#93.3 Updating Riegel – Each Issuer's Limit - Pt. 2

Source

This chapter, is fully entitled, Each Issuer's Limit, with this subtitle;

Determination of Each Person's Limit of Money Issue and its Redemption and the Maintenance of Adequate Supply Without Inflation and Deflation.

We began discussing this chapter here. 

We commence with Riegel giving examples explaining his two account solution for exchange B member businesses, 

An example: An employer has 50 employees and their total pay per month is 5,000 valuns or a total of 15,000 valuns over three months. Besides this debit power on his payroll account, he would have 7,500 valuns debit power on his commercial account or a total of 22,500 valuns. Only his employees could draw against the payroll account. At the end of the three months his payroll debit power would be exhausted; and, to continue the power of his employees to draw against his payroll account he would have to transfer to it from his commercial account enough to provide for the next three months. Employees would have a permanent debit power equal to three months salary. 

I've always read this as exactly equivalent to our stated notions of proposed Labour Contracts. It could as easily be implemented using one account per B member business. But our solution looks far more straightforward; Labour Contracts represent an offer by a possible employee to be employed for a term of time by an employer and as it was done in olden times, the employee would provide the money for his eventual pay. The transaction would begin on the first day of work with the issuance by the employee of the entire amount to be paid back to him to the employer. This would go into the employer's payroll balance in his account. As the contract ran, the employee would be paid back his Valuns that he issued and in so doing cancel his issuance with the work he accomplished. Our definition of work holds throughout. 

Employers would have a debit power the first three months equivalent to 1 1/2 times the three month's payroll during the first three months, and one third of such sum permanently. 

I think he was just trying to sketch it out. The proposal would have the employer getting the float from the Labour Contracts from the start of work and the employer pays all of it back to the end of the term of the employee's contract. It's simple. Schedules can be devised to meet the individual needs of any employment situation. Riegel continues, 

As stated, the proposed debit limits are merely an estimate of what would provide sufficient circulation for a start. Demand for additional debit power would not be a matter of individual request, but rather the determination from the industry study of turnover, which industries required more [deeper debit limits] and how much. The determined amount would be allotted to every member within the particular industry in ratio to his sales for the previous year or six months. 

This conforms to consuming what you produce and producing what you consume in the previous post. Riegel here uses the word member in an ambiguous way though, as if B members get the right to issue money when as we see it and as Riegel explains elsewhere, they do not. B members derive their Valun float from the A members that are employed by them. They have no other way to issue Valuns, since they are concerns, organizations, operations, corporations of people, but not everyman, which is an ordinary individual. 

The industry study of turnover gets at finding ways of self financing businesses throughout cycles of production, etc. that perhaps do not require borrowing money from a VEN financier, who would be another B member business. Notice that our proposal very importantly separates the money lending from the transaction clearing money functions in typical banking operations. 

As for employees, the debit limit for each would be automatically adjusted by the wage or salary, with the only question being, whether the three month period is adequate. 

This is exactly what our proposal does, but makes a six month contract a standard, at least to start. There may be reasons however where an employer is not sure whether someone will work out. We might make a rule that if the employment arrangement is the first time for either A or B member, that the first contract might run for as short as a month. 

Persons who are not on a salary basis, such as the commission salesman, the news dealer on the corner, and others who are neither employer nor employee would come under the minimum debit limit which might be, say, 100 valuns. Professional persons, such as doctors, lawyers, ministers, architects, engineers, etc., like farmers, would be classified under the industry survey with an appropriate debit allotment assigned. 

We can see here that he intends for us to figure out how much each of us is to be allowed to issue through our labour commensurate with our position, responsibilities, skills, dangers to be endured, etc. All governments publish salary ranges for their various occupation categories. The comparison in Valuns is real easy to figure out. But the real limiting question remains how much extra taxes will Valun creation subject one to? 

Each member, with his debit limit assigned, could then, within such limit, create fountain-pen money by the mere writing of checks. If any currency be required, he would present his check to the nearest Currency Counter dealer and receive bills and coins as desired. If he should exceed his debit or over-draft limit, his check would be returned just as it now is when he exhausts his credit balance in a bank. 

Yes, well we may be able to come up with a few more off the shelf, open source ways of making this kind of data available, so you would know how many Valuns were in your 3 balances; your Valun issuance permits, your regular balance and your escrow account balance. These are just three fields on a date stamped record in a computer database. Riegel knew nothing of any of this, but he notably would have understood the importance of printed reports and each exchange will need to produce and keep enough of them to recover quickly from any interruptions. 

There would be no payroll problem for either employer or employee. The Exchange would automatically credit the prescribed pay to each employee's account each pay day and the employee would enter his pay in his check book. Of course, any check received by any member would have to be mailed by him to the Exchange for credit to his account and debit to the account of the check writer. 

Yes, this would all be handled according to the stipulations on the Labour Contract. We explained a regular work type and an artisan/craftsman work type Labour Contract. Self-financing of labour removes the cost of labour from the back of business and places it directly on the employees themselves. It would create a brand new work ethic, as everyone would have to understand just where the money was coming from to sustain their job. They would literally be working for their own money, and that would include everyone from the top on down.

This however affects accounting on the Valun side, such that the Valuns paid cannot exceed the revenue in Valuns expected by the business. If you do that, you go broke. Since the Labour Contract begins with a credit to a B member's business account (paid without interest – as a loan without interest), that the business must still pay back, all of that still falls under the expenses of the business.

The balance between the cost of Labour and the costs of materials, etc. must still be evaluated to come up with a reliable and acceptable return from revenue from sales. Then this must be reduced by cost of goods sold to obtain the margin of profit. This could be retired into the retained earnings balance on the business account on some regular time basis. Any distributions to members of the business might come from here, but more likely this would serve as a business sinking fund to expand or improve the business. 

Under this plan of employee money creating power, employment is given a stimulus; because each employee brings to his employer his own debit power, and the employer has a three months deferment of wage payments. This is a vital contribution toward the sale of labor services because it makes the payroll less forbidding. Each employee becomes a capitalist who brings not only his services but his own financing. Each employee in effect buys his own services. This puts money power at the most vital point. It also cushions unemployment; because an employee laid off need not stop buying unless he has exhausted his debit limit. 

