“Invaders From Mars” — a Brit’s view of how America’s corporate hegemony is eroding civilization. Paul Krugman has a slightly different view.
These days, we’re living in the world of the imperial, very self-interested individual; the man in the gray flannel suit has been replaced by the man in the very expensive Armani suit. Look at the protagonists in the global financial meltdown, and you won’t see faceless corporations subverting individual will; you’ll see avaricious individuals exploiting corporate forms to enrich themselves, often bringing the corporations down in the process. Lehman, AIG, Anglo-Irish, etc. were not cases of immortal hive-minds at work; they were cases of kleptocrats run wild.
Ezra Klein: “Will 2012 be Different From 2010.” This is the best, concise defense of the tax cut compromise I’ve seen so far. See also “The White House’s Case for the Tax Cut Deal in One Graph.”
Regarding the “Invaders…” article, remember when we all used to laugh at people who kept telling us about the “New World Order” and the “Trilateral Commission?” HAHAHAHAHA!!!
Yeah, good times. “NWO” and “Trilateral” – hahahaha!
ha.
ha…
Uhm, maybe they had something there?
I wonder how the world will be split by Corporations. Will it be “The US of Microsoft?” Or, will Apple have the coasts and large cities – the hoity-toity, while the hoi polloi will be left with Windows? I’ll be one of those, I’m afraid, ’cause I can’t afford anything but Gates’ product.
Oil for the Middle East?
Russia, what, minerals?
Africa – diamonds? Or labor, like in the olden ‘golden’ days?
Or will there be some ‘One World Uber Corp,’ with tons of subsidiaries?
Years ago I built a sandbox when my nephew was little. I sure wish we still had it, because I’d like to stick my head in it for awhile…
PS: And Krugman’s right. As usual.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/08-5
A decade ago, I used to puzzle over those activists who would have big protests at the G20 summits about “globalization”–sometimes getting tear gassed by overzealous police and hired thugs. They were right. We got sold out so everyone from Walmart to IBM can sell cheap asian socks/furniture/software.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6WstddMJZQ
http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Rudyard_Kipling/kipling_the_ballad_of_the_kings_mercy.htm
http://www.lewrockwell.com/celente/celente57.1.html
In biology/ecology, there’s the concept of “succession”. If you take raw land in any ecosystem – it could become raw by any circumstance, for example by fire – there are pioneer species, which change the soil, preparing it for the next wave of species, which change the ecosystem further, preparing it for successive waves of colonization by different species. Barring disturbances, the ecosystem eventually arrives at a fully colonized, mature equilibrium phase, where succession slows or ends completely. But it all began with raw land and hardy, pioneer species.
I grew up on the Great Lakes, near a sandspit, where new land (sandbars) was constantly being formed, and where you could walk over a short distance, and see the various waves of succession in action. Within a half mile, you could see the pioneer grasses rooting in new sandbar, all the way back to areas of mature ecosystem, beech-maple forest that had been around for centuries.
Corporate domination is a phase in sociological succession. When liberal/enlightenment ideals fade, for whatever reasons (and this is well articulated in Chris Hedges’ The Death of the Liberal Class), corporate/oligarchic rule appropriates the commons and pushes aside democratic rule. The sociopathic culture this represents and engenders, produces and encourages the kind of kleptocrats Krugman writes about. These are a further phase in the breaking down of egalitarian democracy.
Technology in our time empowers the individual over the collective, and this is a huge reason why corporations themselves aren’t as necessary in this process as they once were, and are being succeeded by certain powerful indivduals. Corporations become tools to be exploited or used by individuals. The Sovereign Individual provides a good understanding of this overall shift.
Biologic succession is one directional – always going from nearly sterile raw land to fully mature, complex ecosystems. Human systems tend to oscillate between egalitariansm and authoritarianism, between the circle and the pyramid. (And isn’t it interesting that these are the very symbols you can find in any public building denoting gender specific restrooms?). Unregulated corporations and kleptocrats are part of the swing that destroys the circle and builds the pyramid.
Anyway, Saturday morning musings…
Maybe 30 years ago is when America began to adopt the belief that the goal of an economic system was to advance the needs of a few (think trickle-down and boats rising with the tide) rather than to advance the needs of humanity as a whole. In fact, it was being preached to us that advancing the needs of humanity as a whole would only make the whole of us economically poor.
Taken to heart, the amassing of great wealth by a few became acceptable, even laudable as it would benefit all of us. Unfortunately, as history as shown us the influx of wealth weakens our fiber and fosters corruption and luxury. And we’re here to verify its truth.
