Lately I have been using the phrase "Corporate Communism" on my television show. I think it is an especially fitting term when discussing the current landscape in both our banking and health care systems.
As Americans, I believe we reject communism because it historically has allowed a tiny group of people to consolidate complete control over national resources (including people), in the process stifling competition, freedom and choice. It leaves its citizens stagnating under the perpetual broken systems with no natural motivation to innovate, improve services or reduce costs.
Lack of choice, lazy, unresponsive customer service, a culture of exploitation and a small powerbase formed by cronyism and nepotism are the hallmarks of a communist system that steals from its citizenry and a major reason why America spent half a century fighting a Cold War with the U.S.S.R.
And yet today we find ourselves as a country in two distinctly different categories: those who are forced to compete tooth and nail each day to provide value to society in return for income for ourselves and our families and those who would instead use our lawmaking apparatus to help themselves to our tax money and/or to protect themselves from true competition.
If you allow weak, outdated players to take control of the government and change the rules so they are protected from the natural competition and reward systems that have created so many innovations in our country, you not only steal from the citizens on behalf of the least worthy but you also doom them by trapping the capital that would be used to generate new innovation and, most tangibly in our current situation, jobs.
We are losing the opportunity cost of all the great ideas that should be coming from the proper deployment of that 23.7 trillion in capital. Everything from innovation in medical delivery systems to accessible space travel, free energy to the driverless car; all of these things may never come to bear because those powerful individuals who have failed, been passed over by technological advancements, innovation and flat-out smarts, have commandeered our government to unfairly sustain their wealth and power.
Unfortunately, they use our wealth and laws not only to benefit their outdated, failed companies, but also spend a small pittance of their ill-gotten gains lobbying and favor-trading with politicians so the government will continue to protect them from competition and their well-deserved failure.
The massive spike in unemployment, the utter destruction of retirement wealth, the collapse in the value of our homes, the worst recession since the Great Depression have all resulted directly from the abdication of proper government.
Even with all that -- the only changes that have been made, have been made to prop up and hide the massive flaws on behalf of those who perpetuated them. Still utterly nothing has been done to disclose the flaws in this system, improve it or rebuild it. Only true rules-based capitalism ensures constant adaptation and implementation of the latest and best practices for a given business, as those businesses that don't adapt fail, and those who deploy the latest innovations to their customers benefit, prosper.
The concept of communism is rightly reviled in this country for the simple reason that it is blind to human nature, allowing a small group of individuals near-total control, while sticking everyone else with the same crappy systems -- and the bill. America spent countless lives and half a century fighting against this system of government. So why are we standing for it now?
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Bacevich outlines that if President Obama approves the McChrystal plan he will be implicitly , "Affirming that military might will remain the principal instrument for exercising American global leadership
Bacevich rightly senses that Obama’s decision on Afghanista
Although the Pashtun - Taliban kicked the Soviet Communist EMPIRE out in the late 1980s, but they will not so easily be able to kick-out this 'last Empire standing' on earth, the disguised "Corporate Communist" Empire without the agreement of the American people behind Obama agreeing to voluntaril
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
On the other hand, a fascist government exists for the support of the corporatio
The most recent issue of New Yorker has an excellent article on self-descr
I like your term, perfect descriptio
It is astonishin
Unfortunat
So storm the gates but remember 'The fool rattles the saber, the wise enjoins'.
Draw an arrow to the left and write "socialism
Draw an arrow up and write "aristocra
Draw an arrow to the right and write "capitalis
Draw an arrow down and write "religion"
Now extend all four arrows. Where do they lead?
Taken to the extremes all of the "systems" come to the same place. And that place for each of them is the opposite of "democracy
Place the ball on the floor. What does it take to keep "democracy
Whatever it's called we need to pry loose the grip that tiny group of people at the top have on our government
Starting with those mercenary lobbyists.
(Establish
Your last two ideas (politicia
He explains his role in what the author basically describes, involving internatio
Gee, wonder what do they know that you do not?