God Bless the Corporations

No one else can compete with them because there is no other way for such goods to be produced. None. Unless you're proposing we all go back to living in villages surviving off of water from a well, doing exhausting manual labor from dawn to dusk, and going to school with no books or supplies (all books and learning materials are produced by corporations) except what each family can scrap together from whatever materials are avilable, with each village isolated from the next aside from perhaps a local newspaper that covers several towns. Is that the way you'd rather live?

 

You are using the same arguement I just refuted. Of course corporations make the book and learning materials, no one else can afford to compete with them.


We do not need corporations to maintain modern industry. A factory does not need to be part of a major corporation to exist. There are still privately owned factories out there. Fewer every year thanks to your lovely corporations.

We do not need corporations to maintain our national or local infrastructure. Much of that is currently maintained by our taxes anyways.

Corporations do not better the quality of our lives. Corporations remove diversity and choice from our lives. Corporations poison our society with advertising. Corporations deprive people of the opportunity to own businesses.

Corporations are evil.

 

Even if we did revert back to the world you described, corporations would eventually arise from the local companies who expand their business. When one company is more successful than others at Town A, all other local companies in town A are put out of business. That company then moves to town B and, with it's domanancy(sp?) already established in town A, starts to offer it's beter/more efficient product or service to town B. Since this company's product is better than anything else available (I'll use Microsoft's Windows OS as an example), it puts it's competors (IBM's Unix, for example) out of business in town B and then moves on to town C. Rinse, lather, repeat, and you've got yourself a corporation.

Corporations are as big as they are because the people, the consumers, make them that big. Corporations are able to produce better quality products for a cheaper price than small, local manufacturers. Period. People spend their money on whatever is best and most efficient, and more often than not what's best and most efficient comes from a big corporation. It's not like they're cheating or playing dirty - their stuff is simply better.

Does this mean we should have an unrestrained marketplace with corporations doing whatever the fuck they want? Hell no. The kind of sweatshop labor that goes on in Asia and Africa are human rights violations, and the UN has every right to charge the people responsible for such practices as human rights violators (not that they ever will, because the UN is a worthless organization). There should be laws and restrictions on what corporations can and can't do, and I'll be the first one to admit there's probably not enough of them right now. But just because a few big corporations (Enron, for example) screw over their employees and are involved in illegal activities doesn't mean they all deserve to be torn down. That's like saying all Arabs should be killed just because a few of them are terrorists.

 

This is sloganeering. Tell me, are corporations giving us slower, more expensive computers every year? Do you think mom and pop companies should be building them instead (In fact there are still a lot of small shops putting to gether PCs - just have a look at the latest Computer Shopper)? If you don't want Nike, aren't there about 200 other brands of shoes you could buy?

 

"All I know is, like it or not, the world is becoming a Corporate world, so whether you agree with it or not, we're getting it lol "

--not without a ton of GLOBALIZED RESISTENCE!

Keowyn, you are exactly right. More and more people are coming to accept this as fact. There's a worldwide populist movement that "radically" opposes corporate global hegemony. Hence, the "increasingly polarized world" we're hearing about more and more. The polarization is a class one, when looked at with a magnifying glass (for those that would need it). It's a potential all-out classwar between the world (corporate-state) elites, and the common man/woman/child. Unfortunately, if you are pro-corporation, you are anti-family, whether consciously or not.

Also, Keowyn, don't bother trying to reason with these kinds of folks. They've already made their pact with $atan.

One last thing about corporations, especially multi-national conglomerates. They represent the very worst of capitalism. They ARE the worst of capitalism. They stifle diversity. They fight dissent (often with automatic weapons), they root out competition. They MONOPOLIZE EVERYTHING IN THEIR PATH. They are selfish. They are greedy. They have no soul. They are not living human beings. They have voting rights...they provide access to state legislation, they require the middle class and poor to remain exactly where they are. They determine how much pollution gets thrown into the atmosphere, THEY'VE TAKEN OVER THE UNITED STATES POLITICAL SYSTEM including both major parties, they ARE the mainstream media, they fire those who resist and disagree, they main, they rape, they manipulate, they deceive, they grin in secret, they harm, they are killers.

Dispute that with facts if you can.

