The Alternative Facts that Led to Insurrection

Most of us know someone who occasionally slips in a talking point from Rupert Murdoch’s editorial pages. It’s not fair to cast them immediately into Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables.” We’re all to blame for those opinions being pushed and so often believed; every one of us who has ever tolerated alternative facts shares in the guilt and responsibility for their current gross manipulations. 

Today we have big oil shouting their concerns for the environment and the world's sustainable future. We have banks desperate for us to know how much they want to help us make the most of our money. We are ruled by the promise of trickle-down economics, now thirty years old and yet to start trickling. We have overtly sexualised underage models promoting everything except the age of consent. We have public utilities privatised and ruled by investors, and we have allowed science to take a back seat and be overlooked unless its outcome makes a profit. 

Capitalism is the most efficient model for harnessing human greed and ingenuity. The downside is that it rewards the carnival barker and their exaggerations and half-truths.  P.T Barnum is immortalised for his ability to double talk his way into profit, and his success reveals complicity in allowing all those variations of the truth to go unchallenged.

At first, it was treated as a joke. How cheeky we said when the Superbowl seat we paid for arrived in the mail – a small two-inch seat with the words Superbowl printed on the backrest.

Then we never asked for the Ponds Institute’s address or questioned why tobacco being toasted seemed more significant than smoking causing cancer. When the fossil fuel industry set our planet on fire for profit, and the Ponzi scheme of economic growth required a global economy to keep the wealth growing, we just nodded and accepted the situation, pacified by larger televisions and technological wizardry. We no longer pause to think about containers with false bottoms or packaging of mostly air. We overlook discounts that drop the price while reducing quality or size. We’re so used to looking the other way that there was no mechanism in place to stop America’s election being declared invalid for two whole months. Everyone who could have done something was looking the other way out of habit.

Russia, China, Poland, Brazil, the Philippines and others have created pseudo-democratic states that have long lost the battle to alternative facts. Their governments declare everything being done is for their people. They care so much they are willing to kill those people to ensure their beneficial system remains in place.

We have allowed our truth to be skewed incrementally over many generations. A considerable percentage of our populations believe nothing can be done to redress the inequality of wealth and power; that the system is both too big and too broken to change.

Simultaneously, the patriarchal, white, wealthy, Christian, cis-gendered, abled, skinny privileged members of society are screaming they are being attacked. They’re not. They’re just being asked to share – to enjoy the same benefits as others. Suggest women should have equal rights, and those who currently hold power will shout about being attacked and victimised. Suggest systemic racism, and they defend, deflect and undermine. To someone standing at the top of the pile, being asked to be equal feels like an attack.

Suddenly the truth is being massaged to sell a product or hide an inconvenient truth to maintain the current system’s foundations. We didn’t arrive here overnight. It took decades and began with the smallest and seemingly most trivial incursions on the truth; “It’s advertising. We expect them to stretch the truth.” “They’re politicians; they’re not expected to keep their promises.” We allowed ourselves to end up here by allowing the truth to be continually tested and pushed further away from fact. 

We have all fallen victim to the seemingly inconsequential effect of micro-aggressions against facts.

Microaggressions are trivial misdemeanours against anything. They can exist in all forms: speech, action, attitudes, stories, emotions, bureaucracy, etc. Complaining about any single issue comes across as trivial and paints those complaining as being overly sensitive or out of touch with the real world – a snowflake. When there are tens of thousands of these subtle, nuanced, inbuilt negative comments, actions or attitudes, adopted and accepted by a community as acceptable, whatever target of these negative micro-aggressions loses standing. This can certainly happen to a minority: women, people of colour, LGBTQI+, those with disabilities, the overweight, elderly and on and on. It has also happened to the truth and a lack of factual information being reported when that information paints the rich and powerful negatively.

Micro-aggressions against the truth come in many forms.

‘What-about-ism’ is used by those being called out to highlight any hypocrisy by those arguing against them. “He says he wants tighter gun controls, but he has a gun licence.” The two issues have no direct correlation, but pointing out the person wanting to limit access to firearms also owns a gun sets up a false narrative that their argument is disingenuous.

