Can money be made in MLM (Multi-level Marketing)? Yes, but only for the top 1% who join in the very beginning.
Who am I? I am a woman who made this post because of my brief experience in MLMs and I am someone who wants to see her friend out of an MLM once I found out the truth.
Because my friend is completely brainwashed by World Financial Group, an insurance-based MLM, I'd like to share everything I learned trying to convince her to get out of a pyramid-shaped company that relies on recruits to make the majority of their money. Perhaps this can help you or a friend. If so, it is worth all of effort for me. I love my friend very much, just like you love yours. Let's share the real information of what MLMs do to impoverished communities through facts.
Scroll down for government article links on MLMs and why 99% of people in them lose money.
The way a pyramid is shaped means that only the top 1% in the pyramid make money. In order to be in the top 1%, typically you have to join an MLM in the first year. Here's a fact: World Financial Group began in 2011. Ummm...it’s 2020 right now. If you join WFG, not much is going to happen for you now. WFG began too long ago to make money in it today for new recruits, but they need recruits to keep money funneling to them for the top 1%.

In this review, I am going to use government based articles to explain why this setup at WFG and MLMs in general are a very bad idea of nearly everyone involved.

The information in this post includes answers to why MLMs are immoral, target minorities populations, and exploits people for money, and how MLMs breed poverty in already poverty-stricken communities (Latinos & African Americans). I mention race here because racial bias is important to consider when investing MLMs. I am going to show you valid points on why, with a foundational basis on math and facts to explain this to you, but I’m going to give you my personal story and thoughts as well. You should read the links from government websites to get the full picture on MLMs and World Financial Group, Transamerica, and all other MLMs = is all the same pyramid shaped system.

I’m going to demonstrate the moral point, that all pyramid-shaped MLMs are immoral and exploitative, even with WFG, who sells insurance policies, which is supposed to be a helpful benefit, right? Like my WFG friend tells me, "you're so confused. We help so many people. I know all about pyramids. They teach us all about pyramids."

My Background in MLMs:
My ex’s father was an MLM expert in the company MonaVie (2008). We will call him H. In the past, I used to be able to google H and easily find information from his name and his success, but it is like he disappeared from the internet. I used to admire H a lot. He was an African American man, tall, skinny, and very educated. He used to be homeless, but got into MLMs and other businesses, making a lot of money later. I went to his conferences for MonaVie with his 20's age son, and I recall he held his son a spot higher up in the company bracket so that his son could begin selling with a solid downline from recruits. From his son's words, H made approximately $300,000 per month for having people underneath him in an MLM. I was impressed because I thought MLMs were amazing if someone could make that much money.
When I looked up H's website, he charged $500 per phone call for his advice. I thought, in my early twenties, "Wow, this must be a smart man to charge that much for advice." Also, H was an engineer, which required a level of understanding in science and math beyond my scope. I remember listening to H's talks and he was a gifted speaker and dreamer ... he had a way with people and he recruited a lot of people beneath him. H was in the top 1% and made elite status in the MLM company. What H and other did not tell you is that no one except the first people that joined ever made the kind of money H made, not even close, despite all of the conferences he had in people signing up as new recruits.
Reflecting on H and what I know now, I am pretty disappointed that he knew how this worked, but still found it just fine to make all of these dreamers under him purchase products and lose money for his gain. It's a greedy world for the top MLM people.

MLMs will never work unless you joined in the very very early stages.

I almost joined an MLM 3x! I know, it's sad....
The last time it happened I was in a Chipotle getting lunch and surrounded by mostly men in business suits. One African American man approached me and we had a discussion about business. He ended up buying me a book (it was actually a good book) and that made our connection. Then, he tells me that someone higher up in the business, who made a lot of money, explained to him that he can change his life if he follows this system in Amway. It is a very touching story.
Soon enough, and some Zoom calls later, I have to pass this reflective test and questionnaire to prove that I am someone that has the motivation and drive to be mentored by him. I was supposed to feel honored when I passed. After the passed first test, I am about to attend a meeting where everyone is going to clap for me because I passed the first step into this organizational pyramid called Amway....
Facts: 99.9% lost money in Amway. Check out the government article, first link.
My Amway mentor had a construction business and that was how he was doing well financially. there is no way he was able to leave Amway and retire on his benefits from the MLM. Despite people saying he was about to retire from Amway and how well he was doing, he was probably too ashamed to admit he spent 10 years and all of his extra time thinking he was going to retire early because of Amway. I also question that supposedly rich man in his story that he could have racially targeted this person to him a worker and slave to Amway for losses, not gains....
I ended up googling Amway and found another man wrote a book on how Amway scammed him out of his life savings, despite being a top agent and never seeing any of the funds the top agents promoted. Everyone thought he was successful below him, but the truth was that he was in a lot of debt.
Since all pyramid-shaped business models in MLMs work the same way with building a business based on recruits and the products purchased, below will be examples why the MLM pyramid model (**which is in all MLMs) is not a moral business model.
Let me explain.... and please chime in if I said anything incorrect, you wonderful reddit people.

All MLMs are setup similarly; it’s a pyramid shape. If anything is a pyramid shape, it needs money from the bottom to funnel up to the top. "You find X people, and those people find X people."
MLMs often target minorities, single moms, and uneducated populations. They want recruits from every sector, but they target vulnerable populations.
MLMs need recruits to keep the pyramid functioning, but it only gives big gains to the top 1% who first joined.
MLMs have a product or service, but make most of their money through recruiting.
MLMs have a product or service that their “agents/contractors/recruits” buy themselves.
MLMs give unrealistic expectations that if you join, saying, "you can make a lot of money if you work hard, but no guarantees."
MLMs convince you that you can be in the top 1% despite being at the bottom of the pyramid, but you never realize you’re at the bottom or how a pyramid works, but you think they have educated you....
MLMs make money by recruiting others.
MLMs have some kind of conferences or products they sell to you, usually motivational or spiritual in nature.
MLMs want you to think you can be your own entrepreneur, but the truth is you will never have your own LLC or S-Corp in a Pyramid. Basically, you cannot branch off into your own business because you have to be connected by a leg in the pyramid, but they want you to think you're an independent business owner to keep getting and convincing recruits.
MLMs target vulnerable populations, immigrant, and especially single mothers.
MLMs use some type of manipulative tactics and want to explain to you in person on how the finances are setup.
MLMs have some sort of cult-like nature to them, no matter how professional. They use manipulative tactics to pressure people into joining and FEAR is a motivator, especially pressuring people into life insurance policies …if something bad happens and you can secure your future, it guilt-trips people and the WFG agents think they are helping them and their finances, serving society and on a moral mission.
MLMs use psychological principles for agents to say, “if you work hard, you will more likely get results.” This is not true. A pyramid is a collapsable business model and only the top get the money and rewards. They prey on people's self-doubt, making you think you are the reason why you did not get results.
MLMs say now is the perfect time to join! Ever heard one say otherwise?
MLMs try to say they are not like the other MLMs to disguise the fact it's a pyramid. They say not all MLMs are bad. Not all MLMs are evil. Many MLMs are even promoted as charities or affiliated with helping charities.
They often say how terrible it is to work for employers when you can be your own entrepreneur and boss. The thing is, employers are actually better because they don't charge you to be an agent for them or make you purchase services from them. You get money from your hours worked and the employers assumes the risk of starting the company. Employers also don't make you lose 99% of your time and money.
They say many companies have paid training **to justify you to keep paying them money.**
MLMs, like World Financial Group, train you from the inside out. My friend at World Financial Group told me this herself. They do not let REAL financial advisors from universities come and talk about your MLM and how you can make money. She would not let me explain the model to a REAL financial advisor. She referred me to speak to her upline. It's always people in the group that "educate" you. My friend in WFG said, "People with PhDs don't know everything." I'm thinking....okay....that means we should not read scholarly articles that doesn't support your MLM goals?
With MLMs, when the person does not get results, it’s because of the pyramid shape, not because of their effort, but they sadly blame themselves. That is why many people to stay in MLMs because they need emotional support, confidence, or feel lonely and having their uplines gives them an endorphin boost. Also, feeling like they are serving a life's mission, sell insurance, is a motivator in itself.
MLMs do not supply you customers. Unlike working for a company like ATT, selling phones, MLMs make you hunt for them and use manipulative tactics (in the guise of you educating them or selling a product, but the goal is to get more recruits and people purchasing product/services).
The World Financial Group MLM takes uneducated people about finance and gives them training on how to educate the public on their finances, charging them money for training. Does it make sense that people without a finance degree to be educating others on what to do with their money? Hmmmm. I'd rather you be an actual finance person.
MLMs promote more than one income. It's important to have more than one income, in fact, people have many forms of income. Yes, that's because no one can support themselves on one income from am MLM where 99% are losing money,
MLMs convince you that wherever in the bracket you are starting, you can actually make good money if you work hard enough. FALSE. You can never work against the odds of a pyramid model and make the money of the people in the top 1% because in every MLM, 99% lose money since YOU NEED RECRUITS to make the most of your money. SCAM ALERT. RED FLAG!
WFG makes their agents eventually a financial advisor, helps them with licensing, and encourages them to get more recruits to feed other uneducated people for their uplines, specifically targeting minorities, thinking they are helping them secure their financial future being being more legitimate (but they reallllllly they disguise the fact that just need more recruits and trick themselves into thinking it's about the insurance).
MLMs say we are not a pyramid scheme, those are illegal! Yes, but even legitmate businesses are legal and immoral. For example, Scientology is a terrible scam (check out Netflix documentary on Scientology), but it is still legal. Just because something is legal, does not mean the pyramid is still immoral. They get to be a legitimate business because of the product they are selling; this is the government's loophole for them to exist.
MLMs love to say they are not a pyramid scheme despite their pyramid shape. How many places have you worked did you fight for your company's reputation on not being a scam?
MLMs give you things to say to people and others who are skeptical; it is implanted in their talks and programs. My friend has every defense for them in everything a skeptical person says, as if it discussed in their talks. She said her WFG friends get this from their friends, thinking they are part of a cult or scam. She says, "Not all pyramids are evil." I never said they were, but actually, they kind of are, depends on how you define evil I guess...
All MLMs mathematical odds are so against you, you’d have more luck winning the lottery to have the success of the people you admire in the company (or the success they claim to have, often lies unless in first ever to join). This truth is in the government articles linked below.
For the World Financial Group MLM, the average associate makes $18K per year salary. Is that what you want to make? Most don’t even reach that level and that’s poverty-level people!
For MLMs, the people who sign up leave. You can see this in the numbers, but they often leave out certain information. It is not a sustainable business model and every single MLM is proven to collapse.
Many MLMs change their name later and setup due to lawsuits of malpractice and not disclosing the real financial risk and loss upfront when new recruits join.
MLMs say things like, "Everything is a hierarchy in business" or "Everything is a pyramid," as an example to justify their pyramid, but still they never are REALLY educating you on the pyramid shape because they don't want you to know that you will make so little. They need you hooked and to hook other people for more recruits, the life of the top 1%...
MLMs do not share that if you get X person to find X people, that mathematically you’d have to go through so many cycles to make money, but the number of cycles it takes makes it impossible odds because it assumes ALL of those people who recruit won’t leave and that they actually make those goals. Most people are not sales people and quit, losing money. They give you visuals, making you think it's EASY, but it's not and odds are better to win the lottery.
World Financial Group silences people who speak out against their MLM.
MLMs And WFG breeds more racial poverty because it uses racial bias to target people who need money in low-income communities, especially people with financial problems, like African American and Latinos, and when these minorities spend money for insurance (an arguably helpful benefit because there are better insurance plans than WFG) they are exposed to MLMs recruiting them into WFG... and a high percentage of those recruited lose money due to company turnover rate, community competition, and the pyramid's setup..
USA Government Article Fact: 99% of people in MLMs lose money. This is a FACT.

