When I heard the word "corporatist" a couple of years ago, I laughed. I thought what a funny, made up, liberal word. I fancy myself a die-hard capitalist, so it seemed vaguely anti-business, so I was put off by it.
Well, as it turns out, it's a great word. It perfectly describes a great majority of our politicians and the infrastructure set up to support the current corporations in the country. It is not just inaccurate to call these people and these corporations capitalists; it is in fact the exact opposite of what they are.
Capitalists believe in choice, free markets and competition. Corporatists believe in the opposite. They don't want any competition at all. They want to eliminate the competition using their power, their entrenched position and usually the politicians they've purchased. They want to capture the system and use it only for their benefit.
I don't blame them. They're trying to make a buck. And it's a hell of a lot easier making money when you don't have competition or truly free markets or consumer choice. All of these corporations would absolutely love it if they were the only choice a consumer had.
Blaming the corporations for this is a little silly. It's like blaming a man for breathing or a scorpion for stinging. That's what they do. In fact, they are legally bound to make their best effort at not just crushing the competition, but eliminating it. Lack of competition will lead to making more money (presumably for their shareholders; though realistically it winds up being for their executives these days).
As the saying goes, "Don't hate the player, hate the game." We have to understand how this system works and then account for the abuses that are likely to arise out of it. I don't hate the scorpion for stinging but I also wouldn't put a bunch of them in my bed. And I wouldn't take kindly to someone else putting them there, either.
Politicians are very cheap to buy (and senators from smaller states are even easier to buy - great bang for your buck). So, obviously corporations are going to look to buy them so they can pass laws to kill off their competition. If you don't understand this, you're being at least a little bit dense.
You should lose significant credibility as a journalist if you're naïve enough to believe that corporations would not do this out of the goodness of their hearts. Come on, can anyone really believe that? Yet, in today's media atmosphere, saying politicians are in the back pocket of the corporate lobbyists who raise the most money for them is seen as an unacceptable comment. Anyone who challenges the system is portrayed as an outsider, fringe element who must be treated with scorn and shunned. We are told in earnest tones we must trust the corporations and not question the motives of the politicians.
The sensible approach would be to recognize the problem and figure out a way to avoid it the best we can. Money always finds a way in, but we can at least be cognizant of the issue and try to combat it as much as possible. We must do this as citizens who care about our democracy, but we must also do it as capitalists.
I believe in the capitalist system. I think it makes sense and it is attuned to human nature. People do not work to the best of their ability and take only as much as they need. They work as little as humanly possible and take as much as humanly possible. Capitalism helps to funnel these natural impulses in a positive, hopefully productive manner.
But in order to have capitalism we must have choice. If consumers do not have different companies to choose from, if the markets aren't truly free and there is no real competition, then you kill capitalism. Corporations are a natural byproduct of capitalism, but as soon as they are born they want to destroy their parent. Corporations are the Oedipus of the capitalist system.
In order for capitalism to work, they must not be allowed to succeed. We must guard capitalism jealously.
So, it is of the utmost importance that we watch politicians with a very wary eye. Campaign contributions are a tiny expense to a large corporation. And the politicians treasure them too much. It is an easy sale. So, beware of politicians receiving gifts.
The perfect example of this is the health care reform debate going on now. And perhaps there is no better example of a politician who works for his corporate overlords than Max Baucus, who has received nearly three million dollars from the health care industry.
I don't blame the health care companies. I would do the same thing in their position. In fact, it is their fiduciary responsibility to buy an important (and cheap) senator like Max Baucus (he's cheap because he comes from the small state of Montana, where it is far less expensive to buy ads and crush your political competition with money they cannot possibly match).
If the health care companies can eliminate their competition, they'll make a lot more money. That is why there is so little competition among corporations in so many parts of the country now and why they are desperate to avoid the public option. They'd have to be stupid and negligent not to buy Max Baucus. He is the head of the Finance Committee and in charge of writing the most touted and awaited version of the health care bill.
I don't blame them, I blame us. How stupid and negligent are we to let that guy write this bill? The media should be treating Baucus and many of the other senators (who all get millions from the health care industry) with enormous skepticism. Instead, they are treating them as if they are honest actors who would never be affected by all that money.
They treat their concerns as if they are legitimate issues. The Republicans and the corporatist Democrats pretend to be fiscal conservatives who care about the budget when they are trying to kill the most important cost constraint in the whole bill - the public option. If you're a budget hawk, that's the last thing you'd kill, not the first. That's what keeps our costs down.
You see, these politicians betrayed their real motives in this debate. They made it crystal clear that they are not, in fact, conservatives or moderates or centrists or even capitalists. They are corporatists. They look out for the interests of the corporations that pay them above all else. Capitalists believe in competition. They believe it lowers costs and gives consumers better choices.
