[ExI] Corporate Misbehavior (was Avatar: misanthropy in three dimensions)

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Sun Jan 10 01:17:55 UTC 2010


BillK writes

> Yes, people have been turned against corporations and more
> to pro-government solutions. But the problem in the US is that the
> corporations have become the government.

I quite agree! I didn't mean to imply that corporations
are run by public spirited saints. On the contrary,
like in politics, the systems evolve people into positions
of power who are not exactly like your next door neighbor.

But if restrained by competition, corporations are to a
very great extent working on behalf of the public, just
as Adam Smith explained was true of candlestick makers.
But not that they, the corporations, like it one bit.
J. P. Morgan constantly complained about "ruinous competition",
and was largely successful in taming it, partly through mergers
and monopolies, but most effectively in promoting government
regulation. Do you think that the airlines, for example,
*like* being deregulated?

Nothing warms the corporate heart as much, or puts as much
money in its pockets, as cozy regulation by sympathetic
government types. Government is corporations' chief instrument
of exercising power, these days. And unfortunately, most
people totally miss the point when they call for more
government regulation!

Some 70,000 pages of new regulations are inflicted on the
public each year by congress here in the USA.

Oops. Did I say "congress"?  Actually, far from it. If
it were congress, then that at least would be somewhat
constitutional. Instead, the regulatory agents are who
regulate American life, as a part of an evil entity we
call "the Administration". And they work hand in hand with
corporations to suppress competition, and especially the
easy entry into the market of those who would challenge
monopoly.

> So the mass of the US people who are rapidly becoming
 > the poor and / or unemployed have to find a different
 > government to be pro-.

Again, I totally agree! The present western governments
need to be slowly disbanded, agency by agency. It will
be painful (so painful that, of course, it will never
happen), but the alternative is slow death by regulation.
Which will happen.

Lee




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