The Black Box at the Center of Democracy

The story isn’t illegal voters. It never was. The story is who owns the machines that count the votes — and why we have no way to verify what they do.

By Jim Prues  & Jim’s AI buddy ·  World5.org

Every election cycle, the same alarm gets sounded: illegal voters are stealing democracy. It is a powerful story — emotionally vivid, politically useful, and by every credible measure, almost entirely fictional. Verified cases of non-citizen or fraudulent voting occur at rates so vanishingly small they would not change a local school board race, let alone a national one. And yet the story dominates, consuming outrage and legislative energy — while the actual structural vulnerabilities in our elections go almost entirely unexamined.

That is not an accident. Misdirection is a strategy.

Here is what the misdirection is designed to keep you from looking at: the software running your voting machines is privately owned, proprietary, and shielded from independent inspection behind trade secret law. When you cast a vote on a touchscreen terminal, there is no mechanism for you to verify your intent was recorded correctly. When ballots are tabulated by a closed system, the jurisdiction running the election has no independent means of confirmation. They are trusting a corporation’s word. So are you.

A democracy that cannot verify its own elections is not a democracy. It is a ceremony.

The researchers and citizen investigators at This Will Hold have been digging into this with specific, disturbing focus. Their recent piece — “She Won. They Didn’t Just Change the Machines. They Rewired the Election.” — traces a chain of corporate connections that deserves far wider attention: the 2021 sale of Tripp Lite (whose power hardware is physically connected to ES&S and Dominion tabulators across the country) to Eaton Corporation, Eaton’s subsequent deepening partnership with Palantir, the quiet activation of Starlink’s direct-to-cell satellite network just days before the 2024 election, and statistical anomalies in the results that, taken together, they argue cannot be explained by ordinary variance.

Referenced Investigation

“She Won. They Didn’t Just Change the Machines. They Rewired the Election.” — This Will Hold

A detailed investigative piece connecting corporate infrastructure — Tripp Lite, Eaton, Palantir, and Starlink’s DTC activation — to anomalous 2024 election data. Their central argument: the math in multiple recent election cycles does not add up, and the systems involved are structured to prevent anyone from proving why. Read it here →

I want to be precise about what I am saying and what I am not. The connections This Will Hold documents are real — the corporate acquisitions, the partnerships, the technical architecture are all on the record. Whether those connections were deliberately weaponized to alter election outcomes is a claim that has not been confirmed by independent investigators. But here is the thing: the reason it cannot be confirmed is exactly the problem. We lack the transparent, redundant systems that would allow us to know. The opacity is the crime, even if nothing else is.

This is the World 5.0 framing: integrity is not a virtue we perform. It is a structural condition we build. A system has integrity when its inner workings and its outer results are verifiably aligned. By that measure, our current election infrastructure does not have integrity — not because everyone running elections is corrupt, but because the systems they use make verification structurally impossible. The This Will Hold investigators cannot prove their case. That inability is itself the proof of the structural failure.

The solution is not voter ID laws. It is open architecture: voting system code that is publicly audited, hardware that is independently inspected, and results verified through meaningful redundancy — voter-verified paper trails and risk-limiting audits that compare physical records to digital tallies in public, by law, after every election. None of this is theoretical. Colorado has implemented risk-limiting audits that election security experts across the political spectrum point to as a model. The technology exists. The political will to demand it at scale is what we are still building.

Both parties have failed this test — Democrats by avoiding the conversation because it sounds too close to the claims made by bad-faith actors who dispute results they dislike, Republicans by wrapping legitimate concerns about voting technology inside the phantom-voter narrative that poisons the well for everyone. Both postures leave the structural problem intact. Both serve the interests of the companies that profit from opacity.

The immigrants are not coming for your ballot. The machines deserve every question you can raise.

What This Will Hold is doing — following the corporate connections, interrogating the statistical anomalies, refusing to accept that “trust us” is an answer — is precisely what citizens in a self-governing society are supposed to do. Whether or not their specific conclusions hold up to further scrutiny, their core demand is correct: show your work, or you have not earned our confidence.

Confidence built on opacity is not confidence. It is faith — and faith in private corporations is not a foundation for self-governance. The answers we need are available. Open source code, verifiable paper trails, independent audits. The will to demand them is what World 5.0 is about building — in this space, and in every system that structures our collective life.

