The Wrongologist

What’s
Wrong Today:

The
presidential campaign is shaping up as a contest between a Democrat who says we
had a free market from
2001 through 2008 and
it nearly ruined us, and a Republican who says “[w]e are only
inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy.” And that will
ruin us.

Barack
Obama and Mitt Romney apparently agree that the free market caused the
housing and financial debacle, our massive unemployment and the low growth
economy we all enjoy today.

How will
voters choose among them? Those who abhor “socialism” (however they define it)
will rally round the Republican because of his rhetoric, while those who abhor
“crony capitalism” will support the Democrat because of his rhetoric.

And the
winner will be: Corporatism, just like
last time.

So, What’s Wrong?

Every four years, some segment of
the vast American Corporatocracy backs a guy who captures the U.S. presidency
and government. In the case of the Bush administration it was the energy
industry. In the case of Obama, it was the financial services industry.

The Bush
administration prosecuted Enron and put Skilling and other executives in
prison. Since the Obama administration came to power backed by the financial
industry, it has neither prosecuted nor convicted anyone from that industry.

In fact,
there has not been much change in Washington’s approach to the financial
services industry from Clinton to Bush to Obama. The same is true regarding the
Energy and Defense sectors, Enron and BP excepted.

 

The Free Dictionary defines Corporatism as follows:

 

Noun1.corporatism – control of a
state or organization by large interest groups; “individualism is in
danger of being swamped by a kind of corporatism”

 

It defines control as: power to direct or determine;
“under control”

 

So, corporations run politics and policy in
our country. But, a corporation is a societal
construct codified in law to further the mutual interests of individuals. A
corporation is “an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing
only in contemplation of the law,” according to Chief
Justice Marshall
in the case Trustees of
Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819.

A corporation has no inalienable or natural
rights as described in the US Declaration of
Independence.
Nevertheless, since corporations represent a group of individuals,
“corporatists” have claimed that these fictional legal entities should enjoy
the same natural and legal liberties and rights with which individuals are
born.

And so we
get Citizens United.

Granting corporations the same rights as
natural persons may well prove to be a turning point in the viability of our
democracy,
not to mention the vibrant small/local capitalism that was a feature from the
birth of our nation to the present.

That is not to say that businesses should
not have rights. They should; and we should grant them as much freedom to act
as is reasonable and warranted.

But,
corporations are not individuals; they are collections of individuals. Often,
individuals hide behind the collective using the corporate veil to shield
themselves from sanctions for behavior, including the kind that abuses
individual liberties.

The
rights of businesses and individuals often come into conflict and a corporatist
would always favor the corporation in that conflict.

Economic conservatives defend the primacy
of markets over all else, when in reality common sense tells us that those with the greatest influence and
money will always be at an advantage without some check on that
influence and power.

Corporations
only “die” if the corporation becomes insolvent or their charter is
revoked (something that rarely happens in the large corporate world). All
natural persons die even when they’re doing well, financially. This difference is a compelling reason
to limit the rights of corporations versus people.

Virtual
immortality is a huge advantage which, combined with superior wealth and
influence, creates an extreme imbalance of power.

So far, corporations cannot vote. However,
increasing freedom to use their money and power to influence elections may
increasingly trump the votes of natural persons. Does one hundred dollars equal
one vote now? Two hundred? Three?

It
is axiomatic that those with the means and access will always have greater
influence over government than those without. So, in a very real sense, the
socioeconomic elite of any advanced, stratified society will always have disproportionate
control of the economic and political system.

We are passing
a tipping point. The Citizen’s United
decision handed our electoral system to the multinational corporate
kleptocracy. Unchanged, it’s a downhill road from here to serfdom.

And we don’t just have
Corporatists in one sector of the economy: There
is an oligopoly in finance and in derivatives speculation. We have an oligopoly
in health care, in defense, in energy. There is an oligopoly in the media. What
makes it worse is that all of these oligarchs are transnational corporations with little loyalty to anyone or to
any country.

This means
that they have no need to support the economic health of our nation.

Why so? US
corporations work from a market premise: there are 1.3 billion Chinese, 1
billion Indians, plus 1 billion East European and Middle Eastern consumers to
sell to. There are only 300 million American consumers; they’ve made most of what
profits they can make in the US. In order to grow, they have to find
incremental volume elsewhere.

 Since growth in demand
is too low or too uncertain in the US, there is little need to hire. It is not
because taxes are too high or there is too much regulation; there are simply 10 times more consumers
outside this country than in it.

Despite their PR
to the contrary, U.S corporations are mostly satisfied with the US economy, particularly
since, when they need the services that a large relatively affluent taxpaying
population can provide, like a bailout, they have organized Washington so they can
get it.

Absent a rapidly growing US
market, the Kleptocrats favor siphoning tax revenues to their “privatized” subsidiaries.
They push to privatize tax revenues for schools, universities, prisons,
highways, military functions and anything else they can convince their political
puppets to sell in Congress. The corporatist uses free market rhetoric as cover
for the real end which is unchecked power. It is similar to the way neo-cons
talk up democracy in pursuit of US hegemony and oil security.

Capitalism needs to be
refined and redefined for the Twenty-first Century. Unfortunately, the great political
minds needed to address the task are not apparent at the moment.

 Who
are these thought leaders and where are they?