I heard yesterday%26#039;s %26#039;teabaggers%26#039; (who were protesting in DC) citing a quote to the effect of saying that any government big enough to give you what you want or need should be feared.
In our capitalist society where people entertain the (often very dangerous) idea of not just capitalism, but %26#039;free market%26#039; capitalism, and free market ethics, money equates to power in a very real way. Despite that though, i rarely see conservatives worry about the size and scope of international mega corporations -except occasionally with direct lobbying. The same corporations who are responsible for the wages of millions (combined), who finance campaigns, back policy advocacy groups, directly force other nations to change their labor laws (i.e. Steve and Barry%26#039;s in multiple African nations), influence culture, and ect......
Why is there so little concern there, but so much if you replace the name Walmart with %26#039;The federal government?%26#039;Why do conservatives fear big government, but not mega corporations?Well it%26#039;s perfectly apparent why the ruling elite take this stance...big corporation =good; big government=bad. Simply put, they have yet to find a way to make a personal mega fortune out of providing high quality free education, worlds best practice public health care and a reasonable sort of Social Security Safety Net.That%26#039;s why they%26#039;re so keen to see the Corporations extend their control over the lives of your citizenry...and so determined that the government will do sweet eff all for them.
What amazes me is that they have managed so completely to brainwash a significant proportion of the US Public into believing it right along with them. The very people who are having their rear ends taxed off to fund a military Industrial complex which sacrifices their children and deprives their entire society of the sorts of services that taxpayers in other nations consider to be their birth right.These are the people who have taken to the streets in their thousands as tea baggers and anti health reform activists...to fight for their right to be f*cked up the ar$e.
A case in point is the health Care Debate.The fact is that the Right have successfully managed to hijack the discussion on Health Care based on this creeping fear of big government....to enlist in their counter forces so many of those who would benefit from a total overhaul of the US Health care industry is evidence of just how successful their %26quot;dumbing down%26quot; of the US population has been over the past few decades.
They have socially engineered the US to the point where now those who are the greatest victims of corporate larceny are the most stalwart defenders of their oppressors right to put profit before all else.
That ordinary people are now so hate filled and fearful of change that they are taking guns to Town Hall meetings is proof positive of just how successful this social engineering has been. No one in the rest of the world can believe that the fury is not directed at how LITTLE this Bill seeks to provide for your citizenry...rather than at the ludicrous notion that it is somehow proposing a free ride for the lazy and the feckless.
You were promised Health Care Reform...and instead they are talking about tweaking Insurance rules to provide a few more people with coverage. WTF?? You should be out on the streets howling your fury at THAT!
A series of governments at both State and Federal levels have deliberately reduced funding to public education, slashed programs that promote literacy, given moral majority Christian notions prominence in their own campaigns, limited public access to information about the rest of the world and generally encouraged the populace to live in fear of anything remotely like social change and freedom of choice.
Even more insidiously they have managed to ensure that the nutrition of working class Americans is so appalling that they get less intelligent with every generation. Big Macs grow small brains...this has been a very successful strategy for them. Make fruit expensive and fries affordable, flood the airwaves with reality TV and celebrity gossip, make cable TV and flat screen TV%26#039;s accessible, but price books out of reach for all but the well off. Voila! You have the pig ignorance necessary for total domination of the masses.The denizens of trailer parks and public housing estates will fight tooth and nail against the notion of a rise in the minimum wage, the expansion of Union representation, the provision of low cost University education.because they have been spoonfed all their lives the notion that this somehow equates to the demon Socialism, to a loss of self reliance...to foreign notions...and foreign notions must be bad...must be less noble than Free Born American ones.
And the real kicker with this is that the working class, fed on the filth that the fast food giants profit from, will die many years before they qualify for Medicare...of lifestyle diseases like cancer, diabetes and heart failure. So no public funds need ever be expended upon them. Machiavellian, isn%26#039;t it?