Appealing to the extremes is also popular in replacing facts. “If we allow gay marriage, we’ll end up with people marrying animals.” This plays to the fear of an issue being a gateway for far worse things.

A straw-man argument is where an entirely new proposition is raised, and an alternative proposition is refuted rather than the original. “We should promote riding bicycles in cities to reduce emissions and slow global warming.” “When you give cyclists priority on city streets they run red lights and endanger pedestrians.” The straw-man argument often has merit and needs to be addressed, and a good straw-man argument will seem to be related, but both issues existing don’t cancel each other out.

False equivalency is an argument that draws two things together because of shared characteristics. “Why are you suddenly so alarmed by Donald Trump telling thirty thousand lies when Hillary Clinton has at least that many missing emails?” Once again, two issues don’t need to be mutually exclusive and can each be addressed. The advice given to four-year-olds of two wrongs not making a right never grows old.

Arguing from false ignorance is also used incredibly effectively by those with large platforms who intend to manipulate, incite, and fear-monger to gain and maintain an audience rather than have a genuine debate on an issue. This is how most shock jocks work. “How do our energy prices keep going up? Every year we pay more. Is this a result of the ‘do-gooders’ radicalising and demonising fossil fuels? It may well be.”

There is no argument here. It’s a series of statements designed to guide thought without ever citing factual information. Fox News uses this question led journalism all the time as their question mark chyron guides viewers from behind the network’s cloak of false ignorance – “Hillary Clinton – Guilty?” “Climate Change – A hoax to harm fossil fuel production?” Could be, we don’t know, we’re only raising the question.

Fox News has quietly transitioned out of their slogan, “Fair and Balanced,” to “The Most Watched, The Most Trusted,” and now, “Standing up for what’s right.” They’ve also transitioned their news to run early with prime-time now ‘Opinion’ although the personalities presenting opinion seem, in every way to be traditional news presenters.

This is how so many people have been courted and seduced into a world of the grand conspiracy theory.

It’s easy to dismiss the believers of alien lasers, JFK Jnr coming to save us, of a paedophile Kabul of lefties operating out of a pizza shop or any derivation of the more traditional conspiracies that involve minorities, religions, immigrants and foreigners organising coordinated attacks against a lifestyle that is felt to be disappearing. That lifestyle never actually existed, except in the romanticised memories of youth that seem simpler, more comfortable and happier.

It’s much harder to dismiss those we respect and love who only occasionally throw out a ‘Fox-bomb’ of misinformation into a family gathering, bringing a conversation to a dead-halt. It is hard to be the dissenting voice and draw the ire of ruining the family gathering. It is hard to raise an opposing opinion to those who are often more experienced and sometimes better educated. It is arrogant to assume your opinion is more valid than theirs and a cardinal sin to lump all opinions that differ to yours into a ‘basket of deplorables’ or any other condescending phrase.

We have travelled a long road to get to where we are today, and it is not all Donald Trump's doing, or Fox News, or big oil, or big pharma, or any of the other major ‘players’ that have taken advantage of political and social winds to build a market. We are all complicit. Every slide in ethics and quality, every excuse to forgo service and value, every unchallenged assumption or opinion in the face of facts that we’ve allowed to go unchecked has brought us to this place.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with someone wholeheartedly buying into the politics of the left, even though I have seen with my own eyes a generation of people raised under socialism and accustomed to a living wage, bereft of motivation and drive to better their lives.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone wholeheartedly buying into the politics of the right, even though many free-market policies tend to help those already making ends meet while reducing the standard of living for those who are not.

Perhaps you fall somewhere in the middle, taking a few of the better policies from both sides to satisfy the capitalist and socialist at war within. Both sides have advantages and bring benefit to many – but not all.

I’m not sure it’s possible to satisfy everyone. This is why governing a large, modern population is so complicated and often is reduced to the politics of compromise. The human race survives off personal greed and diversity. These strengths make universal policy if not impossible, then highly improbable.

