The takeover goes on

In financial crisis, no prosecutions of top figures (NYT)

Would we allow goldman sachs to fail now? (baselinescenario) (spoiler: the answer is no (of course))

I love to say I told you so, F., so here it is: "I told you so". I told you we should have let them all fall and you said I was irresponsible. I said at least we had to punish them right there and then and you said there was no time, we'd to it later; you said after this it would never be the same; it would have to change; they would have to accept changes. Well, here we are.

Years later, no punishment, no regulation,  failed banks and failed rating agencies preaching over the states who bailed them, and all of us on the road to servitude under the new corporate feudalism. And still the sheep bleat and flog both each other and their own backs and join in the cries of the austerics, like in some catholic orgy of self-flagelation.  Is it some judeo-cretin fetish again, maybe that's why I don't get it? Why aren't you shouting "off with their heads?" Why aren't they cowering in fear? Why aren't you singing "you got the guns but we've got the numbers?". Instead you cower in fear. Are you now discovering what being poor is? It is not about having no money. You still have money, but already you are poor. It is about living in fear. Every single day. It is about going to sleep hoping you won't get sick, because if everything goes right you might just make it, but if you wake up sick, expensively sick, then you are ruined forever - there in the gutter, but for the sake of luck, you go.

Why aren't you at least politely correcting them when they say "the state failed"? The state failed? Yes, it failed, when it bailed them out. But they who speak of the markets, the markets have spoken and they all failed, from the dirtiest Madoff right up to sage Warren Buffet, they all failed. They are broke. They are only standing up, the financially undead, because they bought the politicians and stole our money and our futures. And we let them. Because we won't go out on the streets and bring the whole fucking thing down. Because we won't burn their golf courses and serve them molotov cocktails. Because we have grown too polite. We have been bred to cower in front of the new aristocracy, to feed on their narrative, to think in their terms. And to admire their ugly mugs in the covers of magazines. The pigs have taken over the farm.

Large corporations are in effect states, and by their nature the worst kind of states: private realms and absolute tyrannies. The employer's rule is arbitrary, he controls what you dress, he controls every waking hour, and what the waking hours are, he controls your speech. Oh, you can leave. Leave and beg your meal from another just as bad, or perish, since the the social state is about to be eliminated. Your tax money is not there for you, you parasite! It is there to bail  out your betters when they fuck up again.

Communism fails because it degenerates into an opressive bureaucracy. Capitalism fails because it degenerates into corporate feudalism. Both are unstable systems, vigilance is necessary, and a periodical reboot must be executed, at great human expense. Jefferson was wise, or at least, right.

It is a brilliant takeover. We have freedom of speech - in the public sphere. We have the right to vote - in the public sphere. We have lots of rights - in the public sphere. Nobody would dare take those rights away openly. But the public sphere is reduced to a mere pebble, and in the private sphere - that occupies the whole world where you can dwell, feed, survive - it is back to middle age autocracy. Welcome back to the age of the robber barons. Welcome back to the age where I wonder if I should say such things in the future, without wearing a mask.

As I was writing this the sheep were shouting over some idiotic football match. The whole street trembled in joy because some obscenely overpayed athlete stuck a ball into a goal. If only these people could be made to shout half as hard over the fact they and their children are being gutted, the day could still be won.