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tim wrote: Thu Oct 22, 2026 8:29 am

The Hidden Looting by the Rich leads to the Physical Looting by Those Who've Been Looted

CHARLES HUGH SMITH

Those who aren’t delighted to further enrich the moneylenders in the temple with their labor quit in disgust, while those with zero scruples and limitless greed devote every waking hour to enriching the most avaricious few for their share of the loot.

Major Ken Paxton Donor Endorses James Talarico in Texas
Published Oct 22, 2026 at 04:04 AM EDT

Thomas J. Henry, a prominent attorney and the founder of the personal injury law firm Thomas J. Henry Law, which has offices in five cities in Texas, announced his endorsement of Talarico in a video posted on X on Wednesday night.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Sep 19, 2026 1:53 pm

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2023 9:49 pm Also, during the early stages of this breakdown, there were economic losers and beneficiaries. The beneficiaries were the corporations who could cookie cutter their outlets across a previously interesting and varied landscape, producing the forlorn, bland, and ugly architectural landscape that now exists across America. McDonalds perhaps being one of the first and best examples.

To capture this concept correctly, I would have needed to get the McDonald's, a tattoo parlor, a hole in the wall church, a dollar store and a billboard for a personal injury lawyer all in one photo. It wouldn't have been too difficult except that traffic was moving (slowly).

The Hidden Looting by the Rich leads to the Physical Looting by Those Who've Been Looted
This is Essay #3 in the series Truth Be Told.
CHARLES HUGH SMITH
19 HOURS AGO

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That The Hidden Looting by the Rich leads to the Physical Looting by Those Who’ve Been Looted is so obvious that it is strictly taboo in the polite circles of those tasked with protecting The Hidden Looting by the Rich behind the cliches of “market forces” and the many carefully obscured mechanisms of state subsidies, tax giveaways, insider trading, market manipulation, and so on.

An astute reader summarized the dynamic succinctly: “Looting by the rich is hidden, silent, not criminalized while the physical looting by the poor is overt, thunderous and criminal.”

Note that “the market” doesn’t dictate what is legal and what is criminalized; the state dictates what is legal and what is criminal. This establishes the second truth which is taboo in the status quo:

“The Market” and the State are one system. Every claim that these are separate is self-serving misdirection / artifice. Consider the difference between what happens when Average Citizen contacts their state representative or a regulatory agency, and what happens when Tech Bro Billionaire contacts their state representative or a regulatory agency with an offer to fund $10 million of campaign contributions if various regulations and tax codes are amended.

The truth is “the state” is a “market” for corruption and self-service in which the “market” is hidden from view: The auction that dictates what’s legal and what’s criminal is won by the highest bidders, who are of course the wealthiest and most powerful few, who then dictate state policies that expand and protect their wealth and power by looting the powerless many.

French economist Frederic Bastiat famously described this dynamic of “market” and “state” generating legal plunder, i.e. legal looting. Once the purchase of state power for the purposes of self-enrichment becomes normalized--what I term moral decay leading to moral collapse--it becomes more profitable to pursue legalized looting than actually create authentic value.

This is why we see extreme wealth-power inequality increasing while the quality of goods and services plummets. There are no “rewards” for the richest few to risk capital by increasing the quality of goods and services when political influence is both cheap and risk-free: just “buy” a tax break or subsidy or regulations that protects your lavish state contracts from competition and expands the power of your monopoly / cartel.

The reason why this dynamic of legalized looting by the rich expands until it breaks the status quo is that it is self-reinforcing. Those who aren’t delighted to further enrich the moneylenders in the temple with their labor quit in disgust, while those with zero scruples and limitless greed devote every waking hour to enriching the most avaricious few for their share of the loot.

Politicians who don’t kiss the ring of Tech Bro Billionaires to raise millions of dollars in campaign contributions lose elections, as once again those with any shred of integrity self-select out of the political / “market” cesspool.

As Bastiat put it, the status quo boils down to “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen”. What’s seen is an endless spew of paeans to the glories of “the market,” scrappy innovators creating new products in garages that generate billions in wealth, blah-blah-blah, or paeans to the glories of the state protecting us from the evils of exploitation, blah-blah-blah, all of which is the necessary cover story to cloak the market-state system of legalized looting by the rich and the criminalization of any blowback by those being looted.

We’re being looted in so many ways that are not seen until the scales fall from our eyes. Billionaires manage to exploit tax shelters intended for the middle class to protect millions of dollars in gains from any taxes. Inflation in goods and services that is gutting the bottom 90% doesn’t affect the wealthy, as they spend an inconsequential share of their wealth and income on essential goods and services.

As in any conflict staged for show, “the market” is glorified as the saint and “the state” is demonized--or on other stages, the roles are reversed. Neither staging reflects the truth: there is only one system, and the only possible output of this morality-free system of self-enrichment is the terminal expansion of looting until the system breaks down.


