They Are Rich With Our Money!

You know, we always see headlines, you know, in the newspaper, the business news, or what have you. Company x made $10,000,000,000 in sales last year or, you know, this or that blockbuster film made a 160,000,000 on its opening weekend and so on and so on. That's not really what happened. I mean that's a that's a that's a particular way of presenting what happened, but that's not really what happened. Companies don't make money, companies take money.

I mean that $10,000,000,000 didn't fall from the sky, it came out of people's pockets. It came from the hard earned wages of workers, laborers, regular people. It came from the household budgets of families. It came from you and I, that's where that money came from. I mean, the movie industry for example, as I said, the production budget of any major Hollywood film usually is around or more than $200,000,000.

Okay. That sounds like an obscene amount of money and we all think it's crazy. But here's the thing, we, you and I, the people, we pay exponentially more than that just to watch the movies. I mean, a film can actually recover its entire production budget in a single weekend. In July 2023, Barbie made a $162,000,000 in its first three days in The US alone, just in just in America.

Global earnings cost a billion dollars within weeks. I mean pause and reflect, a billion dollars. Where did that money come from? Well, came from us, came from you and I. Collectively, we chose to part with that $1,000,000,000 just to watch a movie.

Now think about that. How much do we, you and I, the people, how much do we collectively spend on entertainment annually, every year? Well, in 2022, the global entertainment and media market was valued at over $2,300,000,000,000. 2,300,000,000,000.0. You understand that's more than the GDP of 200 countries around the world.

Meanwhile, over 700,000,000 people live on less than $2.15 a day, that's extreme poverty. You know, for many people, millions of people in the world, it's not about which movie to watch, it's not about what brand you're gonna buy, it's about whether you're gonna eat or not. You see the contradiction here, you see the problem here. You know, we rail against the obscene cost of producing blockbuster films, but we rarely question how we ourselves are complicit in that. I mean, a company like Disney say, or Universal or what have you, if they report $83,000,000,000 in annual revenue, that's not Disney's money.

Whose money is that? It's our money spent on movies, on theme parks, on streaming subscriptions, merchandise, what have you, that's all our money. I mean, you know, when there's a famine, you always hear this, when there's a famine or something, people always say, it isn't that there isn't enough food for people to eat, even in that country, it's that the leaders are corrupt. Well, there's a logistics problem of how to get the food to the people or what have you. Well, you know, we talk about the redistribution of wealth while we are redistributing our money to the wealthy every day by choice.

Regular average people are able to mobilize over $2,000,000,000,000 globally every year just to hand over to the entertainment industry. Imagine, you know, we talk about how obscene it is that they spend that much money on a on a Hollywood blockbuster, on a Hollywood movie, we talk about how disgusting that is and we say, why couldn't they spend that money helping the poor? Well, they spend that money because they know you're gonna pay them back, you're gonna reimburse them all of the money that they spend making that movie, all of the hundreds of millions, tens of millions of dollars at least, that they spend making that movie, they know that you the people, you and I are gonna reimburse them that money plus profit. They know they're gonna make all that money back from us. But we ask why don't they spend their millions helping the poor while we're spending our millions paying off their millions of what amounts to debt.

We're paying off the rich's debt every day. We're choosing to do that instead of ourselves helping the poor. For example, we blame them for spending all of that money on a blockbuster movie when we're spending more than that to watch the blockbuster movie when we could be spending our money helping each other. You know? We have to wrap our heads around this.

Americans mobilized over $163,000,000 in just three days in 2023 just to pay off everyone who invested in producing the movie Barbie. That's like a debt that's owed by the wealthy that you and I paid off for them. Please understand me. Imagine if even a fraction of that of that money a fraction of that spending could be redirected towards solving real problems. I mean, consider, according to UNESCO, it would be it it would take just $3,039,000,000,000 dollars annually to provide quality education to every child on this planet.

39,000,000,000. That's less than what Americans, spend on Halloween costumes, on candy and decorations every year, just for that one holiday. Imagine if the billions that we pour into frivolous consumption, the amount that we pour into frivolous consumption could be reallocated towards housing the homeless, towards funding health care, towards empowering our communities. Why not? I mean, imagine the transformation that that would cause.

