseball games. For basketball games, I drank out of the gym’s water fountain. I had no idea what was in that non-purified water.

Fluoride was first added to our water supply in 1945. But that was only in Grand Rapids, Michigan. One of the initial proponents of putting this known poison into our drinking water was Harold Hodge, who was part of the human radiation experiments taking place around the same time. You know, where they injected vulnerable “test subjects” with plutonium and uranium. I guess they anticipated something wonderful happening as a result. The “science” behind putting a deadly toxin in our water was provided by some of the largest corporations in the country; Alcoa, the American Petroleum Institute, Dupont, US Steel, among others. And as we learned during the COVID psyop, it is imperative that we all “trust the science.” If we don’t, then we become a “threat to democracy.”

Right-wing “extremists” were understandably upset when fluoridated water went nationwide by the early 1960s. Watch the scene in Dr. Strangelove where these sensible folks were not very subtly skewered. But capitalism- our corrupt, noncompetitive form of capitalism- benefited from this poisoning of the water supply. Two supplemental industries were born; the bottled water industry and the individual water filtration industry. Now, to a simple community college dropout like me, who barely passed high school chemistry, it would seem to make more sense to just have giant water filtration systems in every area, to do what Brita pitchers and the like do. And as for paying for bottles of water, there probably wasn’t a citizen on earth in 1960 that would have believed such a thing could ever become a booming business. They might have had little confidence in the collective intelligence of the people, but paying for water?

We now have billionaire “water barons,” which included the late George H.W. Bush, T. Boone Pickens, and familiar capitalist villains like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and the Blackstone Group, buying up water rights all over the world. At the same time, government has implemented tyrannical measures like outlawing the collection of rainwater by individuals. I’m assuming it’s okay for someone like Goldman Sachs to collect rainwater. When he died in 2019, Pickens owned more water rights than anyone in the world. Now this seems decidedly odd; how can someone “own” water? Can they shoot a thirsty homeless person for trying to get a drink of “their” water? How about an animal? That would be more likely to raise the ire of today’s Americans. If they could “buy” the air we breathe, you know they’d do it.

There are other supplemental industries, which exist solely because the cost of almost everything is beyond the means of ordinary people. Look at insurance. All forms of insurance. As Ambrose Bierce noted well over a century ago, the only way to “win” at life insurance is to die as quickly as possible. You’ll score a double indemnity if you can get someone to murder you. At least you’ll leave your blushing bride with an exciting new partner to help her spend all that money. Car insurance? You need that, because any significant repair is going to cost more than the amount of savings that 70 plus percent of the people have to their name. Home insurance? Same thing, but on a larger scale. And if you need another reason not to desire nuclear war, that particular catastrophe isn’t covered under homeowner policies. You can get “fliers” for water damage and the like, but to my knowledge not damage from nuclear war.

And if you defy all the odds, and live to a ripe old age, and avoid hospitals and “healthcare,” then you’ve paid an astronomical amount of both life and health insurance for….nothing. It’s not like they give you a refund because you were such a great customer, permitting them to buy and reap great profits from all that real estate and everything. As for car insurance, if you go decades without an accident, and then one happens because another driver was at fault, you will be very lucky not to have your rates rise. Some might even be cancelled by their insurance provider. When I became a pathfinder in the DWI movement in 1978, I was unable to afford insurance for two years. I had to opt for the uninsured motorist’s fee. It I’d been in an accident, I would have been financially destroyed. Good thing I didn’t know enough to worry. There are some advantages to being a happy-go-lucky partyer.

The most disgusting insurance is healthcare coverage. Of course, needless to say, without it, no one could afford to have cancer or any other debilitating disease. Medicare recipients, on top of paying an increasing monthly fee to get their own money back, which they paid into the system over the course of a working lifetime, also have to buy supplemental health insurance. This is because the Medicare Bernie Sanders is so infatuated with only covers 80 percent of medical costs. 20 percent of any medical bill can be financially devastating. But the oldsters are frightened into purchasing it. Without it, how could they afford the dozen different deadly products of Big Pharma they take daily?

When feminism and the leftist cultural push resulted in most women entering the workforce by the mid-1970s, a new problem arose, for a new supplemental industry to address. Most people were still interested in having kids in those twilight years of America 1.0. What would happen to them when they got off the school bus, and mom wasn’t waiting there for them with a smile as big as June Cleaver’s? She was too busy toiling away in a pointless job that somehow didn’t result in the family having a higher standard of living. How does two incomes not result in a net financial gain? And thus, daycare centers were born. Where the loving parents could entrust hours of daily care to complete strangers. But don’t worry; the “legitimate” ones were certified by the state. Trained and licensed. By the state. It’s not like the state is corrupt.

