The Diego Diaries: Questions (dd8 90)
Well, this is a hot mess. I fixed it. :D:D:D
I hear ya, Leoness. As for the pupper, I had to take one of the cats in today and wrestle that. After an arm and a leg later, I find out she's just constipated. LOL! Life is a hoot. HUGS!
=0=Questions
:Then what you're saying is … if you want to change a contract without even notifying us so we can talk, then you will: Kyle Davis said with some heat.
Will Lennox sat in his chair watching the spectacle and speculated on how big the closet of his daughter and wife would have to be to include all the things that were 'so cute, Daddy' at the stores at the mall if they suddenly didn't cost money. He grinned faintly. Optimus Prime was obviously making a point.
"If you wish to interpret it that way, that is up to you," Optimus said. "There is no provision for the need to consult since the contracts and treaties confirm that as I am the director of Autobot Nation, its assets and its chief lien holder, nothing you 'own' is 'owned' by you."
A sound caught everyone's attention. They turned around to look down table. Venture was rapping for attention, then sat forward with a concerned expression. "May I have a chance to explain what Lord Optimus is trying to express." He glanced at Prime. "If I may be that bold, that is." He nodded in respect to his son-in-law.
"Of course," Prime said nodding back.
Venture stared at the humans a moment obviously making up his mind about what he would say. "I am Venture of Praxus of the House of Andulus. That line has provided to the Cybertronian government, business and academia economists and financial thinkers for eons of time, literally tens of millions of years. I myself was chairman of the High Council of Economic Advisors to the Primes of Cybertron nearly as long. I've seen and studied about every kind of economic system that exists including many that are not practiced but are theoretical constructs. That is, interesting if not practical.
"I would like to say that most models in which there is a quid pro quo as out of balance as that of Earth are subject to stresses and strains that lead often to abuse, corruption and failure. Your system, for example, is what many call end stage capitalism. You expect high return on your goods and services, often pricing them out of the market for the many while extracting as much as you can with little consequence for the damage it can do. Profit is the end game all in all so that allows the stagnation or lowest possible wages and almost no benefits for those who do the work in the name of cutting costs. There is no concern for the opportunity costs of your decisions, what happens because you make them for good or ill."
:What's wrong with making profits? How do companies last who don't?: Hamilton Brown said.
"Profit is only part of the package in a healthy system. When it becomes the WHOLE package then its only a matter of time before the house of cards it becomes collapses. Then it becomes a game of acquisitions, of gathering of resources by the few by any means to make more products to continue the cycle. The damage it does to the resource producers, your world, to the workers who fall very quickly downward in the calculation among the few in the race to become the most wealthy and powerful among their cliché and the corruption that always comes with it to keep this model moving leads to the end of times eventually.
"Sometimes it doesn't take very long because this model is essentially a Ponzi scheme where you take from everything to prop up the present at the expense of everyone and the future. Your idea is to take and through that to acquire power to do more taking and thereby acquiring even more power … its a self destructive path at some point from which there's no return."
:You seem to think that the wealthy have no concern about the world around us. That we have no desire to give anything back: Kyle said as Hamilton Brown nodded beside him. :Some of the wealthiest people are the most philanthropic I ever met:
"I have studied the Earth model to understand it and thereby make commerce between us more sensible and facilitated. I found those who have great wealth give back very small portions in relation to the size of their wealth, usually no more than a few percentage points of their total wealth, engendering when they do a lot of good publicity for a calculated and short term period of time. If you were to compare the levels of giving for those of lesser means against those who have great wealth, the percentage of giving is higher among the poorer than the wealthy because they give a greater percentage on average to their wealth than the rich do.
"The rich often put their charitable wealth into trusts that protect them from paying taxes and financial scrutiny. To do so means they pay no taxes, get to keep using their wealth the way they want, even avoiding doing charity which is supposed to be the function of these trusts without penalty. The desire to give back usually comes late in their lives, not when they could have carried out charitable actions all along and usually when they want to shelter the inheritance taxes that they would have to pay upon their deaths.
"There are laws that protect them and most are implemented by lobbyists and related business associations such as the Chamber of Commerce who represent their interests often to the detriment of everyone and everything else. Politicians who take donations to their campaigns give their donors preferential treatment. Who do you suppose they answer the quickest for phone calls? Their regular constituents or their donors? Most of these individuals do not pay any income taxes whatsoever nor do their companies, rather using laws designed to facilitate their interests to avoid them.
"Many of these individuals and companies take their money out of their home countries to hide it abroad in shell companies, tax shelters and often illegal banking accounts abroad. It's estimated that just the company, Apple, alone has hidden a trillion taxable dollars in this manner. Anyone else would be in prison for tax evasion but they've bought good will among regulators and governmental officials who often state that they're 'too big to fail' or to chase down.
"All of you sitting in this room have done the same thing. You don't pay taxes, you expect personalized service from public servants and you pay next to nothing for the labor and expertise that you exploit to make yourself wealthy beyond common decency. You who take the lions share of the wealth don't pay taxes, so who does? Those who are least placed to do so, the rest of the population. Few of you have demonstrated over the length of your rise in business any talent to make anything yourself that would account for the incomes and wealth that you've amassed.
"Some of you go into government and out of it, a rotating door that pays well as you use what you learned in government to enrich yourselves, something others would go to prison for under insider trading rules and laws. Others are predators, taking over businesses, loading them with debt from other ventures, then watching them bankrupt themselves suddenly having to pay it off. You can then declare bankruptcy of often healthy businesses to get out of paying off creditors which are often small local businesses who suffer because of this, then sell off everything that has value. The workers and their pensions, their livelihoods and towns are left in the dust as you move on to your next victims.
