A Political Economy of the Corporation
Religion is a tool of the elites leveraged to keep the masses ignorant. It is a social construct. It enables the uninformed to lead lives sans reflection. This allows them to leave the big questions unanswered, for they lack the cognition to know which questions to ask. Instead, they base everything on mere faith and rely on the rhetoric they are fed from the pulpit.
I believe that religion is mental slavery. I always thought of church as a waste of time and I tended to ask questions, which tended to irritate the church leadership, who didn’t have satisfactory answers for the questions. How dare I question what they say?
The vast majority of youths are socially conditioned by means of the public indoctrination system (i.e. public education) through which they are kept just as ignorant as a 12 year old. Teachers and television become their babysitters, while their parents are enslaved through subsistence wages such that both parents must work to support the family, if they haven’t divorced yet due to the stresses of economic problems on the marriage.
The corporations, who control the government with their campaign contributions, have orchestrated this scenario. The government has become an instrument of corporations. When the children arise from this muck, they are mere troglodytes, unable to think for themselves; perfect victims, or cogs in the machine known as American-style Capitalism. As part of this problem, we have an oligopolistic media comprised of 9 mega-conglomerates, which broadcast propaganda.
These cave men (and women) are kept from thinking on their own by the "puppet masters", who control their thought through an idiot box (a.k.a. the television). This propaganda machine also robs them of their attention spans, which they would need to take steps toward truth and out of the Platonic Cave in which they are mentally enslaved. This is how you keep the masses ignorant; thought control. So, they turn to religion, because “truth” is served to them on a silver platter – they don’t have to think. Further, it offers them hope and explanation for their circumstances. They were bad and sinned. This is why they live in misery. They must work harder so that they can get to heaven.
Capitalization on the ignorance of the masses does not stop there. Our nebulous “War on Terror” is yet another manifestation of this dynamic at work. The masses are malleable. They are kept in a state of fear of the latest "-ism". This way, the powers that be in the executive branch can launch their foreign policy agenda and military-industrial complex continues on greasing the wheels of the economy.
GWB is not interested in diplomacy, only expansion of the military-industrial complex to serve the interests of his winning coalition. His thinking seems to be, “We have bigger guns.” Therefore, we will quash you and force you to submit to our Western edicts. It is imperialism. His theoretical framework, good and evil, is so discrete. It is a reiteration of the old “divide and conquer” mentality. His statement, “you are either with us, or against us” can serve as an assessment of his cognitive ability; limited critical thinking skills, if any at all.
Either, he is very astute and is using this rhetoric deliberately to rally support for his agenda, or he is a bona-fide lunatic. His categorical “Axis of Evil” is used to isolate those rogue states, which are really states for which we lack effective diplomatic strategies. Within this framework, there is no gray area.
It is widely perceived that corporations operate under the mantra "profits before social responsibility," better yet "profits before people." This is evidenced by their actions and not their rhetoric, which is quite the contrary.
People are painfully undereducated in matters of Civics in our country. I believe that this is by design that about half of the voting age population even knows the function of the Electoral College, let alone its existence. It was just another way of keeping the peons (and originally it was just the peons with land that could vote) in line so that the elite could control the government.
Senators, our only real aristocracy, were originally appointed by the states to keep the peons from interfering. We directly elect them now. At the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson warned that a "government of an aristocracy founded on banking institutions and moneyed corporations" would be "riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry." He shared the belief with James Madison that economic power would one day try to seize political power. The courts made corporations into persons and due to their economic power they have been been able to seize political power in the nation-states in which they operate. They represent the global elite.
In contemporary times, globalization and American hegemony has caused these “persons” to be unaccountable to political power. They have become courtesans in the global empire, ruled by the US. All they must do is appease and control their master (i.e. the American Emperor) and they are free to do as they wish throughout the globe.
Corporations have made the gestalt leap from operating in single nation-states to having multi-national operations. They now rule the world by means of leveraging their economic power to control policymaking in the world. This is a particularly effective tactic, when dealing with vulnerable Third World governments. The bottom line is that they lack social responsibility and leverage their economic power to orchestrate politics to their advantage.
I often compare the power partnership between corporations and government to the mafia. The mafia’s Commission represents the District’s old boys club, kingpins who quietly mastermind policy to serve their interests. The Caporegimas, or mafiaspeak for Captains, in America, are captains of industry such as Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Bill Gates. The enforcers, soldiers, or Wise Guys, are lawyers (ever heard the expression, “I have a good hired gun” in reference to a lawyer?), who enforce policy and discipline those who get out of line through intimidation. The associates include corrupt police, who only patrol low-income neighborhoods or geographic zones over which they exercise control.
It makes sense for the corporations to organize government to their own liking. When things are organized, profits increase. Gotti once commented that the only difference between him and the government was that the government makes the rules. He meant that they use the same tactics. The government is an organized mechanism by which corporations orchestrate policy to their favor. This is the nature of the beast and the concept behind organized crime.
The original corporations were chartered by the Crown of England to fulfill a specifically delineated social function. Those involved in the corporation were allowed to make a reasonable profit to achieve those social goals. The Crown always reserved the right to dissolve corporations that weren't fulfilling their social obligations. Today, corporations are entities autonomous of the state. The state cannot dissolve them unless they commit some sort of horrid crime that pisses too many of the peasants off.
There is no reason why corporations couldn't operate as they did once upon a time as semi-private extensions of the state. In a democracy, that would mean popular oversight of every chartered corporation. I'm tired of a society that views the only measure of human quality of life in terms of consumption. A corporation that doesn't meet the requirements that the majority of the population desires it to meet should be dissolved. If the requirements mean the corporation cannot exist, then so be it, we just don’t have that function in society, because corporations have used their economic power to amass political power and will not allow such a function to exist.
