Subj : Capitalism & Corporatism
To : Dr. What
From : Kaelon
Date : Tue Jul 19 2022 04:43 pm
Re: Capitalism vs. Corporatis
By: Dr. What to Kaelon on Tue Jul 19 2022 09:44 am
> The Elitists have an idea that the world would work so much better if there
> was a small group of smart people directing everything and that the great
> unwashed masses didn't have to think anymore.
Indeed. There is no doubt that a true meritocracy is the sworn enemy of corporatist group-think, and elitists cannot fathom truly fair and equitable competition for the best ideas.
> One thing that we need to remember, though, is that corporations are not the
> majority of the employers nor are they the driving force of our economy.
> It's easy to think of them as such because they are so large and visible.
Quite right. Small businesses are the overwhelming employer and driving-force of economic activity in the United States. That said, let's not underestimate the power of the United States Federal Government, which alone, directly employees some 20-25% of our population. This is one of the many vast corporatist hold-overs from the Grand Unification of our pillars of economic and political power at the end of the Great Depression and the start of the Post-War Global Order.
> The major drivers of the economy are the small businesses.
Of that there can be no doubt. My biggest concern is just how threatened all of these small businesses are, not necessarily from the competition of the large entities (they are largely *not* centers of innovation), but from the oppressive hand of excessive government and corporatist controls.
> But those large corporations all started out as single-man operations. So
> in that respect, they exist because of "true" (whatever that means)
> capitalism.
>
> The problem is that those large corporations have been corrupted by the
> Elitists - many of whom are in the gov't. Laws, regulations, etc. are put
> into place to prevent a small business from disrupting big business's
> business model.
And what a shame it is! We are in an era where the increasing optimization of revenue channels by the large players, enabled by a repeatedly-rigged market system with self-serving soft-floors in our financial and political institutions, prevent any future "next Facebook" or "next YouTube." At some point, these entities labeled "too big to fail" will collapse and bring much of our economy with them. But the massive gap between the wealthy and the poor in this country is largely a gulf enabled by these behemoths, and saner tax and anti-monopoly regulatory policies will inevitably prevail over these corporatist ones. Call me an optimist. ;)
> I already saw the "create a crisis" play that they often use. (Create a
> crisis, then use that as an excuse to grab more power to "help avert a
> diaster", which then causes another crisis, and so on.) But I didn't see
> the connection to things like WWI and WWII where we "pulled together" and
> basically became a sociaist country "for a time" in order to fight off the
> threat.
Yes. The "for a time" essentially became "forever." And even if this wasn't the original design, it became the inevitable necessity. Following the Allied Victory at the end of the Second World War, a vast population of unemployable veterans returned to the United States and needed significant subsidizing by the government (in the form of the G.I. Bill, employer-based incentives, and significant tax and favorable loan terms - all of which exist to this day (for example, most veterans can buy homes without putting any money down). It's not that we shouldn't care for our veterans - we certainly should! - but the reasons for these vast subsidies, and their particular targets, were intended to prevent a general breakdown of our socioeconomic order. Ironically, they created countless bubbles that are now all falling apart. For example:
1. The College Bubble: This idea that "anyone and everyone can go to college" is a farcical myth, and other countries - especially those in the Eurozone - see college attendance below 50% of the population, with a greater and almost co-equal emphasis on Trades. So in the United States, our corporatist policy for subsidizing college through loans, grants, and tax incentives has led to self-fulfilling capital-generating engines that deliver little, if any, practical benefit to significant numbers of "graduates" and degree-holders. No, everyone can't go to college - and the Pandemic revealed just how worthless and radically over-priced these residential-based programs are. There's a reckoning where almost all of these small, liberal-arts colleges are going bankrupt now, and even larger universities have had to re-think their economic models to remain solvent.
2. The Housing Bubble: This idea that everyone can own a home without saving for it is a sound idea, but our intervention is borne of radical inflationary policies advanced by the Federal Reserve. If incomes had kept up with inflation since the end of the Second World War, the average minimum wage would now be $33/hour, rather than the absurd compromise we are all striving for across the states at $15/hour. And the price of homes would average at about $113,500, not the absurd $435,000 for a typical single family domicile. So what we have instead is a Debtor Nation of people borrowing vast sums of money that will take them decades to pay off, if they ever can pay them off (most won't), for property that no one can really afford because there is grossly insufficient income for our populations.
3. The Wealth Bubble: Big Government required Big Business, and with the era of consolidation came the vast gap between CEOs (who at the start of the Second World War, on average, made around 7x the average individual contributor's salary; and today make, on average, 385x the average individual contributor's salary today) and their Employees. On the one hand, you might think (as has been billed by Corporatists) "this is a great sign of the American Dream! Everyone should want to get rich!" But this is more than three times the conditions that led to the French Revolution -- only this time, the Corporatists have employed the Roman model of "bread and circuses" to distract the under-earning masses with a steady diet of cheap junk food and reality television.
> Side note: I have an interest in railroads, so I've studied much history
> about them - and not just the Transcontinental Railroad. During WWII the
> gov't seized control of the railroads because they needed them to move
> resources around "efficiently". The end result was that after years of
> gov't control, the railroads were wrecked (too much deferred maintenance,
> old equipment, etc.). That was one of the reasons road travel became so
> popular after WWII - the railroads needed time and money to get their system
> back in order and they were deep in a hole that they needed to get out of.
That is fascinating! I had no idea that railroads were seized in this manner, but it does explain a lot of the grotesque inefficiencies of Amtrak (and how the Northeast Corridor, which is absurdly expensive, subsidizes the entire network, which remains ridiculously cheap and unused). Again, government interference in industries that need to be left to the natural supply-and-demand processes of a truly free market is largely responsible for the calamity in our national infrastructure.
> One of the problems a gov't has is that once it has power, they will never
> let it go completely. And while I haven't researched it, I have heard
> people assert too much that many of the controls put in place during WWII
> are still there.
This is true, but far from intentional tyranny this Corporatist Syndicate that
we have running our political and economic institutions is principally interested in maintaining efficient capital extraction models, not accumulating power necessarily. This is why social discord is particularly unacceptable to Corporatists, but who now have made a dangerous ally in extremists across the political spectrum - both Far Right Authoritarians and Far Left Radical Extremists - to advance their economic aims. Now there are social and political policies that these extremists are cashing in on, and it is creating the very social upheaval that will drive further division and a reckoning.
I share Robert Heinlein's view -- that the social scientists have brought our civilization to the brink of ruin, and that perhaps the veterans (or some other civic-righteous institution) will step in and restore order, and reorganize our society into those who compete meritocratically and those who simply subsist off of the safety nets that must humanely be erected. But I doubt either one of us will be alive to witness the true reckoning of what Corporatists have in store and what true Capitalists must do to unseat this modern tyranny.
_____
-=: Kaelon :=-
---
� Synchronet � Vertrauen � Home of Synchronet � [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net
