Gordon Gekko says “greed is good”!! Pfft…what a nobend!

100% class A, nobend!

I remember in the late 1980’s when I was around 16, I watched the movie Wall Street.

You know, the one with Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, the Wall Street trader and his wannabe, played by Charlie Sheen. I remember loving the film as it played right into the hands of my materialistic and impressionable 16 year old brain. 

“Greed is good” was our Mr Gekko’s mantra and at the time I thought ‘fuck yeah’, god damn those homeless people and their no showers and being lazy and all that, ‘fuck yeah’, greed was good and I was absolutely going to have the best of everything in my life I proudly, if naively, told my slightly horrified left wing leaning mum. 

Business and social morals

Weirdly, although perhaps given hindsight, tellingly, Gordon Gekko was never portrayed as someone who was the spawn of human evil.

It was never suggested for example that his character should, in penance for his actions and questionable approach to business and social morals, have been cast out of our society and made to sleep naked in a box with a collection of cocaine fueled Porcupines. 

Sure he went to jail in the end, but not for destroying people’s lives, not for causing families to lose their only income sources and so potentially become destitute all in his relentless pursuit of personal wealth above all others. No he was sent to jail for being a touch underhand in the way he did all that, not that he did it in the first place. 

So you see it wasn’t my fault my 16 year old self wanted to laugh in the face of pox ridden orphans, I was at that time being exactly what the world told me to be. 

I was being told that money and power were things to aspire to and that robbing grannies, stabbing kittens and generally standing all over other people to get it was entirely acceptable. 

Co-exist in harmony

Fortunately now I’m…I was going to say ‘old enough’, but on reflection and as perhaps vanity is something I’m allowing myself right now I’m going to run with, ‘experienced enough’, to know what the world should revolve around.

That is certainly not money and the pursuit of individual wealth, but rather what I’m calling ‘community’. 

You see, I believe that we should live as communities of people, together, with skills and abilities that aid the ‘community’ and in that way we can co-exist in harmony together.

We should look after our immediate community first and foremost, then look to the next level and so on. I know,  radical eh!

So in this scenario the first community where one divides up responsibilities and skill-sets is one’s own home and those with whom one lives. 

The second community we have responsibility for is our neighbourhood, starting with those living around us. Old Bert next door, is he okay, do the family down the road need a babysitter etc. 

Our next level of community is the town or suburb in which we live. 

For example we should do the weekly grocery shop or conduct our business locally, through local people first and foremost as only in doing so are we putting back into our ‘community’. 

Beyond that, come community city, community region, country, world etc. But the core ethos is that if we don’t look after each level of our ‘community’, eventually the whole thing will come crashing down. 

It’s not a new idea this method of survival. 

Indeed it’s been prevalent in human society since the dawn of time. People living together, using and appreciating each other’s strengths for the collective good. 

No,  it’s definitely not a new concept, but I’ll tell you what,  it’s one that we’ve been weaned from over the last 30 years in order that today we think not of our community in the first instance, but of ourselves and our own survival. 

Wee Mrs Jones over the road

Look what’s happened. Can you honestly say that you know, or really care about your neighbours? You might know the guy upstairs, or wee Mrs Jones over the road but what about three doors down, do you know them? 

That big pile of firewood on their front lawn that’s been there for weeks, have you offered to help shift it, maybe they’re not able? 

When was the last time you bought something from a local business even though you knew it was more expensive than the same item you could buy online? 

When was the last time you dismissed even looking at a local business as you knew you could get whatever it was you were looking for less expensively by buying through a large retailer in the nearest big city.  

Or worse, when was the last time you bought something online from overseas as you knew it was cheaper simply as you didn’t have to pay the GST, or VAT or whatever your local goods tax is called? 

Crimes against community

Bottom line, I’m prepared to bet that all of us have done at least one of these things and in doing so all of us have threatened the very fabric of our ‘community’, even our existence as we experience it today. 

However I can’t convict everyone of crimes against community, not least because in my time I believed that the pursuit of personal wealth was what life was all about. 

And you know what, it’s too easy to blame people for just being selfish arseholes. The truth is that just as people aren’t born rapists, they’re not born selfish arseholes.

We’ve all been conditioned somehow into believing we as individuals are the most important thing to consider first and foremost and that by not caring about anyone but ourselves we’re protecting our immediate community and those in our own household. 

