thepete's take: Capitalism = Cannibalism

If you look at the word "capitalism" and break it down into its two components you start to see my premise.  The word "capital," in this context, generally refers to things of value that you own.  AKA, assets.  These are things that are generally paid for with money earned by doing work. 

The second part  of the word "capitalism" is the word "ism."  Merriam-Webster.com defines this simply, as a belief, style or attitude referred to by a word that ends in the suffix  -ism."

So, that means the word "capitalism" literally means "belief in assets". 

As a people, we are all capitalists and we all believe that our value lies in our value.

So, when companies hire us, they are hiring us for the financial value we will bring to the company.  Of course, they have to pay us, but the more they pay us, the less value they ultimately get from us.  As such, they generally try to pay us as little as they can.  At one point capitalists stooped so low as to kidnap actual human beings, forcing them to work, often in horrible conditions.  Maybe you've heard of this practice?  It's called "slavery."

For decades now, we've been hearing about "illegal immigrants," who are generally defined by the fact that they have come to America from another country and do not enter legally.  However, what they really are is the cheapest goddamn labor that can be found.  If you're an American citizen, employers generally want to pay you as little as legally possible.  If you're an illegal immigrant, they can pay you less.  This means we should really be referring to them as "slaves with a minimum monthly payment."  Of course, the word "slaves" suggests they have no choice but to stay in their jobs.  In some cases they don't, but in most cases, they can just quit and find something else (not that finding something else is always easy--I'm just simplifying this for the sake of the argument).

Well, some companies actually hire prison labor who work for even less money than immigrant workers.  Yep, prison labor is legal in the USA, believe it or not.  Doesn't that make you proud to be an American knowing that lingerie women buy from Victoria's Secret is sewn by convicted criminals?  And those guys can't just take their pay and move to where ever they want. 

Even if you are a regular old American citizen and are getting paid enough money to survive on, you're still allowing the system to feed off of you.  In order for your employers to make money, by definition, they need to pay you less than you are worth to them so they can make that profit they love so much.  This is that "capitalism" thing.  You are part of their capital.  They are using you to make profit.  Of course, we have this thing in the USA called 'the minimum wage." 

This just won't do for many corporations.  Why else do you think Apple Inc. pays people in China to make your iPhone?  It's because you are too expensive to pay.  Don't let that whole "immigrants do jobs Americans just don't want to" stuff--the reality is, American businesses don't want to pay enough to get Americans to do those jobs.

So they don't.  But unskilled labor won't work for some positions in the US.  So, you get hired anyway.  However, as mentioned earlier, they'll pay you as little as they can get away with.  Not only that, they'll also dump as much work on your desk as they can.  Can you even think of a job you've had that didn't end up being waaay more work than was mentioned in your original job description?

They want to exploit us as much as they can because workers end up being a good chunk of the value of a company.  Of course, it's a big chunk that no one ever talks about because if we did, we'd all realize how powerful we can be.  Why do you think so many big companies hate unions?  It's because strikes are expensive.

There was a time when American workers were paid much closer to what they were worth.  Why has that changed?  Well, employers will tell you that competition has gotten tougher and tighter.  Giant car companies used to give hefty pensions to loyal workers but now they say they can't because competition is too tough.  The reality is that they are trying to make every thin dime that they can.  Why cut their own wages and benefits when they can cut yours?

What it boils down to is priorities.  The cost of doing business used to include paying a decent wage to your employees.  Now it includes paying as little as possible.

And sadly, we have rolled with it for years now--decades even.  We let them eat up our waking hours like the financial cannibals they are.  As the years tick by we spend more time working than we do living.  Hell, we spend more more time with coworkers than we do our own family. 

What the hell is this system of ours?

Capitalism = Cannibalism 

"...What we learned was that the Fed provided $16 trillion in secret, low-interest loans to every major American financial institution..."