Well, of course, everyone was sold on the idea that capitalism, an ism with capital, was a good thing, whereas we have pointed out that all of that was propaganda by the capitalists to allow them to make money on money without work, as the capitalists never had to relinquish very much or any of the time out of the rest of their lives to barter for their existence. Their money places them above all this. Therefore we regard a capitalist as a rich person by definition; no poor person can or would ever be a capitalist. The lie at the heart of the system was selling people on the idea that if they just stuck with “the system” that they too could one day become capitalists. The catch always was that the money was always someone else's not yours.

Stated differently, each employee becomes a source of income (through their innate wealth) who brings not only his services but his own financing. Each employee in effect buys his own employment and the VEN Labour Contract is the vehicle used to accomplish this.

Once we have established the principle of debit power for employees, we have released a power for stability that is not possible when this power is confined to employers or sellers of goods. How far we may go in this direction can not be forecast but it is plain to be seen that debit power at this point can positively prevent depression because sustained purchasing power means sustained employment demand.

We have brought up various parallels to plumbing and electrical flow that illustrate better what money is and where it goes. The money issuance power is the force of the money equivalent to voltage or water pressure. The current or flow is determined by the standard on which the money is based, so that everyone using it knows what it's expected to measure so that a method of stating a value determined by exchange is possible worldwide. The resistance to money occurs when prices for things are too high for them to sell; goods or services. 

Now hear what Riegel says about the cost of labour, which was the reason he determined on a complementary or alternative monetary system as a solution, 

When goods show a tendency to accumulate in warehouses, it indicates that employees have not been paid wages high enough to buy the goods they have produced. Reduced production then ensues; which means reduced employment, and this in turn implies reduced purchasing - thus accentuating the unbalance between goods supply and money supply. Perfect competition should preclude this unbalance between goods supply and money supply because it would compel adequate wages. But can we hope for perfect competition? While the political money system is the greatest disturber of competition, there are other disturbing influences, also attributable to political intervention. 

If there be no recourse other than to introduce a compensatory force to balance the inequities of imperfect competition, the valun system will be found ideally suited therefore by reason of the simple measure of continuing debit power even with a discharged employee. This would prevent the depression spiral from forming, and would nip a threatened depression in the bud. 

This is one very good reason why we may insist on the monthly income standard for determining eligibility to issue Valuns. Each member will have V200 they can issue to start. Then if they already have jobs, whether their employer is a member or not, the number of Valuns they may issue is determined largely on their ability to pay taxes on the extra Valuns they earned. Should they fall into unemployment, their debit limit is established, based on where they are living and they may have recourse to that in order to subsist between jobs. 

A depression means shortage of employers and surplus of employees; but is it not made less menacing when money creating power resides on the employee side of the employment line? Would it not induce some employees to step across the line and become employers (since employment does not mean an immediate drain upon available funds) thus tending to restore the balance between employers and employees? 

The aim of the valun system is to establish a true money system, and to rely on competition to keep the economy on a steady keel. It is not inspired by the aim to establish a compensatory system for inequalities that may exist in exchange; but we point out that, if a compensatory program must be pursued, the valun system supplies the need effectively. 

… and our implementation of it will too; we dubbed it “natural socialism” or the community taking care of its own. I'd like each of you to pause and consider for one moment an incontestable fact; the present system places value on stuff, the Valun system places it on everyman. People are more valuable than things and until we get over our brainwashing to the contrary, expect very little to change. 

Indeed for the most part, most of people's problems stem from the belief that human life is so abundant that it is almost worthless, or just another resource to be used by the oligarchy as it sees fit; cannon fodder, slave trafficking, drug addiction, etc. Since people do not have the money power, it matters little to nothing whether they can say what they please, write as they please, publish what they please, congregate with whomever they please or believe what they please. Without power over the issuance of money, none of the other freedoms are frankly worth very much at all. 

Now Riegel delves into a subject he calls constant demand, 

Since constant employment, with resultant constant production and constant consumption, is the ideal of an economy, may we not resolve to make it actually so by regarding the employer-employee relationship as existing between the whole body of employers and the whole body of employees rather than between individual employers and individual employees? 

If we take this attitude it is simple to provide - in the Valun Exchange - a central employment bureau where employee-members are registered with full information of their qualifications. Should any be laid off, they could continue to draw on their account to the extent of 1/2 or 3/4 of their recent salary until some other employer or their former employer reengaged them. 

This policy can be justified on the ground that there would be no disemployment unless employees had been underpaid - thus making it impossible for them to buy the goods they had produced - and the disemployment compensation is to correct this previous inequality.

We intend this too and have from the beginning. Our independent exchanges or IE's would be far more than what most people assume. They will not be banks in the traditional sense as none of them will ever be in the business of loaning money. Their principle job is to manage the transaction clearing functions which includes making sure that all labour and credit contracts are satisfied on schedule.
 

BUT we intend to be a center for local awareness of each other's innate wealth. Each member will probably fill out a brief questionnaire that describes what their capabilities are. The businesses would list what they are too. Employers would post positions when available with acceptable bids for labour expressed in Valuns right on each ad. Members could walk into any IE and search these ads that would not be available to the general non member public. You cannot have your own money without work although we will offer less of it for those who are still poor or disabled among us, but we fully intend to make our money worth working for and saving, etc. Now then, Riegel said this at the end of the second paragraph above,

Should any be laid off, they could continue to draw on their account to the extent of 1/2 or 3/4 of their recent salary until some other employer or their former employer reengaged them. 

The default is there; the unemployed member can fall back into subsistence. But that's not why people work and what they do with what they work for is usually to build up something that is theirs above and beyond their current monthly expenses. There are other forms of savings, usually involving purchases of larger ticket items. We therefore might issue a rider on all labour contracts allowing a kind of limited issuance from one's innate wealth, but these allowances would not be allowed but for a few months. After that one drops back into issuance for subsistence. See, we really do want to encourage people to work, though at this point we cannot do anything about income taxes, which must still be paid in their money, not ours. So, even payment for employment by contract in Valuns, needs supplementation in whatever the local currency is that will cover the income taxes on the whole, both dollars and Valuns. I see no way around this under the present regime. You simply must or they will FORCE you to pay your taxes to them in their money.