An ill-informed population is easy to manipulate. Your society is proof positive of that.
And The FOX News network has been their greatest ally in this.It has become the de facto propaganda arm of the GOP. FOX executives regularly have meetings with GOP officials to discuss strategy and approaches to public policy issues.
The Right in America is nothing less than a fascist front. They are evil incarnate. Their only goal is to oppress and subjugate, exploit and delude the vast majority of Americans into believing that there is no other way of life possible than what they have....to work themselves into the ground for a pittance and to be eternally grateful for the opportunity to do so.
They may have ensured that they have stupid followers, but the architects of these policies are far from lacking in intelligence...and rat cunning.
A population which is ill educated and xenophobic lives in fear. There are bogeymen everywhere...what you don%26#039;t understand is evil and what you have never experienced must be inferior to what you%26#039;ve got.And anyone who seeks to tell you otherwise is an enemy of the state.
And they have done it all specifically in order that they might spend 75% of the taxes they collect on financing the Military Machine...which is employed as a tool of corporate interests....softening up markets around the world, opening up access to resource rich regions which they plunder shamelessly.
If there were fewer soldiers there would be a hell of a lot more money for Health Care and education.. But then...if there were Health Care and affordable College courses, there would be a hell of a lot less money for their wars...and the Wars are where the big bucks are.
You%26#039;re all told constantly that these wars you%26#039;re fighting are in defense of your freedoms. Freedom my ar$e!! The only freedom you have is the freedom to live in penury. And to shut your mouths about your subjugation, for fear of being called a traitor. You are treated like serfs...cannon fodder and slave labour....that%26#039;s what the working classes have become there.
And those who are most oppressed are those most likely to volunteer to die defending the State.And proudly drape the flag on the coffins of their loved ones.
It%26#039;s impressive...it really is...in an horrific kind of way.
Why do conservatives fear big government, but not mega corporations?
It is the government%26#039;s responsibilty to regulate (not takeover) corporations in the interest of the people in a capitalist society. Corporations do not have the power to make laws that effect all of us. Governments do have that power. You can blame Corps all you want for the mess we are in, but the truth of it is, this is the fault of the [corrupt] government, Republicans and Democrats alike, that allowed corporations to do what they were doing, by listening to lobbyists and not the people they represent.
Why do conservatives fear big government, but not mega corporations?
That%26#039;s an easy question to answer. No corporation, no matter how big, can put a gun in your face and force you to buy their product. The government, by definition, can not do anything without putting a gun in your face. Everything the government does is by law. Every law is enforced by men with guns.
%26quot;Government is not reason; it is no eloquent; it is force.%26quot; - George Washington.
Big government has no income other than TAXES on individuals and have proven over the years they are incapable of running a business at a profit.
And I do have issues with any company that has control of a market, as an example if I want electricity in my home I have no choice (reasonably) of who I get power from, I do not have the choice of going to Joe%26#039;s electric company if I feel Virginia Power is over charging or providing bad service.
The biggest of megacorporations are still microscopic compared to the government. If you don%26#039;t trust big, the federal government really needs to top your list of untrustworthy organizations.
Not trusting big corporations is a good idea, too, but trusting the government to %26#039;keep them honest%26#039; for you is kinda like taking a T-rex into your home to keep the rats down.
I fear government takeover of anything. It affects my freedom. Government should only be involved in protecting the country and it%26#039;s citizens. There should be limits on how much the government can take from me, by force, through taxation.
Corporations who earn money are good things. It means they provide goods and services that people want. And they earn money for stockholders. Profit is a good thing. I am sure you don%26#039;t work for free.
Further, we do not have to deal with corporations if we chose not to do so. With government, we are stuck with whoever is in power.
Oh, it%26#039;s because corporations are the exact opposite of communism. See, under corporations, everything is run from a centralized location with no input from the outside or consideration of the short or long-term effects. Corporations decide how their employees and the community are treated and answer only to the Politburo, er, board. See?