Jim Prues is the founder of the World 5.0 framework for civilizational transformation, author of World 5.0: We Move From Here. Free download from the website. He writes and produces from Cincinnati.  ·  world5.org

The Declaration of World 5.0

[This declaration is the short form of the mission this book invokes. It is
available as a video on the World 5.0 site, http://world5.org.]

We, the people of Earth, in light of The Three Truths, do ordain and engender
World 5.0. These truths are first: We live in Eternal Awareness and
this constant flux of energy. We are one. Second: Here, of prime
concern is our intent: fear or Love. And third, only Love makes us
happy.

We ascribe to the principles of integrity, justice and balance in our transactions
and relationships, as the only way to ensure transparency and hence
fairness. We promote localism as the best method for augmenting
health and ecology. And we connect human rights and environmental
health, knowing that failure to protect one inevitably leads to failures
of the other.

We utterly denounce war and violence. There is no greater scourge on our
planet today than hostility, furthered by nation-states and the
military/industrial/media complex. There is no viable excuse to kill
or to invoke suffering on another. We withdraw our support from
any institutions that continue to condone war and violence.

We encourage pluralism and autonomy, where each of us is valued and
respected. The meager distinctions of gender, color, class, looks,
religion, sexual preference or wealth are of no consequence in light of
our true nature. We allow no ideology or morality to come between
us, as we are far better served by ethics. We support and revel in
our families, friends and communities, as these are the lifeblood to
happiness.

We require a transparent, global financial system for any and all currencies
based on a universal, InterWeb-based standard, bringing light to
fraudulent trading schemes. This model decentralizes power and
fosters honest trade, allowing for far greater freedom in how we
design and live our lives.

We engage in the exchange of goodwill, of ideas and of goods and services.
We create, design and build our systems and infrastructure based
on sustainability, ecology and a resource-based economy. Clean air
and water, access to food, healthcare, energy and information are all
inalienable human rights.

Already we embark on the redesign of our culture, just as already we embark
on finding our true selves. The signs of healing and remaking are
everywhere, and the unholy din of the old culture draws thin. Within
World5, we leverage our connection to All and each other to remake
our world

Of prime concern is restoring ecology to our Earth. Sustainable, organic
food production is required, as is renewable energy production.
Ancient forests must be preserved. Cradle to cradle is the only viable
model for the production of goods, and localism provides the key to
minimizing our consumption, while maximizing our health.

Here in the United States, we look to The Declaration of Independence and
Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution to initiate a new constitutional
assembly. The three-headed monster of corporatism, militarism and
elitism has no place within World5. With the help of The InterWeb,
we intend a document that simplifies the law, restores justice and
balance, and honors Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Further, we intend a Constitution of the Earth in an effort to mitigate climate
change and to restore stability and health to our planet. Research,
advisory and governing councils, working together, can provide the
wisdom and will for this effort. The Earth is a living breathing body
and our only home.

Finally, we Now initiate the Federation for Peace. This Federation belongs to
those of us who take the Oath of Peace. We renounce the ideologies
of hate and terror, and align ourselves with the Peace of Eternal
Awareness, to create Peace on Earth. As the InterWeb is the mind of
World5, The Federation for Peace is the heart.

This we declare: We Love; We Live in Peace; We Move from Here; Welcome
to World 5.0.

The Cincinnati Southern Railway

For those not local to the Cincinnati area, you likely aren’t aware that the city of Cincinnati owns a rail line. We’ve had it since 1880, and now our politicians want to sell it off to Norfolk Southern, that wonderful corporation that brought is the disaster in East Palestine last February.

In a surprising confluence, my friend Justin Jeffre asked me about filming former mayor Dwight Tillary for remarks again the sale about a month ago. A bit later that same day Justin asked if I could also record Alfred Nippert. Alfred had such knowledge that the next day I suggested to Justin we could probably make a documentary with all we got from Alfred. He said go for it.

As it happened I was also able to film former Cincinnati councilman Kevin Flynn who also happens to be a real estate attorney. The result is this 20 minute documentary that describes the reason it came to be, construction, its evolution and why it remains a valuable asset. Lots of cool old photos and moving pictures….

This Transformation We Require

So we’ve been taught, and grown up, in a culture that values money and its attendant power above all else. Why is this case instead of say, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness being our top priority? It’s actually quite simple. It’s because 600 years ago the British Crown made ‘The Corporation’ a viable business entity. Horrible idea.

