The Trump Administration is currently engaged in diplomatic talks with Iran, ostensibly over Iran’s nuclear program. If the issue is simply halting the Uranium enrichment program in Iran, there are some reasons to be optimistic. Iran seems willing to return to the agreement forged by the US, Germany, Russia, China, France and Great Britain during the Obama Administration. That agreement limited the level of enrichment to those levels necessary to build a nuclear bomb in return for the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran. But the US and Israel are demanding other limitations, including restrictions on Iran’s missile program (which was never part of the original deal).
In order to buttress his demands, Trump has ordered a significant expansion of the US military presence near Iran, including the dispatch of another aircraft carrier to the region. Axios describes the scale of the buildup:
“Trump’s armada has grown to include two aircraft carriers, a dozen warships, hundreds of fighter jets and multiple air defense systems. Some of that firepower is still on its way.
More than 150 U.S. military cargo flights have moved weapons systems and ammunition to the Middle East.
In the past 24 hours, another 50 fighter jets — F-35s, F-22s and F-16s — headed to the region.
“Between the lines: Trump’s military and rhetorical buildups make it hard for him to back down without major concessions from Iran on its nuclear program.
It’s not in Trump’s nature, and his advisers don’t view the deployment of all that hardware as a bluff.
:With Trump, anything can happen. But all signs point to him pulling the trigger if talks fail.”
It is doubtful that Iran will agree to those additional demands. Robert Reich believes that Trump wants “regime change” in Iran which essentially means the removal of the Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei:
“The United States is being represented in the talks by “Special Envoy” Steve Witkoff (whose son is the chief executive of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, nearly half of which was purchased last year for $500 million by an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates). And by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner (who’s been making private deals with the Saudis and who raised several billion dollars before Trump’s second term from overseas investors including sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates).
“No one from the State Department. Nobody from the National Security Council. No one who knows much of anything about Iran.
“So what’s the real goal?
“On Friday, in a little-noticed remark, Trump said “the best thing that could happen” in Iran would be regime change, noting “there are people” who could take over from Iran’s Islamic ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”
That objective is significantly more complicated than the removal of Venezuelan leader, Maduro. I have given up on trying to predict what Trump will actually do (largely because I believe that often he has no real plan for the consequences of his actions). But it seems to be clear that Israel is pushing hard for a more sustained attack: According to the New York Times:
“In Israel, the two defense officials said that significant preparations were underway for the possibility of a joint strike with the United States, even though no decision has been made about whether to carry out such an attack. They said the planning envisions delivering a severe blow over a number of days with the goal of forcing Iran into concessions at the negotiating table that it has so far been unwilling to make.
“The U.S. buildup suggests an array of possible Iranian targets, including short and medium range missiles, missile storage depots, nuclear sites and other military targets, such as headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
There are currently negotiations between the US and Iran in Geneva on the nuclear issue. But it does not appear that any progress has been made on the ballistic missile issue. Moreover, the Trump Administration may think that the recent protests in Iran make the possibility of a regime collapse more likely, and that a sustained attack on Iran would usher in regime change. There does not seem to be much discussion on the implications of an overthrow of the regime. Iran is different from the intervention in Venezuela which does not seem to have changed the character of the Venezuelan government much. There are many more fragmenting concerns in Iran: ethnic issues, distributional issues, and the threat of a sustained drought.
“Prime Minister Donald Tusk called on Thursday for all Polish citizens to leave Iran, after US President Donald Trump again hinted at military action against the Islamic Republic.
“’Everyone who is still in Iran must leave immediately, and under no circumstances should anyone plan to travel to that country,’ he said at a press conference.
He added that ‘the possibility of heated conflict is very real, and in a few, a dozen or several dozen hours, evacuation may no longer be an option.'”
If the attack occurs, it will mark the seventh time Trump has bombed a foreign power since January. I have not checked, but it seems to me that this is probably a record number of bombed states for any President in the first year of a presidential term.
The Munich Security Conference is an annual event held in Germany every year. It is an assemblage of experts in security matters, and generally it focuses on military matters. It issues a security report after each meeting and this year’s report is quite stunning in its bluntness. This is an excerpt from its Executive Summary:
“The world has entered a period of wrecking-ball politics. Sweeping destruction – rather than careful reforms and policy corrections – is the order of the day. The most prominent of those who promise to free their country from the existing order’s constraints and rebuild a stronger, more prosperous nation is the current US administration. As a result, more than 80 years after construction began, the US-led post-1945 international order is now under destruction.
