The other day, a total twit on Twitter twitted that she’s like to see the US federal government sue Exxon into bankruptcy for global warming. Let’s put aside for a moment the incredible absurdity of choosing that one particular corporation rather than any other petrochemical firm or coal-mining concern; any auto manufacturer or power company; any government entity which owns industrial facilities; people collectively for driving cars & using electricity; the heirs of Faraday or Edison; China, India, or Brazil; or even cows collectively for belching up so much methane. Do you really want to government to be able to sue YOU for something they decide to blame you for? That’s the precedent that would set. Why are people so damned stupid about how legal precedent works? Once set, a precedent isn’t only usable vs. people YOU consider bad.
Look, y’all, it’s simple. Big corporations are dangerous, but they don’t claim the right to inflict violence on me for not using their products. There are lots of big corporations I won’t give money to, and they don’t send armed thugs to smash down my door, steal everything I own, lock me in a cage and render me forever unemployable (assuming I survive the process) for refusing to deal with them. Try doing that with government; go on, I dare you. Refuse to purchase government “services” or follow their “terms of service” (called “laws”), and see if you get away as painlessly as you do when you boycott Wal-mart or choose not to watch Hollywood movies. The real danger is that corporations and government are increasingly intertwined, and corporations can call on government to inflict violence (such as via “copyright violation investigations”). But sever the connection and those corporations are toothless. So if you’re afraid of Monsanto, but not of the government mechanisms it can use to crush you, you’re hopeless and deserve everything you get; alas, you’re dragging me down with you. Government promotes the myth that it protects people from big corporations, but in reality, they couldn’t have grown so big without the corrupt symbiosis which has been growing ever more extensive, powerful and inescapable since the days of the East India Company.
On a small scale, consider the myriad laws requiring people to buy commercial products (under threat of “punishment” as though we were children), or attempting to prevent people from buying cheaper alternatives from competitors who aren’t in bed with government. Government “regulations” are always unnecessarily byzantine so that only corporations large enough to keep full-time compliance experts (lawyers, accountants, etc) on the payroll can possibly hope to follow all of them without unknowingly breaking some, and thus bringing down crushing fines (or, increasingly, criminal penalties). If you’re in favor of government “regulation” of some industry but also claim you’re against big corporations, you’re a hypocrite and a fool because the regulations are always written by operatives of big corporations or professional cartels to favor big corporations and kill small competitors. Ask yourself who benefits from requiring black women to take thousands of hours of training when all they want to do is braid hair, or who benefits from requiring food trucks to follow arbitrary rules designed to stifle their business and drive up their operating costs, and maybe it’ll begin to dawn on you. Also note that these two examples force small, usually minority-owned businesses to dance to tunes written by established businesses (which are, of course, mostly owned by white people) and maybe, just maybe, you’ll begin to see a glimmer of what I see.
But even more importantly than all that: Any individual thuggish cop can do more to destroy the average person’s life in seconds than Microsoft could do in ten years. When Coca-Cola, Disney, IBM, Google, Monsanto, Chase, Wal-mart or Kraft starts sending out gangs of thugs to rape, rob & murder people, then and only then will I be more concerned about them than I am about government. I notice most people whining about corporations are middle-class whites; oppressed minorities are more concerned about being robbed, locked up, virtually enslaved and even murdered by government actors than they are about “unfairness”. Yes, huge corporations are dangerous, but governments are much more dangerous because they claim the “right” to do evil to anyone they want, often without the victim having any recourse whatsoever. No corporation claims that, and if one ever does then it will have crossed over into being a government.
Well said. I’ve never been able to figure out why people don’t make the connection that the talking heads telling them what politics will protect them from the power of big corporations are employed by some of the biggest.
Well, yes in that this is the norm today. However we are well along on the road to when corporations like Weyland-Yutani become the norm 😀
Monsanto makes a pesticide out of tobacco, used on corn, that is eradicating the honey bee. It is banned in Europe and many other areas. In America, it’s still under consideration because, well, you know…. Big corporations can be as bad as big government, and often worse. Tell all those people in Houston that they should get government out of the few hairs they have left as their lives float on by. I’m certain the corporations will be glad to help them. Especially the chemical companies.
Yeah. I find it amusing to read the pleas for donations, contributions and assistance for Houston, and in the next article read about the gas gougers at it again, despite the fact that the hurricane did not impact the supply lines.