I think it’s wrong to argue against any idea or cause because of partisan politics. I think it’s wrong to disallow an opinion on any grounds without clear thought and a thorough investigation into merit and weakness. It’s inexcusable to go forward with any idea, big or small, without exploring, studying and considering the facts. Truth matters. Things that can be proven should be accepted in the face of that proof. Arguments based on expert analysis deserve to be considered. People’s measures and tactics to argue a cause need to be understood, identified, exposed, and disclosed. Opinions and news need to be labelled and separated. We need to be reminded and educated to think for ourselves. Everyone needs to be encouraged to form their own opinion and reminded of how to find and use facts to inform those opinions. 

Don’t tell Pop he’s racist. That’s rude and shows a lack of diplomacy and respect. Give Granddad the facts without spin or argumentative trickery; just the facts. If he still thinks we should only allow immigration until the point where we have all ‘their’ recipes, then let him know you disagree and diplomatically let him know his ideas aren't welcome because he's ignoring quantifiable facts.

People are allowed to have different opinions, but make sure they also have the facts; unbiased, unspun, un-manipulated facts – because facts matter, science matters, experts matter. Opinions without the facts included belong on the other side of the shop with the rest of the fiction. 

Which Way Do You Swing? - Politics

Most conservative policies seem to help big business and entrepreneurs by extending tax breaks, incentives and reducing red-tape. These policies assist those already managing.  Sometimes by a little, sometimes a lot. It is the politics and policies of capitalism that fuel the age of the billionaires, and the promise that everyone can achieve those heights. 

These same policies tend to leave those not managing untouched, or, on occasion, worse off, usually in real terms across time, making it harder to quantify any direct disadvantage from an individual policy.

These are policies promoted as celebrating success and allowing the 'job-makers' to take advantage of the system, up to and including, rorting that system. Success and financial power seem to make all these indiscretions tolerable.  

The left finds these greedy, grifting, profiteering examples intolerable and they shout about them as if these are the only examples that exist. They are not. These policies help and support some truly deserving business models, across the economic spectrum, to survive and thrive.

The progressive left puts forward policies that reduce the ability of the successful to make higher profits and placing more restrictions and oversight on businesses. This makes the difficult early years of small business and small sole traders even more precarious. The left also seeks a basic minimum standard of living for all, universal health care, they look to environmental issues at the expense of corporate profits and ensure those on the lowest rungs of society can maintain an equitable standard of living.

These policies are designed to raise the greatest number possible out of poverty and ensure that working full time is rewarded with a liveable wage that covers life's basics and provides for a family. This also allows some to choose not to work and live solely off welfare. 

The right finds these greedy, grifting, freeloading examples intolerable and they shout about them as if these are the only examples that exist. They are not. These policies help and support some truly deserving individuals being let down by a system purported to be looking out for everyone.

I've always felt things work best when liberals and conservatives exchange power at around a 2 to 3 ratio. The right builds up the wealth with a strong economy and the left reforms social policies to help those who slip through the net of the conservative economic lift.

The ratio has slipped across the world because the right has outplayed the left at politics. This has happened because the left regard morality in politics as a badge of honour, and the right has long ago recognised that badges are worthless. 

Once morals counted for something in life and in politics, but then came the age of spin where both side's spokespeople focused only on the faults of the other side, and never with themselves. Where no mistake is owned or corrected and doing the right thing, a standard that was once the default, or at least the desired position, is now the exception.

How did we get here? 

It began when those charged with holding leaders responsible, the fourth estate, the news journalists, became confused with being personalities and entertainers. 

When equal representation of both points of view became more important than facts as determined and checked by multiple sources by professionally trained, skilled and schooled journalists whose reputations depended on their accuracy, facts became irrelevant.

When the politically correct ideal of regarding every view as relevant and worth scrutiny on official news broadcasts became a benchmark, this worthy notion was exploited by those looking to hide issues, spin alternative facts and obfuscate truths. You can shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and get away with it provided you do something provocative enough to misdirect people from your crime. Throw in some 'what-about-ism', cloud the facts with suggestions the victim had a gun or a record, and alert the press that many other people shot people on the same day, and your crime will hardly rate a mention. 

When the opinion/editorial/op-ed piece began to be presented alongside news with little or no delineation, news reporting stopped being news and became political propaganda. The ultimate extension of this is the dedicated partisan network that says whatever is needed by the government to convince people it's news. It is believed for no other reason than it looks like a news channel.

