While nothing serious, we made a trip to the doctor for Smallsteps this morning, to have some tests taken. We were going to do it tomorrow, but with my wife and I being so busy at work and us having private health insurance for Smallsteps, it was far easier to do it on a Sunday.

Thankfully everything was okay, but we wanted to make sure as due to her having hypoglycemia for the first couple weeks of her life, she is at a higher risk for diabetes. She was being monitored through a special study that was designed to follow a group of at risk children from birth through to adulthood, but we got a letter that it won't continue because they couldn't secure government funding. We checked and the funding they needed was a pittance, but I suspect that it is going to be more common, as they will look to cut costs in other areas, as so much has been diverted to Covid-related expenditure.

They are going to have to cut costs for the next few decades.

You can print all the money through taking on debt all you want, but eventually that has to be repaid one way or another. The amounts that have been borrowed against the future are extreme in pretty much every country on earth and the "claw back" has already started, but the cuts are being made in less obvious areas, like diabetes research.

As you can probably imagine, prevention of health issues is far more valuable for wellbeing, but far less valuable for generating profits on illness - or the threat of illness. Healthy people don't make money for pharmaceutical companies, the massive amount of various insurance revenues, or the transfer of wealth from tax payer, through the healthcare system and into the pockets of these companies channeled through government subsidy and rebate.

So, while my taxes haven't decreased, where they are being spent has changed from a service that helped my daughter and others, possibly improving their health outcomes, quality of life and leading to findings and breakthroughs that could potentially affect millions of people globally - to reacting to Covid. But, this is happening in multiple areas simultaneously, with all kinds of services being pared back in order to divert the funds elsewhere.

Obviously, this is a complex issue, but due to the complexity and the sheer amount of money that is being handled (poorly), it means that there are going to be gaping black holes that will be taken advantage of by those who can, which isn't the average taxpayer, it is the corporations. The amount of wealth that is being extracted is immense, but what is the most incredible, is due to the way it is being managed, the wealth is going to be extracted for years to come.

For example, I have written a few articles about the largest shareholders of most of the major tech conglomerates, singling out the two largest managed funds in the world, Blackrock and Vanguard. They are the major investors in Facebook, Twitter, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon...

But did you know:

And you thought Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were in competition??

What about three of the largest Insurance companies in the world?

But they are US companies...

This is Allianz, a German company

I can't be bothered posting any more of these, but I think you get the idea. Well, a couple more, because for example, Blackrock and Vanguard don't appear in all of them, there are also major investors like Goldman Sachs and Fidelity getting in on the game:

oh.

Fierce competition??

Buying a car?

Vanguard owns 2.28% and Blackrock 1% of the Volkwagon Auto Group also.

You see how this game works?

While not a monopoly, the investment pool is far, far narrower than most people suspect and most of the diversity is actually not diverse, since they too are partially owned by the same small groups of investors. It is a massive circlejerk that provides all kinds of goods and services under the guise of alternatives and competition, whilst not actually competing at all, as no matter what consumer decisions you make, it all flows back into the same set of pockets.

A Finnish example?

Oh, you might say - "but Nokia is dead" - until you realize that their largest division is network infrastructure.

But you get the truth from the news you trust:

These very deep and wide pockets have stake in pretty much every company that we use globally and cover necessary services like insurance, nearly all consumer goods and services, telecommunications - as well as all major social platforms. But of course, there can't possibly be any conflicts of interest or collusion going on that could affect the decisions of governments and consumers in order to increase profits and control.

The future looks bleak

Until this kind of centralization is torn away, the incentives are going to continue to monopolize under the directive for profit and what is going to suffer is human wellbeing. You see, while humans do invest into these companies, the companies themselves are entities that are soulless and algorithm-based processes that are only concerned with increasing profits, regardless of the impacts it has on society. And because of the sheer pervasiveness and investment mass already with a stranglehold on every industry on earth, the only way to soften the grip is to create new value in products and services that have ownership that cannot be centralized, without it also being able to be abandoned.

That is where crypto and blockchain steps in, but don't expect that mass adoption is going to automatically lead to better outcomes, because it is going to depend on what we as consumers support and use - if we keep doing what we are doing, we will end up exactly where we already are.

You can take the elevator to different floors, but you are still in the same building.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]