20 years ago it was fashionable to hate big companies that destroyed smaller mom and pop stores by stealing their customers away with a combination of lower prices (due to bulk purchasing) and better selection (also based on bulk purchasing). In 2004, Maxine Waters famously led an effort to stop Wal-Mart from opening a store in Inglewood, CA., an effort she claimed saved the livelihoods of many of the businessmen and women in her district.
Maybe so…
But cut to 2021, almost 20 years later, suddenly big business Oligarchs have become a favorite constiuency of the formerly populist Left, once identified with politicians like Waters. Jeff Bezos, via Amazon, has amassed a fortune the Walton family could only have dreamed of. Their control of the overall retail market has helped destroy not just mom and pop shops, but even medium and large brick-and-mortar retail brands like Sears and Toys R Us.
But no one on the Left can be bothered to say the same things about Jeff Bezos that they once said about Sam Walton only two decades ago.
Why?
A couple of reasons, I think. For one, Sam Walton was not a Leftist and could not be counted on to push policies and concepts of the kind that are popular with the Woke Left. Jeff Bezos, by contrast, is their huckleberry. They love how woke he is, and so he gets a pass even when his business practices are anathema to everything the Woke Left says they stand for.
Second, he’s gotten so big that they are now beholden to him in every way that matters. He can change the fortunes of an entire state based on where he does business or where he decides to open (or close) a warehouse. And he can sure as hell change the fortunes of individual politicans literally overnight. Not only does he have billions of dollars to throw around in the form of campaign donations, but he owns one of the biggest, most well-respected newspapers in the world. That matters as much as cash to Politicians who desperately need good press and cannot afford bad press.
Remember what Michael Corleone said to Sonny and Tom Hagen when they told him he couldn’t kill a New York Police Captain?
“Where does it say that you can’t kill a cop?…I’m talking about a cop that’s mixed up in drugs. I’m talking about a dishonest cop and a crooked cop who got mixed up in the rackets and got what was coming to him. That’d make a helluva story. Now we got people in the newspapers, right Tom? They might like a story like that…”
And how does tom Hagen respond?
“They might… they just might.” and then he smiles… you can get away with anything in America if the press has your back.
If you don’t think that’s what scares the hell out of every politician in D.C., not the assassination of course but political immolation via the Op-Ed pages, you’re kidding yourself.
But George, but George…. Liz Warren has been going after him, she wants him to “pay his fair share”!
Bullshit… that’s a feint. Warren and Bezos are putting on a show. She gets to pretend like she’s this big whale hunter… going after powerful Bezos… speaking truth to power, as the kids say. And Bezos gets to pretend that he’s not walkling with Warren and the rest of “our” Government hand-in-glove, like we all know he is. “How can you call me an oligarch!?” he’ll complain… “Liz Warren comes after me every day, calling me a tax scofflaw.”
It’s all a grift, and you and I are the marks.
The truth is that Bezos and Buffet and Gates all love higher taxes and stronger regulations… know why? Because they can afford them. Know who can’t? Their smaller weaker competition. That’s what this is really about. It’s the real world, Webster’s dictionary version of Fascism. Government partnership with Big Business that allows both parties to do things they would be prevented by law from doing if they were on their own.
And as far as I cen tell, no one who matters seems to care…