When people say something is good for 'the economy', what do they really mean? Who are they including in this boon? Not homeowners apparently -- we're told we shouldn't give too much help to those hurt by the sub-prime scam because it might hurt the economy. Nor does the economy subsume American working people -- while the economy has grown and thrived, the average American is making less money now than thirty years ago, despite working longer hours. Nor does the consumer enjoy membership in this elite club. Bush's knee-jerk response to the threatened recession was another tax cut -- the stated purpose of which was to get consumers to buy more junk they don't need, on credit, in order to stimulate the economy. Some conservatives opposed the cut, complaining that naughty consumers might just put the money in the bank or pay bills with it, which wouldn't stimulate the economy at all.
This would seem to leave corporations as the only group profiting from the economy. Yet we're told we shouldn't go too far in resisting global warming because it might hurt the economy, and it certainly can't be good for corporations to have their assets under water.
One can only conclude that the economy is a euphemism for 'short-term corporate profits', since that's the only part of our economic system that seems to benefit from policies that are good for the economy.
This is important to remember. Corporations themselves don't benefit from short-term profits when such profits endanger the long-term health of the company, as many now defunct firms have learned.
They say people get the government they deserve, which is perhaps why apathetic Americans have the nearest thing to a dictatorship in the 'free' world. People also get the corporations they deserve, which is why multinational corporations behave so much better in Europe than they do in the United States. When Americans pay twice as much for the same product as Europeans do it's not the fault of capitalism. It's our own apathy. In Europe, multi-nationals put up with all kinds of regulation they have easily managed to resist here, where every idiot sees himself as a potential billionaire.
People on the left need to keep this in mind, and build a little complexity into their thinking about capitalism. We need to make a separation between the horrendous abuses inherent in the system, and the system itself. To reject capitalism is to be as blind as the free market ideologues. Most of us don't reject government despite the fact that power corrupts even more surely than money. The left tends to put all its energy into influencing the federal government, as if Big Daddy is going to solve the world's problems. But Big Daddy isn't as relevant as he used to be, and he's a lot less forward looking than corporations are. Corporations all over the world were planning ways of coping with global warming when Washington still had its head in the sand.
If free market fanatics had their way, capitalism would soon self-destruct. It would destroy its workers, poison its consumers, and exhaust all its resources. Like any two-year-old -- which it resembles, motivationally -- capitalism requires limits, direction, positive inducements in order to stay alive. Without government regulation, restrictive laws, labor unions, and consumer advocates, capitalism would be doomed.
Corporations want to make short-term profits, but they also want to be around for the long term. Right now they hear much too much from investors who only care about short-term profits, and much too little from people pointing out the long-term gains from more enlightened practices.
Capitalism, with all its abuses, is dynamic, evolutionary, responsive, while centralized government is inherently static, conservative, chained to tradition. No viable corporation has as many levels in its hierarchy as the CIA, or the army, or the FBI, or Homeland Security. The executive branch of our government operates on authoritarian principles that most corporations abandoned decades ago as too cumbersome.
Capitalism is where change occurs. It's where a lot of the smartest people in America hang out. It's where effective influence--rather than mere protest and vilification--most needs to be brought to bear.
I know people who are in their 30's and they take dozens of pills each week. Try to tell them that they could get rid of their "disease" with a diet that eliminates factory-farmed, GMO, growth hormone, pesticide and antibiotic-infested frankenfoods and they look at you like you're fucking nuts.
People love their problems and they love Big Brother. They think the government has their best interests in mind when they eat these FDA-approved pills and FDA-approved meat and FDA-approved lies.
Doesn't the Bible say something about the problem with the devil isn't that he's evil... the problem is that he's attractive and seductive. They must have been talking about corporately produced goods....
Kiss the ring, get the money. I don't know who runs healthscare, I guess that'd be Cheney, either that or Bush, but ultimately at the top of the pyramid, I think you find one or more of those, hanging out drinking expensive booze, playing cards or something there. I don't know, I guess they could hit golf balls off the top, kind of like something out of Addams Family(KEEP THE BALL, JUDGE, I'VE GOT A WHOLE BUCKETFUL!)
But, who owns HOLLYWOOD? Who, indeed...maybe it's like a group ownership thing...hmmm....
It's all about the financial sector. Twenty five years ago the financial sector garnered 6% of the S&P profits, by 2005 it was over 30%. We are trading ever more pieces of paper to each other while taking a profit and calling it an economy.
the emperor has no clothes.
see a paper I wrote called "fractional reserve banking as economic
parasitism"
http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/wpawuwpma/0203005.htm
endorsed by two phd economists. printed in nexus
magazine, 60k world circulation. #1 top downloaded
economics paper. used by economics
teacher in australia as standard classroom material.
more info on request.
recent supporting material:
The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on the Rise of Disaster Capitalism
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/17/1411235
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251
John Perkins on "The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption"
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/05/149254
Video, senator/pres candidate Dennis Kucinich
at last years 2005 Monetary Reform Conference
http://www.monetary.org/video/kucinich/win_broadband.wmv
Money as Debt, video by Grignon
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279
For example, right now, you need to prove harm to get any compensation from a company that pollutes and you need to spend years in courts. In all the free market theory I've read, all you need to prove is that something the company did invaded your property and then they either have to compensate you and/or stop invading your property. There should be some arbitration method in place to make that pronouncement quickly. The end. The court system isn't fast enough right now.