So, I would ask the media to please stop calling these politicians conservatives or even capitalists. And could you please look out for the rather obvious fact that they might not be working for us but for the people who pay them?
Of course, the media outlets might be able to better recognize this if large corporations didn't also own them. But that probably wouldn't affect their judgment either, would it?
Follow Cenk Uygur on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks
"In the United States Founding Fathers like James Madison defined republic in terms of representative democracy as opposed to only having direct democracy[6], and this usage is still employed by many viewing themselves as "republicans".[7" wiki.
Worse, neither a democracy nor a republican is for sale to the highest bidder, that makes the USA a Plutocracy.
The question is money.
Is it speech or Bribery?
That should be obviously to everyone that
Money to candidates is Bribery.
All Contributions are Bribes.
This whole republic versus democracy thing is a conservative canard.
Modern conservatism was formed to fight the Enlightenment, and continues to that fight today.
The Battle is between Plutocracy/conservatism/corporatism/oligarchy
Versus
True democracy: Not the "for sale" plutocratic toy of today. No contributions/bribes, equal prime time for all candidates, a travel budget. Real elections, real elected representatives.
That's the .1% versus everyone else.
Plutocracy or democracy
Choose.
Turn the USA from a Plutocracy it is, to the Democracy it was meant to be!
Fold the FED into the treasury, directly grow the economy by paying for services and equal distribution of cash to all citizens, instead of 12 FED Dealer banks getting free money.
Regulate Wall Street to what FDR put in place. Outlaw Derivatives, force banksters to invest in Main Street.
Prosecute the Banksters who participated in the CDS fraud. Insurance without reserves is known fraud.
Increase the top personal income tax, to 50%, to whatever it takes to fix the damage done, universal health care, transition to green energy, infrastructure, remove the SS income cap to give us the first flat tax.
Tax all commercial pollution. 1$ per ton carbon equivalent, mercury, curies of radiation. No cap and trade Bankster bs.
Break up any company "too big to fail", break up the media empires: One outlet per owner. Bring back the Renegotiation Board, and give it power over wall street too.
Outlaw mercenary armies, persecute Blackwater right to the top.
End Nixon's war on hippies and legalize pot, and decriminalize the rest.
End the energy wars, close 90% of our 1000 bases, stop policing the world, and start working with the world.
Prosecute all torture, rendition and lies leading to war to the fullest extent.
Pot laws have been used to sell nylon, control blacks, then kill off the hippie movement and recently it is again handy for arresting Mexicans. But Nixon and JEHoover wrote memos, conspired, to take antiwar political prisoners in the drugs war, but their belief that selectively prosecuting pot users would net more peace lovers than conservatives. It worked.
"Growing the money supply" by directly giving each citizen new money has nothing to do with communism. Who is it taken from?
Automation is the product of our entire civilization over history. Automation allows multiplication of effort, ie gain, that leads to economic instability, by concentrating the wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. That's reality.
You have some fantasy objection to redistributive taxes, the word "
communism" is very effectively used to scare you when it is nothing of the kind. Is Sweden Communist? No, in fact they have more private ownership of business than does the USA. But they have cradle to grave safety net included better health care. They are the happiest and least miserableness folks on the planet along with the other redistributive tax countries.
Why do you want a plutocracy?
The laws will not be enforced since it is not in the plutocracy interest to do so. They have bought our democratic republic.
You want to go to regressive taxation instead.
It crashes. People die.
Wake up.
Corporations are owned by people. They are not abstract beings. People have a right to peaceably assemble, and to petiton the Government for a redress of their grievances under the first amendment. The amendment does not prescribe the method of their redress. It is up to those in government to uphold the Constitution. It is up to the citizens to make sure that the Federal government remain as limited as possible to perform it's main purpose which is the protection of individual liberty and personal property rights. The progressive agenda, sadly, doesn't promote any of this.
Unregulated "free" market capitalism is a disaster, leading to plutocracy, oligarchy. and poverty for the vast majority or people. see my profile for more details.
What we need to do it get big money out of democracy.
All contributions are Bribes.
Free prime time for all candidates, and a small travel stipend is all we need for fair democratic elections.
The only way to get "money out democracy" is to limit the power of governments. Someone once wrote....."Regulation is how industry and government collude to create the rules of misconduct." The founders knew this which is why they created a Constitution which provided a Federal Government which had no authority to regulate private transactions. James Madison tells us in Federalist #62.....
Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.
Free prime time for ALL candidates? I wonder who'll define what a "candidate" is?
Aside from paralyzing free-enterprise, "capitalism" and corportarism court the worst in all of us, including politicians.
There is a distinction between "free-enterprise" and "capitalism." Knowing this won't help me pay my medical bills this month.
http://www.leftista.com/index.php/2009/09/free-enterprise-vs-capitalism//
So, neither the old Marxist formula nor its antithesis is really correct. We need something more subtle.