See Government Articles Below for FACTS on MLMS:

Government Article on why 99% of people in MLMs lose money and probability odds, including breakdowns of finances for very popular MLM company agents:	https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/public_comments/trade-regulation-rule-disclosure-requirements-and-prohibitions-concerning-business-opportunities-ftc.r511993-00008%C2%A0/00008-57281.pdf When the Federal Trade Commission ruled in 1979 that Amway was not an illegal pyramid scheme—mainly because legitimate products were offered, the floodgates were opened and multi-level marketing programs began to proliferate. But what is often ignored is the fact that MLM programs are still pyramid schemes, modified by a variety of compensation systems that change the character of the pyramid, but not the essential pyramidal concept, motivation, and effects. The pyramid concept in MLM is seen in multiple layers of distributors, with lower level distributors contributing income to an ―upline who may have little to do with a given sale.
USA Federal Commission quotes from this website	http://skepdic.com/pyramid.html "A pyramid scheme is called a pyramid scheme because of the shape of a pyramid: a three dimensional triangle. If a pyramid were started by a human being at the top with just 10 people beneath him, and 100 beneath them, and 1000 beneath them, etc., the pyramid would involve everyone on earth in just ten layers of people with one con man on top. The human pyramid would be about 60 feet high and the bottom layer would have more than 4.5 billion people! Thus, in very short order, 10 recruiting 10 and so on would reach 10 billion, well in excess of the earth's population. If the entire population of earth were 5 billion and we all got involved in a pyramid scheme, the bottom layer would consist of about 90 percent of the planet, i.e., about 4.5 billion people. Thus, for 500 million people to be WINNERS, 4.5 billion must be LOSERS.
Scholarly Article on The Behavioral Economics of Multilevel Marketing....	MLMs and pyramid schemes partially overlap: Some MLM companies are pyramid schemes and some pyramid schemes consist of MLM companies. The resemblance between the two is made salient by the organizational structure: Pyramid schemes ask those individuals at the base of the pyramid to contribute to the higher levels, with the promise of a reward provided entirely from those levels below the individual. Similarly, MLMs offer the promise of profits to its consultants, but those profits stem from two streams: Commissions from direct sales and commissions from recruiting new clients. Indeed, one early article attempting to distinguish pyramid schemes from MLM models pointed out that “the investor's pecuniary benefit [of a pyramid scheme] derives primarily from his success in inducing additional persons to participate in the plan.” Most of the money made from every WFG agent is through recruits verses insurance sales. https://repository.uchastings.e du/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1176&context=hastings_business_law_journal
A Government Article from Federal Trade Commission	https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0065-multi-level-marketing-businesses-and-pyramid-schemes
World Financial Group Tries to Silence People Speaking Out	People at WFG created instagram accounts and harassed him to get his video taken down: https://Ωwww.youtube.com/watch?v=flugTRSTZoo
Other popular MLM FACTS	ALL MLM's work for the top 1% to make hundreds of thousands and the lowest to make nearly nothing. For example, 99% of all Arbonne distributors earned an average income of $87.36 annually whereas the top .04% earned an average income of $330,516.”
	Popular MLMs with the same results of 99% losing money: Mona Vie (2008.) 99% lost Nu Skin (2008) 99% lost Herbalife (2008). Arbonne Int’l (2007) Amway/Quixtar (2001)In every case, using the analytical framework described above, the loss rate for all of these MLMs ranged from 99.12% to 99.97%, with an average of 99.6% of participants losing money. On average, one in 238 actually profited after subtracting expenses, and 996 out of 1,000 lost money – to say nothing of the time invested. The most liberal assumptions that could reasonably be used in favor of the MLMs were applied to this table of MLM loss rates. Using the more realistic assumptions discussed in prior chapters, the average loss rate for these MLMs would have averaged no better than 99.9% - with less than one in 1,000 profiting significantly. Also, I would estimate that the number of new recruits who wind up receiving the promised substantial “residual income” held out at MLM opportunity meetings is no better than one in 25,000 recruits!
An MLM Documentary (Herbalife was a scam for decades.....)	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtc9Up2zF7w

“The loss rate for MLMs is at least 99%. This means that less than one in 100 MLM participants make a clear profit, and at least 99 out of 100 participants actually lose money! In fact, classic no-product pyramid schemes are ten to one hundred times as likely to result in profits as are product-based pyramid schemes, or MLMs (government article quote from above).”
“Promoters emphasize recruiting new distributors for your sales network as the real way to make money. Walk away. In a legitimate MLM program, you should be able to make money just by selling the product (government article quote from above).
My friend thinks WFG just has bad advertising; that is what they tell her inside and she believes it.

I know some of you are thinking …”that WFG is not the same! Not all MLMs are bad! We sell insurance and help people secure a financial future.”
My answer to that is it’s still bad. Why? Because you build funds for yourself and the top of the pyramid by recruiting to uneducated people who know less about finance than you when 99% of all of you fail. That means, more people in poverty lose money and I think that's pretty bad, especially now with more attention to minority communities and the Brianna Taylor trial ....we are trying to have more diversity in the workplace to support inclusion of all races to have better economic gains for minorities families and futures.

Remember, ask yourself this question: If I ONLY sold the product would I make a good enough living without recruits? If the answer is no, you should leave now.

An MLM peoples' odds of being successful are almost zero at this phase of entry into any MLM. The insurance sales is a cunning WFG tactic because it may help people stay around longer, but the business model of a pyramid is still there and it is still overall immoral and hurts minority communities. Why?
Poverty-stricken communities pay more money than they ever get out of it with an MLM. They also get their friends and family involved, a requirement for started in WFG, which means many people are affected and lose money by paying for trainings, licenses, and even the first few people YOU bring in when you start are actually commissions made for their upline person, not you.

Remember, the government fact is that 99% of people who join an MLM lose money! Facts are facts. Also, people can get better insurance policies with other companies than offered at WFG.
WFG is a VERY clever and cunning MLM by using insurance, but it is STILL AN MLM.
What MLMs want you to think:

They want you to think YOU can be one of the top successful people financially and that it is a HARD job and it is effort gives reward.
They want you to think the long and hardworking game is how you win…but the reality is that if you were not the first to join, you will always lose more money for your effort because that’s how the pyramid shape works.
Even with insurance, people at WFG cannot sustain an income only through their insurance sales. The longer you stay, the more money you bring them. When everyone recruits everyone, you create a lot of competition in the city, but even then the competition does not last because people cannot live on an unsustainable model. That means, they put more money in than they ever got it. It's a faulty business model and expectations of sales are unrealistic. Selling insurance takes a while and that's how they keep you going for longer, using that logic....
The government article linked above states, “As indicated above, one can do much better at the gaming tables in Las Vegas. And a person need not risk his or her social capital – treasured relationships with friends and family one has spent a lifetime cultivating. “
MLMs want you to think in the here and now. Just be present with life!
WFG wants people to think their company is different, like all MLMs…this company says they are helping people with life insurance policies, but the truth is that is how they can operate legally. WFG is cunning and smart, as they found the government loophole and that by selling services, the WFG MLM keeps going and the people involved think their dreams will come true, that they will achieve the success of those above them.
Another truth, WFG’s insurance commissions are lower than in other industries and keeps people in it for longer since building up clients from an insurance takes time…. The more time they hold recruits, the more successful they are at feeding the top and their uplines.
Ask someone from an MLM if they ONLY sold the product with no recruits, would they make a livable income? If the answer is no, they need to get out.

People at WFG cannot make enough money just selling ONLY the product, but through recruits. This is where your RED FLAG ALERT should go off. Remember, the government article above says, "Promoters emphasize recruiting new distributors for your sales network as the real way to make money. Walk away. In a legitimate MLM program, you should be able to make money just by selling the product."
When my friend told me she needed 10 people to watch her training to pass her exam at WFG, I went to help her. During me helping her, they switched the energy on me and tried to also recruit me. What was an innocent act of kindness on my part was no longer all that was wanted from me, but I was curious about the business and I researched and googled it more.
I got a lot of text messages from her after that to join her in conferences.
The successful people are the only ones successful. The people claiming success….well, it will never happen for them. A lot of people in their uplines lie and pretend they make more than they do, but they end up feeling ashamed they never got the riches for all of their hard work. It's a sad world we live in and since my friend cannot hear me, maybe one of you will instead.
Here are some text exchanges I had with my World Financial Group friend. I am in the green colored boxes:
I am telling her in this conversation about how MLMs are setup. Here below she refers me her upline guy so he can explain the things she cannot. This systemic approach also increases are chances of recruiting me. Notice how she says she can never lose money she never made? In an earlier conversation, she told me she pays for conferences, so right now she is only losing money by their affiliation.
I am asking her how much money she is making profit after her working there for one year. Do you see her response? She diverts from it and immediately says I am not being fair? She and I have had many very close conversations in the past but she will not reveal to me that she is making ....which is nothing at World Financial Group after 1 full year, which is probably blames on herself despite her working very hard in lots of trainings and meetings.
Below notice how she says I can \"loose time not making money and can't loose money from something she never set up?\" This makes no sense to me with her being involved with them for 1 total year.
Below I tell her I am not going to meet with her upline, but she does not notice what I said. Later she gets upset with me that I committed to meet him when I said I no longer wanted to (not pictured, so you have to take my word on it). Also, I think it's weird she has never been upset with me before in our friendship and she takes me not meeting him as a personal attack. Also, here she says she \"cannot solve everything today,\" probably a brainwashed technique on staying in the moment and being oblivious to the MLM pyramid. She says she knows \"the odds,\" too. Okay, let's go gamble and you have a kid...since our odds are higher there? She does not know the real odds of those she targets in minority populations for the pressured recruiting tactics and signup fees.
Below she thinks I have a \"negative view\" on MLMs. It's not about my opinion, but science. She is taught to think that some pyramids are good, like her MLM World Financial Group.
Which people would disagree? The ones in your MLM? Here she thinks it is wrong that I am going to write articles on people not joining MLMs and I have convinced myself it is a scam and calls me ignorant.
Here is says she's 38 and talks about all of her business knowledge. She told me throughout our texts, about 10x explaining that \"I am not stupid.\" I never once called her stupid or ever believed she was. I have never called her a mean name ever! She also put me in the groups of her abusive ex and narcissistic boyfriend! I've dated a narc and that's seriously offensive. I would give the shirt off my back to anyone in need. That is why I am doing everything I can to help my friend get out of this MLM! She is so tied to her positive experiences in this MLM that anyone opposing it is a threat.
This MLM has her thinking that having a regular job is evil and that it's normal to need up to 4 income sources. I have 3 incomes sources, but an MLM is not a good one. I want to say....Sweetie, what's evil is MLMs who take 99% of people's money and rely on recruits in a system that only feeds the top 1%, making the bottom workers like her PAY for trainings and events, get their friends to pay... and make very low commissions for insurance preying on minorities.
She does not think that statistics or math runs the world, making her in total denial of the pyramid MLM she is involved with. She wants woman empowerment and thinks this MLM, primarily female, will be more empowered by staying involved and motivating each other. Since most MLMs are females, she is connecting to that group energy and motivation, keeping her involved to keep her self-esteem high.
https://preview.redd.it/y5y5y1a0kc061.png?width=750&format=png&auto=webp&s=384c09e68430545dfd5c0fd8d6423a30a4871ec5

Conclusion: Since all MLMs only make money in the top 1%, her recruiting people will never make her enough to support herself from recruits. While she may continue to stay in it making subpar insurance commissions, she is making less compared to other insurance companies, keeping her financial situation down unless she takes on more jobs to support herself for a good life. If she continues to stay, this MLM will steal all of her extra time that she could have had with her child. She instead will stay in an MLM that ultimately promotes more poverty, even though I know she is passionate about the opposite, which is helping impoverished populations that she is targeting for financial advice. She feels that in WFG she is helping those more than harming, but I would disagree. She would better to be involved in a non-MLM insurance company with higher commissions for her efforts.
Reddit, she is one of the purest hearted people and that is why I am trying to help her, but if I can help convince even one person to not join an MLM, then writing this was totally worth it.