Profit is usually enough inducement for people. I don't see how the government can provide any positive inducement, only negative inducement. "Do something we don't like and we'll punish you" the government says.
Resources are scarce. That's one reason capitalism works. If a resource comes into high demand, it goes up in price reflecting the increased scarcity. If a resource comes into high supply, it goes down in price reflecting the decreased scarcity. If this mechanism is not distorted through price controls or similar methods then resources get put where they are needed.
Capitalism would not destroy it's workers. This is Marxist class warfare crap that doesn't work out in practice. If you're going to produce something, you need workers. You want the best workers you can get, so you're going pay them as much as you can, given your prices and other costs of production. If we didn't have an inflationary central bank, wages would reflect worker productivity. Worker productivity constantly goes up because of increasing investment in capital goods. Therefore average wages should always go up. This increased productivity always drives prices down, too, driving up demand for whatever is being produced. This isn't happening right because of the problems inflation and fiat money create.
Please read Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" and "The Conquest of Poverty" to understand this better.
Thanks for the update.
I don't know what I was thinking.
Your logic is like ....., well not like the logic I am used to.
I used to think that when the European corporations were forced to be meagerly more common-minded by all that, you know, government regulation, well, I thought that meant that WE should also be pushing for MORE government contrl of our corporations.
So that we could extend the commons, so that some of it might be avialbale for our grandchildren.
But, you know, this is obviously incorrect.
By your logic, that is.
You say that capitalism is where I should bring some effective influence to bear. Wow, I sure wuould like to.
Who do I call to have more rational, long-term thinking in these markets, and to get rid of gross CEO salaries and exploitation of third-world resources and excessive growth of the money supply that causes all these funny little wealth-grabbing "bubbles" we seem to see all the more often. And, the complex. Who do I call to influence these things, again with a view towards the sustainable common-good kind of thing.
Just to be clear, I am absolutely not a communist and I am not against a true free market system, with the proper amount of either a conscience or government regulation.
Greedy, corporate, capitalist bastards.
That's what I am against.
The ones the media world looks up to because they control the media.
Because they are the media.
I mean, are you sure about this, Phil?
We're all a bunch of little capitalists.
But if we have any morals, we can see the perils of the unbridled laissez-faire corporatism we now behold within the military industrial complex.
The complex.
Maybe that's the problem.
Lordy lordy, maybe YOU need to build a little complexity into your thinking about stereotypes. We all want to make money. We all want to individually prosper, as well as see our economy prosper. We've already thought about this, and we want FAIR trade. Y'know, just like in Europe like you were saying. That's what we want, just like what you want. So what's with bashing the left? We're already on board, buddy.
The trick is to get our entrenched big business welfare queens and the conservatives and the republicans (you know, the RIGHT) on board.
Dude, catch up.
If this were true we wouldn't be going down the crapper!
If it were true, large corporations would be embracing new technologies instead of clinging to oil and coal.
Yes, and one can also conclude that democracy is a euphemism for capitalism.
We're spreading democracy [ahem, capitalism] around the world to the unenlightened masses. Through military force or the Peace Corps or thru deregulation and NAFTA and free-trade agreements and debt. There's always a handy euphemism for "spreading capitalism and setting up a one-world-government."
I think the corporations are working hand-in-hand with the government in this trickle-up redistribution of wealth. I'm just wondering how long it will be before one of the corporations just buys America outright. One day Rupert Murdoch, or Wal-Mart, or Halliburton may just own us.
I agree centralized government is bad. But corporate rule cannot be any better. Instead of "All roads lead to Rome," we have a new mantra for our one-world-citystate... "All roads lead to the marketplace."
OK, seriously, though ... nicely reasoned! I have to agree with almost every point you make.
There is ONE point that I would debate: That Corporations want to stay around for the long-run.
At one time, I think that was true. But remember: While Corporations (bizarrely) have been vested with legal "person" status, they do not exist as homogeneous, thinking entities. Of late, the actions of Corporations have increasingly been subverted from "value to shareholders" and your stated "strengthening long-term viability" to "milking the cash cow all you can for as many of the near-term fiscal quarters as you can."
This is because CEOs have achieved their own "unitary executive" power and have bellied up to the trough for personal gain. They cut "costs" without regard of preserving quality, service, or long-term viability (much less growth). Like bloated parasites, they feed on the Corporation as long as they can, sucking its lifeblood.
And then they leave.
Usually accompanied by several gallons more, leaving the anemic shell behind.
They realize that the average CEO has a limited term at any single Corporation (maybe 3 - 7 years?), therefore, they maximize their personal profit while they can. They won't be at that Corporation when the chickens come home to roost, from their short-sighted decisions/actions.