During the disemployment period consumption would be continued while production would be retarded, thus tending to restore the balance between production and consumption. The employee in effect would buy himself back into employment; because his consumption would induce demand for production, just as his previously stinted consumption had brought about his disemployment. 

Serious update on Riegel here: the balance between consumption and production has been purposely perverted by special interests down through time. Until most things people want and need are once again produced relatively locally, these imbalances will occur and recur and those with more money than they need to live on will stay with the globalist scheme to render each country a specialty producer at the lowest possible labour price so that “the problem of production is solved,” and since no one but a special few ever have jobs, everyone else gets everything by someone else deciding the terms of barter for everyone's very existence; yes, we're talking about government determining that those who have already shall get more since it is theirs, beginning with the money they used to buy it all, and what's left will be doled out to the rest of us under their terms of equality, liberty and fraternity. Understood? You will need your own money, not theirs. 

Would this issuance of new money during non-employment be inflation? No, it would not. Inflation is the issuance of money against a non-value. Here we have the issuance of money against values previously produced and priced abnormally high, so high in fact, that there was not sufficient money supply in the hands of employees to purchase them. In other words, the condition of unemployment was produced by an inflation of goods supply - causing prices to decline - and the action proposed is a deflationary influence upon goods, causing prices to return to their norm. 

Update here as well: Riegel's economic reasoning is perfectly logical. But we live in a financial world that runs in defiance of any of this. There are two phrases to get to know well; one is “mark to market” - denoting or relating to a system of valuing assets by the most recent market price - means that the prices of anything are determined by the market for them, whether that market be an “open” one or a closed one open only to members, such as the one we propose. The alternative is “mark to model” - “the practice of pricing a position or portfolio [or anything else] at prices determined by financial models, in contrast to allowing the market to determine the price. Often the use of models is necessary where a market for the financial product is not available, such as with complex financial instruments.” 

We say this: if you will not sell for the prices determined by the market (mark to market), whatever or however imperfect that market might be, if your prices are too high (mark to model), then as we say of all things, “the seller isn't really interested in selling.” Such practices indicate precisely the nature of the scheming and scamming that has replaced honest finance. They also of course represent a resistance in the monetary system; we called this resistance to money; the seller is asking too much for whatever is “said” to be for sale. These practices are frank admissions that what they want to sell dear is not worth the money they say it is. 

If, however, we must choose between a higher price level, with continuing employment, and a lowered price level with unemployment, the choice would be unanimously for the former. 

Riegel would rather that more people were employed and prices remain high than fewer employed with prices low, and no one has enough money to sustain even those prices. Recall folks, money itself, contrary to all the kooks, weirdos and other predators that people the halls of economic power, has now value in itself. What did Riegel say it was used for? He said that money was a method of stating a value determined by exchange. The problem has been that in the present system the distribution of money has never been fair, not even in their economic terms; certain people have always managed to get their hands on more, or force their subject populations to rely on money that was based on a scarcity. Once this is done, those who have the scarcity rule those without it and there are some assholes out there that intend on FORCING society back into this slavery! They dare call it liberty and freedom too, the LIARS! 

We can resolve the membership of the valun system into a community within the general community - an inner community where the evils of the political money system are barred; and where other evils, that may be inescapable, are compensated for, and the economy thus kept on an even keel. 

Right. And before continuing, look what Riegel has explicitly stated as a pencil sketch model; an inner community, a private membership, which nevertheless might be quite large and whose spread is designed to be universal. 

It is not the purpose of this study to outline arbitrarily a debit policy. Debit policy is the vitals of the whole system and if the principle of the democracy of the money power is respected, all else is a matter of judgment and preference as willed by the members through their elected servants. 

We remind some of our friends that what Riegel meant by “democracy” had everything to do with the promotion of the importance of everyman when it comes to the issuance of money, not the agendas the word has since received which are all corruptions of this essential democracy. 

It is possible not only to assure continuity of prosperity of all employed members of the Exchange, but also to even absorb gradually the unemployed from among the non-members. The cycle of production and consumption need not begin with production; it can begin with consumption. An unemployed person may actually buy himself into a job by consuming existing goods, thus inducing demand for labor. Since a person having valun debit power can spend his valuns only with suppliers who are members of the Valun Exchange, his demand can be directed only within the system; and thus all reaction remains within the valun community. 

This will gradually happen as what Riegel is describing here is in the same category as the force of gravity when it comes to natural law. The more who join and tend to buy within the community the more stable prices become.

We shall not have fully comprehended human rights until we recognize the right of every man to proffer his services to society by the practical means of requisitioning the services of others through his power to issue money. In an exchange society man's only means of employing himself is to employ others and thus induce the reaction of demand for his own services. In sheer justice, therefore, we cannot deny to any man the right to issue a draft upon his own energy, even though, at the time of such issue, he is unemployed. 

Indeed! And this too is in accordance with natural law and what we have dubbed “natural socialism” which arises among ourselves and is certainly not subject to the dictats of states or the schemes of capitalists whether they be bankers or other speculators. Notice we didn't really make much of a distinction based on policies of recent times.

The fear of moral delinquency, as a hazard to debit power exerted by individuals without discrimination, can be dismissed because of the unity of the accounting system. A Valun Exchange would be a St. Peter's ledger on earth which could condemn a faithless man to economic perdition. 

Again, this is a “fair” system. It offers a practical end to poverty, but it will also show the differences between those who work and those that don't with the latter remaining poor. Our intention is to solve the inflation issue so that prices remain stable over very long periods of time so if you are poor at least you can survive. 

Under the political money system, every bank is an individual issuer of credit and there is no central ledger; and one may default repeatedly and still remain in the economic community. 

Let's stop here and consider just what Riegel has said. In the present system, lending is leveraged (risked) against reserves in deliberate violation of natural law for the sole purpose of enriching the lenders. At present this arrangement makes it impossible for anyone to get anything done without going into debt. Money is always kept artificially scarce and no matter how much of it is ever created by the present methods there can never be enough of it. This perpetuates debt. We know all this, but Riegel is pointing out is that  

1) Each lending institution is operating under its own ledger, and 

2) This practice allows repeat defaulters of credit contracts to continue in the economy.