For those children not old enough to attend government run institutions of indoctrination, you had day long day care. So in some cases, the infant/toddler was spending more time with these well trained “care providers” than his/her own parents. I wonder if they ask the toddlers what their pronouns are in today’s day care centers? Just imagine the purple haired, multi-tattooed “Woke” monstrosities that “provide care” for the children of working parents today. Now anyone with enough money also entrusts the care of their children to strangers. They call them nannies. It’s an upward mobility thing, you wouldn’t understand. In almost every case, the nanny (as opposed to the daycare “provider”) doesn’t speak English. So this serves to ensure that the upper crust will become bilingual. After all, you need to speak Spanish fluently if you’re going to own your own company, and pay the day workers their pittance.

Those not fortunate enough to have been born to parents with enough disposable income to hire a non-English speaking nanny, or to working parents or single mothers who couldn’t afford day care, became latchkey kids. Kind of a catchy name. If you’re an 11 or 12 year old boy, with a female latchkey kid your age in the neighborhood, a lot of ideas may come to mind. No adults around to supervise. Kids with raging hormones left to their own devices. Nowadays, I’m not so sure what happens, especially if the object of your affection has already been injected with hormone blockers, courtesy of her otherwise absentee parents. The nanny state came up with a new term to make working parents and single mothers feel better about this kind of neglect. Quality time. Yes, once I finally get home, I will spend quality time with my child.

When I was a kid, I suppose people used credit cards. My parents never did. The working class back then tended to try and live within their means. One bathroom fits all families. Maybe if they’d had a credit card, I might have gotten that Ludwig drum set I dreamed so much about. I can’t help but connect the rise in prevalence of credit cards, and of course credit card debt, to the widespread introduction of women into the workforce. What with that doubling of the family income, that somehow made things less affordable and all. The booming credit card industry made it possible for almost anyone to live beyond their means. Keep up with the Joneses. And with credit cards, came the new, all important credit score. Outrageous interest rates for “high risk” card owners and the like. And all necessary because again, family buying power miraculously fell with an extra income. I wouldn’t mention this to feminists.

Because the affordable food supply is just as unhealthy as the water, and lacks essential nutrients, the vitamin and supplement business began booming as well. This is one supplemental business I support. I can’t count the number of vitamins I take every day. But it wouldn’t be a successful industry if corporations stopped using unnecessary colors and preservatives. Stopped injecting everything with deadly corn syrup. I learned about BHA and BHT in the 1980s. I was an early label reader. This is the one area where I have actually had an impact with my lovely wife. She scans those labels at the grocery store like no one else. As I often say, she is a Hall of Fame shopper. But it’s costly to buy everything organic. Most people can’t afford that. And why did they take Iodine- essential for humans- out of table salt?

Our leaders are so devoted to providing their peasants with dangerously unhealthy food that they are now using GMO (genetically modified organism) ingredients in an unknown number of products. I say unknown because their devotion is so intense that they refuse to allow GMO ingredients to appear on food labels. A few years back, the always astute voters in Colorado and Oregon rejected a referendum that would have mandated GMO labeling. Voters only go for the COVID-kind of “mandates.” Think of that- the people had a chance to do something right, bypassing their worthless “representatives.” People power in action. And they refused to do so, saving some horrific federal judge the trouble of overturning it. That’s democracy for you.

How about tax preparation firms like H & R Block? Our tax system is so needlessly complex and inconsistent, that it takes a trained “professional” to get you to pay as little as possible to finance our Socialism Without Services. Remember all those Stupid Party promises, that would allow you to “fill out your tax return on a post card?” National Sales Tax. Flat Tax. Instead, we got reputed tax-cutter Ronald Reagan’s 1986 “reform” act, which eliminated deductions for things like car loans, personal loans, and credit cards, which of course primarily impacted the poor, and lower middle class. It also “reformed” the way you could deduct medical expenses. Actually, it made it almost impossible to deduct them. I have a lot more about the Gipper’s real record in American Memory Hole.

More recent supplemental industries include the food delivery outlets like Grubhub and Uber Eats. Unlike the others we have mentioned, this isn’t related to the costs of living, and the fact 80 percent of workers are not paid enough to meet them. This industry was born because Americans have become so indescribably lazy. Waddling to a car, and driving all the way to some fast-food joint, then waiting in the drive-through line for your nutrient-free carryout, was just too taxing. Food delivery right to your door. You can even pay on your “smart” phone. You could pull a muscle reaching for your wallet. Just tip on your phone, too. The delivery guy will definitely need that, since he too is not being paid enough to live independently in America 2.0.

I doubt that it’s a booming business, but they now have video game instructors. They actually come to your home, like piano teachers used to do, and oversee your youngster’s gaming ability. They will guarantee higher scores, and consistent success at reaching the next level. Since our rigged economy, with all its outsourcing and cheap foreign labor, have made it difficult for the vast majority of young people to find good jobs, it’s essential that a supplemental industry fill the void. There are a whole lot of gamers, and many of them probably do live in their parents’ basements. Grubhub can deliver their nachos and cheese. But someone has to teach them how to be more proficient gamers. And the Boomers pitch in by calling them “snowflakes.”