“In many Western societies, political forces favoring destruction over reform are gaining momentum. Driven by resentment and regret over the liberal trajectory their societies have embarked on, they seek to tear down structures that they believe will prevent the emergence of stronger, more prosperous nations. Their disruptive agendas build on widespread disenchantment with the performance of democratic institutions and a pervasive loss of trust in meaningful reforms and political course corrections. In all G7 countries surveyed for the Munich Security Index 2026, only a tiny proportion of respondents say that their current government’s policies will make future generations better off. And both domestically and internationally, political structures are now perceived as overly bureaucratized and judicialized, impossible to reform and adapt to better serve the people’s needs. The result is a new climate in which those who employ bulldozers, wrecking balls, and chainsaws are often cautiously admired if not openly celebrated.
“The most powerful of those who take the axe to existing rules and institutions is US President Donald Trump.”
The report is, no doubt, a response to the National Security Strategy white paper issued by the Trump Administration in November 2025. But the perspective of the US paper is radically different:
“Over the past nine months, we have brought our nation–and the world–back from the brink of catastrophe and disaster. After four years of weakness, my administration has moved with urgency and historic speed to restore American strength at home and abroad, and bring peace and security to our world.
“No administration in history has achieved so dramatic a turnaround in so short a time.”
This juxtaposition of perspectives defies an easy explanation–both cannot be true at the same time. One is clearly wrong. There is no doubt in my mind that the Munich group is much closer to the mark. That raises a serious question: Who is writing this delusional nonsense for Trump? And why are Americans and the world not doing more to stop this ignorant fool?
The New York Times conducted an extensive interview with President Trump which is definitely worth reading with a very critical eye. Much of the interview was simple gibberish, but the Times highlighted an astonishing excerpt:
“President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his ‘own morality,’ brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.
“Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: ‘Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.’
“’I don’t need international law,’ he added. ‘I’m not looking to hurt people.’
When pressed further about whether his administration needed to abide by international law, Mr. Trump said, ‘I do.’ But he made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints applied to the United States.
“’It depends what your definition of international law is,’ he said.
“Mr. Trump’s assessment of his own freedom to use any instrument of military, economic or political power to cement American supremacy was the most blunt acknowledgment yet of his worldview. At its core is the concept that national strength, rather than laws, treaties and conventions, should be the deciding factor as powers collide.”
The quotes reveal a mentality toward governance that harks back to Louis XIV: “L’État, c’est moi“. It is a perspective that generated abject misery among the poorer classes during Louis’s reign and ultimately led to the French Revolution. It is a perspective that has no place in a democratic republic. And it epitomizes an arrogance that is truly sinister and frightening.
This is clearly a day that will live in infamy for the US, even as many in the US regard the insurrection as a patriotic act. I remain dumbfounded how the lie of a “stolen” election persists. It is a mark of how willing some are to be deluded in the thrall of an execrable and selfish person who manages to make promises that he can never keep. More bewildering, however, is how easily Trump has discarded the world order promised by the creation of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. My hope was that some countries who benefited from that world order (think China and Europe) would have tried harder to maintain the system.
But, as argued in a previous post, Trump has led the world into the 19th Century system of the balance of power.
The balance of power is perhaps the most enduring pattern in world politics, and we can trace its applications in many historical situations. The first record of powers explicitly talking about the balance of power was during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (431–404 BCE) written by Thucydides. The part of that war which most clearly expresses the logic of the balance of power occurs when the Athenians try to conquer the island of Melos, which was a colony of Sparta. In debating with the people of Melos, the Athenians are explicit about the importance of the balance of power: “Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist forever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power we have, would do the same as we do.”
As one can see from this map, Melos was quite far from Athens, and it posed no security threat at all to Athens. The Melians tried to persuade the Athenians that they would remain completely neutral in Athens’ war with Sparta. When that gambit failed, they resorted to a moral argument: that it was morally wrong for a stronger power to exert its will on a weaker power if there was no security threat to manage. Ultimately, the Athenians simply said that their power gave them the right to subjugate Melos–the first fully articulated defense of the argument that “might makes right”.