It's a strongly moral statement he's making here. I'm mindful of a discourse by Stefan Molyneux on just how effective private organizations can be in enforcing contracts.

We wonder openly that if most social matters can best be handled by private organizations, just who's interests does the current regime of governments as fronts for banks and the public corporations that have sprung up to absorb more wealth than they can possibly represent, etc. benefit? What are the characteristics of these people? We're taking about people with criminal intent, to steal under various covers from others, to have without paying for it in kind. We know all that. But it used to be possible for one person to work and the rest would be provided for. That too is a cultural thing that the present commercial order has pulverized with its purposely inflationary money and criminal corruption of governments. 

Our mission is to build an honest monetary system that would run in parallel with theirs with the full intention of renouncing theirs when it fails, and not accepting any more of their illegitimate money when it does fail!  

We reassert that money is fundamentally the token representation of an accounting machine. The central ledger is the book where all transactions are recorded in that machine. The machine consisted purely of pen/pencil and paper until electronic media came about. Now we have electronic media. We will still require printed reports. We can have a system using open source, “off the shelf” electronic media for very minimal cost.

We mentioned yearly dues in the “public” currency of the countries where we set up equal to V1 (1 Valun) per year. Right now that's $2.65. Most people spend more then that for a meal these days.

Since membership makes a market, we need lots of members before we can bring about anything. A drive to sign up 100,000 A members (We'd need at least 400 B members and hopefully as many more as possible) would give the organization that conducts the drive the ability to raise $250,000 very easily. It's important where this money goes and how it's accounted for because every one of those contributing dues paying members is an OWNER of the organization that sponsors this drive. It is also very important to understand what Riegel took for granted in his day; that every A membership in this organization is PRIVATE and nobody's business. This is a PRIVATE solution not a public one. Anyone signing up with us understands that all personal identification will be respected and protected. We even kicked around the idea of making even personal checks basically demands to move Valuns from one account to another and the numbers for the accounts are the only identifications on these checks. 

Not so in the valun system. There is only one ledger of debits and credits. Nothing is expected of any one who issues valuns through his debit power other than that he will accept valuns when tendered for goods or services at the current market price. If he fails in this, it will soon show up on his account. If he has been willing to deliver his wares or work at competitive prices and has found no takers, the fault is not moral. If he willfully refuses to accept employment or patronage, he automatically brings upon himself ostracism from the entire valun community. 

He's basically talking about a member who spends his Valuns but has no interest in earning them or taking them in trade for goods or services. 

This self-imposed injury is much greater than any harm to the remaining reputable membership - which will go on functioning without noticing his departure. 

He's right, there really is only one ledger, but it will be held and administered locally not centrally – although the proposed organization that will serve all the independent exchanges throughout the proposed Valun exchange network, not a directorate but a servant, will probably also be the repository for what Riegel would regard as the one ledger. It will greatly matter that each A member can only be an A member of one exchange, though they can change exchanges and their A membership moves with them. Under the proposal, only A members have the right to issue money. B members do not, but they can establish as many accounts in many exchanges. Again, businesses that lend money will lie outside the exchanges as B members and they will operate through credit contracts.

Each A or B member will get a rating within the entire VEN and will be affected by it within the VEN. It is not only worthwhile to have your own money, but also to maintain and improve one's reputation in one's local community. If you get into trouble in one community, merely moving somewhere else and taking your A membership with you may not help you as your reputation follows you. You want an honest and fair system? That's what it takes.

We can promise you this though: the existing system claims it has ways of getting you out of debt and keeping you out of debt yet it is based on usury the taking back of that which was never created and compound interest which is usury on steroids. They never even compute their interest rates in a fair, CONSISTENT, open or honest manner. They have so concocted things that it is getting harder all the time to be able to go into any business without assuming a lot of debt in their money. Debt is a form of slavery. Want your own money yet? 

There will be honest failures - since men will continue to be fallible - and the system should provide some way of reestablishing the debit power of such persons; but this is one of the matters that may be left to the common sense of the members to decide. 

It will be. Among members, when it comes to money, people will deal fairly and honestly or others will soon find out. It IS about money, but it is also about eliminating the things that make the present order “unfair” and crooked. 

The question as to what becomes of unsatisfied debits that result from failures, is not one that is peculiar to the valun system. Losses in business are absorbed in the price of goods and this is one of the influences that tend to raise prices. There are, however, other influences that tend to reduce prices - notably the loss of currency, which in turn is countered by the presence of counterfeits. These factors are not serious and may for the purposes of this study be ignored. 

Business losses are sometimes written down against taxes. The risk to money lenders must be their own and the only basis they will have is completed labour and credit contracts. Per usual, 

We may assume that every issuer of valuns will redeem with goods or services all the valuns he issues; and the failure, for whatever reason, to do so can not be as harmful to the economy as is a pessimistic policy which would hamper exchange. It is far better that money be issued beyond its actual redemption than that it be issued below its possible redemption - since the latter course hampers exchange, and this in turn retards the production of wealth. Idle man hours are a more serious loss than unredeemed money and the former must never be hazarded by pinching the latter. Interrupted production is the only loss that is a net loss. 

We want to state here what is certainly NOT obvious to most people who really fail to grasp a monetary system as a whole, a totality; those who fear inflation from money that circulates around that is not redeemed – money was paid by someone who didn't accept any back because maybe they were poor and couldn't – don't understand that under present circumstances most money that governments or central banks issue is spent by states in ways in which that money DIES AND NEVER RETURNS. They never think about that. It's called depreciation and it is the result of governments spending HUGE SUMS OF ILLEGITIMATE MONEY on things which none of us would even want. Why did Riegel's prediction of inflation take 70 years? Depreciation, simple as that. Money has a source and it dies. Therefore it must be replenished from a source. It should be well understood by now that any ideas that honest real legitimate money can ever be considered a fixed quantity of anything are doo doo! 

Deprogramming takes a long time. 

David Burton 

dpbmss@mail.com

Current Hypothetical Value of a Hypothetical Value Unit

#0 Ultra-rich man’s letter: “To My Fellow Filthy Rich Americans: The Pitchforks Are Coming”

Source 

This article appeared recently and begged for a response and some comments. Per usual, Hanauer's article appears in blue, my remarks in black:

By NICK HANAUER

You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist.