The multiplatform social media landscape has allowed every opinion to be a truth as the presenter presents it. All too often the term 'do your own research', a term intended to mitigate legal issues over commentary of stocks and investments has permeated into every opinion put forward as a phrase to legitimise that opinion by alerting you to the existence of any number of 'opinions' online that back up the opinion being put forward. 'Do your own research' now means, go and read equally dubious opinion pieces posted online by others who share my views.

If you see spokes-people introduced from two sides of politics or from two sides of a contentious issue, what is the point of staying to watch? Professional press agents now spruik their well-rehearsed talking points without ever listening to the other side, and those talking points are always extreme examples. For their team, they put forward positive outliers, for the other side, the negative outliers, and each example gets promoted as examples of the norm - which they are definitely not.  

Politics has stopped being an avenue of service to do the greater good and is now an avenue to get what lobbyists want and stop the will of the people from participating. Journalists began this slide into the darkness of opinions based on wants instead of facts, and the internet has sped it up and made us all contribute to the demise of facts.

How many false stories have been reposted on scientific, medical, political and even current events?

   

What happened to common sense and genuinely doing your own research? Question opinions by seeking out multiple sources of facts as published by respected and accredited institutions and experts with current accredited standing. I want to hear other people's opinions, but I want to know they've taken some time and given some effort towards forming them. Reading a headline and reposting something without scrutiny becomes a waste of everyone's time, or worse, another nail in the coffin of our entire democratic system.

Hasan Minhaj in his address at the correspondent's dinner said: "I don't have a solution of how to win back trust, but I know in the age of Trump, you guys (the media) have to be more perfect than ever because you are how the President gets his news - not from advisors, not from experts, not from intelligent agencies - you guys. So that's why you've got to be twice as good, you've got to be on your A-game, you can't make any mistakes, because when one of you messes up - he blames your entire group; and now you know what it feels like to be a minority." 

In the dawning age of conspiracy, where friends and family regularly state alternative facts as truth, and when challenged, remain defiant and tell you to do your own research, clear thinking, factual journalism and finding alternative sources to double-check alternative facts seems to have become the individual's job. The news media has become entertainment. Politicians have become infallible. Special interest groups have become public relations spokes-people, and facts have become subjective, to be massaged, manipulated, and misrepresented as the truth. 

George Orwell saw this future in a misdirected democracy that delivered authoritarianism. His chilling dystopian tale is starting to feel all too real - the only thing George got wrong was the date.

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

"How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."

"Sometimes, two and two are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once."

― George Orwell, 1984

Trump The Diplomat – or A Series of Unfortunate Events

The gender card, the race card, the gay card – in fact, all the minority cards have been trumped in America. We have officially entered the age of the pussy-grabber. The Donald spent his first week in office laying pipe over environmental groups, Native Americans and any other group that caught his tweeting attention span.

While seated on his golden throne, Trump squeezed out bills that effectively ended The United States efforts to stem global warming, citing alternative facts – namely, that there is no global warming.

Like Rome’s Hadrian and China’s Great before him, Little Hands signed his intention to build a 35-foot wall along the entire US-Mexican border. Many rejoiced at the news, most notably manufacturers of 36-foot ladders. Detractors claim the wall does nothing to stop the 40% of illegal immigrants who enter the country legally and then overstay their visa, although, using another set of alternative facts – it does.

Like the mobile barricades blocking roads in New York to allow Fuckface Von Clownstick to continue living high above the rabble he now rules, many feel the Mexican wall will serve no purpose while causing problems for those forced to live with it.

Building a wall on the Mexican border has been tried before. That wall dissected towns, golf courses and families. Geography impedes any actual wall on the border, and alternative geography is not proving as malleable for this fledgeling administration as alternative facts.

This results in some areas of America lying outside the wall but inside the U.S border. “This shouldn’t be any problem as the area between any fence, and a border is likely to be a warm and inviting place,” – said one former East Berlin resident.

Donald Trump is that guy in the bar who knows everything and wants to tell you about it. He’s so confident in himself he believes he’s the world’s specialist. Unfortunately, his speciality is proctology, and he has no degree, so he’s just some guy surrounded by arseholes.