In the end, the Athenians conquered Melos, and Thucydides, writing of this tragedy, simply stated “Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence….the siege was now pressed vigorously…the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians who put to death all the grown men whom they took and sold the women and children for slaves…and settled the place themselves.”
With this in mind, it was startling to hear Stephen Miller, an advisor to Trump, in an interview with Jake Tapper of CNN, sounding exactly like the Athenians. For those who cannot bear to listen to Miller, the important part of the interview begins at around the 5:30 minute-mark.
The phrase “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” only hints at the melancholy I felt when I heard this interview. Indeed, Miller is correct that “might makes right” operates in many situations. But that adage brought about World War I and World War II, and the effort after 1945 was to try to create a different world order. I guarantee that Miller’s worldview will only lead to similar catastrophes to the world wars because the Great Powers today agree on very little about the world they prefer. Eventually, the balance of power system fails after there are no longer any weaker states to conquer and the Great Powers turn on each other.
Imperialism never dies, but it changes its clothes every so often. After World War II ended, the colonial empires created by European states slowly disintegrated, a process that is still ongoing. But at the end of the war, there was a sense that the idea of self-determination should override the impulse to dominate. That end never materialized, but the more ostentatious trappings of imperialism became difficult to maintain and the right to dominate was articulated in the language of democracy and liberation.
This particular perspective on mimics one of the founding acts of European imperialism, the Treaty of Tordesilla which divided up the entire world into two parts in 1494, one owned by Spain and the other by Portugal. It was a plan crafted by Pope Julius II, which was subsequently modified by the Treaty of Zaragoza, signed in 1529, to include the eastern hemisphere (by tracing out the antemeridian), which included the Spice Islands.
The settlement did not last long, as other European states (the Dutch, the French, the Belgians, and the British) did not want to miss out on the benefits (to them) of imperialism.
We will see how the Venezuelans feel about the US being in charge of domestic affairs once the dust settles. Undoubtedly, many of them are relieved that Maduro is no longer in power, and the Venezuelan economy is in a deep contraction. Right now, there is tremendous uncertainty about how the US will “run” the country. There is, however, not much the Venezuelans can do as long as US forces remain offshore. But there are countries that depend on Venezuelan oil (Cuba and China, in particular) which will probably contest US “ownership” of the oil fields. Moreover, the US will find that it is impossible to “run” a country at arms-length, and as US personnel begin to filter into Venezuela, they will unquestionably be targets of armed opposition.
Regime change is easy for a country as powerful as the US. What happens after the change, however, is extraordinarily difficult for an outside power. The US learned that lesson in Vietnam, Libya, and Iraq. It’s incredible how the US has forgotten those lessons wo quickly and emphatically.
There are a number of questions about this action which need to be answered. But I think that the Post did a great job of raising those questions. Many of those questions revolve around the status of the military action against these alleged drug running vessels: are these actions “acts of war”? President Trump defends these actions under his authority as Commander-in-Chief of the US military and that he is using forces against actors which threaten US national security. Most of those defenses are bogus and have been addressed in many other media sources.
But, for purposes of argument, let’s pretend that the US military action is justified by the principles of self-defense. Those arguments are used to justify the first use of force against these vessels.
But the second attack on the survivors clinging to wreckage is unquestionably a violation of the laws of war. The Geneva Convention is explicit:
GENEVA CONVENTION for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea of 12 August 1949
CHAPTER II Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked
Article 12
Members of the armed forces and other persons mentioned in the following Article, who are at sea and who are wounded, sick or shipwrecked, shall be respected and protected in all circumstances, it being understood that the term “shipwreck” means shipwreck from any cause and includes forced landings at sea by or from aircraft.
Such persons shall be treated humanely and cared for by the Parties to the conflict in whose power they may be, without any adverse distinction founded on sex, race, nationality, religion, political opinions, or any other similar criteria. Any attempts upon their lives, or violence to their persons, shall be strictly prohibited; in particular, they shall not be murdered or exterminated, subjected to torture or to biological experiments; they shall not wilfully be left without medical assistance and care, nor shall conditions exposing them to contagion or infection be created.
Only urgent medical reasons will authorize priority in the order of treatment to be administered.
Women shall be treated with all consideration due to their sex.
