How the Ruling Class Treats People and the Planet as Disposable

Jeffrey Epstein is not an aberration; he's the product of a deeply rotten economic system and a society corrupted by patriarchal power. From his early beginnings teaching math at a private school in Manhattan to his very last moments in that prison cell, Epstein's life is a symbol of patriarchal capitalist depravity. ["alleged sex crimes involving minors"] ["powerful friends like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump"] ["the lies, the thievery"] This is the story of Jeffrey Epstein. But not as it's always been told. It is the story of one man of many, who grasped at power, channeled the logic of capitalism, and then wielded that power with

destructive disregard. In the process, his story reveals the patent indifference the capitalist ruling class holds for not only people, but the planet as well. Through Epstein, we see the forces of capitalism and patriarchy push barons of industry into destroying the lives of people and the natural world all to accumulate capital and ultimately power. Because the story of Epstein is a story repeated through modern history. It is the story of patriarchal capitalism unleashed. Our Changing Climate's finances aren't looking amazing. So, I want to make quick ask for your support as I transition this chanel to become a

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Looking towards the future, I'm hoping to continue making big, high-quality series like this one, but if I'm not able to make the finances work, I might need to reassess. So, this year I'm want to double down on Patreon, and make this channel entirely viewer supported. So, if you have the means to keep this channel afloat, literally just a quarter of the cost of one movie ticket, I humbly ask that you support OCC on Patreon. And, I want to make becoming a channel supporter a mutually beneficial relationship. So, when you become a member on Patreon, you get access to all of my videos,

including the next episode in this series, one month early and ad-free. We also have lovely little Discord community for talking climate and leftist politics, and there's also a trove of bonus videos and extended content as well. If something else might entice you to become a supporter of Our Changing Climate, please do let me know. If you're still here, thanks for watching, and if you become a Patreon supporter to keep these videos high-quality and free for all, you have my endless gratitude. You are truly amazing. Anyways back to the video Epstein's early life and the oil scam The year is 1976, and 21-year-old Jeffrey

Epstein is about to get fired. For two years, He has taught math at the Dalton school in Manhattan, until one day the headmaster calls him into his office. The school is dismissing him. It's unclear exactly why he was let go, but thanks to interviews with his former students, we can get a sense. Epstein was already wielding his power to prey on girls. Becoming friends with and even going so far as to flirting with his 14-year-old students, Epstein was clearly crossing lines in his role as a teacher. One former Dalton student explains, "There was a real clarity of

the inappropriateness of the behavior - that this isn't how adult male teachers conduct themselves." It's here, at Dalton, that we see the first inklings of Epstein's patriarchal worldview at work. An ideology of entitlement and dominance that seizes hold of power imbalances and uses them for destructive ends. An ideology that views women and gender non-conforming people as less than, and therefore disposable- often, to be used for pleasure. But wielding that power imbalance would quickly accelerate as he grasped the reins of finance capitalism and steered them to his benefit. Dalton was just the beginning. Soon,

Epstein's patriarchal dominance would collude with the forces of capitalism. Epstein would manipulate and con the people around him as a means to rise through the ranks of moneyed power. ["the hundreds of millions of dollars that Epstein amassed, the palatial estates, the aircraft… he stole it] After Dalton, Epstein landed a job at the investment banking firm Bear Stearns, thanks to the support of a Dalton parent. And from there, the sky was the limit. He exploited the people around him in the conquest of more wealth. As Epstein entered the investment banking universe,

he immediately responded to the capitalist forces constantly urging people to compete, to cut corners, to outmaneuver in order to eke out the most profit. In 1981, Epstein started growing what would soon become a $600 million fortune through an insider trading scheme at Bear Stearns. He then buddied up with a rich British defense contractor named Douglas Leese- using Leese's credit card to expense his personal private jet flights and luxury hotel stays. But his first big flush of money and power would come with oil. Six years after getting fired from Dalton, Epstein was

working over a man named Michael Stroll. As the New York Times reports, Stroll had gotten rich off a pinball and video game empire and turned to Bear Stearns to make that money into even more money. Such is the way of capitalism after all. But Stroll wouldn't make any returns on his investment, because he was entrusting his money with Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein told Stroll that he had "crude-oil deal" that was in the works that could make the pinball capitalist even richer. So, Stroll wired $450,000 he made exploiting workers' in his pinball empire to Epstein,

and waited… and waited… and would never see that money again. Because after two years, the oil deal never came to fruition, and instead of wiring back the money, Epstein seemingly pocketed half a billion dollars. Money which he spent lavishly on gas-guzzling Rolls-Royces and private jet flights. Churning emissions into the air as quickly as he churned through his marks. In this, we begin to see a glimpse of the disposability ethos of the super-rich. ["He would push the envelope, cross ethical, moral, sometimes legal lines, and basically escape with impunity"]