Trump believes business solutions will work on global problems. He believes hard business negotiations will serve as well as diplomacy and he believes the bottom line of a good deal, forgives all and any transgressions on the path to that deal.

His retaliatory taxes on companies that shift jobs offshore and then import goods back for sale may well have an immediate effect. His 20% tariffs on all Mexican goods coming to the US may force that country to negotiate some contribution towards building a pointless giant wall along their border. 

There is a chance some middle and lower income earners in America will end up better off in the short term thanks to Trump. The danger is in the long run everyone else loses.

The issues that are most important are the agreements that ensure individual rights, freedoms and a sustainable future. The global climate crisis is a life and death negotiation for the human race.

While nineteen out of twenty scientists declare global warming a fact, Trump and his supporters prefer to believe the other guy.

Maybe we should steer the argument towards debunking that twentieth guy. He’s the single scientist the cynical, paranoid, conspiracy-believing, emotion over fact, Alt Right supporter is betting on with the human races' future.

  

The Donald may be headed for some or even many short-term successes, but he's already trampling on rights, on facts and on established international diplomacy. 

He’ll argue an increase in wealth cancel out any negatives along the way, and his supporters will chant his name because, as the saying goes, he who has the gold has the power, and Trump shits on a golden throne, just because he can.

The elephant in the Oval Office is Giina – or China as the rest of the world knows it. They are dredging the sand of the South China Sea, to create new islands to populate, in formerly international waters. Expand and occupy is a very successful policy and has been for millennia. Of course, it often leads to conflict, and that’s when we need to call on diplomats with years of experience to step in and broker peaceful solutions.

And into these delicately flowing waters comes the hippopotamus of negotiators, Donald J Trump. Renowned investor Warren Buffett said The Donald was a great businessman in regards to licensing and branding, but not so much in the running of an ongoing business. Now Trump is running a country. The idea of Donald Trump going about something methodically, slowly and with unreserved patience is so foreign it’s overstayed its visa.

If the manager of a china shop walked into his store and found Donald Trump and a Bull, he’d be hard pressed to know who to blame for the damage.

For the first time in my life, I fear a real possibility of a global war. When you get arrogant, egotistical leaders whose ethical and moral compass only exists within the lines of a balance sheet – you can bet, not just on self-interest, but also on human casualties.

How does Donald Trump’s value system measure the value of life?

It doesn’t - because to him, it’s like comparing apples to solid gold oranges.     

Donald Trump and the Angry Voter

Recently a rich man with a microphone declared Millenials could afford to buy a house if they stopped eating at cafes. Given a trip to a cafe is around twenty dollars and the cheapest house is about three hundred thousand, there was a wave of incredulous anger from Millenials.

The middle-aged, privileged white guy was from a group of like-minded souls who also loudly claim there's no issue with racism, no religious or sexual intolerance and certainly no sexism in our communities. When an indigenous appointment was made to champion issues of indigenous people, the same group pointed out being born in this country made them indigenous, so they saw the appointment as an attack against them.

That's how those in the best seats see most issues involving others asking for a fair share - as an attack against them.

It's that extraordinary lack of awareness from those in power that is incubating so much anger amongst so many people.

Brexit came and went and the media concentrated on the few who never bothered to find out what Brexit actually was. The sound bites were of people admitting, had they taken the time to find out what leaving the EU entailed, they would never have voted to Brexit. No one spent much time concentrating on how many voted out of anger; a protest by the powerless against those in power; of people feeling locked out of a system that is slowly stripping away their enjoyment of life; a system that excludes more and more with every generation; Voters who wanted change to anything else.

The past twenty-five years have produced unparalleled global economic growth. Globally we are richer than we have ever been before and yet, as individuals, more of us are being relegated to jobs where the staples of life need to be budgeted and personal sacrifices are made on a daily basis.

Governments have lost the ability to represent the people because of a convoluted and complicated process making it impossible to get anything done that doesn't benefit, in some way, those with enough power to influence the vote.

This leaves your average person with no representation.