We should remember that the Laws of War are generally unenforceable since the international organizations tasked with the enforcement (the UN Security Council, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court) are powerless to enforce the laws against powerful states. But the Laws of War rest upon the self-interest of states to protect their own people against unlawful acts. The United States would never want its wounded soldiers to be ruthlessly murdered, so it must adhere to a code of conduct that respects the similar status of its enemy’s soldiers. This code of conduct is frequently violated, but far less than one would expect. This self-interest is most potent with respect to civilians, but again, we have lots of evidence to suggest that it is far less than perfect.
Killing two wounded individuals in open seas is a blatant violation of this norm and it invites reciprocal actions by other states. We have already witnesse massive loss of civilian lives in the conflicts in Congo, Myanmar, Ukraine, and the Gaza Strip, and these actions should be soundly condemned. The report of Israeli Defense Forces killing two individuals in the West Bank who had their hands raised in surrender is further evidence of the erosion of this critical aspect of the Laws of War.
Nov. 27, 2025 incident in which two Palestinian men were killed during an operation in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank
There is a second important issue raised by the second missile attack. According to the Post, the military unit that carried out the attack was one of the US’s most elite troops. Whoever received the order to kill the wounded survivors should have refused the order. That the order was carried out suggests a stunning lack of discipline by very well-trained troops. The protections for wounded soldiers and civilians must be enforced. If not, then no war is being fought; it is murder and barbarous.
US President Trump fired the chief statistician, Erika McEntarfer, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he thought that the recent jobs report was distorted by political bias.
There are many examples of “killing the messenger” in history. When a messenger informed King Tigranes of Armenia that Roman general Lucullus was approaching, Tigranes had him executed. Plutarch recounts the result: “The first messenger, that gave notice of Lucullus‘ coming was so far from pleasing Tigranes that, he had his head cut off for his pains; and no man dared to bring further information. Without any intelligence at all, Tigranes sat while war was already blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him”.
Another example is Ivan Adamovich Kraval who was the lead statistician for the 1937 census report in the Soviet Union. That report indicated that the Soviet Union’s population growth had been stunted because of famine induced by Stalin’s agricultural policies:
“The problem was that calculations of natural population growth had projected a population of 186.4 million, an increase of 37.6 million since the 1926 census; the actual increase turned out to be only 7.2 million. The population gap spoke so graphically of unnatural death, and so belied the image of a healthy happy society, that the census was squelched. On September 26, Pravda published a communiqué of the Sovnarkom claiming ‘crude violations of the principles of statistical science.’”
Stalin had Kraval executed for the bad news. as well as others who were involved in the production of the census. But the shortfall in population were the direct result of destructive policies pursued by Stalin;
“Whatever explanations were offered by the statisticians and demographers whose lives were at risk, they were unable to conceal the extent to which population growth had lagged behind the fantastic growth projections of the leadership, to say nothing of the actual decline in population. The child mortality figures were particularly alarming, as was the greater mortality among men, who constituted the greater proportion of the deportees, special settlers and camp inmates, and also the lower birth rate resulting from this catastrophic situation. Over 40 million people were struck down by famine.
“In total, for the year 1933, there were circa 6 million more deaths than usual. As the immense majority of those deaths can be attributed directly to hunger, the death toll for the whole tragedy must therefore be nearly 6 million. The peasants of the Ukraine suffered worst of all, with 4 million lives lost. There were a million deaths in Kazakhstan, most of them among nomadic tribes who had been deprived of their cattle by collectivization and forced to settle in one place. The Northern Caucasus and the Black Earth region accounted for a million more.
“Even if the census of 1937 does not speak of deportations, executions and victims of famine, the data it compiled exposed the true dimensions of the catastrophe. The missing millions correspond fairly precisely to the losses that had arisen through the increased mortality caused by collectivization and the resulting famine.”
The lower employment numbers for the US in 2025 still need to be fully explained, but the most likely explanations involve the uncertainties created by the ever-changing tariff policies of the Trump Administration and the significant cuts to Federal Government employment caused by the efforts of DOGE. President Trump does not care for this explanation, and the statistical manifestations of his moronic economic policies can be fudged by a good statistician. But the human harms created will occur and one hopes that we have a media that is committed enough to publicize these harms. If not, then many millions of people will suffer and die in silence. And the US will cease to be a Republic.
The video below is chilling, and I honestly could not believe it when I first saw it. According to The Guardian:
“Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student in Boston detained on Tuesday by federal immigration agents in response to her pro-Palestinian activism, was on Wednesday evening being detained at the South Louisiana Ice processing center, according to the government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detainee locator page.