Which makes on wonder about nation-states as well. There’s been the natural evolution over the ages, from small villages to cities, city-states and more recently nation-states. Not as horrible an idea as ‘The Corporation’, but one that has seemingly outgrown its usefulness. Some might argue that it’s usefulness was pretty seriously challenged by European colonialism, which so much reshaped the world to support Empire’s ruthless agenda.

Since WWII the U.S. has taken over the mantle of Empire, trying to bend the world so that U.S. hegemony can continue forever. Ain’t going to happen. The trends that supported corporate and nation-state growth are no longer trends. And the supposed virtues of corporations have been seen for what they are. Bullshit, lies, corruption and falseness at every turn. We need a new way forward.

Even the ground rules of the old culture are busted. We assume, and Einstein even postulated, that there are an infinite number of points in time, just as there are an infinite number of points in space. He was wrong. There is only one point it time where Life, and hence we, exist. The point of Life is Now. Less punny, the totality of Now just aught to be the central tenant of any culture. In this one it’s a wildly foreign idea. Yet that makes it no less true.

Once we narrow the playing field of time to Now, we begin to see more clearly the power of our intent. Our collective lives are a mess, pollution is everywhere, if the nuclear war doesn’t kill us, the climate chaos will. Ugly times. And yet, locked into the reality of Now, we understand that we still have options on how we think, feel and act. A tremendous freedom awaits those of us who hold this truth tightly.

Oh yes, and learning Life is relegated to this tiny point in time where the future becomes the past offers another requirement. We are all Here together. Always. We are all always moving from here. Together. A pretty refreshing notion as well.

So we need to find our common ground first. Perhaps then we can begin moving together to solve our horrendous problems.

Our problems, from generations of abuse and corporate overreach all over our planet, are legion.

This Consumer Culture

I imagine that in ancient cultures the goal was water, food and getting basic needs met. Beyond that explore, play, learn, even as other animals do. Getting along was a given. The tribe shared the vibe.

From there we’ve found ourselves gobbling up plastic crap to no end, from our grocery bags to gadgets. We were taught that money is the road to happiness, and more is always better. He who dies with the most toys wins. It’s not only ruining our planet, it’s not making us happier. It was all a lie.

New phone. New car. New shit. We adore it. We’ve been well trained.

The tribe in that ancient culture had a greater sense of abundance than we do. No monthlies, credit cards and the fears of lack so many of us hold. It’s worth noting that they met their needs locally, water, food and wood for energy. We have the same needs now. We just have a corporate greed/corrupt government model today. It is this that must be transformed.

This War Machine

Living in nation-states that disagree sure seems like a great system if you’re in the war business. Recall that a whole slew of nation-states were drawn up by the British Empire. Fuck. And there are amalgamations like China, one political system reigning over a huge number of tribes. And places like the U.S., where we wiped out the indigenous people and brought a bunch of slaves along. Land of the free my ass.

It’s generally been like this since Medieval times, the greatest change being the equipment of war. Catapults hardly compare to the many death machines this war machine has come up with. And now AI and the robots are coming. And of course the frequency. In the Middle Ages we had breaks between our wars.

As many of us recognize, the war in Ukraine goes much deeper than Putin, no angel, wanting to claim Ukraine to remake the old USSR. It’s all part of the demented maniacs willing to destroy we humans out of their greed. The many unknown forces determined to keep us abused and confused, we cannot let them continue. It is this that must be transformed.

This Corrupt Political System

The corrupt political culture, here in the U.S. and on display across the globe, is so evident it needs no discussion. There are a few relative beacons, like the very northern European nations (Norway, Sweden, Finland) but there aren’t a lot of great examples.

At the same time we have a ton of dictators, authoritarians and fascists. This makes for terrible lives for millions and even billions of us as these ‘leaders’ care nothing for you and me. And it doesn’t look like it will fix itself. While it is my sense that most of us humans are pretty decent folk, our politicians and leaders clearly are not. It is this that must be transformed.

The Way Forward Is a New O/S

While healing and restoring are much needed ingredients, we start with a new yet ancient paradigm. We recognize that we exist within Life, and that Life happens only now. Ergo, we only happen Now. This necessitates that we are All Here Together as well. There is quite literally nowhere else in time we can be. All else is speculation or memory.