From a great WaPo op-ed by indy Senator Bernie Sanders (it’s on Sanders’ site, too):

Trust in government is at an all-time low. That’s not because Washington is too heavy-handed with Wall Street. Quite the contrary! The American people are angry and disillusioned because they see our government act boldly to protect Wall Street CEOs but not ordinary Americans. When Wall Street needed a $700 billion bailout, the government was there for them. When working families need an end to excessive oil speculation and real relief at the gas pump, the government has failed to act.

The same Dodd-Frank bill that required commodity regulators to limit speculators included my amendment calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve from Dec. 1, 2007, to July 21, 2010, the period of the financial crisis. What we learned was that the Fed provided $16 trillion in secret, low-interest loans to every major American financial institution and to other central banks, large corporations and wealthy individuals. The audit provision was vigorously opposed by the Federal Reserve chairman. It was right, however, that the veil of secrecy at the Fed was lifted and the American people learned about its actions.

This sums it up. The USG effectively fails to oversee the Fed and giving out loans of $16 trillion seriously fucks with our economy.  Think about it: 16 trillion new dollars injected into our economy.  It’s a miracle the USD is worth anything at this point.  It’s like we’re injecting water into our bloodstream because we think the more liquid is in our veins and arteries the more blood we have.  So, when the USG doesn’t bother to audit the Fed like they’re supposed to and when the USG openly bails out big businesses and banks, it makes We, The People, wonder just what the hell government is there for.

“…for the people, by the people,” my ass.  More like “for banks and corporations, by the guys who used to run them.”

Read the rest of Sanders’ piece on his website and learn about how oil prices are being artificially hiked by excessive futures speculation.

http://cnnbc.moveon.org says the future depends on me voting, I say: it's too late for the future

Found out about this from a friend on Facebook: http://cnnbc.moveon.org/

Essentially, it rips a page from the old TV ad campaign for Captain Power (any scifi geeks out there remember him?) and pretends to be a regular news video that gets interrupted by someone from the future who then implores us to stop the dystopian nightmare of tomorrow from happening by voting.  Of course, in typical mass-marketing fashion, the video message comes from a hot, skinny future-chick who’s got a handsome, passionate black man as a sidekick who comes in toward the end.  Also, in typical mass-marketing fashion, it utilizes Facebook to make the video personal.  Check out these screencaps:

Check out the pic that the black sidekick keeps in a locket around his neck:

I have to admit I totally LOLed, but the sad reality is that the future is already lost.

See, they make a big joke about corporations owning everything (even people) but they conveniently skip over the part where corporations already own the candidates.

On the way back from the big Rally for Sanity and/or Fear this weekend I had a conversation with a guy who said he saw hope for the future if young people would just get out there and vote.  The thing is, big money (aka corporations, in most cases) already determine who we can vote for because it’s legal for them to donate as much as they want to whom they want.  This means anyone with corporations backing them up can pretty much wipe out any message from someone with less money.

What’s the point in voting for change if someone else is already limiting the selection of people promising change?

As we now know for certain, change is more than just skin deep.  Sure, the world is definitely a better place when Democrats win, but ultimately, every elected official in government is in someone’s back pocket.  Too bad our wallet got stolen from our back pocket long ago, not that it matters since We, The People, could never afford to buy our own politicians in the first place.

Hmm… “It’s too late for the future.”  That’s good!  I’m going to use that in a story somewhere. I CALL COPYRIGHT/TRADEMARK DIBS!!

Oh and speaking of a story, have another look at the first screencap above—check out the image to the left in that first screencap.  Now go here and notice the title of a novel I wrote under the pen-name Scott Campbell a bunch of years ago.

Tee-hee!

Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law : NPR

Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law : NPR

The state’s new law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison. An analysis of fund-raising documents, lobbying records and corporate reports shows that the private prison industry helped draft and pass the measure.

So, here’s a private corporation that is LITERALLY creating criminals.

HOW IS THIS LEGAL?

Corporations that do this are actually harming society.

Obama has a CEO problem? How come the CEOs don't have an Obama Problem??