This isn't some utopian fantasy. It's literally just a matter of reordering our priorities. We don't actually have to wait for the government to do it, for any government to do it, for any politician to do it. We have to take responsibility for ourselves. We all know that politicians aren't gonna do anything.

We already know that. We all we know that all they ever do is reverse Robin Hood against the population. No. We have resources. Just like what they say about how famines, like I said, how famines are caused by bad logistics.

Well, we have not allocated our resources properly. We don't even have to be Robin Hood. We don't have to take from the rich, we just have to stop giving to the rich. We have to understand the system that we're participating in. Corporations don't exist to enrich you and I, they exist to enrich themselves.

Every dollar that you give them, every dollar that you give a corporation increases their power, it increases their influence, it increases their dominance over your life. The more you give, the less you have for yourself, the less you have for your family, the less you have for your future and your family's future. So what does this mean for us? It means that we have power, collective power, we do. I mean, fact that a movie can actually generate a $160,000,000 in three days tells us something quite extraordinary that they never want us to know, which is that people do have resources.

Even those who feel financially strained still find ways to spend on what they value, even if what they value is just two hours of an escapist fantasy. Well, what about spending that money on creating a reality that you don't feel the need to escape from? What do we value? Is it entertainment or is it empowerment? Is it the next gadget or is it the next generation?

This is what we have to ask ourselves because we're answering that question every day. The real obscenity isn't the cost of movie production, it's the willingness of the masses to sustain a system that encourages us, even tricks us to literally throw our money away, throw our money, hand our money over to the wealthy instead of using it to help ourselves and to help each other. You know, we complain about the culture of profit over people but we're funding that culture. The question isn't how much companies are making, it's how much we're giving them, how much they're making off of us and why. It's time that we rethink the way we use our own wealth.

It's time to stop enriching those who exploit us and start investing in those who uplift us, Each other. Because in the end, every dollar that we spend is a vote for the kind of world that we want to live in. That's how it is. That's how it really works. So that's the question.

What kind of world are we voting for? What kind of world are we paying for? Because we're paying for this, we're paying for the reality that we live in right now. I think we just don't have the the time or the energy or even the the creativity or the knowledge or the know how sometimes to try to really work this out. I mean, do we redirect the immense flow of wealth that we collectively possess, but habitually squander on just, you know, like I say, movies or what have you, fleeting pleasures.

Redirect that into something actually useful. How do we do that? How do we at a grassroots level try to harness our collective economic power for our own upliftment, for our own prosperity, for our own liberation? Because that's what it will be. Well, you know, across many cultures in the global South that have had to cope with colonization, you have what what you can call sort of community wealth funds.

It's a simple idea. Instead of spending your surplus cash on products and services that just you don't really need and all they do is really sustain corporations, people voluntarily commit a small percentage of their discretionary spending to a a shared fund that's controlled by the community, for the community. There's no reason why you can't do something like that in the West. You could do that in America. I mean, imagine if every person in The US, every person who regularly spends on entertainment, who regularly spends on nonessential goods or so called luxury items, impulse spending, if they redirected just 5% of that spending into a fund like this, just 5%, that's not asking anyone to, you know, stop enjoying their lives or not give up all sorts of comforts and what have you, you know, it's a very small amount.

It's simply a a modest re reallocation of priorities. I mean, do the math. If the average American spends and they do around $2,000 every year just on entertainment, on entertainment only, $2,000 a year, if you do redirect 5% of that, that's a $100 per year per person. So if just a million people participated in something like that, which is just 0.3% of the American population, that's a $100,000,000 a year that you could put together. That's just in one country, which is just a fraction of the global population.

Scale that globally and we're looking at billions of dollars that could be pooled together every year. The people's money, that's your money, that's your own money. I mean obviously a fund like this would need some kind of a structure, it would need accountability, it would need transparency and so forth in order for it to succeed, and not itself become exploitative. But you could find ways to ensure that, you could have local chapters, you know, a decentralized fund with a community managed chapters, every neighborhood or every region can establish its own branch, so that then anyone who's contributing to it can know exactly where their money is going and what it's being spent on. Local chapters can have, can elect a committee of trusted individuals, trusted people to oversee the fund.