 

Half of that post was just your personal opinions and thought, which I personally don't think are very thorough. A class war between the elites and the common man? You might as well say Prolitariat and Bourgoisie. Out system may not be perfect, but we are still far, far, far from a civil war of any sort.

As for the second half which you challenge us to dispute with facts, I don't think that's possible being that you haven't put forth any facts to be challenged. You've just thrown out recycled anti-corporate ideaology which (although not entirely false) isn't what I consider "fact."

 

An argument against corporate capitalism as we currently know it doesn't necessarily entail anti-progress, anti-technology, anti-industrialisation. People often think it has to be one or the other - if it's not capitalism it must be communism... if it's not corporations as we know them it must be a return to pre-industrialisation. But this just shows a lack of imagination.

There's a case to be made that while there are huge benefits to be gleaned from industrialisation corporatisation, the way these global industries and the likes of the World Bank and the IMF who support them are set up is possibly not the best way they could be organised in terms of global ethics. It's true that technology, organised industry and corporations have brought untold benefits to humankind. It's also true that they are the cause of exploitation and poverty in certain parts of the world. The global economy as it currently works seems to require this discrepancy. There are many examples of the downside of global capitalism as documented in the literature already cited.

Surely one thing everyone can agree on - there is room for improvement. At the very least, an assumption that the way things currently are is the best way things can possibly be is hubristic arrogance.

 

What corporations are doing to this planet is not simply a matter of whether they mean to do "good" or "evil" - it's a matter of where these people are taking humanity and the human experience.

Did corporations make the computer I'm using here? Sure. Do they make tv's, air conditioners, pharmaceuticals, building materials, blah blah blah. Certainly. Would Americans have their current "standard of living" without corporations? Doubtful.

What we never ask, however, is whether this "standard of living" is actually benefitting humanity. Are our lives more pleasant because television and internet are keeping us inside for hours more a day? Do we have closer, more satisfying relationships with our children, our aging parents, our communities, the natural world? Are we better off getting obese on corporate-produced food substitutes just because those same corporations can produce drugs to patch us together and keep us alive in our physically weakened state?

On a global scale, what does it MEAN exactly to have life reduced to the manufacture and consumption of objects? What does it MEAN to eliminate a diverse array of cultures that have existed for thousands of years in favor of western "pop" culture, fast food, and western-style government dependence? What does it MEAN for humanity when we homogenize culture, dehumanize community, weaken basic human relationships, and destroy any sense of wonder?

If the United States is any example, the world we are heading toward - if we indeed intend to export our "way of life" around this planet - is one where life holds no mystery and little inherent meaning - where our elderly die alone in sterile nursing homes - where our children are raised by strangers - where nature is nothing more than another "object" to be consumed and destroyed. We are fostering a "way of life" where increasing numbers of citizens resort to consumption of pharmaceuticals and/or various other legal and illegal drugs in an effort to combat the psychological pain, distress, anxiety, and mental and physical exhaustion that is the logical result of turning our lives - our HUMANITY - over to the corporate vision.

As a grad student of anthropology, questions about "modernity" and "globalization" are constant themes in my work. What I've found - and what many anthropologists are finding - is that when interviewing the older members of a culture - those who recall times prior to the advent of corporate sprawl - there is NOT thankfulness for a "higher standard of living" (even when it actually does exist, which is not very often, especially in rural areas). There is a desire to return to a time when standards of consumption were not high, when nearly every member of the group was self-sufficient, when the elderly were respected and cared for, when children worked not in sweatshops, but at their parents' sides. The older members of rural communities mourn the loss of respect for nature, for religious beliefs, for family cohesiveness, for traditions, and for a thousand other aspects of culture that are being literally wiped out by the spread of western liberal economics.

Daniel Quinn once provided a wonderful way to understand what is happening to humanity. Imagine a tiger, caged its entire life. You feed it the best meat. You inject it with antibiotics when it falls ill. You monitor its health, monitor room temperature, monitor water quality, monitor everything about its life. Chances are, that tiger will outlive its wild counterparts. At the same time, it will go completely insane - forced to live against its nature, it will brush its whiskers against the bars, desperate for stimulation. It will become depressed, pace compulsively, or become aggressive. While it may gain QUANTITY of life, its QUALITY of life is absolutely in question. As Quinn points out, we as a species are like that tiger - except we can't see the bars. THAT is what corporations are doing to humanity - and it is for THAT reason that I believe they are harmful, evil, monstrous, and that we are heading for either physical or spiritual disaster if we don't stop following these elite bastards like a bunch of lemmings off a cliff.

