Outrageous Fortune

Ending inequality, ushering in community

“Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?”
 – William Shakespeare, Hamlet

What is Value?

Looking around witnessing the unravelling of American society I ponder a lot on the idea of value, what it means and how it is determined. There's a whole area of philosophy dedicated to the curious way we assign worth, it is called Axiology.

There are two big questions at the core of it: 

• What has value?
• Where does value come from?

In the beginning of the exploration of the concept of value, ancient philosophers aligned it with the highest possible good a person can do.

“Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” – Albert Einstein

What is in a word?

The word value itself stands for many different things. I'm focusing on two. There's the monetary value of goods, property, and services. Then there are the inner values that guide people's moral choices linked more with the philosophical and psychological use of the word.

Looking at the economic use of the word, it could be argued that the value is calculated by how useful, necessary and/or unique the good or service is. A lot of pricing is subjective and balaced on the idea of the threshold of what someone is willing to pay.

There seems to be a dissonance between the different concepts, where when one seeks greater and greater material economic value (personal accumulation of money and valuable objects) they become less connected with the more noble, moral, and psychologcial use of the word.

“We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.” – Gloria Steinem

The Illusion of worth

I remember when I first learned about money. My family was driving past a car dealership and my parents made a comment about getting a new car. So I suggested why don't we go over there right now and get a new one? My parents laughed and then they explained money to me and I was baffled. You need this paper thing called money to buy it? 

To this day, it still feels strange to me that we need these special numbers added to a computer at a special building (bank or data center) to access the things we need and want. What was once paper and before that coins of various precious metals, has now become numbers transfered from one computer to another.

We all buy into the illusion of the value of these numbers. Which fluctuate depending on a lot of uncontrollable (by us) factors. 

Why do things cost what they do?

There's supply and demand, of course, but there's also price setting, some of which is now being done by AI. Price comparison is another way. Seeing how much other businesses are charging for similar things. A lot of businesses test to see just how much they can get away with charging customers. Inflation is an additional factor where prices suddenly start going up dramatically.

Closeup of the one dollar bill

Obtaining value

We have to exert some effort to add to our individual numbers by selling our labor, renting out our minds, or finding things to exchange with people so they will give us some of their numbers, with paper (cash) or digitally (credit/debit cards). Buying shares of companies, getting loans, these are other ways to add to our store bank of numbers.

Our survival depends on adding invisible numbers to a database and being able to send those numbers from one destination to another to access tangible things we require like food, housing, healthcare, clothing, etc.

Why couldn't we just provide fundamental things to everyone in a more equitable way that doesn't rely so much on individual accumulation?

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” – Henry David Thoreau

Greed for money and power is a mental illness

The never-ending drive to squirrel away vast sums that no one could ever spend in several lifetimes seems like a mental illness to me. Hoarding fortunes when the flow of that wealth could be channeled into positive things. Such as universal healthcare, education, moving civilization away from fossil fuels and towards renewables and a regenerative economy, etc. It is the epitome of greed and ego. 

When you have so much that you must defend your treasures and status you have too much. This ultimately makes you vulnerable to theft and isolates you from others. If you have apocalypse bunker money, you have too much money.

In order to justify obscene accumulation you have to think that you deserve the privilege and comfort that outrageous fortune bestows on you. When in reality, it is largely a consequence of luck that you end up on the top of the pyramid. Often determined by birth into a family that has big numbers in the databases.

Connection is the cure

At its core, greed is a form of disconnection with the world around you and with other human beings. The basic need for connection is projected onto material success. This creates an emotionally impoverished scenario. Connecting with others and being open to life, caring about our world and the people we share it with is where wealth truly lies.

Having a loving community of friends and family around you that take care of each other is what we are designed for. We are not meant to be in individual silos where everyone has to provide for all the things that they will need throughout the course of a normal human life. Sharing and helping each other is what we evolved to do and it's where we derive joy, happiness and connection.

This is what true value is. Showing up for each other. Sitting with our loved ones when it's hard. Holding someone's hand when they're going through a hard time. Helping each other and sharing when we have more freely.

