Is Doge For Real?
Billionaires and Their Helping Hands
Speak Loudly and Carry a Big Stick
Dogecoin has really taken off since the election last November. As of writing this sentence, it’s up 166.49%, according to Google’s Market Summary. The valuation of a single share……drumroll please! A whopping .27 USD. That’s a bull market stock if I've ever seen one.
Don’t take financial advice from me. Please, I invest my money in short term Scotch acquisitions that I often pay for with a headache and dehydration.
What do I have to offer today in the way of financial advice? Nothing.
I do have a few opinions to throw your way about Dogecoin’s cousin, DOGE.
To my republican readers that are party first and still celebrating Don’s victory, you might want to look away for this one.
My commentary is independent and punches in all directions. I will always be critical of power.
You should be, too.
Why?
Because.
The Government is Not Your Friend or Your Fiduciary
Listen, the seductive promise of trickle down economics courts even the most fiscally cynical. Republican campaigns of lower taxes on the wealthy that produce effectual net financial gains for the working and middle class are as utopian as democratic promises of bigger refunds to pay for groceries without affecting inflation or property taxes, rates and inflated home values.
Don’t come at me with some convoluted statistical comparison of how either party has served the American working class better because numbers lie—despite our ignorant belief in their purity.
You’ll never get me to say one party is better than the other. The current power will always be in my commentary’s crosshairs. If you feel good about government, you should ask yourself what’s wrong.
Regardless of how much corruption the new guards uncover, power will corrupt the righteous when the idealistic righteous are already corrupt.
Who Will Watch the Watchman: Enter the DOGE
In case you haven’t heard, the Department of Government Efficiency is in full swing. I wonder if it is functioning at maximum efficiency?
According to republican sources, DOGE is the muckraker we've been praying for since Upton Sinclair. According to democrat sources, DOGE is violating federal law, the constitution (funny how that matters to them now), and doing real harm to trusted American institutions. Was there ever such a thing as a trusted American institution?
DOGE, if I didn't know better, sounds like a great idea. The American bureaucracy needs a serious and open audit.
But for me, the DOGE name harkens back to the Dogecoin crypto currency “created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a joke, making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time,” according to Barron’s.
DOGE, Elon’s version, should sound like a joke to you, too.
We are told to believe, as with every new administration, the good guys are in charge now. Things are certainly going to be better (sarcasm). We are told to believe that this version of DOGE is serious about fiscal responsibility and stability unlike Dogecoin.
The guy that named his kids after the sound of a dial-up modem from 1996 told us he's serious. He even threw his heart at us in this video. What’s not to love? I wonder how many threw their hearts back in solidarity.
DOGE = GOOD?
I am not buying it. Neither should you.
Every time Elon opens a file cabinet or DropBox folder on any federal agency computer, he seems to find stacks of government waste receipts and taxpayer IOU’s.
If you trust the source, our government, then this is a great thing.
Now, in fairness, I can’t completely say this is a bad thing. It’s not. But it’s relatively inane to the system that permitted it to happen in the first place.
If you think it started with Biden, just don’t. Sure, maybe funding the DEI initiatives start with him—I think they are a waste themselves—but those programs represent low hanging fruit. Sure, they deserve to be picked, but how far up the tree is DOGE willing to go. How many leaves will it turn over? And which poison fruit will make it to market?
The real issue isn’t what DOGE finds, it’s the need for DOGE anyway. I thought congress had a job to audit. Congressional oversight committees clearly aren’t doing their job, which is why part of me likes DOGE.
Quickly, I recoil because of the whole swamp draining thing. Isn’t the creation of another government agency antithetical to shrinking government? (Oh, this one is necessary I’m told.)
True, DOGE is “finding” corruption. But, doesn’t it seem like they knew exactly where to look. If they knew where to look, then they also knew where not to look. The excess and waste DOGE finds comes from one side of the isle. In a government this big, everyone’s shit stinks, not just liberals. What DOGE finds serves them.
DOGE isn’t altruism.
If you think so, you’re a moron.
A History on Why You Shouldn’t Trust the Charity of Oligarchs or DOGE
History is chock full of Ollies (my new term for oligarchs as public servants and saints) that duped the public at large to be seen as good guys.
Take John D. Rockefeller for example, though many saw him as a philanthropist of the highest order, many believe he tried to buy his way into heaven one dime a time. Tomato, tomatto.
Rockefeller was Christian. His early business practices were hallmarks of capitalism's merits. However, as is often the case of successful businessmen, his capitalist work ethic turned into monopolistic, oligarchical behavior. He accumulated massive wealth, to which he is often quoted as saying “God gave me money.” That’s a bold statement John. The cause and effect logic isn’t that simple, Mr. Rockefeller.
However, I don’t completely disregard divine intervention. I for one blame God for giving me IBS after 2am Taco Bell runs. And, when the bout of explosive bowel evacuation ends, I thank God for ending it.
What makes John D. Rockefeller and I different is I understand my selfish choices led to the cries for pity flushes from my family. I didn’t say God gave me the shits, deal with it. I may have cried out, “why, why me God!” But I knew my free will was to blame.