You see, it’s been the go to tool of the fascist for thousands of years, divide and conquer. 

The more a fascist regime can encourage a populace to worry about themselves, their job, their ability to service the mortgage, pay the rent, put food on the table, the more likely they are to feel powerless against authority and become selfish in their approach to their ‘community’. 

It becomes about me, not us. This is a good thing for the autocrat as a collective strength is a fascist’s worse nightmare, one person, has no power. 

Ronald bloody Reagan

So what happened? Big subject, but ultimately among others one man we could hold responsible would be Ronald bloody Reagan. 

Taking office as President of the United States in 1981, shortly thereafter his brand of ‘Americanism’ and consumerism was rampant all over the ‘Western World’. McDonalds, Hollywood and the ‘American Way’ of freedom, cell phones and indescribable wealth were, we were told, the noble pursuit.

TV and the movies only encouraged us to want more and more, Wall Street being the perfect example! 1989 saw our delightful Ronald winning the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

How did he do that, he went shopping! 

Yes that’s right, basically he spent so much money on American militaria, in the process making friends in the arms business very wealthy indeed, the Soviet economy went boom trying to keep up! 

Voting for the guy who’s screwing you over

What’s happened since, well in an effort at brevity I’ll keep this brief, but I’ll bet you’re in significantly more debt. 

I’ll bet you’re worried about how to pay for your retirement. I guarantee you’ve had some concerns over your job and it’s longevity. 

But ultimately you’ll put up with all this because your house is worth heaps more than it was two years ago as a result of a seemingly constant boom in house prices. 

This keeps making you think you’re wealthy and is the only way to keep your eyes off those who are robbing you of your rights and your real wealth. Ironically of course, in feeling ‘wealthy’, you’ll likely keep voting for the guy who’s screwing you over behind your back in the first place. 

Seemingly horrendous fiscal mismanagement

Only in recent years have we come to understand the deregulation of the financial services sector that began during Reagan’s administration in the 1980’s that ultimately lead to the greatest heist the world had ever seen in 2008 when the financial world fell apart. 

Statistics and history shows us that those banks and financial institutions who through seemingly horrendous fiscal mismanagement, caused the ‘Global Financial Crisis’ of 2008, ultimately became ever more wealthy and powerful as a result of it. 

It seems the rich became even richer to the point that now, in 2016, figures suggest that 62 people, 62 of our world’s 7 billion population, have more money that the bottom 50% of that populous. 

That number doesn’t seem real does it? 

It seems utterly unfathomable that only 62 individuals can have more combined wealth than 3,500,000,000, that’s 3.5 billion of their co-inhabitants on this planet. 

It’s gets worse too, because most of us are aware that money breeds money. You have to have money to make money. 

Therefore it’s not a stretch to assume that in 20 years-time, the significantly largest portion of the planets wealth will be in the hands of so few people, that you could probably invite them to dinner and they’d fit in the same room. 

Redistribution of wealth

So something’s gone awry.  Something is not working in this our current system of government and for the benefit of the many, not the few, something has to change. 

John Kennedy talked of government being of the people, for the people and by the people. This is the fundamental principle of our ‘community’ and was possibly the last time a politician talked of true democracy.

We as a people have the right to control our destinies together and we will only see that day if we gather as one and explain that we want a redistribution of wealth from the richest to the poorest. 

We don’t want corporate control over our government, we don’t want horrendous unemployment to ensure profits for shareholders, or wages so low as to make it effective unemployment or incredibly difficult to remove oneself from poverty. 

It is utterly disgraceful that millions cannot afford to purchase their own home in this world as the wealthiest of individuals will always win that battle in our current system. 

The result is that we’re creating a system of slavery, of masters and juniors, of those with and of those without. 

Surely in 2016 our society has reached the point where we can develop a system that betters ourselves, that makes ours a civilisation to be proud of and one that values every life, not just one that can afford to be valued. 

Perhaps it’s age, perhaps it’s an increasing understanding of where this world has taken us. But my views today are so far from that of my 16 year old self and I have hope that change is coming. 

I see in our world today chinks of light that promise a fairer world. 

I see those who offer a system that values human life before money. Of health before profit, of life before shareholders. 

One that values ‘community’. 

Gordon Gecko! Pfft…what a nobend!