This is a counter-argument from the libertarian perspective, rebutting the ridiculous notions put forth over at the Godless woke blog Imagine Democracy in the post, Understanding What a Corporation Actually Is Can Help Restore Democracy
Governments did not create corporations. Corporations were created by GOD, before the time of Adam and Eve, preceding the events chronicled in the Bible.
Ordained with special powers
Guided only by the Invisible Hand
Homo Economus
No human meddling
Being an airline pilot used to be a good job with good pay and good benefits. Pilots were respected. Young people would sign up for the Air Force to get pilot training hoping they would have great career opportunities later.
Then the airlines broke the unions. Some of them used bankruptcy laws. Some of them just broke the unions. HAHA Showed them who is the boss. Investors raked in the bucks that pilots used to be paid. So now being an airline pilot is a shit job with low pay and long abusive hours. Don’t even ask about the benefits.
And guess what? There is a shortage of pilots. the Air Force is has a pilot shortage and recruitment problems because young people know better than signing up for a shitty career.
And the investors who raked in the $$? THEY DON’T CARE. They’re gone, living it up on the money they “earned” in a system that encourages people to do what they did.
Now Let’s Do Doctors
Being an airline pilot a doctor used to be a good job with good pay and good benefits. Pilots Doctors were respected. Young people would strive to get into medical school.
Then medical corporations took over…
Housing
People used to be able to rent or buy a place to live. Then, during the Great Recession, “private equity” companies bought up as much housing as they could. Now they rent those homes out at ridiculous rates…
You get the picture.
Looting Is Our “System”
This is the result of very short-sighted thinking. There is no planning for the longer term or the public good here. This is about a few people making the most money they can as fast as they can and never mind the consequences.
Is this how a sensible democracy would operate. Of course not. The people doing the looting and raking in the $$ are able to do this because the public has been persuaded that this is the best way to do things. You wouldn’t want “big government” or “union bosses” doing “planning” deciding how to do things, would you?
So our society collapses before our eyes.
Silicon Valley Bank fails…
Corruption allowed the finance industry to operate outside of sensible government oversight, even as the world has experienced the consequences of this over and over again. So here in Silicon Valley and around the world, tech employees are waiting to find out if they’ll get their paychecks or get laid off next week. The world is wondering if contagion will spread that fear. Again. (Last time, because of corruption, not one banker type was held accountable. Not one.)
Also here in Silicon Valley it is raining harder than almost ever – except for a couple weeks ago. Flooding everywhere. I mean, torrential, incredible rain pouring down right now. This is because corruption has caused governments to allow the industry causing this to keep putting more and more carbon into the air even as we all know what the consequences will be.
The news lately has been about train derailments devastating localities. This happens because corruption allows wealthy rail-owners to keep governments from making them operate safely.
Inequality is now completely out-of-control. 60% of Americans now live paycheck-to-paycheck, not even able to raise $500 to cover an emergency like a car breakdown. The government doesn’t raise the minimum wage or otherwise address this because of obvious corruption. Million upon millions are spent convincing these people to blame government for this and vote for those backed by that money, and abolish democracy. “I am your retribution.”
The Supreme Court “rules” that this is all OK. Any amount of secret money is allowed to influence elections. People trying to fix this face millions of dollars spent smearing them in LOCAL elections. This Supreme Court we have is the way it is because of corrupt money spent to put them there.
Is there a common theme here?
Sequel to this post:
Capitalism literally means that the people with wealth make the investment decisions for society & get the return on investment, and the broad public don’t.
All the rest is just propaganda. Capitalism has nothing to do with “markets” or “freedom” or any of the rest.
Capitalism: Maintain a “reserve army of the unemployed” to keep wages low. Keep public services (the things government does to make people’s lives better) and taxes at the top down and keep the people from organizing (democracy) to protect themselves.
Capitalism part 2: As life gets worse, bathe the masses in propaganda and point them at “the other” for blame.
Austerity breeds fascism.