“In Which the Nation’s Top Execs Make a Not-So-Subtle Request that Obama Stop Regulating them So Damn Much”

newsweek:

Fareed, on “Obama’s CEO Problem:”

The Federal Reserve recently reported that America’s 500 largest nonfinancial companies have accumulated an astonishing $1.8 trillion of cash on their balance sheets. By any calculation (for example, as a percentage of assets), this is higher than it has been in almost half a century. And yet, most corporations are not spending this money on new plants, equipment, or workers. Were they to begin loosening their purse strings, hundreds of billions of dollars would start pouring through the economy. And these investments would likely have greater effect and staying power than a government stimulus.

[snip]

Now, let me be clear. I think there is a strong case for a temporary and targeted government stimulus….But government spending can only be a bridge to private-sector investment. The key to a sustainable recovery and robust economic growth is to get companies to start investing in America. So why are they reluctant, despite having mounds of cash lying around? I put this question to a series of business leaders over the past few days. They were all expansive on the topic, and all wanted to stay off the record, for fear of offending people in Washington.

Economic uncertainty was the primary cause of their caution. “We’ve just been through a tsunami, and that produces caution,” one said to me. But in addition to economics, they kept talking about politics, about the uncertainty surrounding regulations and taxes. Some have even begun to speak out publicly. Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, complained last Friday that government was not in sync with entrepreneurs. The Business Roundtable, which had supported the Obama administration, has begun to complain about the myriad new laws and regulations being cooked up in Washington.

This shit makes me mad.

So, corporations not only have the ability to be bailed out by the USG when they get too greedy, they also have the same rights as a human being.

BUT THAT’S NOT ENOUGH.

BP has proven time and again that they don’t give a crap about the disaster they caused and there are corporations that have the gall to say that the USG is over-regulating?  Hell, in my eyes (and in the eyes of many others) the USG isn’t regulating enough. 

This is worse than Bizarro World.  This is Planet Corruption.

Seriously—why is it that the USG has to be “in sync” with business? Why can’t business be “in sync” with what humanity NEEDS??

Imagine a world where, instead of mega-corporations trying to convinces to buy things we don’t need and eat things that aren’t healthy for us, they tried to find ways to fulfill needs we actually have.

Yeah, never mind—I can’t imagine that world either…

effyouorg:piratekitten:BP CEO states “i want my life back.” i’m sure the animals (and workers) that have died as a result of the oil spill are thinking the same thing.A special BONUS EFFYOU to Tony Hayward from EFFYOU.org for the comments he made to Fox News. YOUR LIFE IS OVER, SIR. FOR AS LONG AS YOUR BODY MAY FUNCTION IT MUST BE USED TO MAKE UP FOR THE DISASTER IT CAUSED.MAY YOU NEVER HAVE ANOTHER PEACEFUL DAY FOR AS LONG AS PEOPLE SUFFER IN THE GULF BECAUSE OF YOU.How much more proof do we need that corporations, specifically oil companies, are amoral and infinitely corruptible and in NO WAY DESERVING OF THE RIGHTS WE GIVE THEM—free speech and eternal life should be guaranteed to NO company—especially one capable of taking life, destroying local economies and ruining both lives and economies for decades to come.Watch, in the coming weeks as our leaders do precisely NOTHING to curb the powers of the mega corporations capable of this kind of destruction.

#BBCNewsFAIL: Why Capitalism and News Gathering Often Should Not Mix

#BBCNewsFAIL: Why Capitalism and News Gathering Often Should Not Mix, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

OK, we all know how companies need to make money to survive, but, most of the time, I feel like commercialism has no place in news-gathering. The screencap above (original here) is a perfect example.

There's nothing quite like an advertisement for life insurance right next to a story about someone who got killed.

It all reminds me of the web piece I put together shortly after 911: thepete.com/thespecialpages/disgustingpeople/

Today or eight years ago, money spent on advertising next to coverage of death and destruction seems to be money very poorly spent. In fact, I'd say it's damaging to both the news source and the sponsor to do it this way.

The Next Time Dick Cheney Opens His Fat Mouth Remember This

The Next Time Dick Cheney Opens His Fat Mouth Remember This, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

This is semi-old news, but with Cheney making the rounds again recently I felt this story would be good to conjure up--it's from 2004 but important to think about when Dick Cheney goes on and on about "protecting America."

