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Posted on 06/19/2009 4:18:51 AM PDT by Kaslin
What did you do when capitalism died, Daddy?
I won't be surprised to hear that question from my daughter by the time she gets out of college, or should I say the State Mandatory Voluntarism Training Facility.
When liberals hear conservatives decry the death of capitalism, they titter and roll their eyes. "Oh, you paranoid right-wingers! You see Bolsheviks around every corner."
But such exasperation is the exhalation of concentrated ignorance. The absence of free markets isn't necessarily Bolshevism, or even socialism. Capitalism's death can come in many forms, by many different hands.
After all, not all of Julius Caesar's murderers thought alike. They were united in their belief Caesar had to go, not necessarily on what would replace him. Caesar fought off his attackers until he saw that among their number was Brutus, his friend. "Et tu, Brute?" he exclaimed; "You, too, Brutus?" It was not the enemy blows but his friend's betrayal that sapped his will to fight and brought his downfall.
Some historians claim Caesar actually said, "Tu quoque, fili mi?" or, "You too, my child?"
Whether that's more accurate, it certainly seems a more fitting declaration as the coup de grace of capitalism's murder is at the hands of its most successful child: big business.
Everywhere we look we see the great and once-great beneficiaries of free markets running to the state for protection from the cruel bullying of competition. On health care, insurance companies and others repeat the mantra that they want to be "at the table rather than on the menu," all the better to be positioned as a tax collector of the welfare state. General Motors and Chrysler have gone from being pimped-out prostitutes of the state to outright chattel more akin to the leather-bound gimp in "Pulp Fiction," eager to do the bidding of the president and the UAW.
Once-proud companies like GE have become seduced by global warming schemes, because they recognize that there's more money to be made selling white elephants to Uncle Sam than there is selling competitive products consumers want. Indeed, cap-and-trade taxes promise to deliver precisely the protectionist industrial policies the left has dreamed of for decades, only under a "progressive" label.
This week, Philip Morris, the biggest of the Big Tobacco companies, supported and won passage of an "anti-tobacco" bill that will make it easier for Philip Morris (a subsidiary of Altria) to sell cigarettes by making it harder for smaller, more innovative firms to compete. One way it will do that is by curtailing the First Amendment rights of tobacco companies, making it harder to advertise their products (including healthier alternatives to normal cigarettes). Philip Morris, maker of Marlboro and other established brands, already controls 50 percent of the market. That's why it lobbied government to keep it that way.
Also this week, the White House announced its plan to deal with "systemic risk" in the financial markets. The basic idea is that big firms -- giant banks, insurance companies, etc. -- cannot be allowed to fail if their failure threatens something called "stability." The Obama administration is confident that with its new organizational flow charts and enhanced job description for the Federal Reserve, bureaucrats will suddenly see clearly what they couldn't see before. These regulators will know exactly when bubbles get too big, when booms last too long, and when tens of thousands of managers, investors, actuaries and bankers make bad or sub-optimal decisions.
The problem, other than the shortage of Jedis and shamans to fill these posts, is that big companies will understand the surest way to attain immortality is to become too big to fail. Once they've achieved that privileged status, these companies will become de facto wards of the state, insured for life at taxpayer expense like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and in exchange they will do whatever Uncle Sam asks.
It's too soon to tell which companies will leap at the opportunity to sell their souls for immortality, but you can bet that many of those already suckling the TARP teat will be among the first to celebrate the sagacity of the new system.
While doctrinaire socialists might feel betrayed by liberalism's cozy embrace of big business, their betrayal pales in comparison to the bitterness of free-marketers who defend big business's freedom to operate, only to see these businesses use that freedom to hide behind the skirts of the nanny state. Real freedom means the freedom to fail as well as succeed. Big business wants to be protected from the former and deny competitors the latter. And their betrayal, more than anything, disheartens those who would defend both freedoms.
A flaw of the managerial/corporatist age. The CEO, it isn’t his company, nor the executives, nor the workers. It belongs to distant unknown shareholders.
Corporations are kind of Utopian/socialist ownership, but missing a critical character, THE OWNER.
“But such (liberal) exasperation is the exhalation of concentrated ignorance.”
Quote of the year ....
Beyond and despite common rough opinions there’s a degenerate kind of amoral “capitalism” which perfectly fit with some kind of socialism/liberalism.
Look at CHINA as the typical experience field of that “alliance”...
That unholly alliance of materialist systems is seen as a better way to rule and control the different people and societies all over the world.
Interestingly, before the corporation was legally mandated to be an individual "legal person," stockholders were held personally responsible for the company's behavior, including liability for any corporate illegalities. Now, though that concept is still given lip service, it is functionally dead. Instead, there is a revolving door between CEOs, board members and corporate officers and government service. Especially in law firms, rising past a certain point requires a few stints in "public service" in order to connect with the "benefits" of close interrelationships betwen the private and public sectors.