Once we grasp this great truth, we can focus our attention, our intent, on how we are playing this living moment. Our fears and pains are seen more truly, where they can be more easily released. And we must begin by healing ourselves. Otherwise whatever new system emerges will end up corrupt as well. Integrity is requisite, and is only found where we humans are able to heal and grow.

Once we have our own selves together, we can begin to remake this crazy world we find ourselves living in. We reject the legal status of ‘The Corporation’ and its effect of globalism, which is a terrible system for getting our needs met, but a great system if your own goal is making gobs of money.

Our priorities could be peace, good governance, localism, organic food and learning, without which we are at the mercy of corporate control. Of these objectives, localism most directly strikes at the heart of the corporate controllers. There are innumerable cases where sourcing needed materials comes from the other side of the world because it makes corporate financial sense, though it makes no sense at all for a healthy culture to be doing such things.

We Must Rise Up

As the great historian and intellectual Noam Chomsky has noted, there’s hardly a time in human history where substantive change occurred without the citizenry rising up. Politicians and demagogues are not inclined to give up power unless confronted by citizens that will no longer tolerate their corruption. We see that quite clearly here in the United States.

For Progressives, locked into the two party system, the lesser evil typically means voting for Democrats, in spite of their lust to appease their corporate owners. The Republicans are off the charts now, going to any lengths to make this country ‘white and christian’, which it has never been. Whether we consider the maybe 10 million indigenous people or the maybe three million slaves, non-whites have played a huge role in our country’s history. Sadly, it’s a very ugly history.

Yet we find ourselves now facing a great precipice. If we do not change our children and grandchildren face much more cruel lives. Our climate chaos continues to wreak havoc, and the permanent war paradigm destroys entire populations in the name of greed. We must rise up.

Now is the time we change or perish. Welcome to World 5.0…

Insane Ukraine

We have to unfuck our culture. Rephrase – We must get past corporations and nation states. Both are archaic and we and our planet are dying.

It is in our nature to go about our business and live our lives as best we can. And we all know that the decked is stacked against us. If we look clearly into history, we see the culprits. Nation states and corporations.

Many of our nation states today are but the result of the British Empire designating them because they had guns and ships and the interest. Much of Africa and South America in particular are composed of countries that The British Empire drew the lines for. What a shitty way to determine national boundaries.

The corporations stood right there with them, the East India Trading Company and The Hudson Bay Company are history book examples. A trio of government officials, missionaries and corporate toadies combined to spread a thick layer of bullshit over whomever they intended to colonize. Praise Jesus.

Today many of us understand that many of these nation-state boundaries are but the result of empire, and that regionalism and tribal ancestry make for much better governments.

Oh, I almost forgot I was writing about this fucked up piece of shit war in Ukraine. I watch, I rage, I weep and repeat the cycle. Insanity indeed.

All the governmental players have a role and responsibility in this ugly disaster. The US has poked the bear as they say, with numerous bases and an aggressive stance toward Russia. You throw in crazy-ass Putin, who cares for nothing but retaining and growing his power, and Zelenskyy, whose hero status is suspect and is friends with Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky. Some argue he’s running a government no less corrupt than his predecessors.

Damn. There it is again. Not good vs evil, as our corporate media would have you believe, but bunch of bad actors that includes the Unites States.

Putin’s actions starting this conflict were reprehensible, as are his continuing decisions to keep bombing innocent people. So it’s an easy sell to make him the bad guy. Zelenskyy hasn’t shown that disgusting level of murder, but he’s no saint. The real kicker here is the United States, who has shown little interest in negotiations and great interest in blowing up stuff making millions and billions for the Lockheed Martins (42 billion last year) and Boeings (23 billion last year) and other members of their club. Our government serves up military grade weapons and these war corporations make the financial killing.

So the Permanent War Paradigm, which we were first warned about by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1960, is on full display and shows no sign of being diminished. Our corporate-controlled culture continues to make sure corporations always win. Not good for us citizens. Not good for this dear Earth.

Let’s start with priorities. The first is always ourselves, and the first response must be to hold peace in our hearts, despite this and other war tragedies. We do not help the citizens of Ukraine by offering them thoughts of fear or an anguished heart. We help by holding peace in our hearts and recognizing that they are in our hearts just as we are in theirs. It’s how Life works.

Healing requires letting go of our own fears. Fear is the mind-killer. Always the enemy of peace, and therefore never our friend. Whatever answers fear seems to offer are false. Love is the answer, Here in this Life we share. It is the first truth.

