Friday, July 26, 2019
Walls vs psychopaths
Thinking about Gilded Ages 1 and 2, and then thinking about Bernie Scabders. Those thoughts smooshed together to form a new and dubious correlation.
Not new:
Between the two Gilded Ages we had the Union Age, 1933 to 1979. Predatory corporations existed, but they were CONSTRAINED by hardass Fed regulators AND by hardass unions. They knew exactly how far they could grow, and they didn't try to go beyond the limits. They were forced to operate on PROFIT and DIVIDENDS instead of share value, which means they were forced to have EMPLOYEES and PRODUCTS.
I've covered that territory too often.
New thought:
During a Gilded Age, robber barons have names. Everyone can list several robber barons. During the Union Age, there weren't any named or famed robber barons. In fact the most famous leaders were union leaders.
GA1 = Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Mellon, Stanford.
Union Age = Jimmy Hoffa, James Petrillo, Walter Reuther.
GA2 = Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Jobs, Musk.
In the Union Age the constrained corporations were no longer led by founding families. The founders were still around in some cases, but they kept a careful distance from the companies. In most cases the founders had either died out or pulled out because constrained capitalism was NO FUN for criminals and psychopaths.
Labels: Asked and sort of answered
¶ 8:38 AM
