Editor's note: All opinions, columns and letters reflect the views of the individual writer and not necessarily those of the IDS or its staffers.
It’s easy to see why socialism is appealing. Too many of us have been taught that “unregulated capitalism” causes inflation, and a whole generation is suffering a unified system of corrupt politicians and businesses working against them. In fact, they are right to blame corporate greed and corrupt politicians for our nation’s ills. And they are right to criticize the misled conservatives and libertarians among us who think public-private partnerships and privatization are the panacea.
On the other hand, the conservatives and libertarians who blame big government and socialism are right, too. While Democrats are right to blame corporations for buying our politicians, Republicans are right to blame politicians for selling us to corporations. We would find common ground between all of us if we woke up to one simple misunderstanding, which has had catastrophic consequences: Corporations are not humans. Corporations are, rather, government.
Like government, corporations are legal, collective abstractions. They are chartered, regulated, empowered and protected by law for mostly good reasons. But the United States foolishly bequeathed corporations “human rights” in the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad.
While most corporations are still beneficial, this decision has meant the difference between some corporations and organized crime is little more than paperwork — and campaign donations made above, instead of under, the table. And public-private partnerships don’t have much over privatization. Without exaggeration, they fit a large part of Mussolini’s definition of fascism — the bundling together of socialism, nationalism and corporatism. That’s a hand-in-glove crony system of political armed force and greed with collectivized risk and “privatized” profit. But it gets worse.
Although ominous government surveillance programs like “Total Information Awareness” had been rightly shelved, they were then “privatized” with CIA funding and technology in the ominous form of, for example, Palantir Technologies Inc, Google and Oracle. Likewise, dystopic DOD programs have been updated by the sci-fi dystopic Anduril Industries and SpaceX, as well as the usual military-industrial complex and scientific-technological elite corporations Eisenhower warned of.
Politically powerful Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Food, and, perhaps most egregiously lately, asset management corporations like Blackrock, State Street and Vanguard, along with a certain foreign government colluding with the “Deep State,” have bought out, taken over and stolen, our nation’s wealth, health, security and freedom.
Almost all of us understand that our government is corrupt. Most of us see the obvious relationship between campaign donations and their results in governance. Very few of us, however, vote like we know any of that. And so, only a tiny few of us in any way oppose what I believe is the biggest political threat we humans have ever faced — a very quickly unfolding AI-powered dystopia ruled by a universally global network of billionaire technocrats who espouse a Malthusian, eugenicist and transhumanist “dark enlightenment.” Many of the “tech bros” ominously refer to creating the “Antichrist,” “Mark of the Beast” and even the ancient Golem myth — a man-made slave monster that turns on its makers. But, “you will own nothing, and be happy.”
Our new ruling class is, in other words, howling-at-the-moon crazy.
I suggest the following:
- Recognize that “We The People,” overwhelmingly, voted for this mess. We didn’t have to. And we don’t have to in the future.
- Vote against it. Fire incumbents, both the politicians and the parties’ corruption networks. Follow the money, and vote for only those who don’t, in very real terms, work against you.
- Actively search for better representatives — ones who promote sound, constitutional money, peace and sound technology (e.g., permissionless blockchain, instead of “stablecoins” and total surveillance and control). Talk them into running, or run yourself. At long last, use our power of peaceful revolution as intended.
- Only if this doesn’t work should we discuss Plan B.
Andrew Horning, author of “Relighting the Torch,” has been a constitutional advocate, organizer, candidate and curmudgeon since 1994. He ran to represent Indiana in the U.S. Senate as a Libertarian in 2024.