Oh, wait.
why would you fear a corporation it does not tax you it does not control a large police force and court system to force you to do its bidding. any contact you have with a corporation is totaly volunitary. you buy their product or not your choice. either you work for them or for someone else your choice. and if you feel a corporation is doing wrong you remove your share of their money on a free choice basis.
I do fear both big government and mega-corporations. But at least with mega-corporations I can choose not to participate in their activities by withholding purchases from them.
Last time I tried that with big government, the IRS made it perfectly clear that I could go to prison and have my entire life ruined. Haven%26#039;t had the Wal Mart police show up yet when I went to Target or Costco instead.
Corporations don%26#039;t have accountability to the people, Government does. I still can%26#039;t wrap my mind around people who think that having Corporations run everything is less harmful than someone you can throw out if you don%26#039;t like the job they are doing.
As if the corporations were not owned by people like Soros???
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/indiv鈥?/a>
And what about cap and tax?
http://www.winningreen.com/site/epage/80鈥?/a>
when the libs bed down with big corps. its okay.
First of all, It would be really, really hard to have a mega corporation w/o government intervention. And if people choose to buy a certain product, and therefore a company has monopoly, then what%26#039;s wrong with it?
the balance is hard to achieve. eisenhower warned about the effects of too much big business, combined with too much big government.
Large corporations never force me to do anything. They merely compete with one another, bringing better and better products to market. If they fail to do this, new competitors take their place.
They say the government screws up everything they touch because there is no %26#039;profit margin%26#039; to motivate them..Funny,I don%26#039;t recall Wal-Mart ever putting a man on the moon though do you?
To these nuts, %26quot;We the People%26quot; is a bad thing.... But somehow being motivated purely by money/greed is the ultimate good thing.
Because they own shares in the mega corporations.
Not only that but businesses are out there for themselves whereas our government is pretty much forced to be out there for us. I don%26#039;t trust people who don%26#039;t have my best interests at heart.
Reported for adult content
Because the %26quot;mega-Corp%26quot; does NOT make the LAW
Simple... they get their info from faux news.
You have the balance of power exactly backwards. Corporations are under OUR power, not the other way around. Corporations spend billions trying to figure out what we want, making that thing, making it for a price we would be willing to pay, and then advertising to let us know they have done so. When our fickle tastes change, they eat huge losses on inventory they cannot sell. When a coporation pleases us, we make it rich and powerful, but when it ceases to please us we can destroy it just as fast (faster?) than we built it up.
Further, corporations are nothing but free associations of free individuals pooling their wealth, talent, and energy together for their common benefit. But that common benefit can only be served by doing thing WE WANT. Otherwise we wouldn%26#039;t give them any money, and they would be short-lived. Every penny in a corporation%26#039;s control came to it via free transactions where the other side must have thought that whatever it got in return was worth more than the money they spent...otherwise they wouldn%26#039;t have made the deal.
For the government, most of it%26#039;s money comes from force. If the services provided are not to your liking, tough luck, you%26#039;ll pay for them anyway. The govt doesn%26#039;t care whether you LIKE its services. The govt is slightly accountable to people via elections, but in practice, 99% of what the govt does will go unchanged no matter who you elect.
You deride the term %26#039;market%26#039; but do you not understand that YOU are the market? Market is a term for every economic decision made by every person. When you choose one brand of shoes over another, you are The Market. When you choose NOT to buy new shoes, you are The Market. The market is the most democratic thing ever invented...far more so than any government. Every person participates...constantly voting what products are good, what are bad. Constantly shaping and changing the world. You are powerful. Stop buying to this populist bullsh*t that says you aren%26#039;t.
