We have all fallen for the big lie, or the big con. We have to have something but we don’t know what it is exactly, and this corporation has what we need. The big lie is the basis of consumerism.

We have all have a deep seated problem. That problem is, in one word, covetousness.

We all need the latest shiny object. We need to have the next best thing, the thing we can’t live without, the thing we need other people to see us with so that we can look like we have money.

We need to be envied, and we need to be approved. That’s not the right word but I can’t think of the word I need.

Corporations use that weakness against us. They show the perfect man, woman or couple with the thing they want us to buy. They show how much that thing brings fulfillment to their lives. They can’t stop smiling as the adore that thing. I’m sure they want us to think that their lives are now much more exciting because of that thing. Don’t you want that thing, too, so you can be just like them?

And all through most of our lives, we have fallen for it. We go out and buy that thing we think we need because the ad said that we need it. Then we regret buying it. It sits unused. It collects dust. It eventually gets tossed.

It goes deeper, because most of that time, we use a credit card to buy. So, not only did we buy it but we bought it with a device that makes us pay interest on that thing. We pay two different entities for the same thing. And we do it without thinking about the long term consequences.

I recently paid off something like $20,000 of credit card. I used a debt consolidation program, that gave me a loan after six months of making payments, which meant the debt was paid off sooner. It also meant I was going to be paying them for the next six years for that loan. After a few months, I looked at the interest rate and it was the same as a credit card. I paid the loan off in two months. I then canceled the four credit cards I had applied for because I didn’t want them. I had them to rebuild my credit, but then I had a lightbulb moment. How does it make sense that I need to get into debt in order to prove I can handle more debt? Why do I need to carry 30% of that available debt I have month to month to prove I can manage it? The credit card industry has a term for people who pay their balances every month: deadbeats. A deadbeat to them is someone who doesn’t want to pay interest on their purchases, someone who uses their credit responsibly.

This is part of the lie that we have believed. The credit score. We can pay it off over time, at a 30% interest rate. And it will help us get bigger, shinier things later on, with more credit, and more interest payments.

It gets worse.

Private equity got involved. And also shareholders via corporations.

Private equity has bought a lot of companies. They bought corporations across all spectrums of consumer goods people buy. Everything non-food product they make is disposable. They do not care about quality. Nothing lasts. Automobiles, appliances, phones, computers, shoes, clothing, everything is built to fall apart. They don’t care.

Corporations are just as bad. They only care about making their shareholders money. If profits are down, they will hear about it at the next shareholder meeting. This is all corporations traded on the stock market. They cut corners and use cheaper materials. Food producers use fillers and ultra processed ingredients that are slowly killing us to make products.

They got greedy. The products got worse, prices went up. Automobiles use technology gadgets in their cars to hide how bad they are put together. People kept buying, profits kept rising. But now people are looking closely at what they are buying, the quality and how long their lifespan. The corporations thought that our covetousness was insatiable, and that they would always be able to exploit it.

We need to exit the system they designed, the fiat currency used for commerce and the rules they wrote. They paid politicians to pass lax regulations. The corporations got the politicians to appoint company executives to the FDA and other government agencies to streamline the process. They set the market up so that they can accumulate wealth, they being the cabal of billionaires that really pull the marionette strings of the politicians.

The only solution I see is that we stop playing their game by the rules they set. We bypass their rules and enact commerce amongst ourselves and neighbors. I don’t even know if that is possible but I honestly think it may be necessary. The economy might collapse because of the greed of these private equity firms and corporations. They will be bailed out with more of our money while we are left fighting to survive, probably in a literal sense.