This--


leads to this:

Legal looting by the rich--who have eliminated both the moral foundations of society and avenues of Redress as impediments to the ceaseless expansion of their wealth and power--leads to uncontrollable looting by those who have been looted--Retribution. I address all these dynamics in my book Investing In Revolution. If you can find another book that explains everything I explain, by all means buy that book. But there is no other such book to my knowledge.

Higgenbotham wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2026 12:30 am As the new dark age tightens its grip, the general trend be for leadership to appear to worsen and for more frequent changeover of leaders.

In the new dark age, will the general trend will be for leadership to appear to worsen and for more frequent changeover of leaders?

AI Overview

Based on historical patterns of societal contraction—often metaphorically called "Dark Ages"—the general trend does indeed lean toward volatile leadership changeovers and a perceived decline in leadership quality, driven by systemic collapse rather than just bad actors.

When complex civilizations fracture, the institutional guardrails that ensure peaceful, competent transitions disappear. This creates two distinct dynamics:

1. Accelerated Leadership Changeover (The Velocity of Chaos)

During periods of structural decline, leadership becomes highly unstable.

Loss of Legitimacy: When a government can no longer provide security, basic infrastructure, or economic stability, it loses its "mandate."
The Survival Loop: Leaders are frequently overthrown, assassinated, or replaced because they cannot solve systemic crises (like resource scarcity or climate shifts).

Historical Example: During the Crisis of the Third Century in the Roman Empire, a 50-year period of near-collapse, there were over 26 claimaints to the imperial throne. Most were military generals who ruled for only a few months before being assassinated.

2. The Appearance of Worsening Leadership (Perception vs. Reality)

Leadership often looks significantly worse during a dark age, though this is a mix of actual skill degradation and impossible circumstances.

The Impossible Job: A leader in a golden age looks brilliant because they are managing abundance. A leader in a dark age looks incompetent because they are managing unavoidable triage. Even a political genius cannot fix a collapsed supply chain or an depleted agricultural base.

Shrinking Talent Pools: As centralized education, bureaucracy, and institutional knowledge break down, the pool of trained, strategic leaders shrinks.

Shift to Warlordism: Survival replaces governance. Complex, forward-thinking diplomacy is replaced by short-term, transactional, and often brutal rule (warlordism). To the citizens, this looks like a massive regression in quality and morality.

The Cyclical Exception

While fragmentation causes high turnover early on, it eventually bottoms out into a different kind of stability: highly localized, stagnant feudalism. Once power shrinks down to small, manageable territories (like a local warlord or a fortified manor), a brutal but durable form of local leadership often emerges, ending the rapid cycle of changeovers until a new integration phase begins.

CYPRESS, Texas - There’s something missing in this conservative Houston suburb on the eve of early voting next Monday: Visible support for Republicans, particularly the embattled Senate candidate.

In the sprawling Bridgeland subdivision, yard signs appear to favor Democratic state Rep. James Talarico over his rival, GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton. The signage gap matches recent polling, which shows Talarico, a four-term state representative, either tied or several points ahead of Paxton, who has never lost an election in 25 years.

Nowhere is that more clear than on Bridgeland’s Inspiration Drive, where voters on both sides of the political aisle say that Paxton, dogged by corruption scandals and accusations of infidelity, has lost support from a crucial segment of the electorate: suburban women. Interviews with these female voters, who tend to outvote men and therefore carry extra sway in growing communities, reveal a combination of apathy toward Paxton’s candidacy and an active shift by some conservatives toward his Democratic opponent.

Senator Warren: So under our current law the teacher is going to pay her taxes, year after year, to help support her community and to help support the nation. And Jeff Bezos gets to laugh at her for paying full freight while he keeps his money, and even builds his personal wealth, without paying a penny more in taxes.

Our tax code basically lets billionaires like Bezos opt out. It says: once you accumulate enough wealth, you don’t have to help pay to run this country anymore.

Jeff Bezos is a billionaire grifter–and so are all the rest of these hugely wealthy people who pay next to nothing in taxes.

Amazon employees say they were told to work around corpse: report
by: Rob Taub

Posted: Apr 16, 2026 / 10:12 PM CDT
Updated: Apr 16, 2026 / 10:12 PM CDT

(NewsNation) — Amazon workers in Oregon allege the company told them to continue to work while an employee lay dead in the facility, according to reporting from The Western Edge.

On April 6, a 46-year-old worker collapsed and died on the second level of an Amazon warehouse.

The worker was a “tote runner,” according to employees. Tote runner jobs involve gathering stacks of yellow plastic bins as tall as a person, loading them onto a cart and hauling them up and down the long corridors of the warehouse for delivery to other workers, who will fill them with the goods that go onto trucks.

Amazon worker told 911 coworker was ‘blue looking’

An employee who called for an ambulance told the dispatcher, “We have an associate here who I believe is probably dead. This person does have extensive blood coming from their head. They are very blue looking.”

Several employees acknowledged being instructed to continue fetching totes, picking items off shelves and loading them onto trucks for delivery as the man lay dead.