Neo Feudalism perpetuated by the New Billionaire Class. Bill Gates and Jeff Bozos philanthropist or impostors ?Donovan Reynolds: Independent Writer.

 

Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have two things in common: they are both billionaires and they are both philanthropists. However the greedy 21st century capitalist experiment has taught us to be sceptic of billionaire philanthropists as wolves dressed up in generous sheep’s clothing.

 According to the Billionaire Index the former has a net worth of US102.5 billion dollars and the latter is valued US 137.2 billion. In November 2021 Bloomberg .com reported that Jeff Bezos charitable fund donated US $100 million dollars to 32 recipients from 21 States in the United States; most of the money went to housing charities.

Since 1994 Bill and Melinda Gates have become global trend-setters among the billionaire class. During this period they have given a whopping total of US $50 billion in charity through the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. According to the foundation, $912 million of this money is earmarked to fight diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in the global south.

How therefore do these seemingly well-meaning techno- billionaires fit the mould of Neo Feudalists?

 A definition of neo-feudalism describes policies of governance, economy, and public life, similar to many feudal societies. Among the tenets of this is unequal rights and the removal of legal protections from common people in favour of a new nobility of the billionaire class, the dominance of societies by powerful and elite groups and the return of ‘serf- lordship’ relationships. These modern day billionaires don’t own armies and definitely won’t extract knight’s fees for their large assets but they bear striking similarities.

 Yanis Varoufakis posits that contemporary capitalism has evolved into a feudal-like structure of economies and societies which he refers to as techno-feudalism.  The five biggest tech companies – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook – are valued at US7.5 trillion dollars (Wall Street journal 2020), this is more than Japan’s Gross Domestic Product. We at Kingstonmouth.com believe that we are entering a new phase of capitalism that could produce economic feudal Lords wielding unbridled power that has never been experienced before. On closer examination, these techno billionaires are not squeaky clean and kind in the way that the establishment media and capitalist outriders present them to us. We know for example that, Bill Gates has never planted a carrot and must look like  a right mug in a pair of wellies. Yet this has been on the largest land grabbing spree in the US since modern history.

 The smell of gun powder or the cracking of the whip may not accompany Bill Gates on his land acquisition pursuits. However, he has used his money to acquire unquestioned purchase of 242 thousand acres of farm land in the US valued at 690 million dollars.

This makes Bill Gates the largest owner of farm land in the US which ought to ring alarm bells for food security in the US. However, the purchase has gone by unchallenged by the US anti-trust laws. In 1862 the Homestead Act passed in the US forcing Native American Indians into reservations as they were chased off their lands by mainly white settlers who received up to 160 acres of free lands in Western America. This kick-started a North American variant of Neo-feudalism and paved the way for a new category of mainly white male dominated  land owning class.

 In a country built on forced slave labour and stolen native lands this dubious acquisition of land by this  neo- Feudalists sums up the new American dream “from money bags to more riches” . The US Congress and Senate has  turned a blind eye to a grave  economic injustice. It is by far the biggest monopolistic land grab the Billionaire class in modern Americas history.

 Likewise, it comes as no surprise that during the COVID pandemic, Bill Gates the philanthropist was the biggest global voice on this, despite not having a degree in virology.

A close examination of Bill Gates business activities reveals that the Microsoft giant has used his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation questionably despite their public display of generosity. Their philanthropy is admirable but critics regard is a   platform from which they wield enormous influence on the governing and establishment class.

The Foundation has enabled them to legally evade tax and acquired billions of dollars’ worth of government and private contracts, new business acquisitions and increased investments.

There is no doubt that the soft power that they wield is from the capitalist hand book whether it meets the criteria of a Neo- Feudalists is debatable. However, their new land grabbing exercise, unchecked by the US government, surely raises alarm bells and could be viewed as threat to US food security.

The company Microsoft has also been the subject of numerous lawsuits by several governments and other companies for unlawful monopolistic practices. In 2004, the European Union found Microsoft guilty in the European Union Microsoft competition case. Additionally, EULAs for Microsoft programs are often criticized as being too restrictive.

  Furthermore, investigative journalist Tim Schwab has accused Gates of using his contributions to the media to shape their coverage of him in order to protect his public image.

 In contrast. Jeff Bezos is no mild mannered billionaire like the Gates; he is a feisty money man who often describes his staff as stupid. He is the second richest billionaire in the world and is the owner of Amazon and the influential Washington Post newspaper - these constitute a mere 1% of his assets.

Jeff Bezos has money for serval lifespans of ordinary millionaires. His charitable contributions are jaw dropping. According to the New York Times Newspaper Jeff has given away US 2.1 billion so far.

We know for example that among the charities that benefit from him annually is one that feeds 13.8 million food insecure American household for a month –quite impressive isn’t it? He is able to give generously because Amazon is American multinational technology company which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It is the largest Internet-based store in the world by total sales and market capitalization.

We are drawn to the attention of Jeff Bezoz nefarious tax dodging by the key news home page of Tuesday the 8th of June 2021. The cavorting billionaire’s such as George Soros and Jeff Bezos were not paying their fair share of federal income tax commensurate to what they are earning.  

The report went on to outline that these billionaires were pursuing dodgy tax avoidance strategies that were illegal, such as reductions for charitable donations .The article reported specifically that Jeff Bezos founder and departing CEO of Amazon paid no income tax at all in 2007 and 2011. The matter came to a crescendo  when members of the patriotic millionaires held a peaceful federal tax filing protest day outside of Jeff Bezos apartment to demand that he pay his fair share of taxes. However, despite calls from the Democratic Party to levy a rich Tax on billionaires led by Bernie Saunders and Senator Elizabeth Warren the US president Joe Biden is failing to act.

