Voices from the Flats – Why Socialism Sucks and Corporations are Rad
Thomas Dewar has served as press secretary, communications director and campaign consultant for local, state and national campaigns, labor unions, progressive ballot initiatives and non-profits. A graduate of UC-Berkeley, he most recently managed an Alaska legislative campaign, winning a double-digit victory in an otherwise difficult year for Democrats.
The bracing efficiency of America’s private sector has withstood many a bureaucratic assault from meddlesome government regulators, but the past year has seen our corporate titans really step up their game. Any investment advisor will tell you a diversified portfolio is key, and American Captains of Industry have worked hard in every major sector of our economy to improve your life.
The überprofitable Goldman Sachs has showed our financial markets a thing or two about outside-the-box thinking by defrauding investors and betting against their own customers.
West Virginia’s mining industry has the good sense to realize that 29 dead miners and their grieving families are a small price to pay to avoid burdensome safety regulations.
BP likewise noticed that the Gulf of Mexico had been looking a bit watery of late, and responded by creatively viewing the gulf as a giant wok full of seafood that only needed a bit of oil to get the party started. And no goddamn government busybodies were gonna get in the way of their tasty stir fry.
“Sure,” you say, “they know their way around Wall Street and energy extraction—but what about health care?” No worries, Sparky. Our nation’s largest health insurance company has you covered. Unless you have the bad manners to develop breast cancer.
Hiring alleged human beings to toss you off your coverage when you need it most is, like, so 2007. WellPoint knows information technology is a key component of today’s health care non-delivery, and deploys forward-thinking software algorithms to more efficiently 86 those diagnosed with breast cancer. Can single payer systems in socialist Meccas like France deliver that kind of innovation? Hell no, they can’t.
One can therefore hardly begrudge the company for a bit of gloating in its tag lines (“Did you ever notice how big ideas seem inevitable after the fact?”). Translation: Blue Cross, you’re amateurs sucking our tail wind.
Contrast this free market know-how with Big Government Socialists, doing socialisty things like inspecting the groceries you buy for food safety, providing handy “roads” to complement your automobile, paying our troops, making a college education accessible to millions of Americans via Pell Grants, the GI Bill and guaranteed student loans, and prohibiting a toxic waste dump from being sited next to your kid’s elementary school.
Every time our elected officials perpetrate that crap, freedom dies a little.
The government, as any patriot knows, is a slow, bureaucratic institution that lacks creativity. And nothing provides a more bracing counterpoint to it than California’s Silicon Valley. Facebook built up its biggest and indeed only commodity, the 400 million users it dangles before advertisers and app developers, by enticing them with notions of control over their online privacy. Having thus lured them into the door, there’s no reason to adhere to said policy forever. Or, like, for an entire year.
Which is not to say that government is always bad. Just because we privatize the profits doesn’t mean we can’t socialize the risk. If your company’s hardware prototype is leaked prematurely, it’s always handy to have local cops around to put a boot through somebody’s door. And holding a teabagger rally in government funded and maintained public spaces after arriving there via public roadways is just plain clever.
This oh-so-obvious truth after the fact is disheartening. How do we divest ourselves of the corporations whose only intent (despite its personhood) is to displace indigenous populations with fairly well-meaning voters who are less well off and/or less aware? The christianists are no help in the education because IMO, they are motivated only by greed and the clouded vision of a return to the manifest destiny mantra (American exceptionalism) at the expense of those who do not deserve to be blessed.
The wolves in sheeps’ clothing seem to be absorbed / assimilated so well into ‘mainstream’ communities that they are virtually unrecognizable in national and local political discourse.
African Proverb: You can not wake a person who pretends to be sleeping.
Thank you AKM and other ‘flatters for waking up those of who have been asleep. Lots to think about and lots of work to do.
Lord help us all.
Indeed…Thank you…!
Once this government is socialism and corporations and the “free” market knows best shows up and spent 5 seconds to think about it. One can easily argue that corporations are at their very core socialest beasts. For a small fee you buy in a “share”, with that share you then receive benefits. Not unlike Social Security (the Moby Dick of tea baggers).
Extrapolate and customize my thought.
We each get 1 vote as a citizen, and then we also earn green stamps which we may choose to use for either the influence we need or the shelter, food and clothing we need. The remainder of our lives are making the choices about voting, influence, shelter, food, and clothing. In my parents’ American lives in the 50s and 60s, I recall that shelter, food, and clothing were important, but voting and influence were just not typical factors of immediacy in middle class life. Things have changed.