By our definition a capitalist must be rich enough to begin with to make money on money without actually working for it in terms of time spent to produce a good or service. If you aren't rich to begin with, you are not capable by our definition of being a capitalist. Contrary to very misleading propaganda to the contrary, poor entrepreneurs are NOT capitalists, they are free enterprisers, turning their innate wealth to making an income to live on; bartering for their existence. No capitalist needs to worry about bartering for his existence. He has acquired from whatever means, sufficient split barter, accumulated enough “claims against existing stores of goods and services” to enable him to risk his money to make more, with or without actual work.

I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries—from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first non family investor.

Please notice that these are listed as accomplishments when in fact the chances of being able to do what Hanauer has done is not available to any that aren't far enough up the wealth pyramid to begin with. Some capitalists are in families, and this is often the case. It seems to have played a part here.  If the capitalist has the resources of his family to use, he is already one step ahead of those that do not.

Then I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank.

Notice here what we have said before; many entrepreneurs have in mind building some business with the intention to appeal to bigger capitalists (sharks) to buy out the company and pay the founders cash in a buy out. This is certainly part of capitalism.

I tell you all this to demonstrate that in many ways I’m no different from you. Like you, I have a broad perspective on business and capitalism. And also like you, I have been rewarded obscenely for my success, with a life that the other 99.99 percent of Americans can’t even imagine. Multiple homes, my own plane, etc., etc.

To most of you out there, all this man's stuff you would regard as wealth, even though in all probability, very little of it could be sold at today's market and produce a gain. On the contrary, as we have said, mere stuff is not wealth and in fact a lot of stuff is incapable of being sold for what it was paid for, therefore all that money has died, never to return. All their stuff accomplishes little or nothing as far as the general economy is concerned. Hanauer himself explains this.  

You know what I’m talking about. In 1992, I was selling pillows made by my family’s business, Pacific Coast Feather Co., to retail stores across the country, and the Internet was a clunky novelty to which one hooked up with a loud squawk at 300 baud. But I saw pretty quickly, even back then, that many of my customers, the big department store chains, were already doomed. I knew that as soon as the Internet became fast and trustworthy enough—and that time wasn’t far off—people were going to shop online like crazy. Goodbye, Caldor. And Filene’s. And Borders. And on and on.

Realizing that, seeing over the horizon a little faster than the next guy, was the strategic part of my success. The lucky part was that I had two friends, both immensely talented, who also saw a lot of potential in the web. One was a guy you’ve probably never heard of named Jeff Tauber, and the other was a fellow named Jeff Bezos. I was so excited by the potential of the web that I told both Jeffs that I wanted to invest in whatever they launched, big time. It just happened that the second Jeff—Bezos—called me back first to take up my investment offer. So I helped underwrite his tiny start-up bookseller. The other Jeff started a web department store called Cybershop, but at a time when trust in Internet sales was still low, it was too early for his high-end online idea; people just weren’t yet ready to buy expensive goods without personally checking them out (unlike a basic commodity like books, which don’t vary in quality—Bezos’ great insight). Cybershop didn’t make it, just another dot-com bust. Amazon did somewhat better. Now I own a very large yacht.

What is he leaving out of all this? He mentions a technical shift from the big department store chains to the internet. The department store chains represented wealth because they provided an income to their owners (who could be anonymous investors) and their employees. The investors could sell out and perhaps retain or make their money but those employed by these businesses are on their own.. The internet also represents wealth in that it is capable of generating an income from its commercial (.com) websites. But in the technical shifts, as happens whenever one occurs, wealth is actually destroyed, which may or may not reappear somewhere else with enough income to support as many as were provided an adequate means to split barter for necessities for their existence. A technical replacement has occurred which has destroyed wealth as it has accumulated it in fewer hands elsewhere; enabling Hanauer and his kind to buy yachts.  

But let’s speak frankly to each other. I’m not the smartest guy you’ve ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student. I’m not technical at all—I can’t write a word of code. What sets me apart, I think, is a tolerance for risk and an intuition about what will happen in the future. Seeing where things are headed is the essence of entrepreneurship. And what do I see in our future now?

I see pitchforks.

At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the country—the 99.99 percent—is lagging far behind. The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast. In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent.

It's actually worse than that, as we have shown here.

But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution. 

Notice how startlingly Hanauer says, some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The one inequality that matters is one amounting to access to money, pure and simple. Hanauer would like for you to imagine that just about anyone could become as rich as he is, but that's not actually so. He rode to his success on other people's money and they certainly had a say in what he has accomplished, or they wouldn't have lent him more. Nevertheless, he'd like to imagine that the illusion of political equality is still worth preserving, when it isn't. That goes for the other two falsehoods too, liberty and brotherhood. They certainly can't be enFORCED by any state without some toxic social deformations as have certainly occurred.

And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.

If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.

I don't know about all that. History shows that people pretty much put up with anything rather than anything that looks to be headed for lives which are “nasty, brutish and short.” People in the past have fallen quite low with surprisingly little protest. But we are awake to a great extent now, and this is the 21^st century. We may see a huge upheaval, something quite unprecidented.

Many of us think we’re special because “this is America.” We think we’re immune to the same forces that started the Arab Spring—or the French and Russian revolutions, for that matter. I know you fellow .01%ers tend to dismiss this kind of argument; I’ve had many of you tell me to my face I’m completely bonkers. And yes, I know there are many of you who are convinced that because you saw a poor kid with an iPhone that one time, inequality is a fiction.

Amazing that he's saying that among his kind, they would still want to believe in the idealism represented by social or any other kind of enFORCED equality. What he, and a lot of people completely fail to see, is that inequality is natural and the lack of respect for people's differences lies at the root of many social problems.

The model for us rich guys here should be Henry Ford, who realized that all his autoworkers in Michigan weren’t only cheap labor to be exploited; they were consumers, too. Ford figured that if he raised their wages, to a then-exorbitant $5 a day, they’d be able to afford his Model Ts.

What a great idea. My suggestion to you is: Let’s do it all over again. We’ve got to try something. These idiotic trickle-down policies are destroying my customer base. And yours too.

