Milton Freidman is not the Devil

Milton Friedman is not the Devil, but he is a high ranking demon.

Friedman sold the world on the idea that companies have one purpose to make profit.

Today, shareholders can sue a company and its leadership if it does something to hurt profits.

This single focus requires companies to take any action that increases profit regardless of the actions.

It does not matter that employees are hurt.

It does not matter that the environment is hurt.

It does not matter that communities are hurt.

It does not matter that customers are hurt.

Profit in the short term is how score is kept, meaning there is no interest in the long term.

The system is designed to achieve the outcomes that it is designed to produce.

A company can not forgo profits to take care of employees to generate loyalty.

The pursuit of profit is a house fire in society that destroys opportunity and individual self-determination.

It means winning at all costs.

Yet it alone is not the root of all evil, though Chaucer warned us that this was the case.

It is profit above all else paired with the institutionalization of ownership.

Rarely are companies today owned by benevolent dictators with the power to act as they see fit.

Companies today are owned by institutional investors. 

Private equity firms and hedge funds invest money on behalf of people and other institutions like retirement funds.

No one directly owns the means of production anymore. 

Instead it is a system of cut-outs, and each stage held accountable for maximizing return on investment.

Monopolies rise as a mechanism to create value in profit not value for society.

Even the capitalist has become removed from the means of production.

No longer is the dream of the capitalist to build great things.

Instead is the dream of fat profit.

Completing the triumvirate of social and economic doom is the voodoo economics known as trickle down economics.

The idea is simple and sounds great on paper. 

The more money the rich have, the more they will spend, which will trickle down the social system to those at the bottom.

Alas, when the wealth at the top is invested in institutions charged with generating more wealth through profit, the trickle becomes a closed-loop.

The rich get richer to get richer. Everyone else gets poorer. 

The money and the power becomes more concentrated, strangling out any alternative.

History teaches us that inevitably, this state of affairs will produce a counter force.

Through disruptive conflict, a new and integrated state will arise. 

But revolutions are never pretty and never safe.

Thank you Milton Friedman for your contributions to the causes of the collapse of society and the coming revolution.