By the 1990s, the nonstop illegal immigrant invasion birthed the lawn crew business. Now, I grew up so long ago that there were no such things as lawn crews in this country then, at least not for private residences. I started mowing our yard when I was about ten. I still shiver when I recall how hard it was for me to deal with the pull chord and get our old machine started. Kids did it for parents. Some Dads liked doing it. I still enjoy mowing the yard. Elderly people had some younger family member that did it for them. Kids cut other people’s grass to earn extra money in the summer. But that particular industry disappeared when millions of illegals arrived, for the literal greener grass this side of the border. The new supplemental lawn crew industry created no new jobs for American citizens, outside of the owners of the businesses who picked their workers out of a Home Depot lineup.

I’ve been a licensed Realtor since 1985, but I understand that the only reason our industry exists is because of the complexity of the buying and selling process. There is all the recording and registering, and needless paperwork in every transaction. And almost every owner I’ve known who tried to sell their home without a realtor ran into this problem. The system demands our supplemental industry. Commercial real estate is even more confusing. I wouldn’t attempt to understand it. Even with all my years of experience, I would have a very hard time selling my home without a real estate firm. Property management has become a supplemental industry, even for individual investors who are renting out a property. This is not really financially related, but however you look at it, they’re collecting rent that the owner should.

John D. Rockefeller, one of the icons of American capitalism, had a personal credo that he lived by. No, it wasn’t “a penny saved is a penny earned,” or some other chestnut from libertine and Hell Fire club member Benjamin Franklin. It was a sweet and simple, “Competition is a sin.” Now, that seems like an odd slogan for a proponent of a system supposedly based on competition, but if you read my book Survival of the Richest: How the Corruption of the Marketplace the Disparity of Wealth Created the Greatest Conspiracy of All, you’ll see that it is the underlying premise behind the corrupt profiteers of crony capitalism. Let me know if you can find any real examples of “competition” in our form of capitalism.

I could have noted other examples. Counselors and therapists of all kinds, that only exist because our society is fueled by stress, and the systemic family dysfunction created by our propagandist, state controlled media. Alleged psychics, who help the police solve crimes? If only we had police who could solve crimes, then this wouldn’t be necessary. Well, to be fair, they are pretty good at fixating on a subject and framing them. Some supplemental industries are not welcome; remember the Minutemen, I guess technically a voluntary supplemental industry, who attempted to actually protect the southern border? You know, the one that the immigration and customs enforcement we pay for leaves wide open. Supplemental industries are mostly about profit, and part of the overall corruption. But in cases like border security, or citizen oversight committees to monitor police, doctors, or any other group, there are bigger agendas at work. The corruption must not be touched, even by volunteers.

The rigged system needs these industries. After all, they destroyed our industrial base with awful trade deals like NAFTA, outsourcing, and relocating offshore. Think of all those well paying jobs, with great benefits, in the now extinct American factories. Strong unions helped provide all that. There are no strong unions left, outside of teachers and professional athletes. Those “unskilled” factory workers- all of them decidedly “unessential,” still exist. But they don’t have a chance in America 2.0. How many Americans might still want to be farmers, the livelihood of most of our ancestors, including generations of families? That is if the government hadn’t screwed family farmers over. They want corporate farms. With GMO crops. And preferably with a drooling Bill Gates scarecrow standing guard. Somebody call Willie Nelson. We need another Farm Aid.

Another booming industry- not really supplemental- is the Social Media Influencer field. This involves lots of pretty females, and I guess a decent amount of not pretty ones (this is America 2.0, after all), hamming it up in front of a webcam. Talking about shopping, makeup, dating, anything superficial will do. They all have perfected the “duck face” that is essential for any good selfie. Essentially, they influence. As far as I can figure, this amounts to influencing sometimes millions of gullible fans to support them financially. Some of them have become wealthy. An offshoot of this is Only Fans, where lonely males pay money to look at or talk to women who think they’re “hot.” I’m sure there are significantly extra costs involved for any nudity. Could Only Fans exist if they hadn’t screwed up dating and relationships between young people via their nonstop cultural programming? So maybe it is a supplemental industry.

I am sometimes called a “socialist.” Perhaps even more often than I am called a “racist.” I believe in free enterprise. America 2.0 doesn’t have free enterprise, and America 1.0 began drifting from it into crony capitalism when I was still a wide-eyed idealist, with an ACLU membership card in my wallet. The marketplace is rigged against the average citizen. The one thing the rigged marketplace does produce are these supplemental industries, which are only necessary because 80 percent of the workers are paid too little to afford essential services. Or because a surprisingly large percentage of Americans recognize the danger of drinking impure water, and eating food laced with unhealthy preservatives and artificial ingredients. Always remind your favorite conservative what John D. Rockefeller said about competition.