So, I'm mostly here to vent, and I'm in the UK just to clear up any confusion by the terms I'm using. I'm not necessarily looking for advice, as mentioned in the post, my partner works in homelessness, here in the UK, so we know the process/what could happen, etc.
To give a little background: I haven't lived with her for over 5 years, I moved out to go to Uni at 18 and never went back. I've barely seen her in person since, maybe once or twice a year. Honestly, the only reason I've maintained contact is because of my young teen brother, who still lives with her. When I moved out, she was engaged and living with her fiance in her council house (social housing from the government, she pays rent for it) - he had a house that he kept, and rented out. So, when I left, they were secure. They didn't have a great relationship, always breaking up/fighting, but she was the most stable she'd ever been while with him, so I kinda just kept out of it where I could.
Then, she broke her leg on holiday, and things started to fall apart from there. She's, apparently, always had a gambling/lottery problem that I was unaware of entirely until her ex found out. Basically, during their relationship she would secretly be in thousands of pounds worth of debt, not paying rent (even though she 'charged' her ex for rent/food expenses) and would be spending obscene amounts playing the lottery, and on mobile games, online 'mediums/psychics', that kind of stuff. Anyway, this would all come out, they'd fight and or breakup, but he'd always end up bailing her out and they'd basically just reset. The problem got worse and worse/came out after she broke her leg - it was a really bad injury in multiple places - as she had time to sit and do nothing, I suppose.
So, last year, I get a call from her ex saying he's leaving for good, and I get dragged into their entire breakup - yet again - and have to talk them both through it. Even petty stuff like him trying to get his stuff back, like I could even help, living in a different city. This is where mine and her relationship really fell apart, I have spoken to her once on the phone since then, and have seen her once in person. I was furious at her for 'doing it again', and I just knew that she would go back to her old, pre-fiance self, once he was gone.
Then, as predicted, things declined even more, except now she wasn't calling me for 2 hours at a time to tell me all her problems. Prior to the breakup, I knew she was pursuing a tribunal against her ex-employer for illegally firing and failing to pay her during the leg-fiasco. I knew that she would put all of her eggs in this basket after the breakup, and see this as the big monetary win she's always been looking for (see: lottery spending) and I'm pretty sure I was right. Her ex-boss is dodgy as hell, and owes important/wealthy people a lot of money, there was no way he was ever going to pay her what he owed and to my knowledge he still hasn't - even though he was ordered to.
In the meantime, I was just getting on with my life and trying not to get sucked into the orbit that is her drama; I have my own health problems to deal with, and didn't have time for her really. I checked in with my brother regularly, but barely spoke to her. She stopped telling me things altogether, apart from vague things. To my knowledge, she was on benefits and just coasting by, not able to afford much but keeping them fed and paying her rent.
How wrong was I? Pretty wrong, apart from food. She always makes sure to do the bare minimum!
So, this brings us up to lockdown here in the UK - around March, I think it was? Things were normal at first. I was talking to her a little bit more, as she kept messaging me. For a while she even text me 'how are you darling?' once a week, which was weird - not that she'd actually care about how I was! Then my brother started sending me worrying messages. First, it was: 'she's spending literally already watching psychic/medium livestreams'. Then it was: 'she keeps leaving me alone in the house all day, not telling me where she's going and coming back late/sometimes drunk.' Then, randomly: 'she just gave me £150 for no reason.'
At this point, I'm pretty suspicious something weird is going on. My therapist straight up asked me if she might be a prostitute, which I don't think is happening. I can't explain the money but my theory is that's she's online dating again. When I was 12/13, I used to get left in the house alone all weekend while she went on dates, it just seems like the same behaviour - at least this time she's not leaving her child alone overnight. (Although I should add that to my knowledge, at this moment in time, he's not been left alone for a few weeks so, she seems to have stopped going out.)
Then, I get the big message. My brother sends me a photo of a letter, it's an eviction notice from the council. He's panicking, obviously, so I talk him through and find out as much as I can. The letter is a month or so old, there are other letters that are older, she says she's spoken to them. I speak to my trump card, my SO - he works in homelessness, for the council, in the city we live in. He knows the process, he knows what will happen, he knows what the letter means. He says, from the wording of the letter, it's a last resort attempt at getting her to contact them, as they clearly haven't been able to contact her. The letter says they think the house has been abandoned - this means, she hasn't spoken to them in a long time.
So, I dial up the number on the letter, because I don't believe for a second that she's spoken to them, and I introduce myself as the daughter of NMum, who was just checking to see if they had heard from her, because 'she told me she'd called you.' Turns out, they've been trying to contact her for months and months! They can't really talk to me, as I don't live there and I'm not her, but they just need to confirm she lives at the address and she's not ditched it, basically. And, also, there's been a complaint from my brother's school - I wasn't given the details just, 'there's been a complaint.'
Then, I shoot off a big message to NMum, detailing exactly what will happen if she doesn't contact them (she'll be found intentionally homeless as she was not attempting to stop it, social services will get involved because there's a child and she's done nothing to make sure he's not made homeless, and they'll lose the house and not get another one because there are no more council houses anymore. They'll end up in a hotel, then eventually in a private rental which will not be as forgiving as the council have been with her.) and giving her a phone number to call, stress she needs to call today and she takes about 40mins to reply, giving me this whole speech about having a hard time, being sad, not knowing what to do, etc. I just don't back down, I maintain niceness to get her to continue to engage (if I say what I really think she'll just block me, haha) Anyway, she decides on that day it's more important to waste the entire day at the doctor's getting prescribed anti-depressants instead of calling the woman. Okay, fine, but then she doesn't call the next day, or the day after.
The officer keeps calling me multiple times but eventually she says, she is going to physically show up at the house, because she's realised that there's no way to get NMum on the phone, and I need to tell her to be ready with her ID and a bill, to prove she's been living there, then this will all go away. And, she asks, can I be put down as a contact for the council, in case they can't get in touch with her again - I tentatively say yes, she kinda strong-arms me into it, but the thought of my brothesocial services is on my mind. If they need someone to reach out to, I want tot hear from them, if it concerns my brother.
The house-showing-up goes well and that's it, NMum lets me know it happened and I double check with brother, it happened. I'm now her contact, yay. Joy of joys.
Nothing for a while, two weeks, maybe? (time is meaningless now) Then I get another call, from a different woman in a different department. She seems to think I live with NMum, so I have to correct her and apologise for probably not being able to help her much, as I live somewhere else entirely. I can't really help her, but she tells me that they want to know if NMum is still receiving Universal Credit - this confuses me. So, turns out, she hasn't paid rent since March. Her UC used to automatically pay her rent, before the leftover would be given to her, this stopped after March and they haven't had a rent payment from her since then. They know she's still been getting UC, at least until May, but don't have records after that. So, now they want to know what money is coming in, where it's going, and where the £3k she owes them is. Obviously, this means she's in danger of being evicted, because of course she is.
I agree to ask NMum to call this woman, but I don't bother with the big message trying to give her advice, I just go 'someone called x rang me looking for you, can you call her on x.' And her 'thank you' was the last we spoke. She keeps sending me posts and selfies on instagram but I'm largely choosing to send a like and move on, with those. This was Friday last week.
That brings us up to speed! That's the whole situation! I can't, for the life of me, imagine how she can sit in her house, taking selfies and acting like nothing is happening. If it were me, I would be doing everything I possibly could to not only keep myself self, but my child safe.
She made us homeless when I was a kid, I don't remember it very well but I think that's why I'm so fuming about this. We lived with my aunt because we had nowhere to go, and eventually got placed in an awful, horrible, one bed flat in the worst area of the city. It took her years to get that house she's in now. It was such a huge deal for us. We finally had space and a real roof over our heads.
Growing up I always made excuses for her - or parroted the excuses she told me - she was so young when she had me, she should have done it differently. Well, I'm 23, the age she was when she got pregnant. Yeah, that's young, but it's not that young. Frankly, I couldn't be a mother right now, but considering the fact that I'm picking up the pieces after a nearly 50 year old woman, who is just perpetually a child, it's just not an excuse.
In terms of family, she has little to no relationship with most of her family. Most live in Ireland, including her mum who isn't... the most stable person. She has 1 sensible family member, the aunt I mentioned we lived with, and that's it. My dad hates her, and lives in a different city from her (they broke up when I was 3) - my brother's dad is an ex-convict who no one speaks to, and I'd sooner scoop my eyes out with a rusty spoon than have him anywhere near my brother. Me and my SO have agreed that if we have to take my brother in, we will, but it would be very difficult for us - we don't have a lot of resources, we can't drive, we barely have enough to get by with me sick, and my partner as the sole income (apart from my small side earnings on eBay.) At the very least we wanted to bring him over to stay with us for a while, but it's the getting him here that's an issue.
So, that's about it. Thank you if you read this whole ramble. Like I briefly mentioned I do have a therapist (recommend it) and I started anti-depressants today, actually. I'm just dreading this situation continuing to spiral out of control and really hope it doesn't.
TL;DR: NMum not spoken to council in so long they tried to evict her just to get to talk to her, I tried to push her to talk to them she still wouldn't, they had to show up. Now it turns out she owes them £3k, they keep calling me looking for answers. She still won't call them. I live in a different city, worried about little (teen) brother otherwise wouldn't be involved.

Taxes are a lot more complex than authors realize

Taxes are one of those things that are universal, but a. disliked and b. misunderstood. Governments need them to pay for everything, but they’re weirdly ideological for something that most people don’t actually look into too deeply. Consequently, a lot of tax systems are handwaved, but on occasion you get a juicy libertarian or monarchist who thinks they have the perfect solution. And those systems almost universally absolutely suck.
Examples
A Boy and His Tank is about a conscripted soldier who is forcibly shoved inside a VR tank inside a hover-tank controlled by an AI. It has some interesting ideas about the future of warfare, such as increasing people’s perception of time to give them more time to process during combat, and it invents some pretty cool tech, but the author occasionally oversteps their understanding of topics with massive simplifications of extremely complex topics.
Fable III is about an idiot usurping their brother, because their bother is leveraging too many taxes to fight off an evil that will destroy the entire kingdom, and is kick-the-dog evil. But the player needs to do the same to defeat said evil. Functionally, the entire story is about taxation and the limitations thereof, except the economic system is inherently broken, producing some extremely absurd recommendations for how to properly govern and tax. This analysis is based off the most common method of raising the necessary money, namely buying every shop and house and using the proceeds to fill the royal treasury.
The Triads in Sleeping Dogs functionally levies a tax against businesses and people in their territory, where a certain amount is expected every month. This is fairly accurate to life, where organized crime, rather than auditing the books of companies that are paying protection money, would simply set a fee based on the apparent value of the company, or what they think they can intimidate out of the owner. Or, if they’re working for the crime family, would require a certain amount of money to be paid upwards, which could be a cut or a flat payment. This is reasonable, but it is more in line with feudal practices than modern taxation policy, and has some negative long term outcomes.
Background
Taxes perform three functions for a government.

They discourage certain behaviors.
They redistribute income.
They raise money.

