Corporate onslaught

Gee, I wonder.

What are all the paper pushing latte sipping metrosexual dickheads going to do when they find themselves out of work, out of the loop, and no longer able to afford their daily gourmet espresso (as that loathsome ad in the disgusting 225 magazine queries us)?

Are they going to ask for more bailouts and pump priming? Don't see how that does much good. The bailout funds are reserved for those impersonal quasi-fascist organizations called "corporations" that serve to frustrate our life and limit our choices. Though it might be good for them as a class, as dickheads are seemingly attracted to corporations like flies to a bug lamp.

Any and all of you who believe that those mega-entities that comprise what we call Corporate America are products of the free market should have had their fantasies exploded while observing the course of events of these past few months.

The giant entities that we interact with on a daily basis are interested in profit, yes, but due to their size and political power know very damn well that they don't have to resort to legitimate tactics to achieve their aims.

They write the law to suit their advantages, using their teams of dickhead lawyers to their full advantage to draft contracts so obviously one-sided and biased that even a fifth grader would feel cheated. Acceptance of these contracts, sometimes only implicit, are part and party to doing business with them.

And as consumers we are compelled to 'transact' business with the Corporate Power in many ways. After all, the vast majority of the necessities of life are controlled by these modern day imperial, colonialist powers. From the food you buy, to the drugs that you consume to stay healthy, to the clothes that you wear, to the necessities of transportation and everything else required to exist - all are provided via the Corporate Power.

Don't take this as a panegyric against Big Business. In and of itself big business is not evil. Wal-Mart, for example, is a major corporation, but not tied to the Corporate Power that rules Amerika. Why else do the power elite bash Wal-Mart so? Wal-Mart does not belong to the looter club. Its purpose is the activity of retailers in a truly free market - selling goods while providing the customer with the best deals.

It is the alliance between the Corporate Power and government, the extension of the fraudulent tactics of legitimized plunder that is the precinct of the State to its favored clients, that drives corporate hegemony. In short, fascism. When entities, corporations or otherwise, receive the imprimatur of the authorities (or perhaps just the intentional refusal to enforce fair practice) to engage in fraudulent or otherwise slipshady practices, then these entities by extension become part of the State power and its murderous ways.

What entities belong to the corporate power? Observe the bailout list. Well, actually, that is but a small portion of the Corporate Power to-day. Suffice it to say that virtually any major corporation with significant market penetration within its niche is allied with those in power to protect their interests and stave off unwanted competitors. The State and Corporate America work hand in hand to ensure that the corporate status quo is preserved - that the same entities control banking, retail, health care, insurance, and other vast sectors of the economy which play a part in swindling billions from working people.

Why else would the State be interested in preserving zombie firms such as GM and AIG? The entities must survive, for failure means ruination for those in the power elite (and dickheadery, I might add) whose ships are tethered to these corporate Titanics.

In the end it is the consumer who pays dearly, in greatly increased costs to prop up failing business models and subsidize the financial and moral hazard costs of bailouts, through both taxation and higher prices in the "free" market. It is the consumer who is faced with increased electric bills (regulated utility monopolies), drug costs (publicly funded health care/insurance cartel), food and fuel costs (bipped up oil prices due to wars that feed defense contractors and make Darth Cheney happy), and declining purchasing power (increased taxation and inflation to pay for all this).

And the individual, of course, can do nothing about the matter. For what is one person against the corporate monolith? The corporations have conveniently established things well in their favor. Who does one complain to, to protest the sky-high prices, the lack of quality service, the insolent (and underpaid) employees, the unsatisfactory experience overall? Oh, the corporations have complaint lines, where you register your grievances...to a machine...and maybe get a response, sometime when your grandchildren are learning to drive. 

Corporations are constantly merging, growing in size. The corporate dickhead suits claim "synergies". Are you better served as a consumer, now that your local pharmacy/supermarket/department store has been absorbed into the nationwide chain? Probably not - you noticed that once your city is just another colonial outpost of a vast corporate empire, the corporate committment toward its ostensible goal (serving customers, remember?) declined considerably. The only folks who benefit from corporate mergers are the lawyers. Mergers and acquisitions mean huge paychecks for the legal profession.

All this is made possible by the State-sponsored legal fiction of "limited liability"; meaning that the individual corporate overlords, once they are finished with their looting, are free to return and recommmence their activities...again and again. Because a corporation is a "person" in the eyes of the law, and thus individuals are not morally responsible for any criminal or unethical actions they undertake while wearing the corporate starched suit.  

The scale of "limited liability" bigness is a convenient power in many ways. It conveys the power to purchase power, to corrupt, and to keep interlopers and other "little people" out. In short, the exercise of power on the State scale.

Corporations as they are currently constituted are immoral, and must be reformed or removed if real freedom is to flourish in the world again.