A recent skirmish over the 1 percent’s feces is currently being worked out by the Florida state legislature.
One of the places that Jeff Bezos lives is a man-made island off the coast of Florida called Indian Creek Village. The island is predominantly populated by other billionaires and is colloquially known as the “Billionaire Bunker.” In fact, if you’re not a billionaire, it’s quite difficult to get in. The bridge from the mainland to the island is closed to the public and protected by armed guards and a sophisticated security system.
However, if the island is almost entirely cut off from the rest of humanity, the island’s inhabitants still seem intent on sharing one thing with members of the outside world: their piss and shit.
Indian Creek doesn’t have the underground infrastructure to deal with its own poop, so the solution it came up with was to funnel it through Surfside into a wider regional sewage system. Unfortunately, Surfside didn’t want the poop unless Indian Creek was willing to contribute $10 million to the community for future sewer system improvements. Indian Creek has referred to this request as “extortion.”
Remember back in 2008, curiously right after Obama was elected and the conservatives were really feeling their neo-confederate roots, all the Republicans in my neighborhood started passing “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” amongst themselves. For some reason, nobody ever bothers to read “Anthem” or get to the back half of “I, Robot” in these groups.
It’s not a small skill. For every filthy rich oligarch, living off the accrued labor of thousands of proles, there are a hundred hustlers and influencers and drop shippers and mid-level MLMers who sling just enough slop around to make ends meet. For every drop shipper, there are a hundred factory workers churning out consumerist crap at pennies on the retail dollar, so the drop shippers have something hock.
Being at the top of an empire of greed and exploitation is a full time job. It’s not all yacht cruises and prostitute orgies. You spend a bunch of time selling $10k glasses of water in the sweat tents of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. You spend a lot of time pissing out all that Ketamine while pretending to be the best Fortnite player on Earth.