With regards to discouraging behaviors, this occurs when the government chooses to levy a tax to discourage something they see as undesirable by making it more expensive. For example, if the government decides to charge a tax on cigarettes, as they cost the health system a certain amount, people will smoke less, and the people who smoke will be paying for their own treatment some number of decades down the line. Social harm is reduced through the tax. This is known as a Pigovian Tax, a tax directly created to reduce a negative. And they can be extremely effective. A form of Pigovian taxes, Cap and Trade, functionally eliminated sulfur dioxide and the resulting acid rain as a significant problem faster and with less cost to society than phase-outs through regulatory processes.
However, all taxes cause businesses and people to reconsider their options and change their behaviors. High gas taxes have led to smaller and more fuel efficient cars in Europe versus the US. Luxury taxes, such as a window tax in Feudal England, have led to manor houses built without nearly as many windows as previous styles, despite the social harm such a choice caused to their owners. Higher businesses taxes in the US have created a cottage industry of lawyers and accountants dedicated to reducing a business’s tax bills. Every tax means that people will consider how to avoid that tax, which can have socially negative results, either as programs are underfunded, or if the alternative is worse, similar to higher fuel efficiency requirements massively expanding the light truck car classification. The side effects of these taxes must be taken into account before they’re implemented.
Most taxes today are progressive taxes, designed to provide roughly the same benefit to the whole population, but not take the same amount from the whole populace. They are lower on the poor, and higher on the rich. This means that the people with the most ability to bear the tax pay most of it. Which allows the government to move money around as they see fit, establishing a social safety net or otherwise spending to benefit their population, without unduly harming most of the population. While most economists do not see wealth inequality as a problem in and of itself, having ultra-rich with desperately poor isn’t exactly a stable situation for most governments to be in for too long, and a well off populace tends to be able to force the government to spend appropriate amounts on themselves. All of this combines to encourage progressive taxes, like income taxes, where brackets make the contribution higher as income increases.
The issue with heavily progressive taxation is that it doesn’t actually get that much money, compared to a tax that falls more equally across the entire population. For example, all the billionaires in the world own about $8 trillion. Or about the same amount that the underfunded American Social Security program holds in government bonds. It really isn’t that much when you’re talking about providing for the entire population. Which is why the government needs to levy taxes that fall on the middle class and poor.
These other two concentrations of taxes are flat and regressive. Flat taxes charge the same percentage or percentage regardless of how much people make, allowing you to capture wealth from the entire population. An example of this, is the Social Security tax, which takes 6.5 cents of every dollar that Americans earn up to $133,700 in earnings. A flat tax is fairish, since everyone pays the same amount, but it unduly harms the less well off compared to a progressive tax, as the poor find it harder to pay for things when their income shrinks much more compared to the well off. On the other side are regressive taxes. These are taxes where they fall mostly on those least able to pay, but tend to gain more money since that population tends to spend money almost as quickly as it comes in. For example, a sales tax is a regressive tax, since the poorer in a population need to spend most, if not all, their income to live month to month. The entirety of that income is first taxed with various payroll taxes, then is taxed with sales taxes. With a more well off person, while they pay the same payroll taxes, a larger share of their income goes into investments or bank accounts, where it is not be touched by sales taxes, thereby giving people who are better off more bang for the larger share of bucks.
Of course, one major question is how much taxation should you aim for. Well, the answer is “enough” as useless as that sounds. You need enough to pay for government expenditures over a business cycle, so a recession/expansion period. If you try to maintain a positive balance every year, you’re going to cut benefits or raise taxes during a recession, making it worse and harming your government’s ability to assist the population, as well as reducing long term tax income. If you try to take advantage of high income during expansions by spending more, what you’ll be doing is overheating the economy and taking spending away from the private sector. Which means the actual benefit of spending is reduced. In that situation, each dollar spent can either have no impact on the economy, by taking an equal number of resources from businesses, or have negative, as the government tends to be less efficient than businesses. So taxes should increase during expansions, while spending decreases, and decrease during recessions, while spending increases.
So, ideally, a tax structure is mostly progressive taxes that cover expenses over a business cycle, with enough redistribution to create a functional safety net in society, and targeted taxation to prevent social harm through Pavlovian taxes, while not producing too many perverse incentives..
In that situation, the populace that is being governed is at their most secure, allowing for economic growth while preventing people from being left behind, which creates long term stability and produces a wealthy enough population that emergencies can be paid for with relative ease, resulting in a more powerful and capable nation.
Problems
A Boy and His Tank
A Boy and His Tank created a simple tax code, while not thinking about the ramifications. This is pretty common with people who are new to politics or economics, and is why you should never trust anybody who can explain their tax plan in detail in less than a couple dozen pages.
The government on a planet decided that the primary tax would be a property tax, set based off the value of the land as the owner decided, but they would only be able to sell the land for that amount plus 5%. This seems like a great idea, people would need to set their property taxes at a reasonable amount or else they couldn’t sell their land for what they wanted when they wanted to move.
The issue is that this doesn’t meet any of the requirements for taxes.
Functionally, this tax system requires that people sell their land regularly to actually pay taxes. Which means that there is extreme discouragement to actually sell. Why would you, when there’s no cost to just hold onto the land indefinitely? The value of avoiding taxation is far far more than the ability to sell the land.
Which means that this policy would almost certainly fail as a taxation system. The system heavily encourages inefficiencies, where it is more valuable to hold onto land and let it fall to waste rather than sell it. Which means that the well off at the start of the policy would likely retain huge amounts of resources indefinitely. Which means it encourages socially unoptimal outcomes.
It also means that the established will avoid taxes, while later emigrants will be unable to benefit from those same policies. They will buy land and likely be locked into some value estimate on said land. Which means the ones least able to pay will be supporting most of the tax base, which is extremely regressive. And it is hard to figure out how this policy would actually fund the government. A hyper minority of the population would pay taxes, and would be the ones with the least ability to pay and possess the lowest value of resources that could be taxed.
The likely outcome of this policy would be family plots of land that don’t get taxed, benefiting the already established, leading to land use that won’t adjust to demand, stifling growth and development. A planet wide downward pressure on growth through a 20 word tax policy, causing mass harm and preventing the government from being able to harness the population’s resources. And, due to how resources would be extracted, in any crisis, the government would be hamstrung.
Fable 3
Fable 3 has two tax systems. One that simply exists (unelaborated and the result of the PC saying “increase taxes”), and one that the player creates to make up the difference between what can be taxed and what is actually necessary. Which tends to be a hyper extractionary royal monopoly on housing and commerce.
The issue is that the taxes are one and the same. It is “bad” to increase taxes, but the taxes must come in anyway. The issue here is the same reason why Butters couldn’t use a dog parade to raise the money to save South Park from the Native Americans. If people can’t afford it, they’re not going to be able to afford it if you dress up the taxation in different clothes. They might be less visibly angry about it, people can be weirdly emotional about certain taxes, but the emphasis of the game is that all parts of the kingdom are being taxed to the point that they cannot survive. Increasing the tax rate about 10x as much as it was when the old king was killing the kingdom will also kill the kingdom.
From this perspective, the issue is that Fable 3 does not have a way to actually produce enough productive wealth to save the kingdom.
If the populace will rebel over taxes, the next king will also suffer that threat. Implementing a royal housing and store monopoly and jacking up prices to replace taxes has the same level of harm as the other feudal methods of raising money, which also included selling royal monopolies and taxing the hell out of basic necessities of survival. There is no reason why Reaver, who is working for the PC’s brother, wouldn’t do exactly what the PC does. Especially since it was a common tactic for rulers at the time.
And there doesn’t appear to be such a substantial change in how the government is organized to explain the sudden growth without causing inordinate harm to the populace.
So, if the productive capability of Albion is the limiter for taxation, how does the system do from the other two points? Well, the rich are largely insulated from the royal monopolies. You can buy some richer districts, but places like Reaver’s Mansion cannot be purchased, implying the aristocracy is largely free from the temptation to sell their house then pay rent for it. And it is unlikely that increasing prices of basic goods would fall primarily on the rich.
This is realistic, as feudal societies rarely had progressive taxes, despite many efforts to make the rich contribute to the ruler’s coffers. In France, the aristocracy was explicitly exempt from many taxes, and, in Spain, the monarchy did not have the right to tax aristocrats outside of Castile. It was just easier to tax the politically irrelevant. Which tended to cause long term harm, as the productive members of society were preyed upon by the non-productive rulers, discouraging trade and development.
And I do not believe that there are any Pigovian taxes, unless you count increasing the prices of alcohol in taverns. Which was generally the trend in feudal society, though Islam explicitly levied a higher tax on non-Muslims, encouraging them to convert.
So, points for realism in regards to who is hurt the most, and the ruler’s general disregard towards the well-being of his people, but points off for attempting a bait and switch. The money still needs to come from somewhere, and not having it come from overt taxes is still a tax.
Sleeping Dogs
Taking the actions of a criminal organization as equivalent to the government definitely reeks of a certain mindset, but it is still something to discuss and critique, especially as the approach is very similar to older and less efficient tax systems. A criminal organization has the power to force businesses within their territory to pay a certain amount to enjoy their protection, or pay tribute to avoid being harassed. Less nuanced viewpoints look to the approaches as the same and point to criminal organizations as equivalent to how the government deals with its populace.
There are two major methods of how businesses pay off criminal organizations. A cut of the revenue, which is similar to a flat tax and a set amount that needs to be provided, similar to a wealth tax.
Both of these are very efficient from a raising funds perspective, and are relatively easy to enforce. The wealth tax is just a set amount based on expected earnings, which would be based on the value of the business. A rich looking shop will need to pay more than a poorer one. If the business fails to cough up, charge interest or break their knees, depending on the organization’s personal approach. This is how the Cartels in Breaking Bad operated. The distributors were required to pony up a certain amount of money every month, with beatings being the outcome if they were short.
A flat tax requires some analysis of the books, but has the advantage of appearing fair, which discourages businesses from turning to other people who could offer protection. An explicitly progressive tax would likely turn the most productive businesses against the criminal organization, as they would be being punished for being successful, in their own eyes.
However, the long term result is that smaller businesses are discouraged, while larger businesses become increasingly important.
Without a progressive taxation plan, what tends to happen is that the winners continue to win, allowing for inefficiencies to build up in a system. Which tends to increase risks long term.
Imagine a criminal organization that remains firmly planted 30 years ago, because that’s when it came into power and its supported the same income sources for 30 years. But those income sources will likely have the same understanding of the police from 30 years ago, such as sending faxes because they’re “secure.” They would stand out and become easy targets, thereby causing massive harm to the criminal organization, as their primary sources of income would be the ones that are also the ones that are the riskiest over the long run.
While business income taxes aren’t “that” comparable to personal income taxes, this is somewhat similar across both. Privileging a population for having more money means they’re likely to accumulate more money and power, which means that stupidity and poor decisions get covered up until it’s damaging across the entire population.
Non-progressive taxation systems work, and it’s easier to implement, but they’re less stable over the long term.
Solutions
So… what fictional world does effectively leverage taxes? Well, a system working properly doesn’t really get featured much. Even the Star Wars universe generally stays away from tax policy, despite having a movie trilogy about trade disagreements.
But, taxes are just a way for a society to leverage resources for the common good or, at least, for what the ruler sees as the common good. And in that case, there’s an entire genre of species that have functionally perfected taxation. Hiveminds.
A hivemind is capable of perfectly utilizing resources, for a given value of “perfectly.” They might not dedicate them to the right goals, but a society where every member of that society is actively working to the betterment of that society in perfect coordination means that all requirements of taxes are met.

They discourage certain behaviors. A hivemind in a competitive universe cannot afford to indulge in economically wasteful behavior. While the populace may chronically be on stimulants and steroids, the added value means that those drugs would likely be worth it in healthcare costs later. Tobacco, alcohol, and gambling; individual vices would likely be extremely limited, and I’d imagine that any hivemind that gets addicted to something like gambling would be in for a very interesting, abet brief, story.
They redistribute income. A hivemind would work for the betterment of the society in the same way that a human works for the betterment of their own position. Abject poverty doesn’t make sense when those are productive workers being denied max utility. Resources would be redistributed as needed, with the goal of maximizing production.
They raise money. Well, they raise money in the sense that the greatest amount of resources and labor are directed towards achieving societal goals, be that war or general improvement. That is the advantage a hivemind undeniably offers compared to a cooperative society. There is no dissent or disagreement, only work. Which functionally means that a hivemind is working from a total war perspective, on whatever it finds interesting.

Humans use money to approximate resources and to direct labor and materials towards objectives. But it is clearly less efficient than absolute knowledge of all aspects of human activity and the ability to force humans to work towards the species’s overall goals.
Taxation is much less of a solved problem than other economic topics. It is self contradictory, where the need to get money fights against the need to keep money with the populace, and it is a matter of least bad choice when planning the government’s involvement in an economy.
It is a really really big problem, and the there is really no clear “best” solution. What makes a lot of money for the government hurts people who have little ability to pay, while targeting the rich doesn’t provide enough money.
So, the requirements outlined above are best guesses towards creating more optimal outcomes. We want certain socially unacceptable behaviors to be reduced without needing authoritarian intervention. Taxation provides that, and helps pay for the systems to fix the issues. We want those left behind in society to be helped and brought forward, rather than trapped in a cycle of poverty. We need to pay for things, because money is just a representation of labor and resources. You need taxes because just printing cash won’t make more resources. It just plays on a person’s expectations of value.
So what?
So, what make a good fictional tax system? Well, to be honest, don’t talk about it.
There’s a reason why the more vague the proposal, the fewer problems I could find with it.
The definite tax policy failed on every account. It produced bad outcomes, perverse incentives, and it would not get enough money.
An implied tax structure was more a reflection of the limitations of the time and poor economic systems than actual incompetence of the designer.
The existence of tax-like systems could only be critiqued on the basis that it was probably inefficient.
The people who give a shit about taxes in a world fall into two categories. 1. Economics nerds who will find something wrong. 2. Radical naturists/libertarians/socialists/communists who have no idea what they’re talking about.
Either way, the payoff for slipping in a bright idea is absolutely negative. And your bright idea is probably not nearly as bright as you thought initially.
Like, there’s a reason why the expanded Star Wars universe largely handwaves taxation, when it has a backstory for the bloody Dianoga that attacked Luke and co. From every perspective, talking about tax policy is going to almost certainly be boring and it is almost certainly able to be attacked on some grounds.