Having said that: good post. The problem in a nutshell: politicians respond to money, and corporations have it. End of story.
Capitalism, carried to its logical extreme is Corporatism. They, the Capitalists, give lip service to concepts like free markets and competition, but what they really want is to eliminate the free market and their competition. Their goal is domination of the markets and elimination of competition and they do this by co-opting government so that the game can be rigged in their favor.
I can live with capitalism. There are obvious benefits. But capitalism must be strictly regulated in the public interest because we know from history and experience that they will abuse whatever power they can grab. If we fail to regulate, we will have fascism, another name for corporatism. And we are already pretty far down that road.
First of all we must force both legislative branches to make rules saying that no legislator can have any involvement with any legislation that would impact those individuals or corporations who contributed more than $5,000 to said candidate. Such contributions create a conflict of interest that is anathema to democracy. Accepting such a contribution would automatically bar that candidate from participation in committee hearings, vote, debate, participation in conference committee. They are obbligated to recuse themselves completely. Failure to do so would result in immediate EXPULSION from the Senate or House.
The big corporations could not get anything in return for their money. It would buy no influence or access whatsoever.
Legislators would be spared having to raise such immoral sums for their campaigns, and could spend more time doing their jobs i.e. doing the work of the people including finding time to read the bills they vote on.
Campaigns would be necessarily shortened.
Everybody wins with a more level playing field except for those who sought election to come to Washington for the express purpose of enriching themselves and those executerrorists who are bent on influencing legislation so that they can continue to feed their insatiable greed.
The Baucus bill stinks on ice. Fumigate.
Would it be accurate to say that if Baucus has received nearly 3 million dollars from the health care industry
that other civic- minded politicians are doing the same.
If Baucus and other corporatists are in bed with health insurance lobbyists, isn't it time to kick them out and change the bed pan.
Aside from paralyzing capitalism and obliterating the middle class, corporatism courts the worst politicians.
It can be done. Corporations should control themselves as well. Since they have "personhood", they should take personal responsibility.
Of course we and our government need to set rules and enforce them. We need to set up a system that rewards good corporate behavior and punishes bad corporate behavior. But, just as we expect individuals to take personal responsibility for their own actions, corporations must too. To say that it's understandable when they act like thieves, crooks, liars and mongol hordes, does not help the situation.
My opinion is that it's better to treat corporations like a wild tiger -- he's not inherently evil for gutting and disemboweling you; it's just his nature. Similarly, if a tiger attacks me and I have a gun, I'm not evil for shooting the tiger -- I'm just defending myself.
However, if the tiger's *handlers* let him loose upon a defenseless crowd, those handlers ARE committing an immoral act. They had a choice how to behave, and chose the immoral one. Corporations have no choice but to try to make money. Consumers similarly have no choice but to protect their own self-interest. But regulators and voters (who are often representatives of "corporations" and "consumers" as well... it's complicated) are the ones entrusted with the moral duty to make sure that corporations, while serving their useful purpose as the engines of capitalism, do not harm the general public.
In short, it's the watchmen who have failed us, not the corporations or the consumers.
Health insurance was originally made up of non profit public benefit companies, usually formed by doctors in order to cushion catastrophic costs for their patients. These agencies are required to serve the public interest and limit retained profits in exchange for tax exempt status. It was a huge mistake to let these companies convert to for profit enterprises over the past 25 years. We can undo their for profit status with one simple piece of legislation. (I would include the for profit hospital chains as well). We are the only advanced country that allows for profit insurance companies. Let's be the last to get rid of them.
Ultimately market forces maximize *profits*, not necessarily outcome. This is the fundamental flaw in believing that treating health care as a market-driven commodity will produce good outcomes either for individual patients or for the tax-paying public.
This all would depend on the nature of the public option. A non-profit, self-sustaining public option, using no tax money, which Obama mentioned in his speech, is probably not feasible. The USPS can't compete well with private shipping companies and they have a monopoly on first-class mail. Obama has already mentioned this. The government can't run anything as efficient as the private sector. They would have to charge high premiums just like insurance companies. In my opinion, the premiums would probably be higher.
I don't think they could have an inexpensive public option without using tax dollars.
The free market ideal works well for many things but it does not and cannot work for life essentials, those things which are absolutely necessary for the continuation of life and health: Water, healthcare, electricity and/or gas. Because we cannot go without those necessities without great risk to life or health, privatising those allows the corporations owning them to profiteer like crazy.
Here in Britain, we privatised water, electricity and gas, all within my lifetime. The same thing happened in every case, the same thing that happens every single time life essentials are placed in the hands of private corporations: Prices exploded, service plumeted and standards were all but eliminated.
Obviously it would be a national security disaster to have a privately run military, same with NASA.