They could be responsible for auditing it, they could be responsible for ensuring transparency, for deciding how the resources are allocated, that could be done by a vote, that could be done by some sort of a consensus based on the community's priorities. You know, a fund like this could nowadays, you could operate through an app or a platform or what have you, where every contributor can track, you know, how much is being collected, how it's being spent, and what the impact it's having. Every transaction will be logged, it will be visible and it will be accounted for, and so on and so on and so on. It's not that difficult with technology today. I mean think about what you could use that money for.

I mean it would depend on the the needs of the community and the consensus of the community, but you could use it for example for micro finance, for small business support for small businesses, for entrepreneurs and so on. You could provide interest free, what about free loans or grants to local entrepreneurs, people who are trying, you know, start ups and what have you. So that instead of your community enriching multinational corporations, you could actually support small businesses and circulate your own wealth locally, you know. You could spend it on scholarships for young people, tutoring programs for young people or old people. You could even build schools in underserved areas.

I mean imagine the impact if every community, ensured that no child was left behind. If we took that responsibility upon ourselves and stopped waiting for the government to do it, you know. If you pool your resources, you could even provide housing solutions, you know, or or subsidize health care for people, subsidize health care for the elderly, for for the chronically ill. You don't need a United Healthcare company. You could unite for your own health care, for your own housing.

Believe me, this is gonna become only more and more important, in the West, in America, in Europe. This is gonna be more imperative as more imperative than ever as, the West, falls to neoliberal conquest and they're gonna completely gut all of your governmental social programs, believe me. The whole state is gonna be hollowed out. You could pool your funds to negotiate bulk discounts on essential goods like food, like energy, even housing materials, you know. Communities can pull together to take care of themselves, you're gonna have to.

The key is that the money will serve the people who contribute to it, not to shareholders, not to executives, but to families and to individuals who are part of that movement, who are part of that organize organized, collective of people. This isn't just about economics, obviously, it's about culture. The success of any sort of a community wealth fund will depend upon a shift in how we view spending. Every time we pull out our wallet, we need to ask, is this expenditure, is this purchase helping me, helping my family, or helping my community, or is it just enriching someone who has no interest in my well-being? Is it going to a faceless corporation, a nameless corporation?

You know, so you need to change the culture and that's gonna take awareness campaigns, constant reminders, meetings, discussions, social media platforms, and what have you, education. That will play a pivotal role in changing people's mindset, but you can do it. I mean, once local chapters are established, if you can establish them, then you can link them together and create regional networks. This is how you grow it. It's scalable.

Eventually, you could even become a global network. Why not? I mean, imagine a world where these funds are interconnected, where communities, all around the world, in the global South and in the global North, collaborate across borders, pooling knowledge, pooling resources for maximum impact, cooperating and collaborating together, without any interference or without any support or without any, appeal to government. That's just in the pipe dream. It may sound like a pipe dream, but it's not.

We've seen glimpses of it already working in various forms. You've got community cooperatives, You've got credit unions. We we you've got crowdfunding platforms, you know. All of that has shown that people are willing to contribute. They are willing to put their money down for causes when they see that there's transparency and they can see that there's tangible benefits for that.

The only difference here would be scale. I mean, think about taking all of the fragmented efforts that we see today and organizing them into a global movement. Why isn't that feasible? Why isn't that doable? It's about making empowerment as natural as consumption.

Changing your urges, so instead of, what do they call it, impulse buying, you do impulse contributions. This is where a real revolution can take place, this is how a real revolution can take place, Not with weapons, but with choices. Every dollar that you spend is a seed and you can plant it, either in the barren soil of corporate profits where it will never grow for you, or you can plant it in the fertile soil of your own community where it will bear fruit for generations. It will bear fruit for you and for your children and for your grandchildren. It's not just about money, it's about reclaiming agency.

It's about breaking free, from the illusion that we're powerless, That we're powerless in the face of corporations because the truth is they only have power because we let them, they only have power because we give it to them, they only have wealth because we give it to them. Oh, you know, there's other things that people can do. There's other other things that are practiced in the global South that you might want to know about. If you're a, come, if you come from a culture that values community, you may already know about something called Tanda, or Chit Funds, they call it in India, Susu in Africa, in Somalia they do it. It's a kind of a practice where they have a, it's like a rotating savings and credit association, you know.

It's an age old system. It's a kind of collective savings and lend lending. It exists across the global South in many different parts of the world. It's very simple, but it's very powerful and it's deeply rooted in trust. What I'm proposing is just to sort of modernize the idea and align it with our shared goal of reclaiming our own wealth for the upliftment of our own communities, for our own selves, and for our families, for our children, for our neighbors, and so on.