He's right. What was one of Riegel's motivations? We've hit on it a few times; he believed that all common labor was grossly underpaid. But listen to what this guy next says,

It’s when I realized this that I decided I had to leave my insulated world of the super-rich and get involved in politics. Not directly, by running for office or becoming one of the big-money billionaires who back candidates in an election. Instead, I wanted to try to change the conversation with ideas—by advancing what my co-author, Eric Liu, and I call “middle-out” economics. It’s the long-overdue rebuttal to the trickle-down economics worldview that has become economic orthodoxy across party lines—and has so screwed the American middle class and our economy generally. Middle-out economics rejects the old misconception that an economy is a perfectly efficient, mechanistic system and embraces the much more accurate idea of an economy as a complex ecosystem made up of real people who are dependent on one another.

All emphasis mine. OK, a few points:

Political activism is a waste of time and irrelevant since the state is the problem in that it is engaged in doing what actually causes the problem to begin with, in league with the Federal Reserve and the banks that really run things. My father had this to say,

“TRYING is for lawyers and PRACTICING for doctors. DOING is for leaders.”

There is nothing to fix in the existing system. It is inept and at bottom illegitimate since it has usurped the natural fiat of everyman. Specifically it has done this through issuance of fraudulent money. We all use it because it functions as money, but because the system itself is built on frauds, it will eventually fail and those at the top of it shall certainly suffer the worst at its fall. There is no possible economics conversation change that can happen as trust has been lost. Too many lies have been told and exposure is certain and inevitable. Nevertheless he'll try.

Which is why the fundamental law of capitalism must be: If workers have more money, businesses have more customers. Which makes middle-class consumers, not rich businesspeople like us, the true job creators. Which means a thriving middle class is the source of American prosperity, not a consequence of it. The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around.

At least he understands that much. We would also say that a strong middle class that understands SANITY when it sees it in normal daily life and would prefer living lives with the REASONABLE EXPECTATION of continuing peace tends to promote most of the social justice most people say they would like, or think they would like. It's difficult to know these days because there is such a welter of propaganda afoot about everything. Fabrications and outright lies are told every day in an effort to sway public opinion one way or another. It is one thing to be aware of the makers of public opinion, it is quite another to be able to lift the curtains and see what they intend on doing, much of it obviously INSANE and not promoting anything like a REASONABLE EXPECTATION of continuing peace, especially if you happen to be where some other people do not want you to be. Without a middle class, there wont be any civilization. Though the rich might be able to stand above a feudal system ruled by brute FORCE, all the benefits of civilized life will fade away and a vast barbarism will eventually present itself all around their private domains – unless they figure out a way to kill 90% of us while remaining alive themselves. Don't laugh. They have written about such scenarios for a long time. I merged the following 2 paragraphs,

On June 19, 2013, Bloomberg published an article I wrote called “The Capitalist’s Case for a $15 Minimum Wage.” Forbes labeled it “Nick Hanauer’s near insane” proposal. And yet, just weeks after it was published, my friend David Rolf, a Service Employees International Union organizer, roused fast-food workers to go on strike around the country for a $15 living wage. Nearly a year later, the city of Seattle passed a $15 minimum wage. And just 350 days after my article was published, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray signed that ordinance into law. How could this happen, you ask? It happened because we reminded the masses that they are the source of growth and prosperity, not us rich guys. We reminded them that when workers have more money, businesses have more customers—and need more employees. We reminded them that if businesses paid workers a living wage rather than poverty wages, taxpayers wouldn’t have to make up the difference. And when we got done, 74 percent of likely Seattle voters in a recent poll agreed that a $15 minimum wage was a swell idea.

"The masses," are what the Hanauers of this world call the rest of us, as if we are ants not people. He's strongly advised to drop this from his common usage and spread it among his class as we highly resent it. OK, here's the problem: the smaller businesses do not have the extra money to pay because they must borrow it form a bank at interest. This presents all sorts of problems. Those with better credit ratings or more exposure to debt that the bankers want repaid get more money to buy higher pay for more workers than a small start up. It's another obvious way the big eat up the small because all capitalism eventually eats its own since it is based on usury, the asking back of that which was never created. Hanauer knows nothing of our self financing of labour proposals and how that affects a real change, a death blow to the present monetary order. If you can't pay us with our own money, you're just aiding the fraud that leaves you vulnerable to inevitable retribution. A book wont do it. All the soft soap sappy histrionics imaginable wont do it either.  Since George Carlin, more people are onto the essential dishonesty of the system that only benefits those who "own" the money.. 

The standard response in the minimum-wage debate, made by Republicans and their business backers and plenty of Democrats as well, is that raising the minimum wage costs jobs. Businesses will have to lay off workers. This argument reflects the orthodox economics that most people had in college. If you took Econ 101, then you literally were taught that if wages go up, employment must go down. The law of supply and demand and all that. That’s why you’ve got John Boehner and other Republicans in Congress insisting that if you price employment higher, you get less of it. Really

If you do not allow labour to price itself and pay itself in its own money, then you will have solved nothing. NOTHING! The problem is the price of money (because it is a commodity) not the price of labour in the present order. Under the present rules relating to money, the standard economics explanation suffices because there is a built in scarcity to all money built into the present order that influences how much labour can be paid and how its costs fit into the costs of goods or services sold, etc. ALSO and this is an important factor, there are plenty of instances where investments are made and facilities built BEFORE any genuine need is perceived and a few months or years later, these places are abandoned.

The thing about us businesspeople is that we love our customers rich and our employees poor.

You're right, it's incredibly dumb! But you wont fix it using their system, never! It isn't designed for it.

Because here’s an odd thing. During the past three decades, compensation for CEOs grew 127 times faster than it did for workers. Since 1950, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio has increased 1,000 percent, and that is not a typo. CEOs used to earn 30 times the median wage; now they rake in 500 times. Yet no company I know of has eliminated its senior managers, or outsourced them to China or automated their jobs. Instead, we now have more CEOs and senior executives than ever before. So, too, for financial services workers and technology workers. These folks earn multiples of the median wage, yet we somehow have more and more of them.