I will just pick one profession – engineering, people who build things. Today in Alaska if an educated young engineer wants a life-long career, then they need to make a political choice, otherwise their future career is going to be scut jobs designing driveway repairs. When they make the right choice, there will be a job, and in that job they will be expected to contribute to the right PAC, and their company and their PAC will assist in buying the right kind of influence to keep contracts rolling in. These are the terms of engagement these days. Each of these choices is part of the public domain and easily inspected by influence brokers. Such a young engineer will be dubbed a smart young engineer by the corporate and political power structure of the day, and career development will be possible. If they have registered to support some other party, or some other PAC, or become involved in suspect community activities, then their choices will become known, and their path forward, even their path to just remain in-place gainfully employed, will become ever so much more difficult. Those are the rules as they stand today, and the rules are becoming more entrenched. In a career, if a young engineer pushes back, then they will be viewed as not intelligent enough to understand the required rules of engagement, and simply ignored. It is not just engineers. Substitute any profession. So yes, our lives have changed. And frankly, the Democratic Party has become so weak in Alaska, that it is not the right choice, if you did not get my drift.
The republican party sucks!
Privatize the resources. Socialize the costs. – Yep. Let’s take an example. Ummmmmm… how about Pebble Mine? It is presented as almost a social service with lovable cartoonish images of the Pebble Partnership (cue the jumping salmon and friendly guys in hardhats) interspersed with shots of oh-so-cute native ladies working at computers (jobs, jobs, jobs, get it?) Reality check. The Pebble Partnership is a legal fiction. It doesn’t exist. It is a paper partnership of Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd and Anglo-American PLC. Northern Dynasty’s investment? It owns all the permits. Anglo American’s? It puts up all the money. Okay – so what’s Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd? Surprise – it doesn’t exist either. It is a publicly traded entity (aka a piece of paper) whose only asset is ….. the permits for the Pebble prospect. Who runs it? The officers and Board members are principals in Hunter and Dickinson Inc. Who? HDI is a “private umbrella company” of multiple corporate entities located in Vancouver. It specializes in acquiring and developing mineral exploration projects through equity financings with institutional and retail investors. So what do we have? A group of Canadian mining speculators developing a prospect for Anglo American PLC to whom they will likely hand it off once its operating. So who will be the custodian of the headwaters of Bristol Bay? Anglo American is one of the world’s largest mining conglomerates, founded by Ernest Oppenheimer and JP Morgan, with 2009 revenues around $5 billion. The history of Anglo American is an article (or many) of its own but it has been involved in numerous controversies involving the abuse of local populations and environmental damage. It owns DeBeers with its own controversies involving conflict diamonds, displacement of indigenous people and environmental damage. The point is that Pebble is not John Shively or a bunch of smiling locals. It will be layers of corporate insulation, assuring that if the Bristol Bay fishery is wiped out, one of the world’s largest mining companies who profited from the mineral extraction will not pay. It will be the people of the Bay.
And if you haven’t already read it….
Griftopia, by Matt Taibbi.
http://www.amazon.com/Griftopia-Machines-Vampire-Breaking-America/dp/0385529953
Privatize the profits. Socialize the risks. Yes, indeed.
Socialize the dirty air, polluted water, declining human health, climate change/global warming.
Privatize the resources. Socialize the costs.
Subsidize big oil, dirty coal, banks and companies too big to fail, the wealthy.
Socialize the debt, innocent civilians, loss of biodiversity.
(long moosely sigh)
And don’t forget the internet. Big business has been using the information highway for profit for years now. It was that pesky socialistic government that funded the development of it. (Thanks in part to Al Gore who championed the funding.)
While DARPA did make signifcant contributions to the “internet” it was really funded for military purposes. Most of the tech and physical “plant” was developed and built by private companies. The only reason the Internet is as open as it is today is because I don’t think the MBA’s running the companies really understood what the tech side of the house was up to. Gore’s contribution as Chairman of the Senate subcommittee on Telecommunications was to keep competition alive. Since he left the R’s have been working to make their little monopolies stronger and that is the real threat to an Open Internet.
And you can be sure the Wikileaks debacle is the new WMD of the war on the internet and all our voices. Corporate media is sucking it right up. Manning is being tortured and Assange will be??? all for the war on freedom of speech.
Nice article, it truly is as bad as we think it is.
I laughed until I cried…
Needed that!!!
Thanks!
Perhaps this could be twittered to our special ex-gov- Her answer could be especially snarky since she just loves to say no thankyou. Her do gooding could be extended with an especially large donation for a prettier dress for the joyful little girl in the photo op. Great post.
Great column, really enjoyed it. Thank you for making this day a little brighter. Love the snark.
Very witty. Very true. Not at all funny.
🙂 Thank you for the quick witted writing!