Posted on 01/01/2010 3:11:31 AM PST by The Raven
On the last day of 2009, that awful year, I was listening to a report on National Public Radio (yes, I’m a listener). Reporter Tamara Keith presented a by-now-familiar recap of the worst financial and corporate scandals of the decade, from Enron and Martha Stewart to Tyco and Bernie Madoff. It was a depressing slog of greed, venality, and theft. When the report was over, Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep summarized the report with a tart: “The decade in capitalism.”
I don’t want to single out Inskeep, since he was doing what pretty much the entire media establishment has done, particularly of late: reducing “capitalism” to its alleged sins.
And that’s the point. There are few areas of life where a thing responsible for so much good gets so little credit for it.
Imagine if I were to collect the most infamous deeds of African Americans over the last decade — say, Michael Vick’s dog-fighting scandal and O. J. Simpson’s most recent criminal exploit — and then put a bow on it with the phrase “the decade in black America.” What if I did the same thing with Jews? Bernie Madoff, the face of Jewish America! Do the scandals of Rod Blagojevich, Charlie Rangel, and John Edwards define the Democratic party from 2000 to 2010? Do Abu Ghraib and the balloon boy sum up America?
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
We need to shout this down - wherever it appears.
Once fascism is entrenched, It Takes a Pillage.
NPR is half right, there is real fault on the part of many corporations (especially some really, really big ones). What statist NPR fails to mention was that the greed was a partnership with even bigger government. There’s a name for this...corporatism. The corner block of fascism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
Amazing! I eat better than the kings of old. I’m healthy beyond the age where many forebears died. I live in an environmentally controlled home, sipping cool beverages as I enjoy a wide variety of amusements that lie at my fingertips. I have access to a vast array of human knowledge from around the globe, including Free Republic. I drive my car, in comfort, distances that would have taken the ancients weeks or months to travel. If that isn’t fast enough, I can hop onto a jet and fly around the world for a relative pittance. All of this was brought to me by CAPITALISM!
What has capitalism done for me? I probably wouldn’t be here without it. Compared to the dubious benefits of massive government, I’ll pick capitalism any time.
AMEN.
Of course it is.
This is the strategy that collectivists and communists have been using in this country since the passing of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.
They put enough restrictions on the free-market that it cannot function successfully. Then, when there is a break-down, they blame it on the free-market and demand greater control over the free-market.
BIG GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE SOLUTION TO OUR PROBLEMS. IT IS THE CAUSE OF OUR PROBLEMS.
In discussing this issue, please don’t allow the socialists/communists to control the language.
Any business person who is willing to collude with the government to crush competition and thereby establish a monopoly, is not following “free-market” or “capitalist” economic principles. They are following, first and foremost, socialist principles. It does not matter whether that is a lone businessman or a mega-corporation.
That said, when such an enterprise decides to collude with the government rather than serve the market, they become CORPORATE SOCIALISTS.
Please don’t allow the socialists/communists to demonize corporations by labeling this as “CORPORATISM.” It is not a fault of incorporating. As I said above, it is the fault of colluding with government, which is fascist/socialist.
Interesting link. Thanks!
Very well stated.
Please see my Post #7.
That’s what you don’t hear a lot - the libtard takeover of a lot of big corp boardrooms. You have real conservative business people build a business and then lib ladderclimbers who never build anything but who are good at corporate politics (e.g. current GE CEO) come in and impose all of the same PC crap the govt wants to do.
It is a big problem. Some of these clowns are as big a threat as the kooks actually in govt who are screwing everything up.
My other beef nobody else mentions much - how Ivy Leaguers have gutted virtually every institution in the country in the past few decades. The Ivy League is less about knowledge and more about joining the “elitist club”. Even to get in in the first place is more about building a high school resume to get in the club than about some pure pursuit of knowledge. Then when they get out they continue building a resume (primarily done nowadays by mouthing the right libtard platitudes in the right circles) and they rise to a position of importance in some organization and contribute to screwing it up.
Well, imho the last decade...1999-2009 (which demonstrates the fallacy of saying 2010 is the “last decade”) the rise of Globalism more than any other single factor has led to 2 recessions in the US, the theory behind Globalism was economic growth for all, the fact of the matter is not quite that theory.
Globalism is NOT capitalism, it is the highest level of a partnership between Govt and International Corporations, in China for example there is little difference between the Govt and the Business Sector, which is not “capitalism” it is more along the lines of a Mussolini style fascism.
I love Jonah Goldberg’s writings however he is wearing the same blinders as NPR was wearing he is the other side of the coin.
NPR = 501(c) tax exempt corporation = corporate welfare.
They also fail to mention this as well...
If you follow the link, you'll note that the Wikipedia article is discussing what you're calling "corporate socialism," NOT corporations within a capitalist system.
My fears are not “unfounded.”
I’ve researched this issue out the wazoo.
“Socialism” still has a pejorative context. We need to attach it to this issue.
The thing about Goldberg’s article is he goes on to detail some of the “innovations” over the last ten years, specifically:
1. the Ipod
2. Pharamceuticals
He touts the current system, think of those two products in this light:
1. The Ipod’s “product” is compiling and offering for playback copyrighted media (for the most part), would there be an Ipod if there were not laws that protected that material?
In the US such product is protected with stringent copyright laws, in the rest of the world, such protections are a joke, in China for example such product is pirated almost instantly with no recourse for the copyright holder.
2. Pharmaceuticals, these also fall under the umbrella of state protection from patents, to research done at State funded universities, to grants for studies into such things as which stem cell lines have promise for the “next” cure.
Pharam also benefits from State intervention via laws against individual importation of pharamceuticals as well as suffers from price controls in other countries such as Canada.
In my view, the problem is not Capitalism, it is the State is far to involved in the markets whether Goldberg acknowledges that or not, it is odd that the man who has large knowledge of Benito Mussolini’s Fascism does not mention that fact of business life.
Perhaps I'm just unclear as to what your fears are.
As for me, fascism is just a species of socialism.
Wait until the parasites kill the goose that lays the golden egg for them and they start to experience the real joys of socialism, empty stomachs, no food to purchase even if they had the money given to them to purchase it as they used to, no dope, no alcohol, no electricity, no car, living in camps,being liquidated by the government.
Then you will see and hear some crying. But they do not have the intelligence to realize that they brought this all on themselves.
Their last conscience thought will be: This is all Bush’s fault.
There is, however, a fault in incorporating, and it contributes to the evils you decry. Corporations have no consciences. Most people in them start life with consciences, but many lose theirs after a few years of basing decisions exclusively on the bottom line. When “bottom line” thinking pervades a corporation, the effect is not greed as such, but sociopathic corporate behavior: acquisitive behavior unrestrained by conscience.
Beautiful post. It says it all
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