In an October 12, 2004 article on CommonDreams.org, Jason Leopold wrote about how Dick Cheney was helping Iraq break international law:

The report on Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, prepared by Charles Duelfer, a former U.N. weapons inspector and head of the Iraqi Survey Group, said Saddam Hussein used revenue from the oil-for-food program and “created a web of front companies and used shadowy deals with foreign governments, corporations, and officials to amass $11 billion in illicit revenue in the decade before the US-led invasion last year," reports The New York Times.

Sure, $11 billion is chump change compared to what we've actually spent on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, but that was, to use the old cliche, a lot of money back then. Leopold goes on, however, later in the article, to say:

But the one company that helped Saddam exploit the oil-for-food program in the mid-1990s that wasn’t identified in Duelfer’s report was Halliburton, and the person at the helm of Halliburton at the time of the scheme was Vice President Dick Cheney. Halliburton and its subsidiaries were one of several American and foreign oil supply companies that helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000 by skirting U.S. laws and selling Iraq spare parts so it could repair its oil fields and pump more oil.

Leopold cites UN documents in the article as his source for this story. While he doesn't link to the docs themselves in his article, in the face of evidence like this, if true, it's hard to give any credibility to Cheney at all and I find it very frustrating that the media gives a man like this, who is no longer in power, a voice on TV and on the radio. Frankly, it makes me question the entirety of mainstream media.

As if there wasn't already enough reasons to mistrust the mainstream media.

One other thing about Cheney: this is more proof that our leaders are just corrupt businessmen who couldn't care less about human life and just want to make money. If he really thought that Saddam was a bad guy, why did the company he was CEO of do business with him? Because he doesn't care who is bad or not. It's all about the green.

Democracy? Republic? Free country?

Nah, it's called a Corruptocracy.

All of Your Paranoia about Government and Corporations is Accurate (and then some)

Above: money doesn't make the world go 'round--but it does keep the system moving.

Yeah, pretty sad when things in the real world happen like they would in a novel--you know when the people you trust betray you in a way you would never have expected? Let me get more specific.

Remember that thing called "government" that's supposed to protect your rights and help organize society in a way that allows humanity to have an easier, more enjoyable time?

How about corporations? Remember them? They're the groups of smaller businesses that team up to help better provide for the communities they exist in.

Well, that's the way both were originally supposed to work, anyway. Alas, they've supplanted those wonderful ideals with concerns only for themselves. Corporations have the same rights as we individuals and, while they can't vote, politicians make sure big businesses are more than equally represented in government.

Capitalism is dead and probably has been for years--it's only recently that we've discovered its body. See, Capitalism too, has been supplanted by the system of Corruptionism.

The basic idea is that our leaders (both political and corporate) tell us that they care about all humans, our rights, the environment and our morals, but all they really care about is taking from us and giving to themselves. We give our money to corporations in exchange for products and services we don't need (but are literally brainwashed to believe are necessary) and the corporations take that money and pay off politicians to make laws that make it easier for corporations to make even more money off of us.

Politicians are corrupt because they take money for favors. We are corrupt because our money comes from corporations that we then use for things we don't bother realizing we don't need. Corporations are corrupt because the people who run the corporations take money, ignore their own morals, and keep the corporate interests going.

Everyone is corrupt in this system.

Maybe the Corruptionist system (like most systems) can actually function to make life easier for us. However, take it to the extreme and we get what we have now.

Last month Matt Taibbi wrote an amazingly in-depth piece that you can find at RollingStone.com that covers the bail-out, the AIG mess, corrupt politicians and most importantly how this whole thing has functioned as a non-violent coup meant to wrest control of government (and therefore us) from our elected leaders. Of course, I'd suggest that our elected officials haven't had any substantive power for years. Regardless, the reality seems to be that now they don't. Here's a bit from Taibbi's article:

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — "our partners in the government," as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.

That article has been sitting in a tab in Firefox since last month and is so incredibly long I still haven't finished reading the whole thing. It's a pretty good read, so far, though.