I’m with Bernie Sanders!
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/10-0
Under stuff to read – you missed Charles Krauthammer. Don’t laugh.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/09/AR2010120904472.html
“At great cost that will have to be paid after this newest free lunch, the package will add as much as 1 percent to GDP and lower the unemployment rate by about 1.5 percentage points. That could easily be the difference between victory and defeat in 2012.
Obama is no fool. While getting Republicans to boost his own reelection chances, he gets them to make a mockery of their newfound, second-chance, post-Bush, Tea-Party, this-time-we’re-serious persona of debt-averse fiscal responsibility. “
“I’m with Bernie Sanders!”
I’ll second that, did I already say that?
What the last two years has taught me is that it makes no difference what party controls power, particularly in the senate, the republicant’s have made the sixty vote cloture threshold S.O.P. It will be interesting to see if and when the republicant’s take back the senate, will the democrats invoke virtual filibuster for every measure? It really gives all the power to the pundits and poll takers, and the few senators in the “middleâ€. The party that pays the most for the most favorable poll numbers and pays the most for positive media coverage (owning a network helps) of any given issue wins. Having the least possible moderates (swing votes) will be the key to winning, sounds great don’t it?
It seems to me that we are in a real spiral downward. The less security we have in the public spaces the more money it takes to be secure privately. Thus there is no end to the number of millions or billions that one needs to be secure. And the more millions and billions one has the less he cares about the social security. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Did any of you catch Bernie’s segment on usury? He mentioned the same thing that Candide commented on a few days back…How the banks are using borrowed near zero percent taxpayer money and re-lending it the taxpayers at double digit interest rates(21% to 32%) and in some cases as high as 79%. Bernie also mentioned that the major religions all consider usury immoral. In God we trust?
Swami,
That’s why they Jews were so hated in the Middle Ages. Neither Christians nor Muslims were allowed to lend money with interest. It was not the idea of interest that was forbidden, but rather that when lending money you were giving people a period of TIME to pay off. And the theory was that only God could control time, and hence, it was against God’s will that money be lent for a ‘time.”
Jews were therefore, the only ones who could lend money, and it was because of the interest that they asked for, or why else lend it, that they were hated, chastised, tortured and killed.
Oh, and the interest rates were miniscule compared to what modern banks and CC companies charge. Even the Mob would have been embarassed to charge what some of them are charging.
At first, I wasn’t too happy that it was Bernie, austensibly a Democrat, that gave a speach (he insisted he wasn’t filibustering). Now, I wish he hadn’t done it on Friday during ‘news dump’ day, and done it on Monday for maximum coverage. He said a lot of important things.
Is too early for a bucket of vodka?
I’m watching ABC and Cokie, Dowd and Will are talking over Krugman. As usual, Krugman brings facts, and the rest of them spew out easy to digest, pre-chewed conservative gospel. And of course, he’s alone out there, it’s 3 to 1. And Cokie’s the worst. Will is just a stupid dinosaur who’s there to represent old DC conservative thinking (which seems reasonable compared to today), and Dowd’s out there to get todays RepubliConfederate talking points out there. But Cokie is there to represent the ‘best’ and worst that the Village have to offer. I hope when she dies, they stuff her and put her in the Smithsonian so that future generations, if there are any, can see what a DC Villager looked and acted like. It make the villagers in “The Prisoner” seem like paragons of independent thought.
Yeeesh…
Gulag, its never too early for a bucket of vodka; that’s what V8 is for!
That Usury thing is a complicated issue in the Muslim world, one of the big friction points of “East meets West”.
Bernie Sanders Rocks!
Bernie does indeed Rock! Often when I hear some pundit, politician or newsy pontificating and I think he’s right, it’s because I agree with what he’s saying – it makes sense. However, Bernie really did make perfect sense, all on his own.
cund – however, as I understand it, Jews were not allowed to lend to fellow Jews. I’ve always thought that peculiar. (Interestingly, when Napoleon conquered Poland, because he was sympathetic to the plight of Polish Jews, he lifted many of the restrictions placed on Jews by ruling Poles. However, he stipulated that Jews couldn’t lend money to Polish peasants for a period of ten years. Food for thought, n’est pas?)
I recently read an article about usury and the Jews in early Europe. It seems that many times Jews were employed by wealthy Christians as money lenders and bill collectors, and got a bad rap because of it, while the real criminals were under the radar.
At any rate, I hope the usuary issue gets hammered; in these uncertain times, it is criminal to allow excessive interest and the severe penalties that go with it upon default.
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