There are thousands of peace organizations and groups, but they seem to have little impact on our situation. We are no more peaceful as a planet than we’ve been since World War II, with the constant beat of war drums ever since by The War Machine.

So we must rise up. Getting into the streets is not an ideal answer, but it’s required if we intend to rebalance our lives and end this scourge. Of course voting is the minimal requirement, but that is a slow remedy, fraught with bullshit.

In rising up we force the issue, reminding legislators of our power and intent, reducing to some small degree the corporate influence.

Not a pretty or hopeful picture at this point, but we see great opportunities for change as the old system continues to crumble under the weight of its own corruption.

Let us do what we can and be who we are, and dream of brighter days, where Life is held in much higher regard, and our tolerance for war is zero.

We Are So Fucked – Russell Brand speaks with Noam Chomsky

Corporate Boat Versus Life Boat

In the muddle of these times, progressives ’embrace’ the democratic party because they have no alternative. We in the US live in a duopoly, where our votes are limited by the two party system.Democrats feign policies efforts that would improve our lives, but damn, they’re stymied again, and again, and again. The Republicans are now well adrift from reality, with many aligned with traitor Donald Trump, and nearly all of them given to ideology that does not befit us, and a lust for power that makes corporate interests ever the priority. It’s all too damn ugly.

We may begin to see another option if ranked voting, such as Maine and Alaska have recently initiated, takes hold. But for this election and the near future, the dems are all we have. Sad.

The Republicans began their trajectory in the 1980s with Ronald Reagan, the democratic party took a turn toward neoliberlism with the Clinton presidency in the early 1990s, and it has only gotten far worse with more recent ‘leaders’.

With this context, it’s clear we must make our voices heard more loudly than they have been, as the data shows are elected leaders pay almost no attention to our needs and interests, and all the attention they want to Corporate Overlords. Super Elites. Ideological Controllers. See, they’ve been so successful in keeping us duped that we don’t even have an accepted term for these bastards.

I needn’t remind that these bastards are destroying our planet’s biological life at a horrific pace, we humans included. That precious resources are used for yachts and rockets and endless bullshit because these bastards have almost all the money. The yacht is a nice metaphor for the corporate boat, which has controlled our culture for hundreds of years.

Warned again and again, even by our founding fathers, that corporations inevitably corrupt other institutions, we see now how far we are under their thumb. The recent decisions by the utterly bogus Supreme Court to overturn a woman’s right to her body, the regulation of guns and the EPA’s power to regulate can all be easily linked to these bastards.

There is a way out of this morass for each of us. We transform ourselves, away from mindless noise on the screens and toward our true selves. We each have on. Even these bastards. Yet they are so far from knowing themselves that that fat guy can way more easily fit through a needle. A few things for starting…

Turn off the screen. So much useless, time sinking, distracting horseshit  that whatever of value exists in that ream it’s not worth chasing. Far wiser to learn to sit with yourself, breathe, notice your body and what’s happening within the place you are in, knowing we are all here in Life together. So  we not only move the goalposts, we change our entire life’s game.

Ending our fear is the requirement behind finding our authentic selves. Because our authentic self is Love, which is antithetical to fear. Love is the Energy side of our eternal Tao. Yang. Just as Eternal Awareness is our Yin. We have much to release and let go.

And we must start with ourselves so that we bring authenticity, and its attendant integrity, into our lives. We change the framing of our lives and how we spend this preciousness of Life we share. So this is the Life Boat. So THIS experience of living we are sharing Now, is, quite literally, the Life Boat. Or the First Truth as I call it.

We give our attention to personal healing, which is what I describe above, because healing our lives together and our planet requires that we are healing ourselves already. Then we can begin our efforts to transform this corrupt and broken culture. Indeed, we must rise up.

And as we become more and more authentic we understand and appreciate the messaging we give ourselves on how we best participate, best let our voices be heard, within this transformation process we are undertaking. Our nearly fearless selves understand our place in All This.

And this is what World 5.0 is about. It’s yet another name for our Life Boat. Embracing ourselves, embracing each other, embracing our Earth, and above all, embracing This Life We Share Forever.

Our Civilization Sucks

Well, we don’t have to look very far, indeed, we don’t have to look at all. We feel it in our bones. We sense it on a regular. Our civilization sucks.

This mess in the Ukraine with Russian and US narratives going back and forth, and people dying, but ices our argument. Our civilization sucks. Want a deeper dive?