The concept at its core is just that you have a group of people who contribute a set amount of money, to a collective pool at regular intervals, say every week, every month, every two weeks, what have you, as agreed, and each cycle one member receives the entire pool. So the rotation then continues until everyone has had their turn, everyone has gotten the full payment. A system like this does two things, It creates a simple low risk saving mechanism and it provides interest free access to relatively large sums of money when needed. Now imagine the transformative potential of this type of a model if you tailor it to focus on the money that people waste, the money that we all waste on a regular basis. Let's say 10 people agree to form a group, savings and lendings pool group.

Each member commits to contributing say $20 per week, dollars 20 per week, it's not that much. That's less than the cost of a night out, less than the cost of a definitely less than a a device or a gadget or a few cups of coffee every week, $20. At the end of the week, those 10 people will have collected $200 and that $200 will go to one member, to one of the 10, then the following week to another member, then, following week to another member, and so on until everyone has had their turn. So, during the course of that time, everyone will get a lump sum of $200 It's relatively small, it's a small voluntary redirection of unnecessary spending, but it's small thing that you're doing but it accomplishes something very good, it forces financial discipline and accountability upon yourself, and it allows each of the members access to a lump sum that can potentially be used for some meaningful purpose. It builds solidarity among people, it builds trust among the people in the group and so on.

It it does more than just give you money, it helps to transform your culture. Now this, you know, traditionally this was all informal, it operated all informally, but you can enhance the effectiveness with technology nowadays, with the technology that's available now, I mean you could have digital platforms to do this. You could do it on online, you could create digital platforms for scalability, for accountability, you know, apps could be used to manage the contributions, to manage the rotations, to manage the disbursements and so forth. Especially with things like, cryptocurrency. You can track the payments, you can see where the money is going and so forth, who who has received, you could get notifications of all of that.

It it it's all doable. You can you could you could put together groups like this for even for specific financial goals, like just for entrepreneurial purposes, where funds are used to, you know, support small businesses, to pay off people's medical bills, to pay off people's education bills, their tuition, you know, it could be used just to, fund for skills development, for literacy projects, for, training programs and so forth. Just a safety net for people. A safety net for group members in times of crisis. As participation grows and as trust grows, you know, can, as I say, it's scalable.

It could all be under a large umbrella. You could connect all of these groups together under one large umbrella and share all the resources and best practices across regions, even across countries. What happens when a system like that, goes to scale? I mean, it's a small start. Say you have say you have 10 people, as I say, re redirect $20 weekly into that sort of a fund.

Well that's $10,400 annually, that's enough to, to fund a small business, that's enough to, pay off debts. You can check, you can pay for children's tuition for that. And if you scale up, if a thousand people join that program a single community, a thousand people in a single community redirecting $20 per week to a a a collective pool of resources, well that goes to over $1,000,000 annually. That's enough to launch a large scale community project. You could launch a co op, you could launch housing initiatives, on and on.

I mean imagine if something like that were to be expanded globally with millions of people participating. Like I said, you'd you'd be looking at billions of dollars in under community control. That wouldn't just be a tool for financial empowerment, that would be a catalyst for economic sovereignty, for entire populations, for entire communities. This draws on something that corporations can never replicate, that banks can never replicate, that's community trust. It reminds us of what we've lost in this age of hyper individualism.

People gathering together to pool their money doesn't just pool their money, it pulls values. It reinforces the idea that we're all interdependent, that our success is tied to one another, and that wealth is more than just what's in your bank, it's the strength of your community, it's the strength of your relationships, your bonds with people. When people realize that a night out of the movies or a takeaway meal could instead, be the contribution that funds their neighbor's business, or that funds a friend's education or even their own, future goals, their own training, their own education. Well then priorities can begin to shift when you realize that you're not really on your own, that there's real solidarity between people. With a system like this you take a very age old practice and adapt it to modern needs.

Make it, it's not just a tool for survival, but for upliftment. It's a decentralized, low cost, but deeply empowering, approach. That's the power of grassroots action. It doesn't require approval from the wealthy, it doesn't require complex government programs, it doesn't rely on billionaires suddenly growing a conscience. It starts with us, with what we already have, with the resources that we already have and that we squander.