There would be no need for government if you could rely on everyone to do the right thing and ensure safeguards were respected and the weak were never exploited. We all know that's not human nature - some people need to have common sense decisions legislated in order to do the right thing in the race for that extra dollar.

If that's not the government's job, then why have a government? And that's why people are so mad. More and more it seems the entire regulatory system has lost sight of the individual and sided with those racing to earn that extra dollar.

People are angry. They see their own circumstances getting worse, their real wage decreasing, their job opportunities shrinking, their children's futures being traded away. Leaving the European Union was a vote to change the system; a vote by many to vent their frustrations and express their festering anger.

Now it's America's turn. Donald trump is the protest vote; Hillary represents the entrenched system. If Trump wins he will be a single term president because the protest is in the vote, not in the presidency.

The problem is the system is too entrenched to wind back. Like global warming, it's too late to undo the damage. It's the lobbyists and party politics that forbids either side from supporting a good idea. There are favoured industries and the provision of resources and safeguards are delivered unequally across various industries and demographics for any number of vested interests.

We should have protested when the legal decision was handed down declaring companies were people - that was the point of no return. If companies are people, they are the very worst amongst us. They are certainly not the people we want governing us and yet, that is where we've landed.

Our government bends to accommodate big business and we, in turn, are being governed the way a business governs itself. Big business is responsible for a complicated system of tricky political shuffling, that spins itself as righteous while delivering nothing that helps the average, conscientious, hard working, individual and everything that helps a large corporation flourish. That's why so many are angry and frustrated and ready to cast their vote to the wind - it's another vote for anything else.

The motives driving a large company, the arbitrary indicators they use to make decisions, the monetary bonus system encouraging immoral behaviour, and the corporate structure that keeps those decisions at arm's length from those the decisions impact upon, explain why so many are left feeling helpless, shut out and simmering for change.

A company strives to be successful - to make a profit and to increase that profit year on year. It expands and invests and grows. If all goes well it becomes a large corporation or even a multi-national. It buys up smaller companies to become even larger. Where you once had thousands of small companies across a nation providing a similar service or product and striving to satisfy their individual customer's needs to grow their customer base, you now have a single company. A single big company that really doesn't care about any individual customer.

If it's lucky enough to be a new technology company with intellectual property that gave it an open market, or if it grows big enough to be declared "too big to fail" it may find itself with a relative monopoly - a duopoly or oligopoly. Either way, competition to keep it in check is sparse or relatively absent. We've been here before - Teddy Roosevelt used the Sherman Act to break up the huge corporate monopolies that he felt were acting on greed above all else in making their corporate decisions - and given their monopolies the only way to reign them in was to break those companies up - to reverse their growth.

Donald Trump is no Teddy Roosevelt. Donald Trump is his own billion dollar, multi-national corporation. No one seems to think a relative monopoly is a problem anymore - in fact, it's seen as the pinnacle of success in our current markets - these logo marked behemoths take on the rest of the world and are championed by governments with a sort of nationalistic pride.

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If you break down the corporate mentality it's easy to see why those outside the corporate clubs are growing so disenchanted. Once a company reaches giant status and controls a large percentage of the market it becomes relatively bullet proof. It now has power, influence and, alongside its fellow giant corporations, the means to control the economy. The companies are left to make crucial life changing decisions that affect us all. Through political influence and economic power, they have become the government by proxy.

Corporate decisions that affect so many use one overriding measure - their share price. Their spin departments put other concerns front and centre, boasting of all the good they do - the oil companies fund projects to protect the environment, the fast food industry sponsors athletic events and clothing and high-tech companies fund education for young people in third world nations. Bless! But their core business undermines that work a thousand times over and is driven by that one number - their share price. No one is truly gullible enough to believe that's not their primary concern, regardless of what their very expensive corporate slogans, altruistic philanthropy and catchy tag lines might tell us.

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Over time, in an effort to keep their share price rising, the company cuts. It cuts staff. It cuts expenses. It cuts everything it can cut - right down to the dollop of jam on your favourite biscuit - see it getting smaller? And the actual biscuit also gets smaller, maybe only by 25grams, but your biscuit of happiness is shrinking, also the layer of chocolate covering your biscuit of happiness is thinner - cut, cut, cut.

