[Feel free to ignore my rambling repetetive entry, but the quotes are worth reading]
You know, I hope the oil crash comes soon. The sooner the better. A major energy crisis is probably one of the few things that can stop corporations, because it shifts the balance of power back in the direction of individuals and local, privately held businesses. Even now, megacorporations (who control not only “obvious” things like WALMART, but also now control the production of the majority of food resources, water resources, the military, the healthcare sector, and more), would collapse were it not for the billions upon billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies they receive.
I think if the average person understood just how much of their income is being stolen and handed to big companies (who also pay politicians to run and pay for their campaigns in order to get the subsidies, and in most countries, essentially own or control the government to the point where they are above the law), it would make nearly anyone an empassioned tax resistor. In general I'm all for taxes that are for the public good — healthcare, roads, public energy grids, and so on as long as they're not just an excuse to hand money to friends of the government — but I am absolutely not cool with handing money to, for example, a farming corporation with millions of acres that they are slowly poisoning using nonsustainable methods (and as few employees as possible) just so they can dump surplus grain in Africa, calling it “aid”, when all it does is destroy African econonomies (how can a local farmer compete with free grain?), puts small farmers (often long held family farms) both here and abroad out of business, and makes the average person in the West poorer and poorer as they fill the pockets of major shareholders and executives with money they don't need.
The caste system just keeps getting more and more polarized, and the peasants are so easy to manipulate that so long — What did Hitler say? “What good fortune for those in power that the people do not think,” if I'm remembering it right. Lincoln (who ironically played a pivotal role in empowering the corporation) thought that the American people were strong enough to overcome everything but, he emphasized that they needed the truth… and what did Goebbels call the media? — “a great keyboard on which the government can play.” And now, with no line between the government and the corporation, the corporation plays the keys.
“We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood… It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.”
-President Abraham Lincoln (1864)
And we can move a hundred years forward and see what Eisenhower had to say:
“We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.”
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
-President Dwight Eisenhower, 1960
So… we have an alert and knowledgeable citizenry, right?
Personally, I don't think so. And even with knowledge, I'm not convinced that we haven't gone so far down this path that even if we wanted to stop the corporations (whether it be the military corporations or be it all of the above) because they are so intertwined and in control of nearly every essential element of most people's lives. The only thing that can stop corporations in a way that doesn't also stop all of us is cutting off their food supply. And the closest we're going to get to that is escalating energy costs.
Oh yeah, and along those lines, if you want to make a good investment that will serve you well in the future, buy up cheap middle-America farmland. It's available remarkably inexpensively, it's good land, and the current populations are old and dying off, with the remainder slowly migrating to the big cities… and as long as oil is cheap, it's less expensive a lot of the time to grow the crops in Mexico and elsewhere, so we have a short window of opportunity to snatch up that land as individuals — because we will have a rough period where companies try to retreat to local land as the crash gets serious and that land again becomes unattainable for individuals.
Anyway, I've rambled long enough.
(Original forum unavailable, sorry)*
