[extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley

[randy]

On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 03:15:54 -0700, you wrote

>On Saturday 08 November 2003 23:57, Spike wrote:
>> > On Saturday 08 November 2003 18:49, Rik van Riel wrote:
>> > > Still, I wonder what "the real power lies with corporations"
>> > > means for libertarian beliefs.
>>
>> Corporations are collections of people making a living,
>> creating wealth by making things, creating jobs and
>> wellbeing.  
>
>>Corporations are our friends!  
>
>Corporations supported by major state power are no one's friend, including 
>their own.
>
>>If real power
>> lies with corporations, then real power lies with people
>> working together to create wealth, which sounds good to me.
>
>This is too simplistic.   Too many corporations are about making the maximal 
>money for their stock holders.  This is NOT synonymous with actually creating 
>wealth.   It is too often extracting the maximum number of dollars for the 
>least amount of effort and creativity.   It is often about suing into 
>oblivion anyone or any other corporation that actually dares to innovate.
>
>

Not only that, but the corporations are so powerful that they use the
govt to shut out small time operators.  Plus, they use the govt to set
up social situations that decrease the power of citizens. Perfect
example of course is the ongoing propaganda that keeps the USA from
instituing govt-run universal health care (UHC). UHC empowers the
citizen-worker.  It increases mobility. As an analogy, UHC is like the
recent law compelling cellular phone carriers to allow customers to
keep their personal numbers when they switch carriers.

Naturally,  because UHC empowers the citizen, corporations dislike it.
That disempowers them.



>-s
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-------------
-Randy