Rockefeller escaped all moral and ethical culpability in his surplus wealth by praising God. Advocates of his argue this devotion to his faith is why he gave so much of his money away. See, in a way, John gave the public a pity flush.
He almost died in his fifties. He had his come-to-Jesus moment on what everyone thought was going to be an early death bed. But this first Billionaire in US history, at 53 years old in 1916, would survive his call to the light, then kick start his philanthropic efforts afterwards. The comparisons to be made to Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol are purely coincidental.
Maybe it was his Christian, Baptist upbringing that led to his charitable giving, but I believe his near death experience played a significant role. Though, a string of coincidental timing that thick is too hard for me to ignore.
Rockefeller gave away 540 million dollars of his fortune during his lifetime to so-called philanthropic causes. He also handed dimes to children on nice days in the name of Christ, no doubt. Combining near death experiences with Christian guilt and bible verses about charitable giving would make anyone with few extra dollars sweat the afterlife.
It’s not that $540 million isn’t a lot of money. It is. And that is my point. If you have 540 million to give away, how in the hell do you use supply and demand economics to accumulate that much wealth without the use of nefarious action?
You don’t.
Standard Oil (just one of his companies) was a vulture monopoly that used anti-competitive practices and strong armed greed—as antithetical to Rockefellers Christian beliefs as any—to usurp market economics. The sheer amount of his giving should have been a red flag to everyone, but it was a smokescreen that hid the oligarch machine in perpetuity.
He was seen as a saint for giving so much. I chalk that up to the adage, some is better than none. Hey, when you're dying of thirst, even muddy water tastes sweet. Everyone just kept on accepting his gifts and turned the other cheek. Forbes cited historian Mark Leff as saying Roosevelt did tax one man 79% for making over 5 million, (76 million in our dollars, if that’s a thing). That one man, Rockefeller. It didn’t last long. And thank God, because it would be hard to live on almost 1.2 million 1935.
Did they have Ramen back then? (ha, I just chuckled at the image of a man in a stovepipe hat slurping down chicken flavored Top Ramen in white gloves and fine china.)
The Christian meaning of tithe means to give one tenth of your income to the church. Rockefeller, using the old numbers, giving away more than a third of his income looks pretty damn charitable, but only on paper.
Context matters. It always matters.
When you consider his business practice and the other Ollies of his time likely led to the Great Depression, his tithe is nothing more than blood money responsible for creating more poverty and hardship and death than ever before in American history outside of slavery and war.
The money he gave away wasn’t his earned income. It was someone else’s that he swindled and bilked in the bastardized name of capitalism. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act follows his legacy as evidence that Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbuilt, Morgan, etc. all gained their wealth by impoverishing others not through capitalist means.
The great industrialist of America had very close ties to the uppermost branches of the US government as well. (More on this happy little marriage later.)
When you factor in for inflation, Rockefeller’s net worth was somewhere between 15 Billion to 24 Billion, depending on the method used. There is debate there because all statistical comparisons contain bias. And, there are some that argue he was, in fact, worth 15$ billion in his era. That is astonishing.
Even going with the low end at 15$ billion, a 540$ (not adjusted) million tithe is 18% of Rockefeller's fortune. That’s much more than 1/10th.
Let's take the inflation stats out of it. Because they suck.
But for arguments sake, take the 1.5$ billion as widely reported when he died, and the 540 million he donated as 1:1 in his time. He died a billionaire.
So the real-time number of 1.5$ billion net worth is off somehow because of simple math. He had to have more than 1.5 billion if he gave away 540$ million and still died a billionaire.
For a little context, it would take 274 years to spend 1 billion in today’s dollars if I spent 10K a day. Several different sects of Christianity, though they argue he was the greatest philanthropist of all time, would also say he had spare change to give. So John, he stuck with handing out dimes. Way to make a difference my guy. If he did it without rigging the system, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
I love capitalism. It is the only means for people to pave their own path forward. Rockefeller sure did this at first. Then he reached a precipice, as so many wealthy do, where their integrity, ingenuity and ethic give way to mankind’s essential illness: power.
The Marriage of Government and Monopoly: The Capitalist Oligarchy
Though WWI certainly fueled Rocky’s wealth, Uncle Sam learned to reach a little far into cousin Karl Marx’ pocket. America's industrious capitalists had a hard time getting their back scratched via work the capitalist way, and turned to the US government for help.
In case you are wondering, in true capitalism, oligarchy and communism shouldn't be able to exist. But, who doesn’t love an affair with money and power. Leave it to America to make it happen.
In capitalist societies, product development takes much effort and money and time. In capitalist societies, advertising takes so much effort and money and time. And, In capitalist societies, the people sometimes dislike, don’t want or don’t need, the product no matter how much money effort and time producers put into development and advertising. And it fails.
That’s how it is supposed to work. Fiscal responsibility is built into the system.
But that is too much work, and 100 million isn’t enough for one man. I mean have you seen the cost of eggs?
American oligarchs simultaneously saved money and made billions more thanks to lessons from Marx and the Mob. Get a man on the inside to change the laws for the good of the company, er, the people, and let the magic happen.
