Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
So you think that there is a difference between having money, and having power?

Can you really not see that your guy with $100 billion has power. Or your $100 billion annual turnover corporation? Money IS power.

Who do you think runs the USA for instance? Whoever has the money; corporations or individuals. With the actual people and democracy playing a very distant second fiddle.
Who would like to pull off the same trick in Brussels as they did in Washington, and are well on their way...

In the UK, the super rich and very powerful + people who are popular with the establishment have their own Chamber in the Parliament. They can stop new laws and basically choke any initiative they don't like. Virtually everybody who is a billionaire, is also knighted and can have a place there, if they like. All it takes to get in, is a very large donation to some government project.

The super rich are usually above the law if they commit crimes; they don't usually pay taxes, or only pay as much as they want to.

Right now I am doing an assignment at a very, very large erm.. international corporation in an extremely lucrative area of business. They are as powerful as the government in many areas. They lobby to get their way, they buy off politicians and businessmen at home and abroad. The state almost certainly to some extent carries out industrial espionage on their behalf and the security services is behind their business in places like Russia and South America. They are one of the main beneficiaries of the two recent wars/invasions that the UK has been involved in. Interesting "chance".

In Sweden, we have a family that is incredibly rich and has its tentacles in just about every lucrative business. Their actual family creed (in Latin) is "To act, but not be noticed". It's almost laughable because they really give the game away.
People know they are rich and influential, but nobody knows just how much.
I have a couple of friends from that actual family. They are (individually) very nice people and those I know are not personally involved in the family business even if they benefit from it. I would not bash them as individuals, necessarily. But that family is an example of someone who gets in bed with anyone with the slightest level of power and influence, and manipulates them. This family was so shrewd that they even managed used 80 years of almost no-interruption social democracy to knock off the competition and get richer. In those days, they had to keep their money abroad, but lately with the "Moderates" ruling, and this family funding one right-wing "think tank" or national publication after another, they can now keep their money at home and be a bit more open.

To imagine that rich people exist in isolation, is naive.
How did they get rich, how do they managed to stay rich, or get richer? Obviously because they know how to play the system. Hard work and/or brains alone does not make you a multi billionaire - for that you have to be shrewd and ruthless as well, networking at all levels in society. To stay like that for generations you have to raise your kids right for the purpose.

Look what Facebook, Google and large ISPs had to do to stay on top. Sell out their users private data to security services. It was a price they were willing to pay.
The give and take between state and capital goes both ways. They are in bed together. Or rowing the same boat as a famous punk song goes.

And if you love rich people, prepare to start loving the Chinese! They are just like the family I mention. Not outwardly aggressive or obviously out of control. But they are beginning to buy up major assets in all worthwhile industries in Europe. America is up to its ears in debt to China, and China is the new best friend of many African nations after giving them actual aid on terms the Africans like, in return for stakes in mineral claims.
They are probably working Russia too, but I don't know exactly how.

The USA is turning into a debt-ridden, war-obsessed country run by corporations and billionaires while regular people are getting worse off and public services are crumbling.
China is running a much more effectively controlled ship, and they are not even in a hurry to get there.

My point is Money=Power.
Rich people are not the isolated philantropists that you seem to imagine.
I can agree that money can give you some power to some extent, but that's not the power to mess with other ppl's lives. Neither is it the power to break the law and get away with it. When you're rich, you just don't have to break the law, that makes no sense. You've succeeded in life in such a way you can just watch your wealth make even more wealth in a legal market play. If you have say a couple million bucks, you have maybe about a dozen legal ways to make it work for even a bigger wealth of yours. If you have a couple billion bucks, this number is probably hundreds or thousands of ways. Etc. etc. etc. That's what all the major corporations are doing. Btw, speaking of corporations. Look at Microsoft or Apple. I bet ppl like you in the 1970s (and especially hippies) hated "the evil corporations" just about the same way. They said big corporations had taken over everything, there were no ways for small businesses, etc. Well, look at 2 of those small businesses now. Having started from scratch, they've turned into the world's largest software corporations with annual revenue around $100 billion. They were supposed to have no chance to ever make it to this current level back then in the 1970s, but they did, and nothing stopped them. Maybe money's not the problem if people aren't spoiled?