Kodachrome, Polaroid, 35mm, 8mm movies, 8 track, cassettes, vinyl records and reel-to-reel tapes have all yielded to digital technology. Telephone booths and land lines have given way to cell phones. Calling (you know, actually “talking to people” on the phone) has been replaced by texting, email and Facebook. Typewriters are gone and digital flat screens are in. Even parking meters and human coin collections are being replaced by electronic credit-card boxes.
Many things are being replaced with smarter technology.
But some scams avert this demise.
1) The health insurance bureaucracy has become obsolete. It’s like giving the pizza delivery guy a chauffeur — an absolute waste of money. This scam consumes 31% total (but 20% unnecessary) of health care dollars without ever laying hands on the patient, when that money should be spent on patient care instead. A Medicare-for-all system would be far more efficient without a loss of quality.
2) Corporations, in their current form. Originally established to protect owners from liability, they are now owned by shareholders who have have invested dollars and have virtually no say on how their companies are run. These owners should be given a binding vote on CEO tenure and pay, and political contributions. The “compensation consultants” should be fired and the shareholders put in their place.
3) Corporate Integrity. Corporations can cheat shareholders out of their dividends through repo101?s. For example, just prior to assessing profits and CEO pay, the executives can sell company debt to another friendly CEO for $1, make the corporation look profitable as hell, give the newly-made star CEO a gigantic pay package, and then buy back the toxic debt for $2. Think “Enron.”
4) Hiding behind 501(c)(3)’s. Originally created to allow charitable organizations like the Red Cross to operate tax free, they are now being misused by political organizations (with government permission) to help their “friendly” politicians get elected.
5) The creation of 501(c)(4)’s. They allow special interests to lobby and bribe politicians, all legally. And though there’s nothing wrong with lobbying, when done with cash in hand it becomes bribery.
6) Private funding of political campaigns. The biggest scam of them all, because without this corruption the politicians would never have allowed the others in the first place. It is the one policy that has crashed our economy and keeps it deep in the hole. All others are secondary.
How does this happen?
Cash dollars put in the right political hands can save your current scam and help create others. We can try to correct all of the above or simply take the bribes out of the system and let the others be corrected over time. Because without bought-and-paid-for politicians they will be.