Eric Schlosser, a three time best selling author of Fast Food Nation, Reefer Madness, and Command and Control, establishes and successfully argues that the USA’s economic, industrial, and entertainment might was not a pure capitalist fruit. Without actually saying the words, Schlosser points out how un-American and Marxist the post depression boom was. The expansion of California’s population wouldn’t have been possible without the massive automobile industry. Itself is a result of government and corporate collusion, not capitalist work ethic.
What is so often called today as Public/Private partnership is nothing more than a euphemism for Communism and Marxism that results in oligarchical collusion.
In regards to how un-American the great automotive and economic expansion came of age in the 1940’s, Schlosser writes:
[…]driving seemed to cost much less than using public transport— an illusion created by the fact that the price of a new car did not include the price of building new roads. Lobbyists from the oil, tire, and automobile industries, among others, had persuaded state and federal agencies to assume that fundamental expense. Had the big auto companies been required to pay for the roads—in the same way that trolley companies had to lay and maintain track—the landscape of the American West would look quite different today.
The automobile industry, however, was not content simply to reap the benefits of government-subsidized road construction. It was determined to wipe out railway competition by whatever means necessary. In the late 1920s, General Motors secretly began to purchase trolley systems throughout the United States, using a number of front corporations. Trolley systems in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Montgomery, Alabama, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and El Paso, Texas, in Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles — more than one hundred trolley systems in all — were purchased by GM and then completely dismantled, their tracks ripped up, their overhead wires torn down. The trolley companies were turned into bus lines, and the new buses were manufactured by GM.
General Motors eventually persuaded other companies that benefited from road building to help pay for the costly takeover of America’s trolleys. In 1947, GM and a number of its allies in the scheme were indicted on federal antitrust charges. Two years later, the workings of the conspiracy, and its underlying intentions, were exposed during a trial in Chicago. GM, Mack Truck, Firestone, and Standard Oil of California were all found guilty on one of the two counts by the federal jury. The investigative journalist Jonathan Kwitny later argued that the case was “a fine example of what can happen when important matters of public policy are abandoned by government to the self-interest of corporations.” Judge William J. Campbell was not so outraged. As punishment, he ordered GM and the other companies to pay a fine of $5,000 each. The executives who had secretly plotted and carried out the destruction of America’s light rail network were fined $1 each. And the postwar reign of the automobile proceeded without much further challenge. The nation’s car culture reached its height in southern California, inspiring innovations such as the world’s first motel and the first drive-in bank. -(Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation 2001)
Schlosser doesn’t stop at the automobile industry. Rather, he tackles the image of the great American entertainment export, Disney, long before DEI and feminism claimed their pound of flesh, effectively if not patronizingly changing it’s approach to entertainment for the ‘greater good.’
Of course, Schlosser implicates the entire fast food industry and its dystopian sterility for effectively remaking the American landscape. But behind the entire investigative report is the unveiling of a sinister partnership between oligarchical, monopolistic wealth masquerading as what most of us believe is the American way: capitalism.
The few with the help of the government are shaping the many. The real cost, Schlosser argues, is hidden in the euphemistic wording of such products as the Happy Meal.
DOGE is a euphemism.
When the DOGE Bites, It’s the Owners Fault
I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but history reigns supreme here. The average is for the super wealthy to exploit the opportunities offered, not save the public from it’s struggles.
Whereas Rockefeller, Disney, Kroc, Buffet, Bezos, and Gates (the latter already had one monopoly broken) represent the glorious possibilities of capitalism to start, the nature of greed is to take more through a means that skirts or abuses the system that makes it possible for our competition to best us. It is the undefeated nature of history that should tell you their billions are not from their own hard work but a façade created to keep us from seeing our tithe to Uncle Sam feeds their perpetual wealth.
Elon Musk, Mr. Capitalist himself exploits. It might not be illegal, but you can sure bet it isn’t capitalist.
DOGE is the ultimate kickback.
Should I give Elon the benefit of the doubt? Should I see that the millions and billions of dollars DOGE finds and labels as waste is real? Should I believe this government and this billionaire team is telling me the truth whereas the previous administration wasn’t?
I want to, but I can’t. I won’t. And again, I’d be happy to be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. I want so badly to be wrong. Because I want to believe in the goodness of some people. Billionaires are not self made men. They never have been.
I ask you this dear reader:
If a billionaire sees a million seconds rolling on the ground would he bend over to pick them up? No, he wouldn’t. I would, but a million seconds to me is lifetime. To a billionaire it’s only 11 days, he has seconds to waste.
The millions DOGE finds is nothing. When they say it’s something, it’s a distraction. It’s an advertisement, too. It sounds like a lot. But comparatively speaking, it's not worth the time. It’s what Rockefeller donated but still managed to die with.
When they find the billions, like with the EPA, what are they going to do with it? Pay off our national debt?
Or, does Trump’s bill from Elon come due?
History says Musk just made 20 Billion.
We get the ribbon, he gets the prize.
If you believed it, and it hurts when the time comes, you have only yourself to blame. We are not the same as the wealthy. Stop pretending they have us in mind when we get our tax refund.
When the DOGE bites, don’t blame the dog. That’s its nature.
—Milne