The thing about us businesspeople is that we love our customers rich and our employees poor. So for as long as there has been capitalism, capitalists have said the same thing about any effort to raise wages. We’ve had 75 years of complaints from big business—when the minimum wage was instituted, when women had to be paid equitable amounts, when child labor laws were created. Every time the capitalists said exactly the same thing in the same way: We’re all going to go bankrupt. I’ll have to close. I’ll have to lay everyone off. It hasn’t happened. In fact, the data show that when workers are better treated, business gets better. The naysayers are just wrong.

They would prefer NOT having to borrow more or pay more interest. Most businesses are very aware of taxes and other fees too. All of these expenses come from states and affect their bottom lines. If it isn't worth it for them, they'd rather not compete. Their inability to compete makes society far less interesting, vibrant or exciting and usually leads to general malaise and apathy followed by violence as so much has been taken from them that they have nothing left. Most economics never considers the importance of depreciation on the money supply, never considers how the wrong decisions of the rich make many of our lives farther down the line more miserable. There is only one antidote to trickle down and that's trickle up. Please read the rest of this blog thoughtfully and thoroughly.

Most of you probably think that the $15 minimum wage in Seattle is an insane departure from rational policy that puts our economy at great risk. But in Seattle, our current minimum wage of $9.32 is already nearly 30 percent higher than the federal minimum wage. And has it ruined our economy yet? Well, trickle-downers, look at the data here: The two cities in the nation with the highest rate of job growth by small businesses are San Francisco and Seattle. Guess which cities have the highest minimum wage? San Francisco and Seattle. The fastest-growing big city in America? Seattle. Fifteen dollars isn’t a risky untried policy for us. It’s doubling down on the strategy that’s already allowing our city to kick your city’s ass.

The same will happen in New York City too where the same has happened. But it's still THEIR money not yours or mine, and I might add, since the money inflates anyway, how long before people demand $30 an hour because prices have doubled? They don't double because wages rise, they double because more money is out there chasing whatever inventories are available but especially because the government is spending what it can't tax back. As the debt level rises, prices rise. This is a deadly cycle. The basis of the money itself is the ultimate cause. You can't solve it your way. I was in Seattle and San Francisco last year. Everything in both places is expensive. I felt they had become as expensive as New York.

It makes perfect sense if you think about it: If a worker earns $7.25 an hour, which is now the national minimum wage, what proportion of that person’s income do you think ends up in the cash registers of local small businesses? Hardly any. That person is paying rent, ideally going out to get subsistence groceries at Safeway, and, if really lucky, has a bus pass. But she’s not going out to eat at restaurants. Not browsing for new clothes. Not buying flowers on Mother’s Day.

All right Nick. Just where is average businessperson going to get more money to pay employees more? They have to borrow it. They increasingly wont bother. More businesses will fail, more people will fall into poverty and pressure will mount.

Is this issue more complicated than I’m making out? Of course. Are there many factors at play determining the dynamics of employment? Yup. But please, please stop insisting that if we pay low-wage workers more, unemployment will skyrocket and it will destroy the economy. It’s utter nonsense.

It isn't Nick. Small businesses can't and wont borrow more money. Forget it. Raise wages everywhere without changing the money and you accomplish absolutely nothing. It's the money itself, stupid! It isn't yours and it isn't mine. It says on all of it to whom it belongs. We want our own and until we get it, things will get bad and go to worse.

The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics isn’t believing that if the rich get richer, it’s good for the economy. It’s believing that if the poor get richer, it’s bad for the economy.

Are you following me? It makes your statements irrelevant! Hear the pitchforks? We have the only solution right here on this blog.

I know that virtually all of you feel that compelling our businesses to pay workers more is somehow unfair, or is too much government interference. Most of you think that we should just let good examples like Costco or Gap lead the way. Or let the market set the price. But here’s the thing. When those who set bad examples, like the owners of Wal-Mart or McDonald’s, pay their workers close to the minimum wage, what they’re really saying is that they’d pay even less if it weren’t illegal. (Thankfully both companies have recently said they would not oppose a hike in the minimum wage.) In any large group, some people absolutely will not do the right thing. That’s why our economy can only be safe and effective if it is governed by the same kinds of rules as, say, the transportation system, with its speed limits and stop signs.

I don't believe it! What a tyrant he sounds! Wal-Mart pays by having more of its stores close. They have already many times over exceeded the diminishing returns to scale rule. Probably so have you.

Wal-Mart is our nation’s largest employer with some 1.4 million employees in the United States and more than $25 billion in pre-tax profit. So why are Wal-Mart employees the largest group of Medicaid recipients in many states? Wal-Mart could, say, pay each of its 1 million lowest-paid workers an extra $10,000 per year, raise them all out of poverty and enable them to, of all things, afford to shop at Wal-Mart. Not only would this also save us all the expense of the food stamps, Medicaid and rent assistance that they currently require, but Wal-Mart would still earn more than $15 billion pre-tax per year. Wal-Mart won’t (and shouldn’t) volunteer to pay its workers more than their competitors. In order for us to have an economy that works for everyone, we should compel all retailers to pay living wages—not just ask politely.

Only those who can will under such a tyranny and anyone smaller will simply go out of business. The state has decided in favour of the rich, again! No Nick, our way is better, in fact it is the only way out.

We rich people have been falsely persuaded by our schooling and the affirmation of society, and have convinced ourselves, that we are the main job creators. It’s simply not true. There can never be enough super-rich Americans to power a great economy. I earn about 1,000 times the median American annually, but I don’t buy thousands of times more stuff. My family purchased three cars over the past few years, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. I bought two pairs of the fancy wool pants I am wearing as I write, what my partner Mike calls my “manager pants.” I guess I could have bought 1,000 pairs. But why would I? Instead, I sock my extra money away in savings, where it doesn’t do the country much good.

But it sure does you some good, Nick. After all, capitalism is an ism with capital as socialism is an ism about society, an itch, an irritation. Making money on money without doing any work allows you and yours to steal from everyone else and in order to keep “the masses” quiet, the state as your biggest protector, buys them off with socialism. Capitalism is as surely a form of parasitism as is socialism; they are evil twin sisters spawned by the same class and ilk. Become rich enough and most people would prefer not even knowing you.