Want to look at our dying oceans, devastated ecosystems or environmental destruction?

Want to look at our shitty food systems, our fossil fuels use or our tepid response to the potential end of our species?

Want to back up that Ukraine thing with the permanent war paradigm? Haiti, Palestine, and a hundred other situations where human rights are abused and lives are ruined or ended?

Want to look at our media? Raving lunatics on left and right? All that matters to them is the corporate agenda.

How about civil rights or income inequality? Two very related topics where we’re failing miserably.

Or government, where one of the two main parties is officially the Party of Sedition? And the other a spineless tool of elites?

I could go on and on…

How is it that we find ourselves in such a bad place as a species, as a civilization? That’s not really a tough question if we’re paying attention.

It’s because all of the above and so much more stem from the corporate-owned, more money and power at all costs mentality that the elites – super wealthy families going back hundreds of years – have manipulated us and our culture so they always ‘win’. A sharp case in point is how the Rothschilds funded both sides of the war and lied and cheated ‘manipulated’ both sides, vastly improving their fortunes. Despicable, and a long standing tradition.

No wonder the founding fathers were very wary of ‘The Corporation’. And indeed, The Corporation is the ‘great’ financial entity that allows our corporate overlords to remain our corporate overlords. And it remains despicable.

The Rockefellers, Morgans and Vanderbilts were pulling similarly despicable behaviors in the U.S. a century later. Some of the richest men that ever lived, they offered platitudes to the common citizen, but saw wealth and poverty as both necessitated by capitalism. Their philanthropy was supposed to erase, or at least more tolerable, those great inequalities.

Democrat Grover Cleveland was not the first to complain that “corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.” (1888 State of the Union address). The only major shift since then is the addition of globalization to the corporate tool set. Indeed, our founding fathers had similar concerns, but time favors corporate power as we see today.

These days the rampant abuses of The Corporation are ruining our lives and communities and if that’s not enough, destroying our only home. The people behind the mega-corporations of today are so ingrained in elitist ideology that they’re incapable of recognizing the truth of what they are, at the least, contributing to.

We don’t need extravagant yachts and trips into outer space to see where these crazy folks are leading us. To our doom. We don’t need all the plethora of lawsuits trying to eek out some minor victory against these monsters to know corporations and healthy cultures cannot co-exist. While the recognitions of Occupy back in 2011, that financial systems are corrupt and ruining our lives, might not have seemed obvious then, by now it’s clear to anyone whose head is not buried in some ideological sand.

There is, in truth, only one remedy. Transforming our culture to one where The Corporation has no place. Transform our culture so big lie talking points like Trump really won in 2020 are unimaginable. Transform our culture so that we take the threats to our dear planet Earth with total regard. Where the permanent war paradigm is in the dustbin of history, like so much tremendous malfeasance wreaked on us by our elitist corporate controllers.

Our lives cry out for meaning. For something greater than a sports victory. For something more true than gated communities. For seeing each other in our essence, and not in our clothes, hair, skin or other useless gage of our humanness.

The two Biggies: Community and Commerce

Presuming access to decent air and water, food and energy are the great requirements for a civilization to survive and thrive. And how they do so is through community and commerce. Community because we share this Life Now, and being and doing with each other is a fundamental aspect of our existence. But let’s start with commerce.

Commerce in some form has been with us for tens of thousands of years. Especially with the Agrarian Age and the beginning of specialization in work, people bartered, bought and sold, and developed the system of capitalism. Two folks selling shoes. Who makes the best shoes? Who has the better deal? Whose further away? Such considerations are at the heart of true capitalism.

We don’t have that today. You may find a bit of it in your town or online somewhere, but in all our manifest global systems, we have corporatism. Mindless legal entities, designed and effectively enabling the ruination of our lives and the rape of our dear Earth. First enabled by England around 1600, they have been the scourge we have faced and died for all these long generations.

In any area of our lives, what was once a panoply of business entities is now dominated by one or a few companies. Amazon, Apple, Google, Intel, Walmart, Kroger, AT&T, Tyson, AMD – they covers most everything we buy, how we communicate, what shows up in our searches. And that’s just nine mega-corporations. It doesn’t include the massive financial ‘institutions’ or foreign-owned megaliths like Alibaba, China Petroleum and Chemical or Royal Dutch Shell. Mindless, driven by greed, they destroy lives and Earth with impunity to meet ‘quarterly targets’. There is no hope for a healthy planet where corporations rule.

