Duane HelmerEat the rich, before they eat you.

In a perfect world there would be no need for the following question: What is the

meaning of “the golden rule”? Is it, to do unto others as you would have them do unto

you, or is it, whom ever has the gold makes the rules? To have equal and just societies

based on the concepts of natural law we must examine and change the way in which

wealth is passed from one generation to another. For if not, then at some point we have

merely replaced the inauspicious despots, chiefs, priests, and monarchs of old for a new,

privileged breed, who differ from there predecessors in name only, an oligarchy whose

aims and means only appear to be different, but whose underlying duplicity of purpose,

planning and nature are really the identical. We call them: The very Rich.

What was ancient man’s perspective of themselves and their culture? Their social

structures and functions were expressed as a crude but pure and necessary collaboration

of natural resources and conditions contiguous to multiple adaptive strategies and

behaviors which self perpetuated by the fact that they either succeeded or failed, and in

doing so sustained or terminated those carrying out said actions or accomplishing said

tasks. The structures and functions of their clans, groups, and culture merged into a single

purpose which in turn gave meaning to all subsequent behaviors and activities; each

group member being defined as much by their relation to and ability to exploit the

environment as to each other. Equality between individuals was an expression of

enlightened self-interest. Yet over time more efficient utilization of resources and plain

old good fortune reduced the survival coefficient of energy output to sustenance from

nearly 100% to something less and that new proportionality is what began to allow
individuals more physical, psychological, and cultural room to influence, nuance and

define their social-structures, norms and roles.

This surplus of resources allowed for the emergence of a class of persons whose

unscrupulous attitudes and behaviors cumulated in first limited, then increasingly larger

spheres of control and authority, in the areas of norms, religion, and politics which

allowed them to define, establish, and enforce the “rules”. Rules which derive their

power from the life and death consequences connected to knowing and complying with

them. As the French philosopher and playwright Voltaire said; “It has taken centuries to

do justice to humanity, to feel it was horrible that the many should sow and the few

should reap."; as he called for political, religious, and philosophic freedom for the

betterment of earthly life.

Pity that no sooner had human kind acquired the capacity, privilege, and magnificence of

incorporating reason and empathy as a prevailing and essential characteristic of our

relationship to each other and the world, than we abandoned such enlightened folly

opting instead for a much more practical expression of social-construction based in the

myopic, avaricious, and fallacious belief that might makes right. The tyranny of those

willing to take from others by any means the product of their labor slowly became the

bedrock of myriad societies in which a person’s station, role, and caste in all but the

rarest of exceptions was assigned at birth and determined nearly all the major

intersections of ones life.

This manifest destiny of the masses is the enzymatic underpinning perpetuating this

exploitation, but it cannot exist absent vast concentrations of wealth, passed from one

group or generation in systematic and predictable ways to the next.

What is wealth? According to G. William Domhoff Professor of Sociology at the

University of California at Santa Cruz; (Domhoff) “ "wealth" is the value of everything a

person or family owns, minus any debts.; "Financial wealth is a more 'liquid' concept

than marketable wealth, since one's home is difficult to convert into cash in the short

term. It thus reflects the resources that may be immediately available for consumption or

various forms of investments." “We also need to distinguish wealth from income. Income

is what people earn from wages, dividends, interest, and any rents or royalties that are

paid to them on properties they own. In theory, those who own a great deal of wealth may

or may not have high incomes, depending on the returns they receive from their wealth,

but in reality those at the very top of the wealth distribution usually have the most

income.” He goes on: (Domhoff) “The Wealth Distribution In the United States, wealth is

highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the

upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial,

professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the

people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80%

(wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth, the top 1% of households had an

even greater share: 39.7%.” So we see that most people do not possess wealth, they may

(in developed countries) be able to meet their needs, and many of these may have

additional disposable income, but this is not wealth.

So you might ask, what’s the problem? Why make all this fuss about the rich and “their”

money, it is after all “their” money. Well there are a number of problems with this way

of thinking. They stem from the fact that with very few exceptions most people have no

choice about the circumstances of their births. As such most of us are co-opted into one

or another social contract, i.e. society or culture. Nearly all these have laws (the Rules)

which if not followed consequences will ensue. Nearly all that is but the wealthy. They

have sufficient means to sway outcomes, influence legislators, and manipulate “free”

markets thus circumventing the social contract and invalidating its restraints upon them

and their agendas. Left to operate as they please they consume more of the given

resources be they physical, structural, political, or legal.

This contravention of restrictions imposed by a rule or law without actually breaking it,

or changing it after the fact diminishes the quality and choices of all the others.

Everyone’s life is diminished to a larger or smaller degree, and the more the imbalance

grows the worse it becomes. (John Donne) Human beings necessarily depend on one

another, as in you can't manage this all by yourself; no man is an island. This

expression is a quotation from John Donne's Devotions (1624): "No man is an Island,

entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main."