Because %26quot;wal-mart%26quot; has no power over me... If I don%26#039;t like %26quot;wal-mart%26quot; I can go to Target, or any other numerous stores... If I don%26#039;t like any of those I can start my own, and compete with them (and probably lose due to their buying power, but the fact is that a large corporation has to do something to keep it%26#039;s customer base happy, because that keeps them coming back and that keeps the stockholders happy.... the Government does not have to worry about making a profit, keeping it%26#039;s customers happy or even having a good product.... if the government did, the post office would have no competition as Fed ex and UPS would have failed because they wouldn%26#039;t be able to compete with the government.... they only thrive because the government entity is so terrible.
As long as we prevent monopolies the big corperations have to be fair or they lose business.
But the government is, in effect, a monopoly.
If Walmart hikes the prices up, we can go elsewhere. (but aside from sales at other stores, WM is usually the best price.)
If they don%26#039;t have good enough variety, we can go elsewhere. (as I sometimes do)
If the quality isn%26#039;t good enough, I can shop elsewhere (occassionaly I do)
If the workers are rude, I can go elsewhere,
But with the government we are in a fix.
I am paying for the schools whether I like them or not. So if I want to take my child to a private school, I don%26#039;t get a refund of the money I put into public education. I have to pay more on top of what I already paid.
And there are many reasons why a parent might want their child in a private school
School systems waste a lot of money. Too much of the money goes into the bureaucracy of the school. By the time the actual schools get it, much of the money is gone. It is a very inefficient operation. In many states, teachers who are worse than worthless can%26#039;t be fired.
Same goes for looking for work.
If they pay the people a pathetic amount FOR THE TYPE OF WORK THEY ARE DOING, the good workers will go elsewhere and all Walmart would be left with would be pathetic workers.
But in my experience, in Texas, Walmart pays a bit better than most other places offering similar jobs. I used to work there and my brother works there now. I liked it and my brother does too.
The only complaints I have heard from people there are the same complaints you would have in any similar job, whether you are working at Big Lots, or Dollar Tree, or at a grocery store, or Penney%26#039;s, or Target.
Corporations absolutely do have the power to impact legislation, we have seen that with the bail outs. When a company gets large they are responsible for a micro economy, take GM, not only does GM ctronl the livelihood of a couple hundred thousand GM workers in N.America, they also control the livelihoods of miners, sheet metal and anybody business who has worked as a supplier for GM. The ripple effect is phenomenal.
A company of that size does absolutely create their own economy, however as shown it is not an economy that they are accountable for when things go bad.
Minimum wage laws in many states have been untouched for years despite the 30% Cost of livining increase due to climbing energy costs.
Lobbyists have done a phenomenal job convincing people that, paying more money to a worker will just result in fewer jobs. Ignoring that more money in the hands of a consumer actually increases economic activity to the tune of $1 extra dollar, generates almost $2 economic activity. (this is through not only consumerism, however the supply, distribution and manufacturing networks which support the final consumption of a product)
There is a very black and white mentality to many of the responses you are getting. Many conservatives will see controlling the spectrum of business as socialism, however do not ask for any accountability on the part of business. In other words, allow them do act as they please but do not ask for accountability or reparations.
A lot of people like to bury their head deep in the sand and pretend that business has nothing to do with government, ignoring the fact that out entire central banking institution is not run by the government, it is run by businessmen. Our central banking institution is entirely owned and operated by citizens, not government. With that alone there is no leg to stand on stating that business doesn%26#039;t impact government.
To answer you question, unfortunately people are not concerned with the spectrum of business out of fear of some %26quot;socialist%26quot; agenda, or purely out of misinfomration. You get that business has a big hand in the legislative process, however in order to understand that people have to come to the uncomfortable realization that business isn%26#039;t your friend, wal-mart, GM, GE - they are not part of your extended family, in fact the only thing they care about it how to get your money.
Because a company selling Blu-Ray players and Snickers bars can%26#039;t tell me how to live my life.
If you don%26#039;t like them, stop buying your oreos and vaseline from them.
The power only comes from a corrupt government.
I fear both.
