Dear Friends,
It seems to me, rules are most beneficial, to those who make them. That shouldn’t be a great insight, it should be common sense… but I think it is a profound understanding, because most people don’t see it. When the too big to fail banks make the rules, regulating the banking industry, is it shocking those rules benefit the too big to fail banks, while harming the interests of their customers, employees and shareholders? Which brings us to another point, that the bigger an entity becomes, the closer it gets to those who make the rules, until it itself makes them. Which creates a feedback loop. Like a Pareto distribution of rule making power, that fosters and then accelerates the creation of monopolies. Explaining why the distribution of wealth and privilege in our system is so skewed to the powerful.
If you can make up the rules to a game as you go along, I think most people would be able to win that game. No matter how many times it is played. Find yourself in a trap, just change the rules to make it “more fair,” perhaps someone is getting too many good rolls, just change the rules to eliminate rolling a die, or maybe you are near bankruptcy, merely change the rules to refinance yourself. The options for those who make the rules to always win the game are diverse and myriad. To claim the elite are too virtuous to do such a thing is to claim they are not human beings. Such an assertion is too Pollyannish to argue against… only to laugh at. Those who make the rules will always win the game. That is why in our republic, the rules were supposed to be limited, pass political muster and be transparent.
That those who make the rules always win, applies to every walk of life… especially business. For example, the banking industry was granted the ability to make its own rules by the Woodrow Wilson administration, when they granted the Federal Reserve the franchise. They made it sound like it was a governmental agency but that was a manipulation. It exists to insure the stability of the banking system. As a result, we have too big to fail, (TBTF) banks. Banks that are called too important to fail, because they have grown so enormous, powerful and have so much political favor, their failure would pose a “systemic risk” to the entire economy. So the government will do anything to keep them financially secure, but never break them up… no matter how corrupt. Proving the point in spades.
Big tech is another glaring example of entities that have grown in power, influence and value, mirroring the rise in their ability to make the rules. No regulation about big tech would ever happen without Google’s express consent. Even and especially when that rule making process is opaque to the people… but not to those who make the regulation. Let a moonshiner make the regulations on moonshining, and his competitors will constantly find themselves in trouble with the law, while that moonshiner who makes the rules, will always be in perfect compliance. That is just what has happened with Google, Facebook and Twitter. They make the rules, so they always win, as they win, they get more power to make the rules, so they win more. Just like a moonshiner who made the rules.
Those who make the rules have grown so powerful, our courts bend a knee, our legislatures delegate their constitutional authority and the President better be terrified of them. In short, our government and system serves them… not us. That they continue to win more and more is no surprise. What I do find surprising is, if you were playing cards with someone changing the rules as the game went along, you would get up and leave the table. Because they were cheating. Why don’t we stop playing their game then? They are obviously cheating. Stop using any Google product, withdraw from Facebook’s mind control experiments and cease allowing Twitter to censor your words and thoughts. Don’t use a TBTF bank… for anything. Get up and leave the table, we can only lose, when they make the rules.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