So forget all that rhetoric about how America is great because of people like you and me and Steve Jobs. You know the truth even if you won’t admit it: If any of us had been born in Somalia or the Congo, all we’d be is some guy standing barefoot next to a dirt road selling fruit. It’s not that Somalia and Congo don’t have good entrepreneurs. It’s just that the best ones are selling their wares off crates by the side of the road because that’s all their customers can afford.

Because they can't adequately price their own labour in their own money. They have to borrow it and that inevitably leads to theft.

So why not talk about a different kind of New Deal for the American people, one that could appeal to the right as well as left—to libertarians as well as liberals? First, I’d ask my Republican friends to get real about reducing the size of government. Yes, yes and yes, you guys are all correct: The federal government is too big in some ways. But no way can you cut government substantially, not the way things are now. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush each had eight years to do it, and they failed miserably.

They didn't even try. They were both spokesmen. I met them both. They took orders from people behind the curtains. Expecting any political “fronts” not to do the bidding of those who pay them is … ridiculous.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress can’t shrink government with wishful thinking. The only way to slash government for real is to go back to basic economic principles: You have to reduce the demand for government. If people are getting $15 an hour or more, they don’t need food stamps. They don’t need rent assistance. They don’t need you and me to pay for their medical care. If the consumer middle class is back, buying and shopping, then it stands to reason you won’t need as large a welfare state. And at the same time, revenues from payroll and sales taxes would rise, reducing the deficit.

Wishful thinking and not possible using their money or their system. Forget it. Read this blog and think seriously about our proposal.

This is, in other words, an economic approach that can unite left and right. Perhaps that’s one reason the right is beginning, inexorably, to wake up to this reality as well. Even Republicans as diverse as Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum recently came out in favor of raising the minimum wage, in defiance of the Republicans in Congress.

He says this as if politics and state action is the answer, and then says,

One thing we can agree on—I’m sure of this—is that the change isn’t going to start in Washington. Thinking is stale, arguments even more so. On both sides.

But the way I see it, that’s all right. Most major social movements have seen their earliest victories at the state and municipal levels. The fight over the eight-hour workday, which ended in Washington, D.C., in 1938, began in places like Illinois and Massachusetts in the late 1800s. The movement for social security began in California in the 1930s. Even the Affordable Health Care Act—Obamacare—would have been hard to imagine without Mitt Romney’s model in Massachusetts to lead the way.

Sadly, no Republicans and few Democrats get this. President Obama doesn’t seem to either, though his heart is in the right place. In his State of the Union speech this year, he mentioned the need for a higher minimum wage but failed to make the case that less inequality and a renewed middle class would promote faster economic growth. Instead, the arguments we hear from most Democrats are the same old social-justice claims. The only reason to help workers is because we feel sorry for them. These fairness arguments feed right into every stereotype of Obama and the Democrats as bleeding hearts. Republicans say growth. Democrats say fairness—and lose every time.

But just because the two parties in Washington haven’t figured it out yet doesn’t mean we rich folks can just keep going. The conversation is already changing, even if the billionaires aren’t onto it. I know what you think: You think that Occupy Wall Street and all the other capitalism-is-the-problem protesters disappeared without a trace. But that’s not true. Of course, it’s hard to get people to sleep in a park in the cause of social justice. But the protests we had in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis really did help to change the debate in this country from death panels and debt ceilings to inequality.

It’s just that so many of you plutocrats didn’t get the message.

Listen Nick, I doubt they'll get it either. I let him rant on as if what happened in the past was so great that all we need do is do more of it. No no no, it wont work again because it's already been tried many times before. What's even worse is most people are terribly miseducated. Where to cut the Federal government? Start by privatizing education. Dump the Dept. of Education, end UN involvement, kill the UN, etc. But none of that will happen of course because most people are on a bus heading right over a cliff including you, Nick. You have so much that you can't let any of it go so it will consume you. For everyone it helps, hundreds or thousands are dispossessed. I'm disgusted by more lies, Nick. Capitalism enabled you and your pals to grow rich at the expense of everyone else. Retribution is a bitch, Nick.

Dear 1%ers, many of our fellow citizens are starting to believe that capitalism itself is the problem. I disagree, and I’m sure you do too. Capitalism, when well managed, is the greatest social technology ever invented to create prosperity in human societies.

But capitalism left unchecked tends toward concentration and collapse. It can be managed either to benefit the few in the near term or the many in the long term.  

No Nick, it can't. Capitalism is fundamentally incorrect and unsound. It can't be fixed. It will ensnare you just as it has all the rich people I have ever known. F. Scott Fitzgerald was essentially correct. When the rich get a conscience, which doesn't last long, they get out there and try and do as much good as they can, until they get bored and dive right back into their money … which as we say isn't even theirs.

The work of democracies is to bend it to the latter. That is why investments in the middle class work. And tax breaks for rich people like us don’t. Balancing the power of workers and billionaires by raising the minimum wage isn’t bad for capitalism. It’s an indispensable tool smart capitalists use to make capitalism stable and sustainable. And no one has a bigger stake in that than zillionaires like us.

My emphasis: is democracy really democratic? Is everyman truly represented? Of course not.  Democracy is a SCAM Nick!  

The oldest and most important conflict in human societies is the battle over the concentration of wealth and power. The folks like us at the top have always told those at the bottom that our respective positions are righteous and good for all. Historically, we called that divine right. Today we have trickle-down economics.

Emphasis mine and yes we agree. Want to end this? Read this blog thoroughly and thoughtfully.

What nonsense this is. Am I really such a superior person? Do I belong at the center of the moral as well as economic universe? Do you?

No one has to, Nick. If the money was really ours things would be very different and better for everyone, not just those who have had adequate access to either their credit or their gold.

My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three generations later, I benefited from that. Then I got as lucky as a person could possibly get in the Internet age by having a buddy in Seattle named Bezos. I look at the average Joe on the street, and I say, “There but for the grace of Jeff go I.” Even the best of us, in the worst of circumstances, are barefoot, standing by a dirt road, selling fruit. We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around.

Or we could sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.

Or, some of you could get together with us and we could literally change the world and the course of history. It might just be up to you.

David Burton
dpbmss@mail.com

Current Hypothetical Value of a Hypothetical Value Unit