Ethical/SRI Criteria Series #2 - Liontrust Sustainable Future funds (Equities)

80+ Hour Critique and Plea to Epic

How to fix the game

(in the short term, before it's too late.)
The game is fundamentally flawed with it's progression and will fail. It needs a serious rethink in regards to progression, flow and loot acquisition. It's also starved on content and meaningful player choice. This will require a lot of work, but in the mean time.
I'd like to start with 2 statements.

This game should be about Co-Op, it should be about getting 3 friends together, looting a wasteland and building a trap laden fort, all while shooting zombies.
Ever heard of a polished turd? This is the complete opposite, it's a Diamond which has been covered in a layer of shit.

This entire post will go off topic at points, but i implore you to read to the end. You may disagree with many things listed below, but I want to contribute my thoughts as well as my friends towards improving and saving this game, as well as Epic Games reputation.

Emphasise the good:

Epic games have made a beautiful game. It's gorgeous to look at and real care and attention has gone into the consistent aesthetic and the amount of love and passion from the developers really shows through, the small things, such as gnomes locked behind walls, sinister organ harvesting dungeons hidden in suburban basements and the poor gnome who's taken a tumble from his wheelchair, all of these things enhance the world and bring it alive.
The setting is fantastic, the voice acting is top of the line. It's quality throughout.
The game plays fantastically, my computer is mid-range and I've got 150-200+ FPS constantly, it's fast paced, responsive and just works. Aiming works, 3rd person works, the guns work, bullet registry works, headshots work, it's all extremely well polished.
The pace of the game is very fast paced and arcadey, which is fantastic, the selling points of the game are scavenging to build a base, killing zombies and building traps to better survive those zombies, all in a fantastically procedurally generated world.
The building in this game is also excellently executed and intuitive. Compared to other games on the market with similar systems, it's miles ahead in usability and it just works. Honestly, great fucking job.
The game has a lot going for it, with work and IF, and only IF the development team listen and realise that change is needed, not necessarily the change listed in this post, but change nonetheless, it will work, it will be profitable and it will be loved by the community for years to come.

Loot:

Ideally, it needs to be completely revamped, this is a mobile system that is completely not fit for purpose.
Mini Llamas should have a small chance to drop from mobs as well as chests, with a hard limit per mission. Loot should be shared between players to prevent anti-social, greedy play.
Upgrade Llamas should have a chance to drop from missions, each level of end game reward increases the chance e.g in 4+ reward chest you'll have a 75% chance for a Llama. The type of Llama will be listed on the mission details before joining, e.g Hero / Weapon / Survivor etc.
Missions should also reward up to 50 vBucks on completion.

Chest Level 1: 0
Chest Level 2: 0
Chest Level 3: 5
Chest Level 4: 10
Chest Level 5: 20
Chest Level 6: 30
Chest Level 7: 50

The winner of each category (Combat, Building and Utility) should be rewarded a bonus 5 vBucks.
Skins, when introduced should cost a new currency, we'll call them vBigBucks. These will be purchasable at a good ratio to real currency.
You can however, also convert regular vBucks to vBigBucks, but at a very unfavourable ratio, this will encourage people to spend real money on vBigBucks, but the option is still there for all players to buy skins, given enough time.

Mission flow and crafting materials hoarding:

Currently, with persistent base resources, people are hoarding resources and are less likely to spend them on missions.
To stop this, All resources should be removed at the end of each mission, that's right, you start with nothing but weapons. This is a team game, crafting resources should be shared and the start of the game, the early game should be about building up a team pool of resources to craft your base and traps and supplement weapon crafts.
Early on in a mission, it should be about dealing with threats with the weapons on your back, later on you should NEED a base to survive as well as clever trap placement and real thought and trial and error.
Each map can have different resources which are abundant and others which are scarce, necessitating the need for clever and diverse base design, You'll have to build with what's available and not fall back on the flavour of the month killer trap combination, you'll have to adapt to the map and work with your team to build something that works, for each and every mission.
Any additional resources gathered over the team cap (4000 of each base resource (e.g wood), 200 of each sub resource (e.g planks)) Are split evenly between players and are deposited directly into their stormshield vault.
Remove tiers of crafting components, as it makes unnecessary bloat. Instead of Simple Twine and Rough Twine etc, just have "Twine". I'm tired of being 110/120 backpack slots used up, constantly having to figure out what resource I need least.
The only persistent and unshared crafting components should be rares. E.g Copper / Silver / Malachite / Obsidian / Power Cells etc, these are used for weapon crafting exclusively.

Weapon Downgrading:

Currently, making a higher tier weapon, e.g a level 30 Malachite tier 3 weapon is downgraded if you're using it in Plankerton. There is no mention or explanation of this anywhere.

Weapon / Trap Leveling:

I've got a few weapons at level 20, some at 30 and a shit load at level 1, I want to level them, but I can't, I don't have the XP. I've used the same 3 weapons throughout the entire game, I can't even try my new level 1 weapons and gauge their effectiveness as they don't scale.
The system needs complete reworking.

Heroes:

I would love to try Shuriken Master Sarah, however, the chances of me getting this are tiny, I probably won't ever get it as it's based on a completely random system.
How hard would it be to make each hero purchasable for vBucks from the store.
e.g

Green: 150
Blue: 400
Epic: 1000
Legendary: 2000
Mythic: 5000

Heroes, Customisation & Progression:

I've heard from alpha players that previously heroes had a choice of talents / skills when levelling up, bring this back. The current completely set heroes have no customisation and don't let you get attached to them.
Give us Talent Trees for each hero. Let us level them, it will give re playability to the game and let us reroll to play with friends as well as new players getting into the game.

Energy:

Remove it - it doesn't fit the flow of the game at all, let people play and use abilities reactively, let people sprint around the huge maps. Make the speed of the game play at the speed that it wants, and deserves to be played at, stop slowing people down.
To stop people kiting zombies indefinitely, when hit in melee, players should have their sprint disabled for half a second, punish fuckups.

Ammo:

Remove it - It's a complete timewaste to collect it and detracts from the fun parts of the game. Some guns are completely useless due to high rate of ammo consumption. It's not fun to play a few mission with friends, only to have to go to a low level zone afterwards for 20 minutes hitting cars and destryoing every electrical appliance in sight.

Traps:

Remove the limited uses - they should function until destroyed.
You should be able to craft traps from team members schematics, Traps are no longer crafted in your inventory, only the schematic to use is selected here, traps are built and placed directly from the trap menu (T).

Weapon Schematics:

While in a group, you should have access to your team members crafting schematics for both weapons and traps. If you choose to craft yourself a weapon with their schematic, they have a fixed durability and will break, like how weapons function currently.

Gun Durability:

Remove it - on items you craft YOURSELF - The Guns should be things you take with you and level up, leveling up your schematic should be enough of an incentive to craft a new gun.

Hero / Weapon / Survivor tier upgrades:

The requirement for manuals, pure drops of rain etc should be removed and the XP amount for a tier upgrade should be doubled. It's a grind for grinds sake and detracts from the game.

Weapon Drops from mobs / chests in missions:

These should reward a small amount of schematic xp when picked up, they are also perishable and can be dropped and given to team mates.

Weapon / Trap Secondary Rolls:

To alleviate some of the randomness, you can now choose to reroll certain traits on weapons, though at a cost.
For example...
Say I have a epic hand cannon pistol schematic with the following secondary rolls.

10% Damage
10% Recoil
10% Recoil
15% Damage
10% Crit Chance

Now, I quite like this weapon, but i'd like to improve it, and try get something better than Recoil.
If I have another matching weapon type and quality schematic, in this case an epic pistol schematic, I can control click one of the secondary stats on the above pistol and choose to scrap one of the matching type schematics for a chance to reroll the selected secondary stat.
This results in my hand cannon having the following secondaries after doing this:

10% Damage
10% Reload Speed
10% Recoil
15% Damage
10% Crit Chance

Now, this gives people something to work towards, they can, in theory and with work get their perfect gun.

Defenders:

Even levelled, (by wasting hero xp) these are completely pointless. They waste weapons and ammo.
Make their level mirror your commander level, let them come with a base weapon with unlimited ammo that's built into their card. E.g a Rifleman - Sniper Defender etc.
Make them auto res on death after ~40 seconds and generally expand on their use.

Useless stats:

Weapons and traps need exclusion lists on secondary stats.
E.g Wall lights having crit rolls. This shouldn't happen, a simple exclusion list for each trap / weapon would fix this.

Melee:

Melee isn't viable, especially later game. While the DPS may approach that of ranged, the time involved in getting to melee, and the danger you're in while you're there doesn't make it anywhere near as competitive.
Ninjas and other melee players need a damage resistance buff from melee attacks while they have a melee weapon equipped.
The only way in which anyone could think melee is remotely viable is if they're playing with a controller.

Shove Ability

Like in Left 4 Dead, allow players to Shove with what ever weapon they currently have out, it will briefly stun regular husks and interrupt attacks of other smaller zombies.
Make it charge based, with remaining charges appearing on screen when used.

Ninjas

All Ninjas should have a life on hit passive, Melee weapons should also have this stat added as a secondary so you can run a life leech tank build or damage build, or have multiple weapons to switch between depending on health.
The 10% reduction in fall damage passive should be changed to 100%, I'm batman.

Outlanders

Remove charge fragments from the game, Make the shock turrets and teddy work like regular abilities that actually do SOMETHING.
The Deadeye pistol Outlander is a great concept, do more like that.

Soldiers

Soldiers are currently the only viable endgame class.

Constructors

Need to be faster.
Bullsrush needs the ability to stop the ability on keypress, you should be able to use it to shove enemies off a cliff edge and stop yourself.
New Abilities based on building and buffing traps.
Base is a cool idea, though it shouldn't have to be placed. Make it an aura around the constructor.
Give them a relatively short cooldown ability to overcharge a targeted trap, increasing its damage as well as attack speed for a short time. This ability should have relatively high uptime, e.g lasts 7 seconds with a 12 second cooldown.
Give Constructors a ~3 tile AoE Building heal.

Health / Shield Regen :

Shield Regen- It's fine, this is an established way of having shields recharge after a short duration of taking no damage going back to Halo, it works, keep it working.
Change the Shield regen stat to decrease the time before regen starts instead of regen speed.
Health Regen - Stopping at 30% is unneeded and just leads players to suicide near a teammate while safe for a quick res back to full hp.
Allow health regen back to 30% at the current rate, but also give each player a passive amount of health regen, going all the way to 100%.
The Health Regen stat should increase the passive healing amount.
Healing Pads - They don't scale. Make them restore a % of Health based on their level, not a fixed amount. Make a secondary type of Healing Pad that heals via a heal over time instead of instantly.

Stats & Survivor Squads:

Survivor Squads: Currently, you have 8 Squads, 2 squads for each F.O.R.T. attribute.
It's needless bloat to have this many, Survivor squads are your gear sets in this game, armour, rings and accessories.
I'd remove half the squads and have 1 squad for each Stat and leave it at that.

Commander Level:

Base this off how many REAL levels (skill/research points spent), not your stats. I'm level 34, my friend is level 39, I'm at a much higher skill point level than he is, but he has much better stats / survivors due to luck with gold llamas and spending an additional £100 on Pay/Gamble to win content.

Stormshield:

This should be a place where you get creative, and also the site of bosses / challenges / endless modes.
Failing one of these events will reset your stormshield defences to how they were before starting.
Base Stormshield storage should be increased to 100.

Removing player built structures:

Press G on the target structure, hit delete, done.

Toxic Players:

Add votekicks and blacklists.
Beyond that, a rating system where taking into account your average score as well as upvotes by other players will increase your hidden rating. Reward "good" players and place them with other "good" players, and toxic players with other toxic players down in the cesspool that they belong in.

Mob Balance:

The names wrong on these, I don't care, this is just what me and my friends call them.