“The transfer of Ozturk, a PhD student at Tufts University, appeared to violate a federal court order from Tuesday, which directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Ice to give the court 48 hours’ notice before attempting to take her out of Massachusetts.
“After Ozturk’s transfer to Louisiana emerged from the online locator, the federal judge ordered DHS and Ice to respond to an emergency request in court on Wednesday to produce Ozturk, by 9am ET on Thursday.”
The article cites an ICE official who claimed that Ozturk’s student visa (she is a Fulbright scholar at Tufts) was revoked because of her purported support of Hamas and not because she had committed any crime.
The thuggish nature of this action was clearly calculated to intimidate. The message is clear: if a student shows any sympathy for Palestinians, she cannot assume that she will be afforded the right of free speech. This action is not isolated and it is consistent with the Trump Administration’s conflation of anti-semitism with support for the right of self-determination for the Palestinian people.
The video should provoke outrage among those who believe in the First Amendment. So far, it has been overshadowed by the firestorm over the critical security failure of the Trump foreign policy team. But we should all imagine ourselves in Ozturk’s shoes and how dangerous the deportation policy is to the freedoms of citizens and non-citizens.
Today honors Dr. Martin Luther King for his role in protecting the civil rights of every American. His genius was in understanding his audience. When he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, DC in August 1963, he knew that his primary audience was white Americans and his objective in the speech was to make civil rights palatable to those who refused to grant equal rights to black Americans.
The speech came in two parts. The first was written out and he followed the script, laying out how the idea of equal rights was the bedrock of the Constitution even though the actual text of the Constitution institutionalized slavery. It is a careful and patient outline of how the black population has been denied civil rights by segregation and Jim Crow laws. This part of the speech was to make universal civil rights consistent with the values and ideals of the United States. Because it was written out, the first part of the speech relied upon logic and evidence and suffered from the typical flaws of a speech that was read and not delivered.
The second part was not written out but was a speech that he had often given to black Americans and it begins about 10 minutes in the video below. This part of the speech demonstrated the power of the spoken word and the full meaning of rhetoric. Mahalia Jackson, a gospel singer and close associate of King, encouraged him to leave off the logic and to rely upon the emotions that flow from a sense of liberation. She gave King the license to treat white America to the true feelings of black Americans:
“The story that has been told since that day has Mahalia Jackson intervening at a critical junction when she decided King’s speech needed a course-correction. Recalling a theme she had heard him use in earlier speeches, Jackson said out loud to Martin Luther King Jr., from behind the podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” And at that moment, as can be seen in films of the speech, Dr. King leaves his prepared notes behind to improvise the entire next section of his speech—the historic section that famously begins “And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream….”
The result was one of the most powerful speeches in American history and a genuine turning point in the fight for civil rights. And the speech led to the Civil Rights Act of 1965 which laid the foundation for a more substantive understanding of what rights are. Those rights have since been extended to the rights of women and the gay community. More work needs to be done enhancing the rights of transgender individuals, disabled people, immigrants, and refugees. But King made these developments possible, and Americans should be grateful to King, and all those who supported him, for leading the way.
President Biden, in his final address to the nation as President, warned citizens against the danger of living in an oligarchy: “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.” He was not the first President to warn of this danger. John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, wrote the following:
“9 July 1813
“Your “” [aristocrats] are the most difficult Animals to manage, of anything in the whole Theory and practice of Government. They will not suffer themselves to be governed. They not only exert all their own Subtilty Industry and courage, but they employ the Commonalty, to knock to pieces every Plan and Model that the most honest Architects in Legislation can invent to keep them within bounds. Both Patricians and Plebeians are as furious as the Workmen in England to demolish labour-saving Machinery.
“But who are these ““? Who shall judge? Who shall select these choice Spirits from the rest of the Congregation? Themselves? We must first find out and determine who themselves are. Shall the congregation choose? Ask Xenophon. Perhaps hereafter I may quote you Greek. Too much in a hurry at present, english must suffice. Xenophon says that the ecclesia, always chooses the worst Men they can find, because none others will do their dirty work. This wicked Motive is worse than Birth or Wealth. Here I want to quote Greek again. But the day before I received your Letter of June 27. I gave the Book to George Washington Adams going to the Accadamy at Hingham. The Title is a Collection of Moral Sentences from all the most Ancien[t] Greek Poets. In one of the oldest of them I read in greek that I cannot repeat, a couplet the Sense of which was
“‘Nobility in Men is worth as much as it is in Horses Asses or Rams: but the meanest blooded Puppy, in the World, if he gets a little money, is as good a man as the best of them.’ Yet Birth and Wealth together have prevailed over Virtue and Talents in all ages. The Many, will acknowledge no other ““. Your Experience of This Truth, will not much differ from that of your old Friend.”