Community comes in a million forms, but the content is similar everywhere. People working together, playing together and just being together. I like the old barn building phenom, where materials were lined up, a day was picked, and friends and neighbors put up a barn. Or built a school. Or a bridge. Coming together is the central aspect of community.

This innate predilection within us has been totally subverted by ‘The Corporation’. Just as simple truths like the totality of Now, the only place where Life happens, and hence where we happen, has been subverted with BS like ‘He who dies with the most toys wins.’ Nonsense, and our civilization is full of it, because that’s what our corporate overlords want filling our heads. Ideally fearful nonsense, because the terrified do not act to change things.

Oh, and Nation States

Hand in hand with a long history of corporate malfeasance is the nation state. Small communities became cities, cities fought other cities to become city-states, and city-states the fought each other to become nation-states. Do you note a common theme? Fought. And the winners designated the borders and rights and everything else. [See British Empire.]

It’s not a pleasant history to come to grips with. The most aggressive families became the elites, and then monarchies and then those crazy people came up with all sorts of delusions of grandeur. They’re just like you and me but with aggressive ancestors. This pattern still plays out today with politicians.

The Corporation is like the Hydra. It’s many heads can be severed to no end, but it will not die until we stab its heart.

The Answer

Clearly we need transformation. We need a new ground to stand on, and it is Life, already here with us. Already us. Life, and we, only exist in the vast ‘Nowness’ that encompasses everything that is, and is going on. Almost unimaginable in our current civilization, it, this, is none the less everything that exists, and everything that is true.

In temporal affairs, the truth often changes. What happens in our lives or on the world stage is always in transition. Yet in our hearts and souls we remain here in Life, here where everything happens.

World 5.0 offers the clear way forward. We are all together here in Life. It cannot be helped. The second truth is the power of our intent. We choose between fear and Love. The third truth? Only Love makes us happy. This simple formula takes us far.

When applied to our systems, we need the same integrity in government and finance that we have with buildings and bridges, or the Internet. Without integrity they don’t function. Such is not currently the case in our politics.

It’s striking that we of good will are so ignored and the vile imbeciles run rampant in Washington DC. The Democrats are terrible tools dedicated to their corporate overlords and the Republicans are worse with their big lie and utter lack of respect for we, the people. We will never achieve health or happiness until the corporate scourge is ended. World 5.0 offers a clear alternative.

The Five Biggest Corporate Lies About Unions

Wealthy corporations and their enablers have spread 5 big lies about unions in order to stop workers from organizing and to protect their own bottom lines. Know the truth and spread the truth.

Lie #1: Labor unions are bad for workers. Wrong. Unions are good for all workers—even those who are not unionized. In the mid-1950s, when a third of all workers in the United States were unionized, wages grew in tandem with the economy. That’s because workers across America—even those who were not unionized—had significant power to demand and get better wages, hours, benefits, and working conditions. Since then, as union membership has declined, the middle class has shrunk as well.

Lie #2: Unions hurt the economy. Wrong again. When workers are unionized they can negotiate better wages, which in turn spreads the economic gains more evenly and strengthens the middle class. This creates a virtuous cycle: Wages increase, workers have more to spend in their communities, businesses thrive, and the economy grows. Since the 1970s, the decline in unionization accounts for one-third of the increase in income inequality. Without unions, wealth becomes concentrated at the top and the gains don’t trickle down to workers.

Lie #3: Labor unions are as powerful as big business. No way. Labor union membership in 2018 accounted for 10.5 percent of the American workforce, while large corporations account for almost three-quarters of the entire American economy. And when it comes to political power, it’s big business and small labor. In the 2018 midterms, labor unions contributed less than $70 million to parties and candidates, while big corporations and their political action committees contributed $1.6 billion. This enormous gulf between business and labor is a huge problem. It explains why most economic gains have been going to executives and shareholders rather than workers. But this doesn’t have to be the case.

Lie #4: Most unionized workers are in industries like steel and auto manufacturing. Untrue. Although industrial unions are still vitally important to workers, the largest part of the unionized workforce is workers in the professional and service sectors—retail, restaurant, hotel, hospital, teachers—which comprise 59 percent of all workers represented by a union. And these workers benefit from being in a union. In 2018, unionized service workers earned a median wage of $802 a week. Non-unionized service workers made, on average, $261 less. That’s almost a third less.