Mortars - Give them a clear wind up animation and stop them from shooting until 5 seconds after spawning, currently they spawn and shoot instantly, also, slightly delay their fire rate.
Children - Make them one hit kill from any gun / melee weapon (excluding pickaxe)
Beeeeeeeeees - Remove their ranged attack, make them drop bees on death. Also give a more visually distinct visual cue when stood in a swarm.
Laser Eye Man - This mob functions in a predictable and annoying way, especially for new players. It will miss it's first few shots, giving a false sense of security, before landing everything and melting you in seconds, despite moving, it will track you perfectly. It's not hard to line of site these, but after they're locked on you can't dodge them at all. Ideally a rework would be better. When firing, make them shoot a continuous blast of energy from their eyes, tracking the target at slightly slower than sprint speed. Give them a distinct tell for the charging animation so people know to get moving. Dance Bitch!.
Ghost - Remove their regular me lee attack, after they charge they tend to stick to you, there isn't much you can do to stop if when out of stam. Limit them to charge attacks only, make the charge faster, but in a straight line.
Mimics - Remove the shaking chest tell on the Mimic, they should be a surprise when they pop out.
Flingers - You've made a mob that needs to be killed in melee, yet it gives no outward impression that this is the way to deal with it, ontop of that it runs faster than pretty much every character, all the while there are other threats to deal with while this thing can take you on a wild goose chase. Allow us to shoot the thing to death, or stop it running. On harder difficulties, even if you try melee, it can 2 shot you long before you can kill it, unless you're a Ninja or melee focused character (But who brings them?). so there goes that weakness.
Pitchers - Perfect.
Fat Guys - Perfect.
Zombies - Perfect.
Chargers - Perfect.

Add new mobs! E.g

Summoner - Channels a door portal with a distinct animation and sound, interrupt it before the spell completes and calls in a large group of husks.

Talk to the community. Ark did a great job with Dino Dossiers, give us teasers for what new enemies are the pipeline, involve the players in the development and show us what's going on behind the scenes.

Repetitition :

The game needs more game modes. It needs challenges. It needs achievements. It needs content that isn't a meaningless timewaste of a grind.
Also once you've played a game mode once, you've heard the dialogue, you've seen the cutscenes, let us skip them. I swear that if i hear "Paint that on velvet" and "Ow, My eye" one more time i'll be driven insane.

Balance :

There's honestly no point going into this, things will change, there are a lot of things and abilities that need to be tuned and everyone knows it.

Co-Op :

It's a Co-Op game.
Co-Op.
I'm currently in Canny Valley, if more of my friends bought the game (They were considering it but after the reviews (This one in particular) and with the general public view and reception of the game they're not going to buy it). Beyond that, there is literally no gain for me to play with them, the starting missions are too easy, and offer nothing to high level players, similarly, bringing friends into your higher level missions will get them killed and frustrate them. They have no health or damage, and due to the selfish mission system can't progress.
The alternative is for me to play through their missions with them, at no challenge and steamroll, making it unenjoyable for both of us.
This needs a serious rethink.
In other games such as Orcs must Die, Dungeon Defenders, hell any RPG you just roll a new character to play with them.
Make this game the Co-Op game it was meant to be.

Transforms (This section is a friends addition):

These are supposed to be the way for free players to obtain end game loot. Nope.
In the current system one could farm multiple transform keys(which only seem to come from timed missions - that have a limit of 3/day so you are lucky to even get the ability to transform) unless you buy the unlimited edition for unlimited epic hero transforms (pay to win)
In the current system this is how it works to farm a legendary hero - using the epic -> legendary transform key(s) so firstly to get an epic hero this requires 400 points

blue hero 80 points (level is irrelevant)
epic defender 120 points (finally a use for them!)
blue defender 48 Points
legendary survivor 100 points
epic survivor 40 points
epic weapon schematic 100 points
blue weapon schematic 40 points

A transform key only has 5 slots to get the required points. and basically costs 5x a lower tier to the one you are creating. I think the cost is okay but allow us more slots. as right now anything that isn't an epic schematic+ or a blue hero+ may as well be scrapped for XP and when this transform is pulled of again lets say epic hero - there are 9 possible random/duplicate outcomes per class...
Additionally epic hero transforms require a resource called people (420 of them). Again, okay fine something to farm. Rescue the survivors missions seems to be the best way to get people, rewarding ~20 people a mission so that is 21 missions to get the required people (each mission takes 20 mins) - 7 hours of repeating the same mission over and over and over then a few more times (not sure about you but when I come home from my repetitive job to play video games... not exactly what I am looking for) after doing this you get your random epic hero but it turns out to be one you already have - that fine we can use it towards another legendary transform key.
So we do the above step 4 more times (an additional 28 hours later of farming the same quest over and over) we have 5 epic heroes.. ready to get our first legendary, (out of 36 different ones) So for 35 hours work, i have a 1/36 chance of getting a hero that I actually want.
This games reward system does not reward, skill or planning. you cannont work towards what you want. you just get given a random item it is all about being lucky rather than good.

How to reward exceptional play with optional hard-modes (This section is a friends addition)

Interesting mechanics for loot rewards can be seen in similar co op games, such as Vermintide. In this game players can pick up a hidden item called Grimoires, which increases the difficulty of the mission but also upgrades the loot earned on completion.
For example there are 3 Grimoires on each mission, picking one up will occupy the players medpack slot and reduce the whole teams max health to 50%. Subsequent Grimoires reduce HP to 25% then 10% of max - Grimoires can be dropped to remove the health reduction but this destroys the Grimoire and forfeits the loot upgrade.
While Grimoires are just an example, it highlights an issue with missions within Fortnite, and the lack of ways for players to influence loot, outside of mindlessly grinding rocks and upgrading useless buildings.

Restore Faith:

Epic games have a real gem on their hands with this game, but their silence on the games micro transaction, missing content and false advertisement issues has decimated the games image to the public and to potential buyers.
Epic games need to admit that they've fucked up. They've stated in interviews throughout the games development about their stance on micro transactions, pay walls, pay to progress, time gates etc and then done a complete U-turn and tacked all of them onto the game, in what appears to be a shameful money-grab to finish development, while masquerading the game as something it's not.
Hell, the wikipedia entry for the game still describes it as Left 4 Dead meets Minecraft, it's nothing like either.
In interviews with Epic Games they've said they planned on only selling Cosmetic items and Xp Boosts.
They literally said :
"Collum: Oh yeah. As gamers ourselves, we’re irritated at a lot of the free-to-play practices that some games apply. Time gates, things of that nature. ‘You get X number of turns per day unless you spend money.’ That’s super lame. We don’t want to do anything like that.
Look at TF2, for example. Their primary source of income for that game is cosmetics. They don’t really provide power. We’re not interested in providing power. Maybe we’ll provide health or XP boosts, things that can accelerate time, but we’re not gonna make time a hindrance to players."
Source

Closing thoughts:

I enjoy this game, it has heaps of potential and despite its myriad of problems, I just can't help but feel like I've wasted my time on a game which has been completely sabotaged by greed. I wouldn't have written this if I didn't care, I wouldn't have spent 80+ hours with my friends completing all the content currently available in the game if I didn't enjoy the game at its core.
I believe in this game, and I believe that Epic Games are big enough, and they care enough to admit where they've gone wrong.
I've spent £140 total on Fortnite. I've got 80 Hours out of it, the only meaningful way I can progress now is to buy Llamas, there is however, no point, as there aren't any more missions beyond the repeatable "play with others" in Canny Valley and end game is literally gambling and waiting for dailies.
I honestly think that this game needs to be rethought and take a step back to earlier on in its development, before it was sabotaged. I honestly don't care what it takes, if that means wiping progress I'm all for it, I want this game to succeed longterm as I'm sure many of you do as well.
If no changes are made, then I hope Epic Games are happy with their excellent reputation being dragged down and losing all credibility. They've made this game into a shameless cash grab and I feel sorry for the developers who have seen the game which they've worked on for years be decimated before them by sheer greed.

EDIT - Thanks for the Gold! (x5) :) <3

Bloody hell, You guys are awesome!

5 is just silly though <3.

Ralph Nader and Jeremy Scahill on Dangerous Donald and the Democratic Primary | 2/16/20