In difficult times the corporations shed jobs like leaves in autumn and in good times they hire back, but not the people they cut in those bad times. Those people are now adrift. Their years of dedication to the company count for nothing because a company is a person without morals or emotions so it has no loyalty. When it hires back it hires younger, newer graduates who work for less than those fired. Maybe they even start an intern program offering debt-ridden graduates the honour of working for free to gain experience. Either way, it's a net gain. Happy shareholders - bigger bonuses.

And when the company has cut everything it can possibly cut - they cut contingencies. Yes, you heard me, they cut the fail-safes - the time, the money, the people built into their system to make sure what they do is done, not just well, but safely - cut, cut, cut.

The company is a person with no moral compass remember - its compass comes directly from the health of the share price and the pumping heart of a healthy share price is an increasing profit. So they run their production line or provide their service on a razor's edge. They don't remove the fail-safes completely - things like maintenance still exist, but they only budget for just enough. Protocols get tightened, reduced or cut altogether so by day's end they have not one cent being spent above the absolute minimum needed, not one minute of anyone's time unutilized, not one extra bolt used to secure the machine.

And everything is calculated on the perfect execution and running of their production line, or provision of service. Of course, this also means if a butterfly flaps it's wings once more than predicted in their optimal modelling - everyone suffers. Well, maybe not everyone - those running the company still get paid and receive their bonuses - but you, the consumer, the end user, the client, you don't get what you thought you were getting. You certainly don't get what you paid for and you absolutely don't get what your taxes paid for.

Instead of leaving in place or even building in contingencies to their process, the company now runs workshops and training sessions with glossy posters that declare really warm and comforting platitudes towards staff, such as, "We're part of your team" or "We're all in this together", but really - that's not true. The company know full well they're now working on a razor's edge and that things will go wrong.

But the cost of those things going wrong, the things that cause the consumer time, money and aggravation, are cheaper to cover up and apologise for than the cost of ensuring they never happen in the first place.

The bottom line is it costs a company less to inconvenience people for a short time than to run with contingencies in place to prevent those shortfalls from ever occurring. It's a net gain to the company to have the consumer periodically inconvenienced. They'll swear they're sorry - but really they're not, because, in the long run, it's a win to their bottom line, a boost to their share price and an increase to the manager's bonus incentive scheme.

Of course, every now and again a catastrophic failure occurs and maybe a few people die. Maybe lots. Maybe none, just lots of injuries and people's livelihoods get taken away. The number crunchers will calculate how often such a disaster is likely to happen and calculate the net gain made by averaging all the years that disaster didn't happen. Can you say shareholder happiness - can you say bonus?

When one of these corporate catastrophes does occur the company reverts to a routine we're all very familiar with - the after the fact investigation and transparent report. When something collapses and takes people's lives the company will hold an investigation and declare it the most rigorous in recent history, their training and safety record will be held up as 'world class' and they'll publicise how they've gone above and beyond what they are 'legally' required to do to ensure such a thing never happens again. They may even hire a respected former judge or politician to head up the investigation and make it truly independent. That's how much they want everyone to know what happened was an unavoidable freak event, that, even though it wasn't their fault - they will fix and make certain it is never repeated.

Harvard Busines Review Article

The truth is the disaster happened because the company cut everything they could possibly cut including all but the bare minimum of contingencies - but... net gain, shareholder happiness, bonuses coming. You know the drill.

So who in the end are the winners and losers? The company wins, those managers who hold onto their jobs win, the shareholders, and a handful called in to investigate the disaster all come out ahead.

The losers are the people injured, killed or who lost their livelihood - they obviously lose. Then the workers blamed for the incident - they're screwed - even though the cuts made by the company forced them to cut corners in order to keep their jobs.

The customers of the company get screwed every time the lack of contingencies cause a problem. This turns out to be quite often because the projected optimal running was calculated as an average and averages make things seem orchestrated and manageable on paper, when in the real world products and services are used by consumers in bursts, with peaks and troughs to usage for any number of reasons.

The moment one of these reasons comes along - the whole system fails and people are inconvenienced and get frustrated, but as long as it's not too many - the company doesn't really mind. They have millions of customers - they're a duopoly remember, or at worst an extremely lucrative oligopoly; too big to fail also means too big to care. A large corporation's true response to a frustrated individual is - "Bite Me."