I believe that religion is mental slavery. I always thought of church as a waste of time and I tended to ask questions, which tended to irritate the church leadership, who didn’t have satisfactory answers for the questions. How dare I question what they say?
The vast majority of youths are socially conditioned by means of the public indoctrination system (i.e. public education) through which they are kept just as ignorant as a 12 year old. Teachers and television become their babysitters, while their parents are enslaved through subsistence wages such that both parents must work to support the family, if they haven’t divorced yet due to the stresses of economic problems on the marriage.
The corporations, who control the government with their campaign contributions, have orchestrated this scenario. The government has become an instrument of corporations. When the children arise from this muck, they are mere troglodytes, unable to think for themselves; perfect victims, or cogs in the machine known as American-style Capitalism. As part of this problem, we have an oligopolistic media comprised of 9 mega-conglomerates, which broadcast propaganda.
These cave men (and women) are kept from thinking on their own by the "puppet masters", who control their thought through an idiot box (a.k.a. the television). This propaganda machine also robs them of their attention spans, which they would need to take steps toward truth and out of the Platonic Cave in which they are mentally enslaved. This is how you keep the masses ignorant; thought control. So, they turn to religion, because “truth” is served to them on a silver platter – they don’t have to think. Further, it offers them hope and explanation for their circumstances. They were bad and sinned. This is why they live in misery. They must work harder so that they can get to heaven.
Capitalization on the ignorance of the masses does not stop there. Our nebulous “War on Terror” is yet another manifestation of this dynamic at work. The masses are malleable. They are kept in a state of fear of the latest "-ism". This way, the powers that be in the executive branch can launch their foreign policy agenda and military-industrial complex continues on greasing the wheels of the economy.
GWB is not interested in diplomacy, only expansion of the military-industrial complex to serve the interests of his winning coalition. His thinking seems to be, “We have bigger guns.” Therefore, we will quash you and force you to submit to our Western edicts. It is imperialism. His theoretical framework, good and evil, is so discrete. It is a reiteration of the old “divide and conquer” mentality. His statement, “you are either with us, or against us” can serve as an assessment of his cognitive ability; limited critical thinking skills, if any at all.
Either, he is very astute and is using this rhetoric deliberately to rally support for his agenda, or he is a bona-fide lunatic. His categorical “Axis of Evil” is used to isolate those rogue states, which are really states for which we lack effective diplomatic strategies. Within this framework, there is no gray area.
It is widely perceived that corporations operate under the mantra "profits before social responsibility," better yet "profits before people." This is evidenced by their actions and not their rhetoric, which is quite the contrary.
People are painfully undereducated in matters of Civics in our country. I believe that this is by design that about half of the voting age population even knows the function of the Electoral College, let alone its existence. It was just another way of keeping the peons (and originally it was just the peons with land that could vote) in line so that the elite could control the government.
Senators, our only real aristocracy, were originally appointed by the states to keep the peons from interfering. We directly elect them now. At the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson warned that a "government of an aristocracy founded on banking institutions and moneyed corporations" would be "riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry." He shared the belief with James Madison that economic power would one day try to seize political power. The courts made corporations into persons and due to their economic power they have been been able to seize political power in the nation-states in which they operate. They represent the global elite.
In contemporary times, globalization and American hegemony has caused these “persons” to be unaccountable to political power. They have become courtesans in the global empire, ruled by the US. All they must do is appease and control their master (i.e. the American Emperor) and they are free to do as they wish throughout the globe.
Corporations have made the gestalt leap from operating in single nation-states to having multi-national operations. They now rule the world by means of leveraging their economic power to control policymaking in the world. This is a particularly effective tactic, when dealing with vulnerable Third World governments. The bottom line is that they lack social responsibility and leverage their economic power to orchestrate politics to their advantage.
I often compare the power partnership between corporations and government to the mafia. The mafia’s Commission represents the District’s old boys club, kingpins who quietly mastermind policy to serve their interests. The Caporegimas, or mafiaspeak for Captains, in America, are captains of industry such as Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Bill Gates. The enforcers, soldiers, or Wise Guys, are lawyers (ever heard the expression, “I have a good hired gun” in reference to a lawyer?), who enforce policy and discipline those who get out of line through intimidation. The associates include corrupt police, who only patrol low-income neighborhoods or geographic zones over which they exercise control.
It makes sense for the corporations to organize government to their own liking. When things are organized, profits increase. Gotti once commented that the only difference between him and the government was that the government makes the rules. He meant that they use the same tactics. The government is an organized mechanism by which corporations orchestrate policy to their favor. This is the nature of the beast and the concept behind organized crime.
The original corporations were chartered by the Crown of England to fulfill a specifically delineated social function. Those involved in the corporation were allowed to make a reasonable profit to achieve those social goals. The Crown always reserved the right to dissolve corporations that weren't fulfilling their social obligations. Today, corporations are entities autonomous of the state. The state cannot dissolve them unless they commit some sort of horrid crime that pisses too many of the peasants off.
There is no reason why corporations couldn't operate as they did once upon a time as semi-private extensions of the state. In a democracy, that would mean popular oversight of every chartered corporation. I'm tired of a society that views the only measure of human quality of life in terms of consumption. A corporation that doesn't meet the requirements that the majority of the population desires it to meet should be dissolved. If the requirements mean the corporation cannot exist, then so be it, we just don’t have that function in society, because corporations have used their economic power to amass political power and will not allow such a function to exist.
posted by Sean | 2:23 AM
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