Because wealth isn't created by corporations or banks, it's created by people and given to corporations and banks. We have to reclaim that truth, that understanding of reality and act on it. So how much of your unnecessary spending are you willing, to redirect? You know? How much of your surplus wealth are you ready to, entrust to your community?

And if you don't have a community that you can trust, then you need to start building trust because when we trust each other, we build more than wealth, we build our future. See, this is what I've always meant about how you yourselves, in the West are being colonized by corporations. They approach your own pockets, your own bank accounts, your own salary, the same way that they will approach, say, a mine in The Congo. You possess vital resources that they want and they'll mine it right out of your pockets. They'll mine it right out of your wallet.

They do to you individually what they do to the global South collectively. They take your resources and make themselves rich and make you poor even though their wealth is literally your money. They've got you thinking that they're the rich and powerful even though they're the ones who are needy for your cash. Even though collectively you're able to mobilize tens of millions of dollars in less than a week. No.

Just like how a famine isn't actually about the lack of available food, our poverty isn't actually about a lack of available money. We have the money, we just don't organize it right. We don't mobilize it right and we don't spend it right. So we need to start spending, we need to start saving, we need to start organizing, we need to start mobilizing our money for ourselves and stop letting them just dangle some shiny new movie in front of our faces or some bells and whistles on some new device dangle that in front of our faces, while they pick our pockets. We need to claim ownership of our money.

You need to claim ownership of your money, that money that they want so badly. I don't think you understand just how badly they want your money. They're willing to spend millions upon millions of dollars on advertising and marketing just because they know that if they spend that money on advertising and marketing, they're gonna be able to mesmerize you, and they'll get much more out of your pocket, than they've had to spend trying to get that money out of your pocket. So they'll spend money to get it out of your pocket because they know they'll get more in the end. At the end of the day, the reality is as much as we complain, about the system, we are funding it.

We the public are the biggest financiers of our own oppression, of our own dispossession, of our own exploitation, and of our own subjugation. We provide the fuel for that system. And again, I'm not talking about taxes. No. That you're compelled to pay taxes.

I'm talking about the failure to organize our own money, organize our own spending, organize our own savings in ways that can actually solve our collective problems. Look, the people who put in millions of dollars to make that Barbie movie, they had a problem. When they put that money in, they were basically placing a bet. They bet that people would be willing to not only pay off the money that they had invested, they'd actually pay them exorbitant profits on top of that and you did. Collectively, you did.

Collectively, you solved their financial problems. You paid off their debt, but you don't collectively solve your own collective problems, your own collective financial problems, even though you absolutely can. We absolutely can. I told you before the Global North is reversing roles with the Global South. You're already seeing it.

Your countries are gonna become so called third world countries. It's already happening in Europe and it's happening in many places inside The United States. So you need to start learning, some of the strategies that the people in the Global South have used for, decades in order to survive. Your rugged individualism of the West, it won't take long before that turns into cannibalism if you don't learn some new strategies, believe me. Again, this is why you need to start identifying with, associating with, connecting with those of us in communities in the global South that have successfully persevered through colonization come out the other side, come out the other side with strength and with resilience because that's a hole, that you're just now entering.

And if you don't have solidarity with each other, and if you don't have solidarity with us, well, I don't think you're gonna make it. Your government isn't gonna help you. Your Your government isn't gonna help you, any more than, your government helped us. They're not there to help you. They're not there to help you any more than they were here to help us.

Your government will tell you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps meanwhile you're barefoot. And then some company will come along trying to sell you boots with the straps sold separately. And the politicians are all shareholders in that company. That's what your government is. That's how they are.

That's how they operate. So no, we need to do for ourselves. We need to pool our resources instead of give them away to pay off corporations debts and executive salaries and so on. We need to pool our resources and organize our spending ourselves to uplift our own communities. Organize our spending ourselves to lift up our own communities.

We need to turn off the tap of impulse spending and channel that money to ending our collective misery. Yes, buy ourselves out of slavery, buy our way out of bondage, buy our way out of bondage by just not continuing to pay for the chains that they tie around our necks because that's what we're doing. Stop paying for comforts and conveniences, stop paying for temporary relief, momentary escape from the drudgery, the drudgery of the existence that they have sentenced you to, and instead pay for your own permanent liberation.