"Banks are bailed out and the people aren't. You always have money to give tax cuts to those like you who are bloated with wealth, to the deregulated banks that create this chaos and decry the crumbs that you give to the workers and the people who suffer from your decisions as entitlements.
"Its rather remarkable how patient the people of Earth are. I would've built a guillotine a long time ago," Venture concluded. He sat back with a grim expression on his handsome face. His red chevron glowed with his feelings on the matter.
Prowl stared at his father with awe. He wondered who snatched Venture and replaced him with this god-like figure of indignation. He glanced at Prime. Optimus was as enraptured as he was.
The mechs and femmes in the room listened to this, the first real rendering that they'd had of the situation economically that was practiced on Earth and their feelings of shock and disgust were evident. It really struck close to home for them in their own damned lives on Cybertron. Their optics stared at the humans with unwavering coldness, or so it felt to the humans.
:I hope you count us out: Lennox said. :I don't have a pot or a window:
The others with him, all but the wealthy businessmen and Weaver nodded in agreement.
"It took a while for civil war to break out but understand me clearly. Megatron is a symptom, he isn't the disease," Venture said. "He was the voice calling out into the darkness with a message of hope for our people who were on their last legs when he did. That he didn't turn out to be what he said he was makes no difference. They heard the possibility of hope and change, then took it. So it is on Earth. People will only last so long. The moment their children cry from hunger or sit in the dirt because they have no home no matter how hard their genitors work, then any strong man will do."
"My family worked hard," Drift said. "I can remember how hard they worked but they got next to nothing for their labor. My fathers looked for extra work to help feed us. They weren't home much because of it so my brother and I got into trouble. They deserved the moon. A lot of individuals got themselves dead at the end of my knives and guns because of how I felt about how they were treated.
"They weren't nothing. They were mine and I'd give a lot for them to see our son." He leaned slightly forward. "Do you really believe that there won't be consequences for what you do and believe? You better take a good hard look at us because we're the mirror that holds your future, slaggers." He sat back with an uncharacteristically cold and angry expression on his face. "Do what you will, Optimus. We'll support you."
Everyone in the room murmured and nodded.
It was silent, then Owen Harris stood. :I don't expect you to understand how we work and how its been for ages. We do what we believe is best:
"Shut up, Harris. That's the same story we heard on Cybertron in the caste wars, 'doing it for ages', 'we always did it', 'its what's best for us'," Ironhide said with a cold expression. "You do whats' best for you and hang the people. I came from money. My family had REAL money and so did Prowl's. We shouldn't have. No one should have so much that it makes hunger for others. You don't have a word to say to us that will justify what you do. Until you get it right and understand unity, then you're just another high caste slagger dragging your people down the drain with your greed. Prime has the right and duty to do what he's going to do and if you can't understand why, then leave Mars."
It was silent a moment as Harris stared at Ironhide. He turned to Prime. :You don't believe in the profit motive. You don't believe in free market capitalism. We understand that but inside our own bubble we practice what we believe ourselves. We believe in this model and we've done a lot of good with it:
"I hear Australia and the rain forests are burning down. They call the Amazon the 'lungs of the world'. Your oceans, internal rivers and streams have changed, some of them their very color and so have your jets streams in the upper atmosphere. Weather is no longer predictable and the overall temperature of the world is rising. Given a few more degrees your greenhouse mechanism will overtake the world's ability to regulate itself. You'll be at the mercy of immense super enhanced weather conditions.
"You dig everywhere, frack everywhere and wonder why there's earthquakes in places that never had them before. In some places you can light your household drinking water on fire," Beachcomber said with some heat. "How's that working out for you?"
"If there was unity around your thinking, Harris, we'd be more likely to take the time to listen but we've heard this slag before in a million places including our own home world. We've watched great suffering, civil unrest and extinction, that's how long we live," Magnus said. "We're tired of it. We like the Earth, just so you know. Even though some of you are incomprehensible to us, we like humans. We're here defending you every day. We just don't like people who exploit others for personal gain no matter who they are. It sets something off in our cultural makeup. Maybe its because we faced and are probably still facing extinction to some degree due to the same slag you want to continue here. You should pay attention to what we do. Name a downside to anything you've seen here. Just one."
The million- and billionaires sitting or standing on the table were silent a moment, then Kyle glared at Magnus. He walked toward him, then stopped before the giant mech, something that raised him minutely higher in the optics of those watching. :You're the death of initiative. Why would anyone labor for nothing?:
Arcee considered Magnus who's expression changed into one someone who caught a bad smell somewhere. She grinned, then glanced down at Davis. "Tell me where the initiative doesn't exist here? There's more innovation and initiative here in this one spot than everywhere you care to name on the entirety of Earth. How about for the good of the order? How about because we see a need and want to fix it. How about because we love your people apparently more than you do and want them to have it all? How about we have higher based feelings than you have? How is being rich and powerful making you better? I don't see it."
He glared at Arcee, then glanced at Magnus. :I was taking to you, Magnus:
A soft moan of surprise and foreboding was gasped around the room from mostly the civilians, then Magnus tensed. He leaned in closer. "That's my bond and it would do you well not to forget that. My name is Commander Magnus to you."
Prime watched and felt Magnus's offense. He watched the drama unfold amongst the most unlikely players, feeling great love and affection for Arcee and Venture. Venture had come full circle in his life, an amazing thing considering his growing up. Magnus on the other hand would have swatted Davis across the room in meaner, leaner times.
:You didn't answer my question: Davis said equally hotly.
Magnus leaned in close to Davis. "You didn't answer mine," he said with real danger and offense in his voice.
It was silent in the room.
=0=TBC 02-12-2021 02-12-2021 02-21-2021