RALPH NADER ON BLOOMBERG’S PLOT TO STOP BERNIE, THE ROT WITHIN THE DNC, AND HIS RECENT CALL WITH PELOSI
Jeremy Scahill 2/16/20
LAST FALL, the third most powerful figure in the U.S. government, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, had a phone call with a man who is undoubtedly one of the most hated people among her base of Democratic Party supporters: the famed consumer advocate and former independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader.
Their phone call took place as the Democrats were preparing to launch a narrowly focused impeachment case against Donald Trump. On the call, Nader laid out a strategy for attacking Trump that he believed could have resulted in his actual removal from office. Nader, who has spent his life working to implement a wide range of consumer and environmental protections, argued that it would be a mistake to focus solely on the Ukraine phone call. Instead, Nader suggested that Pelosi orchestrate a public prosecution of Trump’s crimes against ordinary Americans — what he called “kitchen table issues.” Nader beseeched Pelosi to go after Trump on issues far more pressing than Ukraine to millions of Americans, regardless of their political affiliation. He suggested subpoenaing witnesses who could testify to Trump’s “destruction of life-saving consumer protections, environmental protections, workplace safety protections, in his destruction of social safety net protections for children.” Pelosi, Nader says, did not take any of his advice.
Trump’s popularity has risen in the aftermath of his “acquittal,” as he continues his victory tour and purges dissidents from his administration. As the Democratic presidential primary process intensifies, the institutional Democratic Party appears once again to be doing everything in its power to hurt the effort to unseat Trump. The attempt to purchase the Democratic nomination by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is being aided by a Democratic National Committee that ran a dirty operation against Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016. Nader also believes that the Bloomberg candidacy has at its core an effort to block Sanders from winning the nomination, perhaps by forcing a brokered convention. “It’s Armageddon time for the Democratic Party,” Nader said. “If Bernie wins the election against Trump, should he get the nomination, it has to be a massive surge of voter turnout which will sweep out a lot of the Republicans in the Congress. So he will have a much more receptive Congress. It will sweep out the corporate Democrats in the Democratic National Committee, and it will reorient the Democratic Party to where it should be which is a party of, by, and for the people. That’s why they want to fight him.”
Nader joined Intercepted to discuss the failed impeachment move against Trump and the state of the Democratic primary. Nader ran for president in 2000, 2004, and 2008, and throughout his career has been one of the most important voices for justice, as well as environment and consumer protections, in U.S. history. His latest book, written with the consumer advocate Mark Green, is called “Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t.” What follows is the extended transcript of the excerpt of the conversation broadcast on Intercepted.
Jeremy Scahill: Ralph Nader, welcome back to Intercepted.
Ralph Nader: Thank you, Jeremy.
JS: So I want to begin with the big picture of this impeachment fiasco that we’ve just gone through, and while we have Trump on his victory tour talking about his acquittal, we also have this other phenomenon which is that the corporate elite Democratic Party is trying to crush Bernie Sanders’s candidacy. Let’s begin with the impeachment and your assessment of the strategy that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats employed in going after Trump.
RN: Well, I and others beseeched her months ago to go with a strong full hand of impeachable offenses and send it to McConnell and have them reflect kitchen table issues because she always used to say we need kitchen table issues to increase the polls from 50 or 52 percent for impeachment and removal up higher. Well, that didn’t happen. We did see that major committee chairs wanted to put a bribery provision in. She turned that down. They wanted to expand the obstruction in defiance of subpoenas, a critical impeachable offense beyond the Ukraine matter. She turned that down. We had congressman John Larson put in the congressional record on December 18, 12 impeachable offenses of which Ukraine was one.
And the Democrats were basically subjected to one person’s decision, Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker. Well, she gambled and lost badly. Not only, obviously, he was acquitted, but polls went up for Trump, which was astounding. Nobody’s really explained that yet. So now the question is, will the committee chairs whose expanded recommendation to her was rejected, will they now come back to her and say round two? Now round two is quite explicit and quite effective. She has stated repeatedly that she thinks Trump “is a liar, a crook, a thief, and he should be in prison.” It’s a pretty good start. She also stated she wants the five committee chairs to continue their investigations into the corruption and wrongdoing and refusal to enforce the laws on behalf of the health safety and economic well being of the people. That’s the Banking Committee, the Oversight Committee, Judiciary Committee, etc. And if they do that, they are going to run up against a Trump stonewall for further information witnesses, which means they’re going to be obligated to issue subpoenas, which will be defied. That is a per se impeachable offense.
The House, went against Nixon, the third article of impeachment was he defied one subpoena. So when Trump defies these subpoenas for witnesses and documents, Speaker Pelosi will have to face up to the Constitution. The Constitution does not require her to go to court. That’s a tutorial that a lot of Democrats need to be taught. Congress’s power is plenary. They can enforce their own subpoenas, even by use of an antiquated tradition of a sheriff and a prison. They can enforce their own subpoenas. So they can go to the floor, no witnesses are needed, clean cut. Trump, you defied the subpoenas. You defied the essential power of Congress without which all other authorities are debilitated.
If they cannot get information under the Constitution from the executive branch, how debilitated will be the war power, the appropriations power, the tax power, the confirmation power? You defied it. You’re going to be impeached. These subpoenas would be associated with all kinds of kitchen table issues where people have a stake in these impeachments, didn’t have a stake much in Ukraine important as that is. It’s too remote. But they do have a stake in, for example, his destruction of life-saving consumer protections, environmental protections, workplace safety protections, in his destruction of social safety net protections for children.
JS: But are those impeachable offenses?
RN: Yes, they are when they’re associated with corruption, and treading. In other words, this isn’t just normal deregulation, what they’re doing now to the EPA is stripping it of its capacity to enforce the law. They’re pushing out scientists. They’re downgrading other professionals. They’re cutting budgets without congressional authority, and they’re run by people who have conflicts of interest and are corrupt, some of them have already left like Scott Pruitt. It’s the failure to execute the laws. That’s one of the impeachable offenses in the Constitution. Now, if Nancy Pelosi doesn’t do that, Trump will go all over the country, all over his tweets, all over the obsequious media with his disparaging nicknames and taunting and gloating. I told her in a conversation I had with her three months ago. I said, “Nancy, you know what he’s gonna do? He’s gonna say, ‘Nancy Pelosi had the majority in the House and she had all these crazy charges and she didn’t want to get them through. You know why she couldn’t get them through? Because they’re all lies. They’re all fake. I did nothing wrong.'”
JS: What did she say to you when you said that?
RN: When you have the president of the United States doing this with essentially no rebuttal. The reason why Trump stays where he is in the polls is he’s a soliloquist. He’s a slanderist soliloquist with no rebuttal. Look at the nicknames he gives all these people and they never give many nicknames back. The only way you deal with a bully who gives you nicknames like Crazy Bernie and Low IQ Maxine Waters is to give him his own medicine: Decadent Donald, Draft-Dodging Donald, Dangerous Donald, Dumb Donald, Low IQ Donald, Illiterate Donald. That’s the only way. Some say, well, we don’t want to get in the mud with him. Well, that’s an interesting comment. But not when the New York Times, Washington Post, and all the main media repeat verbatim his nicknames without giving the target of the nicknames any right of reply? That’s unethical journalism.
JS: Ralph, what did Pelosi say to you when you were laying all of this out?
RN: She said several things. She said that “I want an airtight case,” and she thinks Ukraine is an airtight case. Number two, she thought the public attention span couldn’t endure multiple impeachment charges. And number three, I think she cut a deal with her 12 Blue Dog Democrats who are in swing districts that that was the only thing she was going to bring forward. They could have had a national security, military sheen about it that insulated them.
JS: Why did Nancy Pelosi meet with you, given the way that you’re, to this day, vilified by the establishment Democratic Party for daring to run for president multiple times?
RN: Well, it wasn’t a meeting. It was a telephone conversation. I think because they’re interested in what I have to say. I mean, I could give them all kinds of strategies to landslide, Donald Trump, if they would listen. I could show them how to argue their case. I’m just giving you an example, Jeremy: You’ve got some currency in the Democratic Party now for universal basic income. I mean Andrew Yang, most prominently, and it’s viewed as a giveaway and simply, pandering to the people. How do you argue universal basic income in addition to alleviating dire poverty, in addition to increasing consumer demand for goods and services which stimulates the economy far better than a corporate tax cut? Well, one way is you say, hey, these corporations have already had universal basic income. What do you mean? Yeah, what do you think massive corporate subsidies, handouts, giveaways and bailouts are? They’re massive universal basic income giveaways. They are not only getting all these taxpayer freebies, but they also get trillions of dollars in the last decade of free government research and development which built Silicon Valley and built the biotech, nanotech, a lot of the aerospace and pharmaceutical industries. That’s pretty good, universal basic income.
Apart from the tax credits they get for doing the research that companies should be doing anyway in a so-called capitalist society. So, they don’t know how to argue full Medicare for All. I put out 25 ways life in Canada — because they have single payer full health care — compared to life in the United States. It isn’t just you know, a matter of un-affordable health insurance. It’s the removal of anxiety, dread and fear. It’s the situation in Canada where you’re not afraid to change your jobs because you might lose your health insurance. It’s a situation where you’re not ripped off by inscrutable sheets of computerized billing which total about 350 billion dollars according to Professor Malcolm Sparrow, an applied mathematician at Harvard. Imagine one-tenth of the entire health expenditure is corporate crime, it’s crime on Medicare, crime on Medicaid, crime on insurance companies because of the billing frauds that they’re paying for, crime on individual patients and payers. They don’t know how to argue it. That’s why once in a while I get through on a phone call.
JS: You know, you’re laying out a much broader strategy for what charges should have been brought against Trump and of course, criticizing the strategy that they ended up employing, but at the same time, Mitch McConnell, runs that Senate with an iron fist. It seemed clear from the jump that only Romney and maybe one or two others would have jumped ship. And in the end, it was just Romney. So, is the strategy you’re advocating putting forth those charges, getting an impeachment on those charges, sending it to the Senate for trial as a way of educating the public or revealing these crimes? Because it seems very unlikely in this day and age that more than one or two Republicans, no matter how much evidence was out there would have jumped ship on Trump over the issues you’re describing. They love that form of deregulation and they seem to not really care at all about the overt corruption that we’re witnessing.
RN: Not when they’re preceded by dozens of highly televised House committee hearings on the misuse of presidential power that is harming in kitchen table manners where people live, work, and raise their families, the American people.
JS: But these people aren’t watching MSNBC, C-SPAN, or CNN. I mean, Fox News is the single most powerful news entity as well as social media. And as Trump has said, he’s his own media outlet. I mean, I see it, Ralph, as part of the problem is there is such low trust in media, such low approval ratings of the Democrats in Congress, that it doesn’t matter if you hold those hearings, given the media landscape today. This is not like the 70s where it’s every single night on the news. It’s people are seeking out information they want, not seeking out the truth.
RN: Wrong analysis.
JS: All right. Correct me.
RN: When you see the kind of witnesses that the House could have brought, the kind of empathy, that kind of resonance, just the way they did when they brought some of those civil servants. You have to admit their testimony reached a lot of people. Fox has its own constituency. So the other networks, the other cable, the social media, the newspapers, the word of mouth. These are very easy abuses by Trump to understand unlike the more arcane diplomatic situation with Ukraine.
JS: Right.
RN: And what’s really important here is she wanted to tie up the Republicans in knots in the Senate and she only used one knot. She used one finger out of ten that could have been curled into a tough fist with very perceived abuses of the Constitution, of protective statutes, of income preservation and of turning over by Trump, turning over the U.S. government to Wall Street. You know how Wall Street polls, Jeremy? 90 percent of the people when they were asked two, three years ago, wanted to break up the big banks. That’s a lot of conservatives. Wall Street over Main Street. It’s an unbeatable presentation to get to the American people. You get left-right combination here. Let’s not subsume our factual imaginations to this polarization. It’s exaggerated because it’s a divide and rule strategy with any broader rebuttal where people work, live and raise their families where they all bleed alike from rip offs, from being denied health care, from usurious interest rates, payday loan rackets, installment, loan rackets, rental abuses, all that will come out because they’re not enforcing the law.
Now remember, the committee hearings do not have to be impeachment hearings at all. They’re just regular investigations so they can range broad far and deep and to watch what Trump is doing to make America fail. And then when the subpoenas are defied, that’s when it turns into an impeachable offense after the hearings. Also, they won’t be able to in the Senate, block witnesses. They blocked witnesses because people like Dershowitz gave them the plausible argument. Well, everything that the Democrats say is true about what Trump did. If it was all true, it didn’t reach an impeachable offense status. So that gave them an out. They can’t get an out when it deals with all these other impeachable offenses which are violations of different clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
JS: Ralph, how has this strategy that you’ve been describing that Nancy Pelosi did end up implementing in just going very narrowly over the Ukraine issue, and then Trump now on his victory lap, how does this impact the broader move at the ballot box to try to defeat Donald Trump?
RN: It produces slippage by the Democrats. They’ve already acknowledged it in the last two weeks. You see, the Democrats cannot defeat Donald Trump by themselves because they don’t use all the arguments and all the issues. There has to be a parallel get out the vote civic initiative in every precinct, in every place in those key six or seven swing states. Now there’s a group in Kentucky which you may know about called Ditch Mitch and it started about six months ago. It’s a PAC. It is not affiliated with the Democratic Party. Its sole purpose is to elaborate Mitch McConnell’s horrific record against Kentucky interests and Kentuckians and get out the vote. Get out the vote, OK. So that’s the formula. There has to be a parallel movement to get out the vote against Trump because the Democrats are not listening.
It’s almost impossible to get through to Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. I’ve had people who’ve run for major office, they can’t even get his ear, much less sit in his office to give them advice. When Mark Green and I just came out with this book, “Fake President” which is more than a book to be read. It’s a book to be used like a resource book by field organizers, by activists and Mark who you know, who’s [an] upstanding Democrat went to try to see him. He couldn’t see him, couldn’t even get an appointment, couldn’t even get him on the phone. I mean, you know, Mark is, you know, was almost mayor of New York. Bloomberg beat him with huge money in the last few weeks. He’s written the two major policy tracks two giant volumes for the Democratic party in prior elections. And he can’t even get through. Congressman John Larson tells me he can’t even get through to Perez.
It’s very hard to get through to any of these people. They think they know it all and what kind of know-it-all? The caution of Nancy Pelosi has brought her defeat in four out of the five congressional elections 2010, ’12, ’14, ’16, squeezed through in 2018 with the help of progressive candidates, but it’s not exactly confirmation that her cautious approach is winning for her. It illustrated itself in the Senate debate recently over the Ukraine impeachment articles.
