A Former Mayor Told Us On a Zoom Call How She Experienced What I Call the Dictatorship of the Rich, Preventing Her From Doing Good Things

A law-making federal government and genuine democracy do not mix.

A former mayor of a small town told a very interesting story on a zoom call I was on recently. She told us how she experienced the way that what I call ‘the dictatorship of the rich’ works.

Right after being elected mayor she was informed by the town’s lawyer that she had sworn an oath to protect the laws, which meant that she could not advocate for any reform that was not consistent with the current laws. The problem, of course, is that the current laws are mostly laws that the rich have gotten, with their high-powered Big $ lobbyists, to serve the rich. Here’s how that problem played out in the mayor’s administration.

One day the mayor was informed that a cell phone company was going to erect a big cell phone tower in a location in the town that many people, very understandably, objected to being made ugly by its presence. The mayor naturally said there must be a public hearing on the matter first. The planning board members who were going to approve the cell phone tower were so angered by this that they resigned.

The public hearing did take place. This is what happened. A large number of lawyers from all of the nation’s big cell phone companies (“Can you hear me now?” and so forth) showed up and sat in the front row. Each of the lawyers testified that there was a federal law that said their companies could erect their cell phone towers anywhere they wished and that no local government had a right to prevent them from doing so. Period! The mayor and the townspeople had no say in the matter.

This is how our dictatorship of the rich works.

In an egalitarian genuine democracy, this is what would have happened instead.

First, there would have been a Local Assembly of Egalitarians or equivalent body by some other name, consisting of all the adults who lived or worked in the town and who were not known enemies of the Golden Rule and who wished to be a member of the Assembly and only such people, governing the town. Read about this in detail here.

This Local Assembly of Egalitarians would have been the sovereign power for the town. No higher body of government—no state or federal or national governmental body—could enact a law that people in the town had to obey. (Read here examples of people in history acting on this principle and rejecting the contrary “You must obey the highest governmental body” principle.)

If a majority of the members of the town’s Local Assembly said the cell phone tower would not be erected in a location where people didn’t want it erected, then it would not be erected there. Period!

It’s not complicated. It’s just that the rich don’t want this to happen.

Let’s make it happen. Here’s how you can help do that.

Note that the U.S. Constitution is ALL ABOUT creating a national government that has the power to over-rule the good people in a local community just as the former mayor described to us. And note the U.S. Constitution says not a single word about excluding advocates of class inequality from being in the government (in contrast to the much better 1865 Constitution of the state of Missouri that rightly excluded people who were pro-slavery from voting or being in the government.¹) This is one reason why we should not admire the Constitution; I discuss this further here and here.

Read here what makes a government legitimate.

1. A Google (AI) search provides this information: “Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, also known as the Disqualification Clause or Insurrection Clause, can disqualify individuals from federal or state office, including the presidency. This applies to those who have previously taken an oath to support the Constitution in a government role and subsequently engaged in insurrection or rebellion against it or aided its enemies. The clause essentially prevents officials involved in rebellion from holding future state and federal positions. Congress has the power to remove this disqualification with a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate.” Thus today’s billionaires and the people who support their right to be billionaires and thus have all the real power in society including the power to routinely and openly treat the have-nots like dirt (see 25 specific examples of this here) can vote and be in the government that the U.S. Constitution creates, as long as they didn’t previously take an oath to support the Constitution and subsequently engage in insurrection or rebellion or aid enemies against it. In other words the U.S. Constitution is just fine with having a fake democracy that is a dictatorship of the rich, which is in fact what we have.