Throughout the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, Epstein moved through the world of finance capitalism as a parasite. Working as a financial manager for ultra-wealthy barons like retail tycoon Leslie Wexner. He "managed" their wealth, but in reality, stole hundreds of millions of dollars. But if we pull back a little bit, this is the way of our current economic system. Wexner made his money preying on and exacerbating relentless consumerism. Through his retail companies like Victoria's Secret, he sold women's bodies to sell clothes, and in the process, shoved more and more junk products down

consumers' throats. Constantly producing evermore cheap trash and evermore emissions to accumulate evermore wealth. And that wealth, at its core, was built on the central cycle of capitalism, siphoning the value of wage workers into profit. This specifically means that during an eight-hour work-day, for example, Wexner might pay a pinball laborer $80, but a small chunk of a worker's day is spent actually making $80 worth of pinball machines; the rest is unpaid or surplus labor. And all of that extra unpaid work means profit for the likes of Wexner. So, yes, Epstein was

a terrible man, but so too were the people he stole from. He was a parasite of parasites. [play clip] While he was amassing his wealth, Epstein used and abused women and girls for his personal pleasure and financial gain. From his days at Bear Stearns all the way to his last days in the New York City jail cell where he died, Epstein's use of women and young girls paralleled the rest of his maneuvering within capitalism. These women were disposable objects, just like his clients, just like the workers who made him rich,

just like the planet he trashed with his Rolls-Royce and private jet. In Epstein's eyes, women were not just sexual toys; they were also expendable tools to accumulate wealth. This is the cruel norm of patriarchal capitalism. During the 1980s, for example, as Epstein turned from Bear Stearns employee to client, using the company to manage his financial positions, Epstein's former manager at Bear Stearns, Clark Schubach, used his 23-year-old assistant, Patricia Schmidt, to keep Epstein happy. According to her diaries and reporting by the New York Times, Epstein gave sexual massages to Schmidt and soon used

her to win over clients. He made her give tours to his clients and accompany them to dinner. Schmidt explains, "It was always about getting him in a position of leverage… I was his plaything. It was like, 'You are someone that's going to help me get where I want to go.'" And Schmidt was not alone. Summarizing his climb to power, the New York Times writes, "Rung by rung, Epstein climbed a social and financial ladder, often using young women as a potent form of currency. His girlfriends, lovers, and even exes helped elevate his status inside a bank,

got him hired to track down missing assets, and gained him entree to prestigious organizations. And deliberately or not, some of them enabled him as he constructed a sex-trafficking operation that would later ensnare hundreds of teenage girls and young women." In this sick view of the disposability of human life, Epstein, once again, is not alone. This is the true heart of patriarchal capitalism. A capitalism that destroys people and the planet for endless accumulation and sexual power. A system that treats everything as disposable in the pursuit of maximum dominance and violent pleasure. Depravity and Disposability Man after man after man in power has built that power on the broken backs of exploitation, sexual dominance, coercion, and by

treating people and the planet as disposable. From Trump ["I don't think about American's financial situation, I don't think about anybody"] to Bill Clinton [play clip] to Elon Musk [Play clip], the ultra-rich embrace the capitalist requirement of disposability- of taking the profits from wage workers and working them as long as and hard as possible for maximum profits, and imbue that into the rest of their lives. Women, especially working-class women, are objects to be used for their personal pleasure. But this is also not a new phenomenon. I'll say it again,

