No Accountability Anywhere
From the presidency to the manager of your local fast-food restaurant, the buck stops with nobody
In today’s New York Times, there’s an article about how hospital organ donor lists are essentially useless - a web of bureaucracy, politics, and corruption.
So….an unconnected or poor person may actually be next on the list to get a kidney but will never get one because someone with more money and power cuts in line.
From fast food to life-saving surgeries, there doesn’t seem to be any human accountability anymore.
Wall Street and private equity are buying up companies, hospitals, and nursing homes, and using creative lawyering and accounting to make it utterly impossible to know who owns any of the companies they are buying.
They hire management and consulting companies as a front.
Try suing a hospital, nursing home, or any business owned by private equity or a Hedge Fund and let me know how many years it takes to ‘pierce the corporate veil,’ find the responsible party, and actually collect damages.
Good luck with that.
The generation under 25 is so soaked and addicted in a euphoric haze of social media, TikTok, Instagram, gummies, vapes, and a convalescence that would make any retiree jealous, they’re simply not going to work the way us older folks define work.
Those of us in our fifties and sixties are realizing there’s hardly anybody under 40 in our workplaces.
Where are the young workers?
How are young people paying their bills?
What is the pathway for our kids to experience the American Dream?
Will young people accept a tradeoff where they essentially live on someone’s sofa, scrounge for food wherever they can, and make enough money through odd jobs and social media to at least afford an occasional Baconator from Wendy’s?
Will Trump’s DOGE find some miraculous (or shady) way to start sending $5000 checks to working Americans in an attempt to placate the masses?
Will poor and working class folks rebel?
What will that look like?
Maybe, like many third world countries, wealth inequality will mean only the top and bottom 10% of Americans will be able to make a living - the top 10% being so lopsidedly rich, they hire the bottom 10% as essentially their slaves and the 80% in the middle live on rice and beans.
Is it possible Trump will shake down the rest of the world for all their money and divide it equally amongst all Americans - like Robin Hood?
When the entire country takes their hands off the steering wheel and nobody is accountable for anything, anywhere, what’s the result?
Chaos.
Increasing medical errors.
Increasing food poisoning from uninspected restaurants.
Banking fraud.
Nonexistent customer service.
A country where people run away from problems instead of running towards them.
A country where even the most empathetic, caring people are ruled by money and willing to accept enormous inconveniences and inequities to protect themselves.
I believe the American Dream should be accessible to as many people as possible but that requires a somewhat level playing field.
If we’re entering an era where there is no ceiling to wealth inequity, we will be creating superhumans who - to protect their wealth - will have to find a way to cull the masses.
It’s only recently that our economic system has allowed individual men (Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg…) to accumulate more money than half the world combined.
Am I a socialist or communist to suggest 379.91 billion (Musk’s worth as of today) might be enough money to purchase a president?
Is a billion dollars enough for one person?
Many people would be thrilled - and fully satisfied - having a few hundred thousand or perhaps a couple million.
Greed is good….until it isn’t.