Of course, if you can attract a few thousand to join your outrage then the company will roll back the "bite me" remark. They'll issue an unreserved apology and find someone in the chain to blame, citing their recent HR training program that clearly listed "bite me" as an inappropriate response. Shareholders happy, managers happy, bonuses on track.

Have you ever tried to contact a company you're unhappy with? Chances are you can't find any details of how to contact them. YOU'RE AN INDIVIDUAL! Have you not been listening? They do not care about you individually. Get yourself 9,999 followers and then they may listen. You'll still have to solve the problem of how to contact them - but if you post your complaint on social media and get noticed by ten thousand others, the company will most likely contact you.

If you do try to go it alone and contact a large company to complain about your individual frustration - you sweet, optimistic child - chances are the best you'll do is to get the automated phone labyrinth that always starts with choices allowing new business to jump the queue.
"If you're calling about our new premium football channel, press one. for all other enquiries, press seven, for the levels of hell you're about to travel."

You press and progress and get some music and press again and finally get to speak to a call centre in a third world nation where real people are trained to care about individuals at two-thirds the price.

Call centres, bank tellers, retail and service attendants are now some of the lowest paid and highest stressed people in our modern economy. The system of cutting everything that can possibly be cut is responsible. These workers who are nowhere near a job they want to be in, nowhere near a job that leads to a career or attracts a bonus of any kind are the ones who have to deal with an increasingly angry public.

From - Secret Diary of a Call Centre - Kindle

They are then asked to work overtime, "Could you work longer because it would really help us out?" And sure, once or twice is fine, but when that request gets made every single day to at least one employee - it's not to help them out, it's an orchestrated managerial tactic that exploits workers by trading their loyalty and goodwill for a management system that doesn't cater for any excess.

The company would rather run short whenever a wave of customers arrive than spend on one worker too many. Again, it's a way of saving, of cutting costs. Why have a superfluous worker standing around for six hours out of eight when you can just emotionally blackmail a worker already working to give you an extra two hours of their leisure time? That's a big tick for the supervisor, a gold star for managers and happy shareholders - once again we've arrived at bonus time.

Of course, there are two economies - the skilled and the unskilled. Have you ever considered that a law firm will not question an invoice from another lawyer for $250 per hour for a professional opinion, but they'll question and complain about every single invoice their cleaners lodge at $20 per hour?

That lawyer is worth $250 an hour, by the way, they worked very hard at university learning all the intricacies of the law and then passed the bar and have years and years of experience in order to become an expert in a specific field, so their opinion carries a high price. I'm not arguing they aren't worth the money. I'm questioning why the cleaner has to fight for their fee of $20 an hour to scrape the shit off those lawyer's toilet bowls, but the lawyer's fee is paid without any question.

And here's the real point of this whole rant - more and more millennials, having done the work, thrown themselves into debt getting qualified - are graduating to a choice of not having a job or cleaning our toilets - either metaphorically or literally.

Do you want to know why Brexit happened? Why Trump is now in striking distance of being the most powerful man in the world? It's because more and more people are cleaning up shit left by those with the greatest wealth and the most privilege. If Trump wins, it's not a vote for Trump, because as Obama points out, Trump is well and truly part of the entrenched system and very unlikely to help those on an hourly wage who have been left behind - the vote for him will be a vote in anger, a protest from a huge and growing number who have no other way to voice their anger but to vote badly.

Even more worryingly, if Trump doesn't win - the next Trump will. Maybe he'll be savvier and make less - 'grabbing pussy' remarks. Maybe time will erase Trump's memory enough for the next Trump to get to the door of the White House on a slightly re-written pathway of platitudes. Either way - keep allowing the cutting of benefits flowing to individuals in favour of further benefits to the already privileged and Trump will get they keys to the city very soon.

Maybe it won't be this time and maybe it won't even be this Trump, but it will be a Trump - a strongman on a platform of change at any cost - and that, by the way, is very close to the definition of revolution. If that happens the middle-aged privileged white demographic will really have something to complain about.