In recent times Amazon has been criticized by a New York Times report that workers at Amazon warehouses face 10 hour shifts on their feet.  

Federal regulators recently ordered Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy to testify in the government's investigation of Amazon Primes working practices. They reject the company’s counter complaint that the executives are being unfairly harassed in the probe of the popular streaming and shopping service.

 Amazon has been accused by the UK Guardian newspaper of treating staff like robots; it emerged that ambulances had been called out 600 times to the on-line retailer’s UK warehouses in the past three years. A Freedom of Information request to ambulance services from the GMB union revealed 115 call-outs to Amazon’s site near Birmingham in the United Kingdom.

Workers at the Amazon Warehouse have said that the constant pressure to hit performance targets makes it difficult for them to take time out to use the bathroom or get a drink during their shift. At least 1,800 people work year-round at the Rugeley warehouse and more than 2,000 more can work there during the Christmas period.

 Amazon has been accused by the New York Times of funding   climate change denial groups including the Competitive Enterprise Institute and politicians denying climate change including Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe.

 The Jeff Bezos owned company also spend an average of14 million US dollars yearly employing and average of 113 lobbyists.  Amazon.com focuses its lobbying money on the United States Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Reserve .Amazon lobbies the United States federal government and state governments on multiple issues such as the enforcement of sales taxes on online sales, transportation safety, privacy and data protection and intellectual property.

We know for sure that the generously giving philanthropist Bezos has been greedily breaking the law around the globe in an attempt to expand his business empire.

Additionally, Good Morning America bough to our attention in May 2018 that the selling of counterfeit products by Amazon has attracted widespread notice. This has included some products sold directly by Amazon itself and marked as "ships from and sold by Amazon.com"

Similarly, in August 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that they had found more than 4,000 items for sale on Amazon's site that had been declared unsafe by federal agencies, had misleading labels or had been banned by federal regulators. Correspondingly, In August 2020, an appeals court in California ruled that Amazon can be held liable for unsafe products sold on its website. A Californian had bought a replacement laptop battery that caught fire and caused her to sustain third-degree burns.

India is practising a hybrid form of capitalism which is in part protectionist. It is difficult for larger external Conglomerates to enter the country through the back-door without being caught. In December 2019, the Competition Commission of India suspended an approval for the strategic takeover of Future Retail and levied a penalty of Rs 200 crores on Amazon.

  The Indian regulators discovered that Amazon intended to acquire a local company to take advantage of foreign investment relaxations and not publicly owing to its interest in the company. Amazon appealed this order in the Company tribunal. Later in March 2022, the CCI defended its order in court citing misrepresentation on the part of Amazon

According to a report released by Fair Tax Mark in 2019, Amazon is the worst offender of tax avoidance, having paid a 12% effective tax rate between 2010 and 2018, in contrast with 35% corporate tax rate in the US during the same period. Amazon countered that it had a 24% effective tax rate during the same period.

 But the great philanthropist tax dodging is not confined to the US. The Independent newspaper reported in May  2012 that Amazon's tax affairs were investigated in China, Germany, Poland, South Korea, France, Japan, Ireland, Singapore, Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, United States, and Portugal.

The kind versus cruel billionaire debate will be the cat herding exercise of the 21st century. Likewise, distinguishing the difference between a billionaire and philanthropists these days is similar to identify the difference between cobras and rattle snakes; they both look good from afar but are a danger within striking distance.

Never-the- less, the economic plunder by the techno- billionaire class has now become a way of life too difficult to bear. They are the new poster boys of Neo Feudalism -  too rich to be straight and too powerful to pay their fair share of taxes.

 They control Governments officials and own the establishment press. They give themselves title as Philanthropist to re -brand and sanitize their image. Be careful of the billionaire dressed up as an “Economic Knight in shining armour” If you tear away his mask what you may find is a greedy tax evading demon.

"Taxation is the price which civilized communities pay for the opportunity of remaining civilized" asserts Albert Bushnell Hart. We at Kinstonmouth.com believe in levying a global wealth tax on rich billionaires. The billionaire class are natural climate change deniers who are not in favour of the green New Deal and are opposed to a the fair distribution of wealth. So it is imperative for us to have a wealth tax in place to close the gap between the rich and the poor.

We believe that a global wealth tax supported by the UN would refocus our attention to the dichotomy between the global super-rich techno feudalist and everyone else. We also envision that the money gained from this tax could fund a breakthrough innovation in sustainable energy technology which could drive down both greenhouse gas emissions and poverty, and bring economic benefits to all by stabilizing energy prices.

At Kingstonmouth.com out parting advice to Jeff Bozos and Bill Gates is simple Continue to give generously. However, we suggest in that you pay your fair share of Tax. Although, it seem such advice may well fall on deaf ears. Ann Smith recently jokingly remarked: “we may well see the rich millionaire class going to prison in our lifetime before the cavorting billionaires pay their fair share of tax”. Upon sensing  that her response had jolted me she climbed down sarcastically  by reassuring me that if it happened after my death she would have the news of it nailed to my gravestone.

Donovan Reynolds is CEO forKingstonmouth.com He is a trained Diplomat, Human Rights Activist, and a Communication Consultant. This article is edited by Ann Smith, a British Educator and Social Activist. Kingstommouth.com is a charitable organization that has been in existence for over nine years. We have an interest in Politics, Human Rights, and International Development Issues. Viewers wishing to comment on this article may do so at the space provided on this blog. Alternatively, they can contact us at kingstonmouth 63@ gmail.com or on our Twitter or Facebook Page.