As much as I'd like to be wrong about this, the moral of the story seems to be that, ultimately, every ounce of stereotypical paranoia any of us have had about politicians and businessmen being liars has been accurate.

Politicians and businessmen are all lying--all the time. They may not even be aware of their own dishonesty, but the reality sure seems to be that eventually, any corporation and every politician will sacrifice what ever it/he/she needs to in order to make as much money as it/he/she can.

Click here to see visit my Disgusting People (Magazine) page which I set up just days after 911.

One good example of this is when People Magazine put out their 911 Memorial Issue, just a few days after 911. They ran ads opposite pictures of the disaster. My "favorite" was a picture of a man on his knees, mouth agape, seemingly staring across the gap between the page his picture was on and the page facing him which featured an ad for State Farm life insurance.

I emailed the editor and complained. She replied with a bunch of rationalizations and apologized only for my offense. Members of an email list I was subscribed to at the time seemed nonplussed by my offense at People Magazine's behavior.

"They have to make a living don't they?" said one person on the list.

Here we are 8 years later and things have only gotten worse. We're all just fodder for the machine of Corruptionism--we seem generally OK with that and so do our political leaders. So much so that, morals are put aside in favor of bringing in the cash so we can buy our iPods, pay our bills, and feed our kids. Our government takes our money (both directly through taxes and indirectly by having the Fed inject new cash into the system) and gives it to these corporations to keep them going and to quite literally reward them for their horrible behavior.

Just keep doing what you're doing, the government seems to be saying.

But "corruption" is the right word for it, isn't it?

Naomi Klein on Corporate Opportunism

Photo Credit: Mariusz Kubik

Wandering the vast Internetz over the today I came across a post on DeusExMalcontent.com from last year referencing a couple articles I missed from Naomi Klein.

Naomi Klein, in case you've not heard of her, is a Canadian journalist who covers things decidedly unpopular to the establishment. Now, I'm sure most people would think of her as a "left wing" reporter, but I see her work as more anti-both sides of the political spectrum. She tends to slam both parties after all--the Republicans for their blind support of businesses and banks, and the Democrats for their lack of spine.

The first article the Deus Ex Malcontent blog points to is a Harpers.Org article from September of 2004. It's all about the US Iraq Attack and how it was never about WMD or Iraqi Freedom or even about the oil. It's really about creating a blank slate by clearing the playing field, both literally and mentally.

Buy it!

This article seems to have been the basis for Klein's latest book The Shock Doctrine which compares the very frightening practice of shock treatment therapy to the way the military and big business seem to work in concert to remake a people into good little capitalists. The idea is that shock treatment regresses a single person back to near-infancy (as the theory goes) so that a new personality can be grown on a blank slate. The Shock Doctrine, Klein argues is the same process but on groups of people.

In the case of Iraq, the entire country is bombed into psychosis so that the survivors will be willing to accept any kind of (capitalist) society so long as it doesn't include the shit being bombed out of them.

The other article the Deus Ex Malcontent blog post points to is a piece by Klein on how the Beijing Olympics were just a huge advertisement for the efficiency of government oppression in creating the perfect little free market capitalist society. In the article, Klein explains:

These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organizing society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism -- central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance -- harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Some call it "authoritarian capitalism," others "market Stalinism," personally I prefer "McCommunism."

While I respect Naomi Klein, I find the word "McCommunism" a bit too glib, especially since the word communism stops meaning anything once people are told to buy and sell things that aren't theirs in the first place. The idea behind communism (I thought) is that the state/people own everything right? But this isn't anything vaguely communistic.

I'm thinking it's more a "Corruptionist" society.

Let's think about it for a sec:

In China, corporations buy their way into markets, essentially bribing the Chinese government to make foreign investment easier. If government wants the big businesses to function in their towns, cities and country, they'll do what big business needs them to do. Anything to get the money flowing.

HEY! That's just like America!

I guess that makes the US a Corruptionist society, too, huh?

Posted via email from thepete's posterous