Scott Galloway, founder of L2, appeared on MSNBC with Stephanie Ruhle. It was clear they concluded that corporations wanted socialism for them in good times but capitalism for the rest.
Corporate socialism & capitalism for the rest
I continue to be more impressed with Stephanie Ruhle like I am with Ali Velshi as they generally attempt to push the limits of journalistic integrity the best they can within the constraints of the corporate media. Here she almost hit a home run. Then again it’s important to note that Ruhle is a former Bloomberg employee who has an international business degree from Lehigh University. Her time spent studying in Guatemala and Kenya may have given her the very noticeable sense of empathy those indoctrinated by our economic system in American business schools fail to have.
The dialogue between Ms. Ruhle and Galloway points out the major defect in the capitalism we practice in America at the detriment of most Americans.
“Go higher up the economic food chain and you actually have healthcare workers who are getting their pay cut, who are working in hospital systems owned by private equity giants like KKR,” Ruhle said. “You’ve got health care professionals course suffering. Yet those private equity giants who are supposed to be in a position where they take all sorts of risks and when you take a risks you could get lots of upside but you risk facing great downside and right now the government is stepping in and curbing that downside. We’re having capitalism on the way up and self-imposed socialism on the way down.”
Galloway’s response did not disappoint.
“You’re absolutely right Stephanie,” Galloway responded. “It’s rugged individualism and capitalism and the hunger games on the way up and then on the way down it’s a lot of call signs by CEOs that we’re in this together and sort of a Hallmark Channel like socialism.”
Scott Galloway then really got into the meet of the hypocrisy of our system
“We need to decide if we’re capitalists meaning that if you take incredible risks there’s incredible upside but if you could use 96% of your free cash flow to buy back stock thereby inflating your compensation in the compensation to the CEO and the directors and you don’t have any cash when a crisis hits should you be in fact be allowed to fail. And what private equity and CEOs are trying to convince us of right now is they’re conflating equity destruction with job destruction. And the reality is — and I know this personally — when your company declares chapter 11 a lot of times there isn’t job loss there’s just a wipeout of equity. So all of a sudden we’re in this together. We need to decide if we’re capitalists meaning that equity gets wiped out on the way down or if we’re socialists. But if we’re gonna be socialists and let’s be honest socialism a lot of people say that’s a better alternative. Five of the seven happiest nations in the world have socialism. If you want your universal pre-k, you want your universal health. But let’s not have capitalism on the way up and then when we hit a crisis we have the worst type of socialism. We have cronyism and that is the people with the most representation in Washington the people with the most economic power decide all of a sudden that we’re in this together and as soon as the markets start going back up you’re gonna hear talks about capitalism and rugged individualism.”
Please listen to the entire video and give me your thoughts.
This was a week brimming with discussions on economic systems. I decided to write another article after several conversations comprising my wife on bottled water, my daughter on Appalachia and idealism, an uncaring capitalist, a Marxist who thought I was not sufficiently “socialist” in my recommendations for economic change, and from someone who does not know what to believe. I invite you to read the article titled “Does my bottled water story make you want this real economic change now?” and comment. I want to do a Politics Done Right program not only on the article but on your thoughts if I get any (anonymously of course).
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I hear the capitalist/socialist argument incessantly. I hear died in the wool, 100% capitalism or nothing, I hear mixed economic system types and I hear 100% socialism types.
What is fascinating is the sheer volume of 100% capitalism everywhere types who enjoy using public roads, highways and superhighways, enjoy a fine walk in the park and a vast military and police force to protect their interests.
The pure socialists never come up with a realistic implementation plan that can even convince their own side.
The mixed crowd, well, they’re realists. We can and should do more, such as with health care (don’t get me into idiots going on about all those socialist kingdoms out there, seriously, a socialist KINGdom?!) and guaranteed income.
Nope, we have the 100% capitalists, who if they had their way, you’d pay a frigging toll just at the end of your street block, a street the residents would have to pay for, private armies and police forces, not to mention contracted private prisons for the wealthy to imprison whoever offends them.
We have died in the wool 100% socialism types, who as I said, can’t even describe what they want, they just want what they don’t know and who cares how to implement it in a manner that won’t collapse.
Then, we get what we really have, a corporatocracy, where any week, I expect to hear shadows of the series Millennium, with its corporate Congress misruling the continent, controlling everything and everyone are serfs again. Corporations get their billions in welfare, people starve to make the nation grate and homelessness greases the wheels that grind all but the wealthy down into dust.
Just this past week, our CAO informed us that we’re ineligible for medical care, despite my wife being determined to be 100% disabled, because we don’t live in the county we’ve lived in for two years, where I’ve paid county wage and state wage taxes and forget about getting a state or county telephone to ring!
Nope, I have to have my abdominal aorta explode, to make America Grate, despite making a high middle class income normally, but these ain’t normal times.
Maybe I should go 100% capitalist, I’m sure nations would be mightily interested in how to construct modern model thermonuclear weapons! Pity that I’m one of those dreamers, who dream that our nation would actually take care of their own, so that information isn’t for sale and no power in this universe could pry that information out of me.
But, a 100% capitalist would cheer that insane solution to income difficulties, all while also championing the imprisonment of anyone who even thinks of such an atrocity!
And there, we have the abject failure, Orwellian doublethink. Everyone that isn’t wealthy is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire and remain so for their entire, abbreviated lives.
I do hear incessant calls for repealing corporate citizenship, never realizing why that legal fiction exists. So that corporations can engage in contracts and real estate transactions. Alas, our legal system seems to have forgotten what a legal fiction vs legal fact are and the difference between them, so corporations have unlimited free speech via money and We The People have to STFU if we can’t afford to “outspeak” billions of dollars in brib- erm, campaign contributions.
No, I got bribes right. But it ain’t unethical or unlawful, the case law says so, sold out to the lowest bidder.