“Anything that just costs money is cheap.” – John Steinbeck

Tool of Control

In the US, we all teeter on the brink of the abyss and are one illness, car accident, layoff, mental breakdown, robbery, shooting, etc. away from losing everything. We like to attribute failure and success to the individual, but both are largely out of our control. A lot is determined by who we encounter in life, and that often depends on what social circles you have access to.

Money has been used as a tool to separate people from each other. To subjugate some and elevate others. It has been used to dehumanize people. The people with no money and no home, who live on the street are seen as expendable. Each one of us has to provide for ourselves and if we fail then we fall into poverty.

Five dollar bill closeup

Imagining other possibilities

Imagine if we lived in a world where all of the people we see and meet had all of their basic necessities available to them. We didn't look at each other to size up where in the social hierarchy you stood based on the clothes and accessories you wore, where your house was, what your skin color is, where you were born, your gender, your sexuality, and what education and social circle you had access to.

How much underlying bias and judgement of others would that remove from our lives if every person we met we could see as fully human, complete, deserving of basic rights and dignity and not as less than? If we could see them as more than the sum of indignities they have experienced by virtue of their ability to access resources and what circumstances they were born into.

“Why are people looking to billionaires to solve their problems? Billionaires are the problem!” – Jennalex (2016)

Don't look to leadership to save you

It takes cruelty and lack of conscious to push to the top of a corrupt system. This means that by default our leadership is unable to relate in anyway to the people they have trampled over on the way up. Or they may have always been above. We can not look to them to help us.

So much bad behavior has been justified by simply saying, "It's just business or it's just politics, it's not personal." But it sure is personal when you're the one who has been exploited, denigrated, robbed, scammed, or trampled over.

Billionaires are the problem

The billionaire class, now commonly referred to as "The Epstein Class" needs to be held accountable for how they have impoverished and exploited everyone else and the planetary resources. Particularly for the harm caused to children, women, people of color, colonized people, and immigrants.

“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” – Honore de Balzac

Through their resistance to change they are actively blocking tangible progress towards greater equality between people, and in stopping the climate crisis and establishing a regenerative system to heal the earth.

Unable to sacrifice power and opulent lifestyles, they are condemning everyone and all life on the planet to avoidable suffering. They have held up progress, when it was clear since the 1970s that we needed to move away from fossil fuels and now we are hurtling towards planetary boundaries at an astounding pace.

The Time for change is now

We have to dismantle the power structure that upholds billionaires and has given them impunity. Now we must take back our wealth and reclaim our power.

Ending the system of domination and subjugation is essential and we must create one built on real community values. Instead of a pyramid we need to be circle.

Doughnut Economics Chart

Regenerative economies

Our economy values destruction and exploitation (war profiteering, clear cutting of forests, pollution from industry, wage theft from productivity gains of workers, etc.).  And it undervalues what is life giving, regenerative, wise, and healing (education, childcare, the elderly, nature, rest, undisturbed landscapes, etc.). We need to flip the script and assign value towards what is restorative, healthful, knowledgable and creative.

It's time for a society that starts centering the wellbeing of all and the health of the planet. The current ruling class is not on board for this, they want to maintain the status quo. Therefore we need to come together and make the system that upholds them obsolete. They do not have any greater merit, they generate no inherent value but instead extract ours. It is time for that to end. No one person is better than any other.

We need to redirect wealth to those who create it > the workers<. Shifting what we value, putting the emphasis on healing the planet, helping each other, and nurturing the children of the next generation, with education, health, and kindness at the center, and building for them a healthy environment.

Growing into something new

The revolution needs to be an inner one as much as an outer one. It needs to be one where we work on spiritual growth, supporting each other through community and move away from transitory superficial factors like beauty, wealth, status, and power. Instead of asking what's in it for me, we need to be thinking, how can I help and contribute to the betterment of all and the world.

We need is a floor and a ceiling. The floor is the level where all of the basic needs of every individual is met. The ceiling is the level of wealth that cannot be surpassed. There needs to be a limit to how much individuals can accumulate and then beyond that everything is taxed at 100%. The Outrageous fortune limit.

Really, all we need is enough.

“There are people who have money and there are people who are rich.” – Coco Chanel