JS: You know, we have this, and it’s ongoing, this debacle in Iowa. And it does seem like there was some dirty pool at play there. You just talked about Tom Perez. At the same time, you have the sort of establishment Democratic Party and figures like you know, he’s not so significant in many ways right now, but his history is worth reminding people of James Carville, who was one of the brains behind Clinton’s ascent to the presidency, basically having an aneurysm over the notion that Bernie Sanders could be the Democratic nominee. Your current assessment of how Tom Perez, the establishment elite of the Democratic Party, are mobilizing against Bernie Sanders in particular but also against anyone with a truly progressive policy platform.
RN: Well, the Democratic corporate establishment deep in the Democratic National Committee and the super delegate fiasco, imagine, nobody elects them, but they can tip the balance, undermined Bernie in 2016. There are strong arguments to say that he did really win Iowa and Nevada before he landslided Hillary in New Hampshire, but that’s the past, but they’re at it again. They have to stop Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren because their hegemony is over if one of those people gets elected, and they want to continue dialing for corporate dollars. They want to continue Obama’s record setting fundraising from Wall Street which exceeded his Republican opponents. Imagine, he got more money from Wall Street than John McCain in 2008. He even got more money from Romney’s venture capital firm. So, that’s the internal struggle. This business about socialism, that’s just a cover but they’re willing to emulate themselves this year, and let Trump win by basically stereotyping any kind of progressive legislation as socialism.
Now, for example, the argument should be by the progressive Democrats, “Look, here’s what we mean by socialism. It’s what led the Western European countries and Canada to a higher standard of living, higher equality. It means full health insurance. It means a living wage. It means retirement security. It means protecting people from serious erosions of their rights as workers. It means the ability to repeal the Taft Hartley Act and reflect majority desires in the retail trades like Walmart to join unions and so on.” But if you want more examples, people, well, let’s see the post office. That’s socialism. Public drinking water departments all over the country, I guess that’s social and public libraries. I guess that’s socialism, public electric utilities, over 1,000 of them around the country, including Jacksonville, Florida. How about the Tennessee Valley Authority deep in red state territory? You think you can repeal that? By conservative voters in Tennessee and Alabama, they’d run you out of town. So they don’t know how to argue this.
And here’s the umbrella argument, Jeremy. Look, it’s a choice between Trump’s corporate socialism which you cannot dis-elect and throw the rascals out because it’s Wall Street controlling Washington, or democratic socialism where if you don’t like it, if you don’t like law and order to corporate domination of your lives, and the corporate state, which Franklin Delano Roosevelt called fascism in a message to Congress in 1938, you can always throw the rascals out. That’s the difference. And what is corporate socialism? It’s seizing your tax money and bailing out the crooks in Wall Street in 2008 with trillions of dollars. Corporate socialism is shoveling out your hard earned dollars to company subsidies, handouts, giveaways, etc, anti-market quotas. And above all, it’s taking your money away by giving it to tax breaks for the rich and powerful which creates huge deficits that are going to be paid by your children and your grandchildren instead of putting the trillion and a half dollars of Trump’s tax cut, including cutting his own family’s taxes into rebuilding America, into rebuilding schools and public transit and water and sewage systems and bridges and highway and airports and ports. That’s the way you argue it, Jeremy.
JS: What is, given your history in electoral politics and the way that you’ve been treated by the Democratic party establishment, if you take that history that you’ve lived, and then you look at Hillary Clinton’s interventions in this current electoral cycle where they, you know, the hagiography on Hulu just premiered at Sundance and she you know, this line gets floated that “nobody likes Bernie,” you take that and then you look at Pete Buttigieg coming out of the McKinsey world, the sort of consiglieres of capitalism and then you have Michael Bloomberg just pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into ads. I was just recently in Puerto Rico and watched ad after ad after ad of Bloomberg saying he’s already rebuilding Puerto Rico. But what is the emerging elite Democratic corporate wing of the Democratic Party strategy in this primary? What are they trying to do? Who are they going to get behind in your assessment?
RN: They have to block as I said, Bernie Sanders. They have to block Elizabeth Warren. They have to block universal basic income proposals like Andrew Yang. And basically, they like people like Joe Biden, you know, he comes out of the corporate state, out of the Obama world, out of the Clarence Thomas, enabler chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, mistreating Anita Hill and, and he comes out of that. They like him and if he falters, they’ll go for Bloomberg, because they know he’s got a lot of money to go up against the Republicans. It’s just redux. It’s corporate state Democrat redux. That is they’re almost identical in military and foreign policy with the Republicans. They’re almost identical and booming, bigger military budgets and lathering the military industrial complex with whatever they want. They’re almost identical with avoiding applying law enforcement to Wall Street.
Their rhetoric is a little different, but we talk about the rhetoric in realistic terms, rhetoric doesn’t really matter politically. So what their record is they have never introduced into Congress any comprehensive corporate crime enforcement. The corporate crime laws are absurd. They’re obsolete. Their fines are, you know, nickels and dimes, and they cut the enforcement budgets of all these agencies to begin with. So, they can’t even enforce against fraud on Medicare, for example, $60 billion a year, billion with a B. They bring back about two, three billion. That’s all. They don’t have enough prosecutors.
All that is deliberate. All that is part of the Rep/Dem consensus, the two party duopoly that stereotypes third parties, and when they start seeing an insurgence in their own party, they go to work on it behind the scenes, tipping close primary elections. They go to work on them, by slandering them, by stereotyping them. And the most interesting person emerging here is Pete Buttigieg because he’s coming on almost like a new Obama or a new Clinton, this kind of smooth moderation. He’s signaling with his fundraising parties with billionaires and millionaires that he’s going to be acceptable to them.
JS: Oh, that’s my favorite line is when Pete Buttigieg says “Hey, we have to include the billionaires. Let’s not exclude people. Let’s include people.” He has the audacity to make that argument and very, I don’t recall any pushback against that particular line that he keeps deploying when people ask him about the 40 odd billionaires who are financing his campaign?
RN: Well, Bernie, obviously pushed back in the recent debates. I don’t mind billionaires, if they support universal basic income, or I don’t mind billionaires who support the stronger enforcement of corporate crime. But his billionaires are basically Clinton-type billionaires, Wall Street billionaires. Remember he came out of McKinsey and Company. That’s the essence of the Wall Street establishment. This giant consulting firm.
JS: You know, at the same time you have — I mentioned Hillary Clinton earlier, but Hillary Clinton also really early on in Tulsi Gabbard’s candidacy for the Democratic nomination, smearing her as essentially a Russian agent. Tulsi Gabbard is of course, suing her for defamation. Now, I have a lot of problems with some aspects of Tulsi Gabbard’s history, her record, her relationship with some very frightening individuals in India, some of her positions on gay marriage, gay rights that have now shifted, and I think she has some questions to answer about some of her positions on Syria but it reminds me also of how you were treated and I’m wondering what your assessment is of that preemptive strike against Tulsi Gabbard by Hillary Clinton to say, “Hey, this is the new Jill Stein. This is who the Russians have chosen.”
RN: Well, you know, she’s not gonna do very well at all in the New Hampshire primary. I think, Hillary Clinton if she continues berating Tulsi Gabbard’s afraid that she’ll go independent and so-called, take away some votes in key states. I don’t think that’s going to happen.
JS: She says she won’t you know, she says she’s not going to do that. In fact, she even —
RN: The more serious attack is the use of the word electability. If they can’t use the word democratic socialism, they use the word electability to marginalize main progressive candidates in the Democratic primary. Now, this is basically a symptom of the defeatism of the Democratic Party. How can anybody running for president against this relentless savage sexual predator, this constant liar on matters of serious import to the American people, separating millions of people from reality into his commercialized fantasy, this person who’s a bigot and a racist and he follows up with actions reflecting that — how can the Democrats even raise the issue of trying to find a candidate who’s electable against this person?
That’s just a technique to marginalize progressive candidates, and they use the words moderate and centrist and leftist and extremist to pursue the same strategy, to mainstream their corporate Democratic primary candidates. For example, Joe Biden is called a moderate. Joe Biden, for example, has supported wars abroad that are unconstitutional. Why is that a moderate? Joe Biden has been to toady the big banks. Why is that a moderate? Joe Biden has supported corporate-type policies on consumer bankruptcy limiting them, and credit card insurance gouging. Why is that considered moderate or centrist? Why is it considered leftist to support universal health insurance and a living wage and cracking down on corporate crime? Those received enormous results in the polls. Left, right support, 65, 70, 75, 80, 90 percent. Why is that considered extreme or leftist? Because the progressive Democrats don’t know how to argue their case, Jeremy. They don’t know how to argue.
And now they’re so tired, going five events a day in the primary, flying in that they can’t think anymore. I’ve been through that kind of pressure. They can’t think anymore. Their wind up speeches are getting stale. They are repeated. They’re not infused with the kind of new facts and new ranges. To open it up, they’ve got to raise the issue of 300 billion dollars a year from a tiny less than 1 percent tax, sales tax on Wall Street transactions. They can say, look, people, you go into a store and you got to pay 6, 7 percent on necessities of life. How come someone buys 100 million dollars of Exxon options or stock and doesn’t have to pay a cent? See, and then you take that 300 billion and you put it back into dealing with student loans. Wall Street basically disenfranchised a whole generation of young Americans by collapsing the economy in 2008. And these people are owed that kind of transfer of sales tax for their technical training, their student loans. They don’t open it up.
As a result, the media which follows them, it gets jaded. They hear the same wind up. It’s a good wind up, but it’s too repetitive. And it excludes a whole range of factual conditions on the ground that will alert more and more millions of people to say to themselves, she’s on my side, he’s on my side and they don’t do that. Therefore, they don’t generate any news, even though they’re in the eye of the media during the primary season, day after day.
JS: We know that there were very dirty tricks played in the 2016 primary by Hillary Clinton and the DNC against Bernie Sanders. I think, Iowa, the Iowa Caucus, made a lot of Sanders supporters believe that that already is happening right now. Not just the overt kind of war against the Sanders and to a lesser extent, but still there Warren candidacy, but if you have a DNC that is willing to rig its own primary, what is Bernie Sanders’ path not just to winning that nomination, but then running a national campaign against a humongous war chest that Trump already is amassing?
RN: Well, he’s doing pretty well without our advice, huh, Jeremy? It’s really quite remarkable.
JS: He is but we’re only you know, we’re only at the very beginning of this and I’m referencing what they did in 2016. I mean, he basically has to fight the DNC and Trump simultaneously.
RN: Well, Bernie doesn’t like to appear like a sore loser. So he doesn’t complain in 2016 about what happened in the casinos where votes were counted, can you imagine? In Nevada, and in Iowa. First of all, he has to attack the caucus system. The caucus system is a form of voter suppression. Let’s face it. I mean, how many people can take out four or five hours, travel to a location, stay there at night, leave their kids? So it’s a form of voter suppression.
JS: We can barely get people to just go and vote in a poll, you know, in a normal one person, one vote.
RN: Just a normal primary, like New Hampshire. So, he lost an opportunity after 2016 to go after them. Although he did change some rules. He reduced the number of super delegates which is a way the corporate Democrats jab in at the end to tip the close race between their candidates and progressive candidates. And now the super delegates only kick in at the Democratic National Convention on the second round, but still, they can be decisive. And you know, the super delegates are members of Congress who are Democrats and former Democratic governors, etc. They haven’t been elected to anything as far as this election is concerned, but they can decide the outcome.
JS: If Sanders does get the nomination, what will that mean for the Democratic Party? I mean, would it be akin to, you know, to sort of what the Tea Party and ultimately Trump did to the Republican Party? I’m not drawing a comparison between their individual policies or their morality in terms of Bernie and Trump. But in terms of what it does to the party, it seems to me like Bernie winning would effectively shatter parts of the Democratic Party for the better, like get rid of some of these toxic elements that dominate that party.
RN: I think you’re right. If Bernie wins the election against Trump, should he get the nomination, it has to be a massive surge of voter turnout which will sweep out a lot of the Republicans in the Congress. So he will have a much more receptive Congress. It will sweep out the corporate Democrats in the Democratic National Committee, and it will reorient the Democratic Party to where it should be which is a party of, by and for the people. That’s why they want to fight him.
JS: Finally, Ralph, what about the state of third-party organizing in this country. I mean, the last truly successful runs were your runs. I mean, I think that the, you know, the Green Party has been just decimated and I think has made some strategically very unwise decisions in recent campaigns. But is there a future for third party organizing in this country given what is happening right now with the ascent of Donald Trump and the threat of an even more authoritarian second term if the Democrats lose?
RN: Well, two responses and by the way, your listeners, if they want more of what they’ve been hearing and my background, they can go to my website nader.org. If they want to see how a progressive campaign on issues that both parties take off the table, they can go to my still-open votenader.org from the 2008 campaign to see what issues we espoused to have majority support that were taken off the table for even discussion by the Democrats and Republicans. I see two scenarios here for third parties: One, they proceed as they are proceeding, maybe get some more votes to nudge the major party that’s closest to their views in the right direction. That happened in the 19th century when some of the smaller parties never won a national election, but they push the two parties on things like anti-slavery, the 1840 run by the Liberty party and women’s suffrage, industrial labor, farmer parties, People’s Party. So that’s one scenario.
A second scenario if the Democrats lose to the worst president in history, the crudest, the most overt disgusting, foul-mouthed corporate toady who’s destroyed the rule of law and constitutional observance, if they lose to him, I can see the Republican Party breaking open. I can see some reminiscence of the Republican Party being created in 1850s, splitting and replacing the Whig Party. In an era of billionaires who are willing to fund new parties, that is not out of range. They will call it a new centrist party something the way Bloomberg has been talking about. And then the third and this is the one the Democrats got to be really afraid of — a progressive third party with hundreds of millions of dollars in their war chest, enough to get five to 10, 12, 15 percent. So this is really Armageddon time for the Democratic Party. They’ve been losing and losing to the worst Republican Party in history. I mean, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Senator Robert Taft would have been aghast at the extreme nature of this Republican Party, the stupidity, the ignorance, the bigotry, the corporatism, the self-serving enrichments, etc. They’re a mirror of Trump which is why they clap for him in the White House. And I can see, if the Democrats lose this one, there’s going to be a lot of fissure and a lot of splits.
The civic community in this country, environmental, consumer workers, civil rights, civil liberties, housing, tenant groups are excluded from the electoral arena. All you gotta do is look at Judy Woodruff on PBS, the News Hour. She interviews reporters. She doesn’t interview leaders who know what you’re talking about of civic groups. The civic community has got to stop being passive and demand that they have a role in the deliberations and in the media coverage of these campaigns, because they know a lot that the candidates don’t know. They know even a lot more that the reporters don’t know. And they are the seed corn for American democracy since day one in the 18th century.
JS: Ralph Nader, thank you very much for being with us.
RN: Thank you, Jeremy.

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