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Big Government and Giant Corporations are pretty much the same enemy

by HappySysiphus, Unknown News       June 1, 2009

#  I am so sick of hearing it said that: "Weak government and strong corporate business equals free market competition."

This is a very slippery propaganda masterpiece. Everybody hates to go to the DMV. Everybody hates the Electric Company. Bureaucracy is evil, right? True, but there is a trick

that is played here. If I establish two things as opposites, Government and Corporate Business, then show how one is bad, "Government," that proves the other thing, "Corporate Business," is good. This sounds great, until we slow down and pay attention to the facts instead of the words.

The fact is that "Government" and "Corporate Business", far from being opposites, are VERY close to being one and the same thing, and that the rejection of LBJ-style big government in favor of unrestrained power for monopolistic corporations is in effect opting against having a small stake in a very powerful democratic institution in favor of a government in which the vast majority have no access to power and the weak have absolutely no protection from the strong.

Free market competition is something that only really exists in the philosopher's head. In time any market produces healthy thriving vendors who become: The Strong.

At a street market level these players seem quite justified in forming their alliances with one another and passing bylaws and rules about how all vendors should keep their booths clean and presentable, and all fruit should be displayed on a table instead of on the ground so as not to drive off the high dollar clientele. After all, these merchants have built respectable businesses from scratch, and they have a vital interest in keeping things going in the right direction in this marketplace.
Who tells you what time to get up in the morning?

Who tells you what clothes to wear, what haircut you need to have, and what to do moment to moment, day after day, year after year until such time as she grows tired of you and banishes you to the mercy of the unwashed poor?

Your boss at work governs you.

So the next time you are fighting to shrink the power of governments, be sure to include corporations on the list of those with too much strength.
 

Maybe the established merchants begin zoning the market so that at this end of the bazaar we have vendors and at that end we have performers. Maybe the established merchants agree that every booth should pay a weekly fee to hire a man to pick up trash in the areas surrounding the bazaar so that the customers will be in a better mood to buy.

We can see, the establishment in the marketplace is governing, and these small collections of bylaws and rules, in addition to their stated purposes, bring with them disadvantages to newcomers. Under this governance in order to start up a booth one has to find out where the zones are, what the fees are, what the culture of presentation is, who the important people are, etc. Upstarts who do not do this are easy to recognize and, unless they shape up, are quickly run out.

The establishment begins to notice a benefit to complicating things more and more: Less competition from upstarts.

Economists call this set of phenomena Barriers to Entry, and if the barriers are high the freedom of the market is low.

In our current environment of Monopolistic Mega-Dino corporations the barriers to entry are impossibly high. In Mexican cartoonist El Fisgon's highly recommended book, How to Succeed in Globalization, a roadside vendor seeks the advice of a soothsayer on how he can grow his fruit selling business into a thriving multinational fruit conglomerate. She suggests he get a time machine and go back to the Middle Ages in Europe or the turn of the 20th Century in America. Beyond that he would have no hope of success.

Such is the strength of an entrenched establishment. As ours trumpets the value of "Free Trade" on its television networks in order to break down the last few protections local markets have from extinction, it simultaneously manipulates every aspect of the global market it has created making certain that market is anything but free.

With consolidation of ownership what it is today, competition from business upstarts is a distant memory. The last frontier of competition in business is the competition between business and government itself.

Which brings me to a question for all the Anarchists and Libertarians in the house: What do you get when you live in a world without the interference of government?

Answer: Feudalism!

When the shackles of government are shaken, powerful rich men that can fortify their homes and feed armies that would otherwise starve RULE the territories around their keeps. It wouldn't be long after the collapse of government until a hundred armed men came knocking on your survival hole's door looking for your stash of silver quarters and your fifty-year supply of water chestnuts.

Of course with the powerful being as remote and as organized as they are today, maybe things wouldn't break down into units that small. Maybe the powerful would just keep paying the armies they had already hired and you would just wake up to discover that your boss at work was your new overlord.

Maybe that has already happened. After all, who tells you what time to get up in the morning? Who tells you what clothes to wear, what haircut you need to have, and what to do moment to moment, day after day, year after year until such time as she grows tired of you and banishes you to the mercy of the unwashed poor?

Your boss at work governs you. So the next time you are fighting to shrink the power of governments, be sure to include corporations on the list of those with too much strength.

© by the author.
This page is archived at unknownnews.org/0905-31HS.html

#  6/3/2009:   Hello? Are we listening now?

It's called Fascism, and the Clan Bush is one of it's major advocates.

Some of us have been pointing to this despicable trend for a while now, but as long as Idol and other idiocy is there to occupy the attention of the propagandized masses, it will continue.

Seeker135  

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Like the URL says, this website is about unknown news.  We post a page of news that merits more attention, all from mainstream, professional journalists, or (rarely) other sources we trust entirely.

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A reader asks, what are our solutions?

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Our suggestion is: think.

A fact-based instead of faith-based approach leads to solutions for most of the recurring issues of our time, from abortion to global climate change, pollution to universal health care, careful but real regulation of industry and economy, hunger, war, terror, human rights for humans not for corporations, science not religious doctrine in public schools, equal protection and prosecution under law, etc. Approach problems without glorifying stupidity, without demonizing intelligence, and answers usually come into focus.

These pages are published by Harry and Helen Highwater, happily married low-income nom de plumes and rabble-rousers from Madison, Wisconsin (with a few friends scattered around the world helping out).

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