Epstein is not an aberration; he's the poster child of patriarchal capitalism. There is a long, long history of Epsteins across world history, but especially in the United States. Thomas Jefferson, for example, a man who enslaved 610 people to become one of the richest men in the U.S. colonies, raped an enslaved woman, Sally Hemings, when she was just 16 years old. George Washington, at the time of his death, enslaved 123 people to toil on a monocropped plantations on stolen Piscataway and Dogue land. Indeed, the rich have been dehumanizing people for eons, and as capitalism and patriarchy has

solidified into the dense imperial core that is United States, our economy has become more and more reliant on the disposability of humans and land. This, after all, is a country whose power was built on the enslavement of millions of people, and the monocropping of biodiverse Indigenous land. Acts of plunder and violence that functioned to bring profits to the pocketbooks of the capitalist class. Epstein, then, is just the new iteration of this long history. He is not an anomaly. He is playing the game of capitalism, he is following the path of patriarchy, and in doing

so, he reveals the ideology of destruction that views all that is not money in the eyes of the rich as disposable. The basis of capitalism is exploitation. So, to grip hold of power within capitalism, to ascend to the ruling class, necessarily means the disregard of humans and planetary life. So why on Earth are we expecting moral good out of people who, for their whole lives, have profited off the destruction of the planet and the immiseration of billions of people? Trafficking of people and planet: Over the course of more than three decades, Epstein sexually assaulted and victimized hundreds of women and girls,

but it wasn't just him. Epstein had a coterie of the ultra-rich ruling class that partook in this sexual violence, and Epstein was more than happy to oblige and facilitate. Because, as author Anand Ghiridaridas explains: [This is a group of people who are not really loyal to the communities they come from. They're not their loyalty is not downward to places and communities and even countries. This is a kind of borderless network of people who are more loyal to each other than to places.] Epstein only respected his capitalist peers, and he used and abused working-class women as

a means to squirm his way into their ranks and gain even more power. As the likes of Musk and Gates churned carbon into the air aboard their own or perhaps even Epstein's private jet, nicknamed "the Lolita Express," they either took part in or knowingly ignored the destruction of human souls happening regularly within the confines of Epstein's eight properties. [That's the morality of the ruling class and in particular, the decadent bourgeoisie.] That's Marxist philosopher Grant Rockhill, he goes on to add, [that thinks all of you and all of us are disposable things and they can do anything with us

and in fact it's enjoyable to use us as disposable things and trash human life] This is the twisted view of humanity that Epstein and his ilk hold at their core. The earth and most people, but specifically working class people, and even more specifically, working class women, are just pawns on the chessboard of capital accumulation and sexual pleasure: they are to be used and discarded at a whim. And this disposability worldview seeps into the ruling classes' conception of the natural world. Epstein's few correspondences on climate change

lay this bear. In one back-and-forth with theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, Epstein sent a link to a video titled "Nobel Laureate Smashes the Global Warming Hoax," and then wrote, "I liked the argument that more CO2 is good for plants?" Epstein was a climate denier. But the particular way in which he denied climate reveals that his denial has been forged in the disposability logics of capitalism and patriarchy. A logic that tells us we can let millions of people die, because in some places, climate change could be good for some plants, and perhaps bring more profit. This is a myth pushed by right-wing think tanks-

in fact more carbon in the air will not be good for plants. Because whatever increased growth plants might enjoy from higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, the droughts, fires, deluges, and extreme conditions will certainly cancel it out. But perhaps the most illuminating of Epstein's climate-denying emails comes in a 2016 exchange with philosopher Joscha Bach. He writes, "Maybe climate change is a good way of dealing with overpopulation… the earths forest fire. potentially a good thing for the species." This is the patriarchal capitalist disposability worldview

distilled. Climate change is good for the species, because it will kill millions, if not hundreds of millions of poor and marginalized people. Because in that ruthless equation, Epstein is never factoring in himself or his rich compatriots as those who need to be sacrificed for the "greater good." A mentality that is mirrored in Trump's callous speech on sending soldiers to Iran: [The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.] or the killing of environmental activists to extract even more from the land [Close to 200 people died defending the environment in 2023.] Or the

construction of a 40,000 acre water guzzling data center in the Utah desert ["if built the data center would generate and consume more energy than the entire state of Utah."] This is the disposability ideology of patriarchal capitalism. An ideology that has pervaded the last 50+ years of denial by the oil industry. Sacrificing potentially billions of lives, and the future of the whole fucking planet, so that the capitalist class can watch the numbers in their bank accounts go up. Under the logic of capitalism, the planet, the atmosphere,

thousands of species, and the working class can all be disposed of. Because a capitalist economy only cares about one thing: capital- specifically the accumulation of more capital in an endless cycle that can only ever lead to destruction. Take Chevron's disregard for human life in the Niger Delta in 1998. There, where crude oil flows like water, Chevron murdered the protesting Ogoni people to ensure the security of their oil. In a crucial investigation, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Traveled to Nigeria to understand the extent of Chevron's violent coercion.