 

Laughin explained better than I ever could.

what I "recycled" was indeed Jargon if u wanna term it that, but it could also be called the bottom line of the points we as anti corporate-capitalists are trying to make. The basis of where all the grimy little details exposed by Laughin are kept.

When I say, "show me the facts", I think it's easy enough to provide statistical evidence to counter the main focal points which I pointed out. To respond by saying you can't put forth any facts to counter what I said is a true cop-out because bottom-line points can be disputed with facts (should the bottom-line points be false). So I'm led to assume that you can't dispute what I said because they, as a generality, are all based in reality through empirical evidence.

 

Some excellent points well made.

Some of the benefits it would be hard to argue against though, and which would not have come about without industrialisation and without giant organised concerns of some kind (let's call them corporations for the sake of argument) would have to be medecine and the efficient production of food. Also, the very fact that people are freed of the necessity to perform trivial duties to keep themsevles alive and can spend their lives researching abstract ideas is one of the major driving factors behind the progress of human knowledge. Knowledge and understanding is good. Science is good.

 

"the very fact that people are freed of the necessity to perform trivial duties to keep themsevles alive and can spend their lives researching abstract ideas is one of the major driving factors behind the progress of human knowledge."

Are you saying that corporate homogenization of the globe will accomplish this?

Who'll be freed? the executive corporate class? What about slave wage labor? the growing class divide between the Have-mores and have-nots?

 

I was referring to scientific progress. Having previously mentioned the benefits of medecine and agricultural efficiency, it would be a reasonable deduction to assume I was talking about the likes of people responsible for discovering things like penecillin or inventing or increasing the efficiency of certain kinds of machinery. The fact that these advances came about because the people responsible for them did not have to spend their lives farming or hunting their own food speaks for itself. The more people who are freed from these chores by such efficiency, the better able we are to feed the starving, and employ our innate ingenuity in the cause of increasing our understanding. Without industrialisation none of this could ever have happened.

 

something most of us can agree on...
Abbadabba and wicked eyes are fucking morons!

 

Yeah the first post in this thread was utterly moronic but there has been some good debate since!

 

When you have a country like the US, where a lot of trade (domestic & international) is heavily regulated, what happens is the corporations who are having to operate within these defined paramaters, take a keen interest in it's legislation. With me so far Abba & Eyes, et all?

So, if you have media sources that are owned by corporations who deal in (of course) trade. And you have elections in which officials are allowed to take contributions & advice from the very areas they are supposed to be regulating, what you get is influenced leaders. Still with me?

Good.

Now, if you combine this country's fear of socialism (taking care of people who can't take care of themselves), and it's lust for "free trade" (Gov't sponsored corporate greed), you end up with very large corporations acquiring public programs and looking for new ways to turn a profit (see energy deregulation in California / i.e. Enron).

So, when you take all these factors overseas you get a double edged sword:

On one side, the people at home lose their jobs to foreign competition (places where a dollar [or Euro] goes much, much further). You get a corporation who can exploit one workforce and blackmail the other (thereby lowering the standards worldwide) AT THE SAME TIME.

On the other side, they get richer and are able to buy more influence in DC's regulatory processes. Thereby making their jobs easier and cheaper. So they can get richer and buy more influence and make things easier, so they can get richer and buy more influence, so they can get richer so they can buy more.............

Not to mention the politicians who get to line their pockets.


Yeah, God Bless that!


And people wonder why I'm an anti-christian. :rolls eyes:

 

Actually no, because at first you refer to the US as a country "where a lot of trade is heavily regulated" and then soon thereafter you refer to its "lust for 'free trade'". I think you're going to have to pick one, you can't have it both ways.

Because that's exactly the point - countries with very little state ownership of industry, with limited regulation, and which allow free trade are far LESS susceptible to corruption because there is very little government to influence.

What's the solution? Ban imports? Reading this post one would get the impression that all countries had the same wages until about ten years ago when we suddenly invented poor countries and started importing from them.