Most Americans are unfamiliar with the word “oligarchy” since the Republic has tried very hard since its inception to convey the sense of equality best expressed in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. It would be years before any American President emphasized the idea of equality over that of freedom. Lincoln did so in his second Inaugural Address. For the first time, an American President declared that slavery was incompatible with the values of the American people, notwithstanding the inclusion of slavery in the Constitution.
An oligarchy is a political system in which the wealthy direct the machinery of government to protect and enhance their interests as opposed to the interests of the citizenry. Brooke Harrington, a Sociology Professor at Dartmouth College wrote this for the Washington Post at the beginning of Trump’s first term:
“There are no laws against a president and his super-wealthy Cabinet using their power to benefit their own class. There is nothing that compels them to look beyond their privilege to address the needs of the citizenry.
“The problem with these prospective leaders is not their money. It’s that they — like Trump — seem more interested in what their country can do for them than in what they can do for their country.”
The concentration of wealth in the second Trump administration is staggering. The following table gives an idea of how concentrated wealth has become in recent years. Many of the people listed, like Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, have actively solicited Trump on various matters and represent business interests that clearly constitute conflicts of interest with a number of important policy issues like freedom of speech in a digital world.
Source: Bloomberg, “Bloomberg Billionaires Index”, 18 January 2025, accessed at: Bloomberg Billionaires Index, on 19 January 2025
Many of these people have contributed a great deal of money to Trump’s inauguration and several of them have been quite visible in the upcoming Trump Administration. We also have a hard time realizing exactly what these numbers represent: a billion of anything is far removed from anything we come into daily contact. One way to comprehend these numbers is to translate them into more accessible terms:
If someone made one million dollars a year, they would make about $480.77 per hour and $3,846.15 per day.
On the other hand, making a billion dollars per year would mean about $480,769 per hour and $3,846,153.85 per day.
These 20 individuals possess more wealth than most countries in the world. Indeed, there are only 7 countries with GDPs larger than $3 trillion:
There are 186 countries in the world with GDPs less than $3 trillion. The combined population of these countries comprises 56% of the global population. But 20 people have more wealth than each of the 186 countries.
Concentrations of wealth lead inevitably to a distorted political system. Adam Smith was well aware of the dangers of concentrated wealth to the public interest:
“Not only the prejudices of the publick, but what is much more unconquerable, the private interests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it. Were the officers of the army to oppose with the same zeal and unanimity any reduction in the number of forces, with which master manufacturers set themselves against every law that is likely to increase the number of their rivals in the home market; were the former to animate their soldiers, in the same manner as the latter enflame their workmen, to attack with violence and outrage the proposers of any such regulation; to attempt to reduce the army would be as dangerous as it has now become to attempt to diminish in any respect the monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained against us. This monopoly has so much increased the number of some particular tribes of them, that, like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature. The member of parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly, is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance. If he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest publick services can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger, arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists.”
This pattern was present as the Roman Republic began its descent into dictatorship. It was also evident in 13th Century Venice and in late-19th Century America. It is happening again, not only in the US, but in India, Russia, China, the low-population oil producers such as Kuwait, and Brazil. It is difficult to see how democracy can persist under these conditions. Active steps must be taken to create a more just distribution of wealth globally.
” [aristocrats] are the most difficult Animals to manage, of anything in the whole Theory and practice of Government. They will not suffer themselves to be governed. They not only exert all their own Subtilty Industry and courage, but they employ the Commonalty, to knock to pieces every Plan and Model that the most honest Architects in Legislation can invent to keep them within bounds. Both Patricians and Plebeians are as furious as the Workmen in England to demolish labour-saving Machinery.
a Collection of Moral Sentences from all the most Ancien[t] Greek Poets. In one of the oldest of them I read in greek that I cannot repeat, a couplet the Sense of which was
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