A Dumpster Fire Sale

It has been some 100 days, so far, for the Trusk (or Mump, maybe?) administration. Rampaging through government, killing children in Africa while tormenting federal workers and dismantling social programs that keep Americans alive here at home. And then there are the tariffs today, so that is officially in the mix. While I know most Americans could not find Africa on a map and figure people die there all the time, it is puzzling why any political actor would proudly urinate on the third rail that is social security or cheap Amazon products. The answer is simple and could only be more James Bond villainous if Elon Musk and Peter Thiel split a volcano lair. Drive the U.S. economy into the ground and buy up the broken businesses, farms and family homes in three easy steps.

Privatization

The first step is destroy the government for privatization. Why are software geeks sent in for DOGE work at departments? Not enough young Incel Joe Rogan fanboy auditors to do the work? No. While the Muskrats use Ctrl+F keyword searches to identify programs for cuts and Elon Musk’s specific vendettas, their real work is likely more insidious--a careful study of the technology and processes used in federal programs for future outsourcing. Assess the feasibility for a profitable privatization. Gain a head start on every conceivably competitive technology company for any privatization contract. Garner untold levels of insider knowledge and draft the most favorable-to-you contract solicitation language. And, along the way, cook the books to alter the national debt calculations, GDP totals and unemployment reports to cover tracks and delay realizations moving forward. Combine all this with the political power to simply steer contracts if the above window-dressing fails completely and you can see a plan unfolding.

More broadly than the technology and book-cooking, people driven from federal jobs are a workforce with the requisite experience for privatized operations in essential government operations—available on the cheap. Let the contracting out begin in earnest. And, along the way, incur a debt that will hobble our country for a generation.

Fear

This leads to the next, more disturbing part of this plan.—put fear back into American workers. Throw a few hundred thousand federal workers, plus a few hundred thousand other federal contractors onto the unemployment rolls and you will not only drive down wages, but impose worker compliance through fear as the economy winds down and job competition increases.

Organized labor’s emergence during the Great Depression happened as an economic recovery began, along with a supportive president and Wagner Act protections. An economy in free-fall, gripped by fear, isolates people through intense job competition. Unions are doing well today, in no small part, because we are close to full-employment and had a very supportive president in Joe Biden. Workers will roll the dice for a union contract if it feels possible to win and if there are options in case a campaign does not work. And it is a dice-roll considering the legal framework for unions here in the U.S., so options are empowering.

As Franklin Roosevelt said, “The only thing to fear is fear itself” But it is fear billionaires like Musk or a Jeff Bezos rely on to keep workers compliant and cheap. You can see why the Amazon founder is coming around and selling out the Washington Post to President Trusk. (Bezos would rather close every Amazon warehouse in Quebec than deal with unions). Tariffs might suck, but cheap compliant workers are better. High unemployment is a boon to a labor-intensive enterprise like Amazon.

Break the economy

Consider what Hillary Clinton pointed out in the 2016 presidential debate. Donald Trump said in 2006 about an economic downturn, “I sort of hope that happens because then people like me would go in and buy... If there is a bubble burst… you could make a lot of money”. Trump said the obvious quiet part out loud as he agreed with himself that night on the debate stage—if you have piles of cash, a cratering economy full of desperate, bankruptcy-bubble businesses, farmers and out-of-work homeowners can yield an even greater fortune. This gets to my final point—truly wealthy people always make money during economic downturns. Just look at how stocks are tanking today after the tariffs and consider someone is making a killing on the move.

The attentive reader may wonder why Peter Thiel’s name came came up some paragraphs ago in the volcano Co-Op. Thiel has not been as public a figure in the unfolding collapse of our government, but I suspect he is there, if for no other reason than his lab project, J.D. Vance, is vice-president. Thiel was pro-Trump back in 2016, but cannot fake sincerity well enough to be helpful on the stump. And, remember his warm words last year while discussing how Musk’s public support for Trump made it easier for others to go MAGA. As reported by Business Insider, "I think Elon was incredibly important to it," Thiel said, later adding that Musk "obviously gave people a great deal of cover."

Peter Thiel crossed over to billionaire as the Great Recession propelled his fortunes. He bought shares in SpaceX when it was hard up for cash. AirBnB as well, whose co-founder Joe Gebbia, is now part of DOGE, by the way. Linkedin and Yelp were in there too. And Thiel started the big data company Planitir at this time, catching all that high-tech talent downsized by said recession and cashing in on lucrative government contracts let in hops of finding fraud and new efficiencies in government (now there is an irony). Planitir made billions from U.S. government contracts.

See where is this going?

Thiel made a fortune from a downturn that happened outside of his control, and a great deal of that fortune came from government contracts made possible by the recession. Imagine how much money a person like Thiel would gain if he could pick the day a downturn happens. He made his billion scavenging the last crash, from cheap stocks AND government contracts. So with his lab creation J.D. Vance a heartbeat from presidency and his apartheid PayPal mafia brother and fellow government contractor Elon Musk running DOGE and a picture begins to emerge.

Let us review—

1. Upend the government for privatization.
2. Use massive unemployment surge to drive down wages, acquire technical workers cheap, and stagnate unionization.
3. Make a killing starting a new recession on purpose. Shorting stocks beforehand and then buying low to sell high. Buy failing businesses for their capital, farmers to further concentrate corporate ownership of arable land and single family houses to rent back to displaced workers. And, as long as you control government, drive your taxes down.

A favorite scene of mine in The Godfather is after the mafia families meet to resolve the fallout from the drug trade war. “Tattaglia's a pimp,” said Vito Corleone, “
He never could've out-fought Santino. But I didn't know until this day that it was Barzini all along.”

In politics, we see the pimps like Trump and Musk everyday. Finding Barzini is the difficult part, and a person can go full on Q if not careful.

But this conjecture is a simple one. While Trump and Musk are no geniuses, they know enough to see everything tariffs and DOGE has only pushed the economy towards a tailspin. The question is who benefits? Certainly not MAGA voters. But those who have money can make even more money knowing the exact timetable of economic collapse. And I am inclined to think a person who built J.D. Vance. saved Musk’s SpaceX back in the day, and is a leader in the PayPal mafia running around DC at the moment, is a person of interest for how billionaires are being purposely weaponized against us.

What is happening now is a magic trick of sorts, with distractions hiding the gaff we really need to see. I do also believe there are a few sets of organized interests taking advantage of Trump 2.0, an avaristic president now unconcerned with re-election and, thereby, unconstrained by public opinion. Thiel might not be a center, but his biography points to the kind of person we all should be concerned about.

I could be wrong. However, there is so much more to focus on than what is pressing in a moment, and we all benefit from finding a different, deeper view, even if imperfect. We must not let these billionaires define what we argue about while moving from trauma to trauma without understanding why events are unfolding. Pick up the problems, turn them to every facet and see what is really there.