In fact twenty years ago there was a very similar sounding outrage that asian nations were "stealing" our markets by building better, cheaper cars and televisions and many other products. In the end the sky never fell and miraculously the US and the asian nations ended up richer.

So your protectionism is really just deja vu all over again.

 

Let me put it to you like this: I have prime rib. I lust for a porterhouse, but I still have prime rib. Get it?

No, you tax and tariff imports so as to encourage buying your products at home.

You got the impression, that I was implying, that all countries had the same wages 10 years ago? Even after the part where I say they go overseas seeking lower paid employees? Sorry. I can't take your head out of your arse for you, so..... I don't know what you want me to do.

Asia definately got richer and more powerful. In fact, a VERY large portion of the US economy is Japenese and Chinese investment. However I would very much like to argue the idea that the US is better off now than 30 years ago. In fact, I can rebuke that idea with two words: RECORD defecit.

 

No, I don't get it. That makes no sense. If your market is deregulated there is no point in cozying up to your local senator because he can't help you. If trade in your product is free then you can't bribe the trade commission to change tariff rules/quotas/etc. That's why free markets produce less corrupt governments. Get it?

Exactly the point. When did this start happening? 100 years ago? 50? 10? When exactly did someone invent this radical concept of manufacturing things abroad and importing them to this country? Er... well like two hundred years ago? How did England ever develop when it was importing cheap stuff from its colonies? How did we ever develop as a country without having sealed ourselves off from all those poor countries?

And what portion of the economy would that be? Any explanation of why they would invest here when the country is doomed because our wages are too high? Any possibility that we invest in them too? Wow, first you're against imports, now you're bothered that other countries are investing here? What exactly is your economic plan for this country?

The deficit is not a measure of the economy, it is a measure of government spending. Bush spent more and took in less revenue due to tax cuts and an economic slowdown. There's your deficit. Try again.

 

No, we do NOT have a free market. Yes, greedy capalists lust for a free market. My, but aren't we dense today?

This is where I deviate from my Libertarian roots, I don't believe in the inherent goodness of corp. America. I believe if you don't strictly regulate and impose upon industry, industry will exploit their workers, and pollute the land with little thought as to the consequences.

Why? Beacause business is about profit.

Think of that. A country where you could pay whoever you want, whatever you want and dump your waste products anywhere you want. Oh boy, where do I sign up for that!?!

What does an economy of over 200 years ago have to do with today's global marketplace?

Did you just ask what my economic solution for the country was? I'm sorry, I didn't know I was running for president.

But hey, I'll answer anyway...

You want to profit in America?
You have to use American workers.
You have to operate in the states.
You have to buy in the states.
You have to pay a living wage.
You have to show respect for your customer.
You have to show respect for your environment.

Then, you eliminate the income tax & proportionately scale down the Fed. Gov't.

You realize all victimless crime (i.e. drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc..) is none of the anyone elses business and reform the laws accordingly.

So what that adds up to is, the burden of the drastically reduced federal tax system is carried in most part by

1) vice activites (drugs, gambling, etc..)

2) tariffs and taxes on product rec'd from overseas.



Oh, I almost forgot to mention. We get the hell out of the IMF & World Bank (money-lending) business. I'm a money-lender, and it's a dirty business.

 

So the US system is corrupted because it has "a lot of highly regulated trade" and it is also corrupted by companies lobbying for free trade. Basically you are say regulation and deregulation are both corrupting the country. And trade which the government is not interfering with is "Government sponsored corporate greed". Yep you really have a coherent argument there.

Newsflash buddy, believing in strict regulation does not count as deviation from libertarianism, it means you are not a libertarian at all.

Global trade was not invented yesterday.

So if you have a US company, you cannot have any overseas production, or use inputs manufactured overseas. All this government control miraculously occurs as we scale down the government, and there are no income taxes because we mostly tax drugs and imports which conveniently cover all costs.

How do you think other countries would react to this? Hey maybe they would ban US exports too! They we would instantaneously lose all export markets and the tens of billion of foreign investment we receive every year would dry up. The prices of many products would soar, and our consumer choice would be seriously limited. Productivity would fall as would wages, employment and living standards.

Sounds like a recipe for economic disaster. This kind of protectionism has been tried before.