The result of this promiscuity, which we see all around us now in technicolor, was not only inevitable, but planned.
I concur. The left thinks big business and Wall street are flag-bearers for free enterprise and capitalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. These people are monopolists at heart. They have a corporate mentality. They’ll take every subsidy they can get and that the government is foolish enough to offer.
Bookmark for later read.
The neophytes are all looking to local economies (within 100 or so miles), subsistence farming, innovative companies, i.e., tech, green, publishing, growing, and barter to create the “new” economy.
That includes living in “Nodes” which will encompass your home (read “sustainable space”), work, recreation, schools, politics, of course, and shopping. To go outside your Node, peak oil you know, you will need to obtain permission to use transportation. Disputes will be settled within the Node with community “Boards acting as arbitration.”
It all falls under the rubrics of Sustainable Development. Actually, it all sounds very third-world by a bunch of people who have fallen for the romance of the tribe rather than the reality of what living in reduced circumstances with an authoritarian government really means.
I first learned of SD and other “progressive” implementations in the early 80’s from a first-hand participant who had awakened to the fact that it was just as much serfdom as anything seen under past centuries.
It’s simply serfdom by another name, promoted by people who for whatever reason think they know better than anyone else, and foisted on those who while thoughtful and searching for something else, have fallen under the romance of the new rather than searching for the reality.
Yes, yes, I know all about the various “peak everything” scenarios.
Now, try these: Peak freedom. Peak personal privacy. Peak personal space. Peak freedom to disagree. Peak freedom to speak freely. Peak freedom to demonstrate. Peak ability to roam freely. Peak ability to experiment with your own destiny.
That’s what we are truly facing. This is what we have lost.
The continued slimy oozing of government deeper and deeper into American life and the American economy will spell the demise of this once great nation. Our standing in the world has been severely damaged by the Clintonistas, the Bushites, and now by the 0bamunists. The world is, rightly, turning its back on America, just as America has turned its back on freedom around the world. The failed policies and diplomatic missteps of the current and previous administrations have shown to the world that America no longer functions from basic, fundamental truths that are (or, were) thought to be immutable: personal freedom requires personal responsibility; freedom must be aggressively protected; less government is better government; the fruits of your labor are yours with which to do as you wish.
It’s time to take back the country.
What’s really sad is that the majority of the Fortune 500 companies out there were founded during downturns. Not only that, new and small business is responsible for net job growth. We should be letting the “big boys” go ahead and fail and come up with something better in the aftermath. Otherwise, propping up big business is a combination of pumping chemo into a dead body and sudden state control over everything (which is what they want).
This is crony capitalism and its what democrats do. They reward their friends and go after whoever failed to donate to them. The same thing happened during the Klinton years.
Goldberg is scrathing the surface here.
What we have now in America is not “capitalism.” We’ve had a corporatist system that is antithesis to free markets and property rights.
Corporations (like GE, Goldman Sachs, Disney, large agricrops etc.) have bought and owned our politicians for some time now.
Entire detailed volumes could be written about it, but to sum it up, what they’re doing is turning you and I into servile production units in order to feed this unholy corporate/government alliance. For only one example, look at the trillions that was confiscated from you, I and our children (and their children’s children) then given to New York bankers and even foreign bankers. It’s literally criminal.
What we have now is not “capitalism” and hasn’t been for some time. Unless something drastic happens, it will only get worse.
I hate to break this to you, but if you think it's only democrats, you're very woefully misinformed.
I can cite numerous times democrats have done this: Tobacco Lawsuits, that frivolous Microsoft lawsuit, the GM dealership shutdown, etc.
Bump!
fyi
If that is the future, my hubby is gonna make a great warlord. We will have to try to get into positions of powere. There is no way I am going to ask for permission from the govt to do shite.
I think the paradigm is so pervasive yet so subtle that even conservatives have their world view shaped by it a little, though we may not react to it in exactly the same way as liberals do, so we're (at least I often am) confused when they're clearly on the right side of some issue, yet we find them publicly bending over and spreading their cheeks for the like of Jesse Jackoff or some fringe environmental group, instead of fighting the idiots tooth and nail till they wish Dad wore a condom. Think BP commercials where they seem to be ashamed of petroleum.
I think part of the answer can be exemplified by regulation of the auto industry, specifically how cars are built. I remember Congressional hearings about some new safety regs (let's say inclusion of seat belts) and the execs are sitting there saying "But if you regulate this, each car will cost $200 more." or whatever. And I think one day they woke up and said "But if they regulate this...each car will cost $200 more.....OH, wait..."
Then, there's also the factor that today's execs are college edumacated MBA's, presumably steeped in liberal dogma, instead of a guy who worked his way up the ranks and judged ideas by whether they worked or not.
Dead on!
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