[The protesters were occupying a Chevron-owned oil platform called the Parabe platform, demanding jobs and compensation for environmental damage to their communities. Soon after landing in Chevron-leased helicopters, the Nigerian military shot to death two protesters and wounded several others.] This is the sick and twisted logic of capitalism. In the quest to make maximum profits, the people, the land, and the atmosphere are nothing but disposable tools or worse, distractions, to be used or murdered. And murdered they were. When Goodman went to confront the head of Chevron's operations in Nigeria about these deaths, he wasn't even ashamed,

explaining that Chevron flew in Nigerian soldiers to shoot at the protestors on their oil platform: [Amy Goodman:Who authorized the call for the military to come in? SOLA OMOLE: Chevron's management. AMY GOODMAN: Who took them in? SOLA OMOLE: We did. We, Chevron, did. We took them there.] For Jefferey Epstein, for Bill Gates, for Elon Musk, for Prince Andrew, for all the ultra-rich that took part in or turned a blind eye to the sexual assault of potentially over a thousand survivors, this is just the logical conclusion of a worldview that

builds power on the oppression and exploitation of others and their environments. That Chevron executive would fit right in with the likes of Epstein. This is what we must understand: the very same capitalist patriarchal forces that facilitate, allow, and reward a man to establish a network of sexual violence across decades are the very same forces that breed the destruction of the planet, settler-colonial genocide, and the immiseration of millions under the shackles of wage labor. The ultra-rich are ultra-rich and powerful because the rest are

not. Their wealth comes at our expense, be it human life or the natural world. Patriarchal capitalism at work Ultimately, this is patriarchal capitalism at work. A system that pushes power into the hands of predominantly men, but more broadly, rewards those who prioritize anger, dominance, violence, sexual power, and disregard for other humans. And that reward comes in the form of profit. Those who win in the endless cycle of capitalism are the very same who win under patriarchy: liars, manipulators, those with little regard for the lives of all kinds. To the ruling class, ordinary people are just things-like a super-yacht or a Maserati,

only much less expensive. Workers-the majority of the population-are mere factors of production from the point of view of those who control capital. And using people for their own enrichment easily transfers to using them for sexual gratification. We need to build a system that removes this power We need a wholesale toppling of this rotten system. One that flattens the ruling class's power into smithereens. Because jailing Epstein or the rest of the capitalist class does not transform the forces that will inevitably push a new batch of ultrarich destroyers into power. We must dismantle this system. We need a revolution

that puts the everyday worker in charge, so that one day we might build a stateless, classless society built on love and harmony between people and the land. For me this means an ecosocialist feminist world. It means recognizing that climate change, Epstein, American imperialism are all intertwined in the same systems that view everything as disposable, and that drive destruction in pursuit of profit and power. So to truly cleanse ourselves of this destruction, we, partilcularly those in the U.S. must transcend the western liberal capitalist schism of democrats and republicans: "Elites are fundamentally the same. Republican and Democratic

Party presidents like Trump and Clinton could share the same social world. Their sense of elite solidarity went beyond sexism, entitlement, and impunity. Epstein's emails reveal a porous network of unofficial politics, backroom deals, and grift available only to the mega-wealthy." We must find solidarity across the working class, across gender, across race, and across ability, because the elite seem to have already found that. They only care about and respect each other. So, there are two sides to this struggle. [There's an imperialist world system that is

demolishing the conditions of possibility of human life.] Again, that's philosopher Gabriel Rockhill, he goes on to add [And you either support that directly, condone it, or find other ways of supporting it implicitly. Or you line up and you say, I'm on the side of humanity. I'm on the side of nature. And what I want is a world where we can all live in some way a dignified life in which we have access to basic goods and services and where we don't have this plundering, corrupt, decadent, immoral financial ruling class that is intent on and is literally strangling all of us.] So, we must call Epstein what he is, not an aberration,

but one man of many soaked in the capitalist, patriarchal norms of a world on fire. We must build a world that rejects these norms and forces wholesale. A world of dignity, where all life, whether human or otherwise, is seen as indispensable. A little while ago, I helped build a solar array on a farm in California. At least, I sort of did, because I didn't build it with power tools; I helped fund the construction through this video's sponsor: Climatize. Climatize is a U.S.-based, SEC-registered, FINRA-member, investing platform that connects people like you and me to vetted renewable energy projects that are seeking funding across the country.

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