You cannot become super rich if you follow the generally accepted rules ...
Six ways to get rich
Several years ago I read a book - something like - How to Become a Billionaire.
The author analyzed 400 of the richest people on the Forbes list and found that there are only a few ways to get on this list of the super-rich.
The first and most popular way is to get an inheritance and avoid tax on it.
Examples are the Waltons (Walmart owners), the Bass family, the Koch brothers, the Barclis family.
Other ways:
- the creation of conglomerates in the industry
- technology monopoly
- exploitation of natural resources
- use of cheap labor
- kronism (clannishness, nepotism, etc.) - manipulation of officials and the legal system to obtain special advantages.
If this list has caused you sadness and depression, then you are not alone.
Most of us are idealists and would like to live in a society ruled by a meritocracy - where the best representatives are adequately rewarded, and not slaughtered, but the fact remains that in order to achieve super-wealth, you simply have to use any means, including those that harm other people.
Extreme wealth just can't be honestly earned - 80 billionaires have as many as 3.5. billion people - i.e. almost half of the world's population .
And so it has been at all times - the company of John Rockefeller was on the way to bankruptcy until he started giving kickbacks to the railroad.
Thomas Edison deceived and practically destroyed Nikola Tesla, Andrew Carnegie literally killed his employees if they asked for a wage increase.
What strategy did Bezos use?
Jeff Bezos used almost all of the above strategies, with the exception of inheritance (his parents, who are still alive, gave him $ 243,573 to start his company ).
Most of Bezos's fans believe that he got rich because Amazon has a supposedly “innovative business model,” but this is actually far from the truth.
In fact, Jeff Bezos became one of the richest people because he was the first person in IT to re-arm his financialization in order to exterminate his competitors and destroy democratic principles.
It is a well-known fact that Amazon is not and has never been much better than other online stores in the past and present, it simply had access to more capital than others had, which it carefully used to strangle competitors and to strengthen its position to extract additional profits from ordinary buyers.
This is the model that many IT companies are now using to grow very rapidly.
How to Monopolize an Industry
Jeff Bezos was the first to truly excel at the treacherous art of financialization.
The deadly gambit is simple:
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This is exactly what Amazon did.
For 58 quarters (14 years!) Since their IPO - Amazon has been losing money every year, spending it to destroy businesses in the real sector of the economy.
Airbnb is another example of an extremely predatory company.
They lost $ 135 million in 2015, $ 136 million in 2016, 70 million in 2017, 16 million in 2018, 674 million in 2019 and 696 million in 2020.
In total, since 2008, Airbnb has lost $ 2.8 billion.
Among the previous generations of businessmen, such an anti-loss record would make the company worthless and investors would avoid it.
But in today's “fairytale” world (in fact, a nightmare) of destructive financialization, coupled with a huge hype - Airbnb is shown to us as a diamond and as a company in which we must definitely invest, the public “value” of the company is about $ 100 billion.
In the case of Amazon, the "value" of the company is now $ 1.5+ trillion.
Amazon and Airbnb are not anomalies.
Lift lost more than $ 1 billion in the year before the IPO and is now “worth” 15+ billion.
According to experts, in 2018, 81% of American companies were unprofitable during the year before the IPO.
Let's be honest - these are not companies with any impressive patents for inventions that could turn the world around.
All their innovations are to attract money from investors in order to burn out the entire field of competition.
John Rockefeller was the first to do what Jeff Bezos is now excelling at:
“One of his favorite methods of dealing with competitors was called sweating well.
The method consisted of dumping selected markets, which led either to bankruptcy of competitors or to the sale of Rockefeller's business to Standard Oil, or to enforce the rules set by Standard Oil. "
If it looks like a monstrous immoral fraud, it is only because it is.
And now things are getting even worse.
Now Amazon is a public company and Bezos has no big rights to raise funds for a direct war with smaller companies.
But in fact, there are many unethical ways:
- He can continue to buy up lucrative companies like Whole Foods, IMDB, Zappos, Goodreads, Audible and a host of others to use their profits for endless expansion.
- He may continue to degrade civil society by continuing to evade taxes and hide huge profits offshore. ( Amazon is recognized as the largest tax evader in the world ).
- He could do like Elon Musk, diluting investor stakes through various rounds and secondary offers.
But that's not all.
Despite de facto control over the remaining online retail market and the grossery market and the web services market - Amazon has been providing its infrastructure for CIA servers for several years - Bezos turned to a very old but new strategy for him:
Cronism (nepotism).
Greatness
Ida Tarbell, a brave journalist from the early 1900s, got tired of watching Rockefeller's monopoly of Standart Oil destroy thousands of small businesses, eliminate competitors through financialization, secret illegal advantages, avoid paying taxes, how wealth is accumulated at the expense of other people's labor and the foundations of democracy are undermined by lobbying politicians and pushing their puppets to courts, Senate and Congress.
Tarbel decided to publicize all the shadowy sides of the company.