OK, and you tell all the people in Texas who are murdered & beaten by cops, and those whose life savings are stolen by cops, and those thrown in prison for decades for weed, and those deported because they’re looking for a better life, and those brutalized just for being black or Hispanic, and all the women who are denied abortions (all in Texas) how much better their lives are because of government.
And then go fuck yourself, and if you dare talk back to me I’ll ban your fucking never-been-raped-by-pigs-or-spent-a-night-in-jail arse. I have a zero-tolerance policy for bootlickers.
luigidaman:
I don’t think the argument here is that corporations are good. The argument is that governement is worse and make bad corporate policy more dangerous by handing it a gun and a badge.
Governments have a monopoly on violence and all too often use that monopoly on behalf of the corporations you hate. A 100 years ago it was Henry Ford calling out the cops to beat down strikers requesting better working conditions. More recently it was United Arlines using law enforcement to drag some poor shlep off a plane for having the temerity of wanting to keep the seat he purcahsed.
Eisenhower rightly warned about a military industrial complex in the 1950s. Today we face a domestically far more dangerous corporate government industrial complex.
You’ve obviously never been arrested, or in a natural disaster or you would know that government is completely incompetant at helping people. There specialty is hurting and terrorizing them. I thought America had learned after Katrina when the police did little more than form armed gangs to rob and beat people while the mayor hid in the Marriott.
In a natural disaster help comes from your right and your left. Most people are decent and pull together in a crisis. Some citizen run groups like The Salvation Army are on the ground in minutes with aid. The much more corporate Red Cross usually arrives with the TV cameras a few weeks later. The government groups like FEMA show up about the time you need help with filling the body bags.
Well said, as usual.
I heard one chap state on TV earlier that, quote :
“If it means convicting six innocent people wrongly so that a terrorist does not go unpunished, so be it”
Or words to that effect.
OK mate, we’ll start with you, your family and the lady stood next to you, then see what you reckon.
Some people are just plain stupid.
You’re an island of uncommon sense in a world of magical-thinkers.
Normally I find your government criticism on point, and your assessment that the biggest danger is not the corporations themselves, but the intertwining of business and government that allow big corporations to grow bloated and dangerous.
However.
Your going to far to say that all government regulation is terrible. Food safety regulations, polition restriction (the company that pollutes must be held acoutable for it, because otherwise everyone pays the cost and the company makes bank), enforcing punishments for advertising fraud, warrenty enforcement, the existance of patents, preventing abuse of the stock market, all of these are crucial to a functioning society.
The problem isn’t the idea of regulation, its the abuse, misuse, and corruption in the system that changes what should be a protection into a danger. Now, I personally think big government is equally indistigushable from big business in its flaws and dangers, but local, even state governments, absolutly need to regulate industry. The federal govermnet should only be there to regulate the states and ensure they are not infringing on the fundamental rights of its residents.
Personally, I also think we should acknowledge a right to pollutant free water and air to the list if fundamental rights, because they are essentual for life. Its not like our society is incapable of affording it.
That’s the “if the right people were in charge” argument. The right people are _never_ in charge for very long. Any organization has external goals – whatever mission the organization was created to support, and internal goals – expanding the powers, manpower, and budget of the organization. In the long run, the internal goals always become the priority. A new organization may hire mostly people dedicated to the mission, but it’s the manipulators who pay lip service to the mission while actually massaging the boss’s ego who get promoted. In a decade or two, the original mission-oriented leaders retire and leave manipulators in charge. Government agencies _always_ rot from within, and at least in the American political system, are nearly impossible to eliminate.
Corporations and even small businesses are subject to this same rotting from within, but the effects are limited (unless they have a monopoly supported by government power) because customers can leave. Small businesses survive the founder’s retirement only when the founder goes against the trend and finds a successor who is equally good at juggling quality, customer service, and cost reductions. Most of them die and leave openings for new businesses. Large corporations can rot from within for decades while past reputation and a huge sales and service organization keep them in business, but eventually they lose market share. 3 examples:
IBM used to dominate data processing and computers – in the 1960’s, it was rare to find a (mainframe) computer that wasn’t IBM. In the 1970’s it lost ground to minicomputers – there were IBM minis, but most of the sales effort went into mainframes. In the 1980’s, it was big enough to establish _the_ standard for personal computers, but lost control of the market, mainly because the older divisions saw the PC division as competition and crippled it.
