U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Elon Musk says we need universal basic income because ‘in the future, physical work will be a choice’,” Business Insider reported Friday. “…Musk said that with the rise of robots, universal basic income will be necessary in the future.”
Both are emerging from the realm of speculation and fiction into reality. Musk’s company is working on a “friendly” humanoid robot, and governments at all levels, city, state, and federal, have been introducing “pilot universal basic income programs for targeted groups of residents.”
A central tenet of Marxism comes to mind:
“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
“Oh, the world owes me a living“? That this cartoonish worldview is being seriously proposed by a billionaire is cognitively dissonant enough. But Musk is not alone.
“During his commencement speech at Harvard, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called for exploring a system of wealth distribution known as ‘universal basic income,’” Business Insider reported in 2017. “…Zuckerberg doubled down on his initial support of the concept in a post on Facebook.”
Later that year, CNBC revealed “What billionaires and business titans say about cash handouts,” featuring Musk, Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, and some lesser-known tech/Silicon Valley bigwigs.
Even Bill Gates is amenable to the idea – not yet, but soon. Perhaps he’s waiting for his “vaccination” initiative to work its “magic”…?
It’s fair to ask if altruism is the prime motivator for these guys. What about ego and narcissism, and an inflated sense of self-importance and their own “visionary leadership”? What about something more basic than that, like Taking Care of Number One? That and survival?
“’The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats,’ Seattle-based ‘One-Percenter’ Nick Hanauer wrote in an open letter on Politico to his ‘fellow zillionaires,’” I wrote in a 2014 article for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. He’s evidently feeling more than a little guilty about his wealth, and thinks he can make everything better and keep the mob he fears his fellow Americans have become from devouring him by raising the minimum wage.
Shortly after that article posted, I noted a report in The Daily Mirror documenting:
“Panicked super rich buying boltholes with private airstrips to escape if poor rise up. Hedge fund managers are buying up remote ranches and land in places like New Zealand to flee to in event of widespread civil unrest. With growing inequality and riots such as those in London in 2011 and in Ferguson and other parts of the USA last year, many financial leaders fear they could become targets for public fury.”
Then last year we noted how angry mobs demanding “their share” of wealth converged on Michael Bloomberg’s $20M house in the Hamptons — with symbolic pitchforks. And don’t forget the guillotine set up in front of Jeff Bezos’ house!
The super-rich, with their private security, are better positioned than most to gauge the resentment that’s building within a population the “progressive” social changes and policies they enable make inevitable. A French or Russian revolution scares the hell out of them, and they somehow believe it will make them safer if they throw scraps to a gathering mob of the increasingly emboldened.
That doesn’t work in nature. Think “Taliban.” Show weakness, indecision, hesitation, and fear, and your enemies circle in. And telling those enemies you think Marxism is the key is all the encouragement the minds behind the mobs need.
It calls to mind another quote, this one ostensibly by Lenin, and although authorship is uncertain, the assertion is proving prophetic:
“The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
There will be no deals if those interested only in totalitarian control get the upper hand. Does anyone really believe there will be a qualifiable difference between full-blown Stalinists and “kinder, gentler” Democratic Socialists if they secure the power they obsess over?
That they’ve hidden their “solidarity songs” away from public view to keep from tipping their hand doesn’t mean they’ve repudiated them:
“Are you sleeping, Are you sleeping,
Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie,
And when the revolution comes,
We’ll kill you all with knives and guns,
Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie”
Isn’t it interesting that these billionaires, trying to make sure their precious hindquarters stay in one piece, bankroll citizen disarmament? They’re hostile to anyone being armed but government enforcers and their own private security details, and undermine what the Founders knew to be “necessary to the security of a free State.” At the same time they’re helping bring about what John Adams warned the Massachusett Militia against in 1798:
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
What kind of character do they think doling out “universal income” bribes to the masses for doing nothing will build? And does anyone think those won’t be the same ones pelting tumbrel occupants and screaming for their heads?
Add one more factor: If they believe average Americans are made obsolete by their machines, how do the elites figure opening the floodgates for even more technologically challenged Third Worlders will help?
It’s not like the billionaires can or will carry the financial load themselves. There arent’ enough of them and besides, they’ll have armies of accountants and politicians bribed to keep the tax codes manipulable to where it’s those Americans still productive despite all the confiscatory laws and regulations who will be tapped to pay for the indolent. It’s no coincidence these are the same Americans the rope-selling “capitalists” demand be disarmed with all the “gun laws” they finance through political “contributions.”
Do they really think disarming productive Americans and redistributing their property to those that “progressive” rule has rendered unemployable will save them in the end? If so, they’re whistling past the graveyard of history and forgetting the most crucial fact: It’s not the dead they need fear.
It is the monster of their own making. And hell follows with him.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