Rockefeller's attack on democracy was historic - senators dependent on him lobbied the president for the right to extract oil in Indian settlements.
Rockefeller helped his business partner Johnson Camden to be elected to the Senate - he officially left the company, but retained a stake in it.
Rockefeller also helped with Payne's Senate election, although his son also had a stake in Standard Oil.
In the end, Ida Tarbel managed to expose the scheme and the Roosevelt administration began a lengthy trial over the Rockefeller monopoly.
Like Rockefeller, Jeff Bezos knows how to use politics to destroy his competitors, fight publicity, win trials, hire politicians, and slowly but surely destroy democratic principles on a scale that Rockefeller never imagined:
- He bought publications like the Washington Post and Business Insider, just as Rockefeller did.
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And this Bezos just started his work.
Lobbying for Amazon is growing exponentially:
Ida Tarbell, to her credit, realized the genius of Rockefeller's plans in time.
She noted that Rockefeller's company had become legitimately outstanding, but also illegitimately outstanding.
The same can be said about Amazon.
Amazon has become a legally great company.
But at the same time, it is also illegally great.
What about Jeff Bezos?
At first, he was an outstanding innovator.
Then he became a successful capitalist.
Then he became a predatory corporation.
And now he is becoming an anti-democratic statesman.
Jeff Bezos is without a doubt the most dangerous politician of our time.
Why?
Because, like Rockefeller, he began to apply dirty rules of the game.
If we look at the picture of the world today, we see that corporations rule the world.
The so-called "democracies" are taken over by corporations, most of the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government are occupied by well-paid puppet politicians of the corporate state.
No one can do this better without the help of IT companies and here Bezos is king.
Bezos brilliantly mastered the art of financialization as a way to kill competitors in IT, and now he is doing the same with democracy - exactly the same as Rockefeller did in his time.
And hundreds of other companies are also following suit.
Jeff Bezos has built a wonderful company, but now he's crossed the line - he's on the dark side if you will - when he decided to tackle the threat to the economy and democratic principles.
When will Jeff Bezos stop?
Aurelius Augustine once said that the human heart can be satisfied with only one thing - everything.
All sex, all money, all power, all possessions.
You need to have everything without a trace.
Only a part of everything cannot satisfy the human heart.
This is how we are created - we want more and more.
Sadly, people like Jeff Bezos just never stop unless stopped.
There are only three ways to stop politicians like Jeff Bezos
The first way is to change legislation.
An almost impossible method in the days of Rockefeller, but it was precisely this method that was used by independent politicians such as Roosevelt and Taft, who nevertheless were able to destroy the Standard Oil monopoly.
But let's not pretend that today's Democratic or Republican leaders are capable of at least half of what was done at the time.
A well-known case was that Roosevelt returned a check for $ 100,000 from the Rockefeller company.
For comparison, Donald Trump's campaign was funded by 99 billionaires, Joe Biden - by 131.
This two-party system will not leave us safe - Joe Biden seems to be an honest man, but he is 100% for corporations.
Until America wakes up and finds a third party (apart from Republicans and Democrats) that can prohibit politicians from accepting money from corporations, this road will be tightly closed.
The second method - but it will most likely never be implemented - is the power confrontation.
During the Rockefeller era, oil workers who lost their jobs burned down refineries, ransacked oil terminals, derailed oil wagons, and even tried to blow up the mansions of board members.
Violence is certainly not the way to fight today - not only because it is deeply immoral, but also because corporations now control the police, military and security forces and will continue to use them to suppress violent activities.
The third way - which almost failed - is to deprive large corporations of funding.
Hard to implement - large corporations bankrupt or buy out other companies.
In fact, most of us are unwitting accomplices in the heyday of Jeff Bezos and oligarchs like him - just as Americans used to have to heat their homes with Standard Oil because Rockefeller controlled 90% of the market.
That is why the future should be in the hands of local companies.
Perhaps just one thing will depose the dominance of the corporatocracy, which is actually sensitive to radical mass opposition:
- widespread use of cryptocurrencies (maybe that's why Elon Musk recently invested 1.5 billion in bitcoin? - translator's note)
- application of cooperative business models
- global boycott of predatory multinationals
- state and city-level laws that protect small business and local democracy from multinational conglomerates
- massive tax strike.
In all likelihood, we still have a chance - otherwise there will be no way to stop Bezos and the entire corporatocracy from wanting to destroy democracy and buy the entire planet.
In fact, this is an almost accurate description of one part of Bezos's strategic plan .
But one thing is for sure - if companies like Amazon and politicians like Jeff Bezos continue to use their capital and technology to bankrupt billions of people, there will be no power on earth to protect them from impending disaster.
Snakes tend to bite when stepped on their necks.
Our first step is to help the world understand how Jeff Bezos and his followers became dangerous.
Then we will know the problem and can change the trajectory of movement.
The newspaper Bezos bought says Democracy is dying in the dark.
This is true - and he knows it for sure - because he is the one holding the knife to her throat.
But something else is also true.
Corruption dies in the light.