HP used to be _the_ source for high quality electronic test equipment. Now it’s one of many PC and printer manufacturers, while the test equipment division was spun off and has been changing it’s name every decade.
GM: Do I need to say anything more?
I wasn’t actually arguing for big government, you will notice. I was arguing that claiming the issue is the regulations themselves rather than the bloated size of the government implementing them is a dangerious fallacy.
We need government regulation. Need. We also need to limit the size of our government, and we have failed to do that. Simply getting rid of regulations, or loudly denouncing them all regardless of their usefulness, is only going to get you ignored by rational people and targeted by irrational people of the opposite opinion.
As I said, the solution is to let states do the regulation and force the federal government to back off and focus on stopping states from violating individual rights.
Really, the tech company exaples you used are not particularly relvent for several reasons: in the 70s and 80s, even the early 90s, a majority of peoples lives did not depend on computers, they were a purely consumer luxury, and thats no longer true. Secondly but equally importantly, the industries have relatively little enviornmental impact, and also require a very very skilled workforce. Thirdly, part of the decline was do to the short sightedness of outsourcing their manufacturing to a concentrated area in china, who were then able to to use the collected local technical knowledge to cut out the foreign middle man. Also, China’s air and water problems are not something to ignore, since even china at this pointis realizing it must regulate pollutants or die.
Secondly but equally importantly, the industries have relatively little enviornmental impact,
This statement is about as false as it can possibly be. Semiconductor manufacturing in particular is possibly the most energy- and resource- intensive industry on the planet. Just because you can package the final product in chrome or sterile white doesn’t remotely mean that the process is low-impact.
You are correct, it is a very resource intensively industry, but enviormentally its a bit more complicated- the industry uses energy, yes, but it doesn’t produce it- if the power plants were held accountable, the tech industry would follow since they are down the chain. Same thing regarding the chemical waist they produce- The vast majority of it must be disposed of according to specific guidelines, and they do have to pay the waist disposal companies for that. If they dump illegally, the fines can, rightly, put them out of business.
Basically, the tech industry is already as regulated as it needs to be- accountability for their impact is built in to their current infrastructure, and, at least in the US, the regulations were put into place at the industry inception. Relaxing those regulations would be disastrous- see China.
So, tldr, it actually reinforces the point that enviornmental protection regulations are essential to the continued survival of humanity. It can and should be done by more local governments rather than a bloated mess of a federal one, but government regulation is indispensable when it comes to the enviornment (and infrastructure).
Great essay. I’ve also tried to explain to people who want big government that once you cede power to the government, they’re unlikely to ever return it and administrations can easily change and use those powers in ways you don’t approve.
I still think the solution is to randomly select representatives for a limited government. If you want to be a House Rep, get signatures of people that actually know you and will swear you’re a decent human being. That’ll put your name in the hat to serve for a term.
It allows more minorities and under represented groups a voice. It acts as a check and balance on corporations and political parties.
Maggie wrote:
Funny, I try to sit as far back in steerage as possible when I fly. I figure that most airliners don’t crash tail first. Just a chuckle.
OT, but you might find it mildly interesting. I recently saw a documentary on Youtube that had 1930s film footage with a few second “drive by” of your MBZ sports car. Well, one just like it.
If you’ll let me know here, I’ll be glad to email you the URL and the time into the video for the drive by. No need to watch the whole thing.
Coincidentally, the subject of the documentary was somewhat in line with your subject here: how extremely evil government can become; the banality (thankew, Hannah Arendt) of the process by which one early 20th century government became evil on steroids; and how a few insiders tried unsuccessfully to bring it down.
For me, it always seems mad to give government power over corporations by “nationalising” them, coupled with the lie that they are now in “public” ownership and belong to “the people”, with the option of voting out a government who’ll change it for the better. All it gives is government more power to use bad things with government backing (close down all the industry that employs thousands in this country or cut it severely when times are rough), or run good things into the ground (let’s close off half our railway network because I’m getting backhanders from corporate giants building roads).
On the flip side, do you think this applies to certain public services as well? Because in the UK, we have a National Health Service and had it since 1948, and a lot of attention is given to it here politically, especially from the left wing.