Lie #5: Most unionized workers are white, male, and middle-aged. Some unionized workers are, of course, but most newly unionized workers are not. They’re women, they’re young, and a growing portion are black and brown. In fact, it’s through the power of unions that people who had been historically marginalized in the American economy because of their race, ethnicity, or gender are now gaining economic ground. In 2018, women who were in unions earned 21 percent more than non-unionized women. And African Americans who were unionized earned nearly 20 percent more than African Americans who were non-unionized.

Don’t believe the corporate lies. Today’s unions are growing, expanding, and boosting the wages and economic prospects of those who need them most. They’re good for workers and good for America.

“The Corporation” Destroys Capitalism

There is an implicit notion in our culture that corporations equal capitalism. Nothing is more false. 

Capitalism is the notion that folks make products or offer services, each with a relative value. The customers have the option of this pair of shoes or this house painter, and they base their choices on the perceived value each vendor offers.

It’s actually quite a good system. Honest competition, along with a bit of salesmanship, lets the customer decide the best value or the vendor who most suits them. We learned about it in high school.

Corporations, on the other hand, are a legal entity devised primarily in England about a thousand years ago. A cozy little legal trick to provide ‘limited liability’ and a methodology to keep the powerful powerful, passing corporate money down across the generations.  Here in the states, when our forefathers were establishing our Constitution, they were quite aware of the work of the Hudson Bay Company and the East India Company, precursers to the corporate behemoths we have today.

Because these were wealthy landowners, even though they mistrusted the legal entity of the corporation, they didn’t disallow them as such. They placed strict restrictions on the corporations of their days, only allowable for certain purposes and with limited lifespans, but they didn’t embed forbidding corporations into the constitution. It’s up there with promoting slavery and generating a savage response to native Americans. 

And looking at our global culture today, it is not capitalism that has given us endless war, GMOs, the propped up fossil fuel industry or so many other ills, it is the corporations.

There is a growing debate in this country about the virtues of two competing cultures – democratic socialism, or just socialism versus capitalism. Again, I find this a false choice. The decision we need to come to is whether we want a society dominated by corporate control, or a society where honest capitalism and a social base for our weakest citizens and elders is the norm.

It’s worth noting that social structures like social  security have been with us for decades, and most countries today have some version of socialized health care. But the money our government spends on these social safety nets is dwarfed by the corporate socialism that exists for behemoths like Amazon, google, Facebook, Apple and a host of others who pay no taxes, have ‘limited liability’ for all the damage they have caused, and who payoff our politicians to give them their corporate socialism. 

As we see every day, our politicians pay lip service to our needs, and pay corporations handsomely, with our tax dollars, for their political contributions. Quid pro quo. It’s beyond prevalent, it’s the way it is. This must change.

The solution? We start by making this November election a clear mandate that the old bullshit doesn’t fly. We elect politicians with integrity. We have a few already, but too few. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown in the Senate, some progressives in the House of Representatives. We’re certainly making headway in local government.

But our president must be removed from office, and Mitch McConnell removed from his leadership role in ruining our country. Pelosi’s facing a strong challenger for her seat in the House. You will not see any of those names near the idea of integrity.

Once we have responsive elected officials, we begin reigning in the worst offenders by using existing antitrust laws and tax laws. We begin making them responsible for all the damage they have done, and remind tech companies that we, the citizens built the internet with our tax dollars. Do you imagine those tech companies are paying for the technology we built for them to leverage?

Let’s take a brief moment to consider our world without corporations. Large companies can be partnerships or coops. Without the overwhelming profit motive, the motivation for the permanent war paradigm ends. Coops are not interested in selling weapons. Our food becomes incredibly healthier and tastier, as shithead companies like Monsanto (now part of Bayer) are not trying to control global food. Fossil fuels are long gone.

With a new shared abundance, we heal our neighborhoods and communities. Restore farming and rural communities, urban centers and living conditions for all us citizens. Our forests and oceans are restored, and mitigating climate change becomes the great priority it must be. Corporations and healthy people and planet don’t work.

Back to our plan. Finally, we get to the point where we end the thousand years scourge that is the legal entity, ‘the Corporation’. It serves no human or earthly need. It’s only purpose is to further enrich the already rich. Capitalism doesn’t require ‘the corporation’. And neither do we…