The problem with letting large corporations become in charge of essentials like medical care, drugs and cures, the justice system, the government, and the environment is that they will always encourage their source of greatest profits to continue despite what damage it may cause.
Drug companies aren't interested in producing cures, they want treatments. The drug industry and most medicine, as well as the justice system, depend on the misery of others to exist. Medicine, including drugs, are supposed to cure that misery but make better profits by treating the symptoms.
Mineral and petroleum extraction companies are about exploiting the resources available in the ground the cheapest way possible. Thus they care not what happens to other resources, ones that aren't supposed to run out, like minerals (as long as we stay on this planet) and petroleum definitely will. The faster they rip it from the earth, the quicker it will run out, of course, the quicker it becomes rarer and the rarer it gets the most profit possible.
The large agriculture corporations are trying to make every farmer dependant on their seeds, which are incapable of reproducing and thus need yearly replacement, and fertilizers and pesticides because the limited varieties sold strip the soil of nutrients and lack the genetic diversity and symbiotic neighbours to ward of pests and diseases. Thus farms are addicted to what the corporations sell.
And in the world economy, large financial corporations profit from risky behaviour (aka gambling) and the lack of regulations as well as the people's fear and belief that these people know what they are doing. They continue to encourage greater, riskier debt so they can get more bale-outs when they loose the money that we give them to invest safely and loan at reasonable rates. What has that gotten us? Credit cards that charge more than Chinese loan-sharks.
And since at least the 1980s politicians have been trying to run countries like corporations. The dog often resembles the master. Economic growth, monetary profit, has been the only guiding ideal. If a country is a corporation when does it profit the most? When a large percentage of its labour force are slaves. Just ask colonial Europe, America, Rome, and Ancient Egypt, plus the women of nearly every age gone by. When the most you have to pay your labour force is beer, your economy grows like wild fire. China is well aware of this, and as its middle class is growing, it's growth is slowing. Because the middle class, in fact most citizens, usually want more from their country than a good profit on the balance sheet. They want services, protections, rights, decent living conditions, dignity. Profit is just one part of helping to achieve this. It's no good if it goes just to the CEO and board and a few majority shareholders. In democratic countries we're all supposed to be equal shareholders. We all get one vote.
Democracies can't be run as corporations. Corporations are single psychopathic legal entities with no other concern but profit. Like in most corporations, rising profits don't mean rising wages and benefits unless the workers make their demands and unity clear.
War is the ultimate way to profit from misery. Ask the so-called "Security Council" of the UN. The biggest five weapons manufacturing and dealing countries on the planet. When they ask each other to intervene in an ongoing human rights disaster or armed conflict, they are really saying, "Do you need to profit from this one or can we take it this time? And how long can we milk this one?" The UN might have a chance of working if this Profiteering Council was abolished.
Do we want our countries to be nothing but misery breeding money machines? The Quebec government is giving funding to reopen Canada's shameful asbestos mine. We won't use it here, but we're sure willing to profit by selling it to people who don't know or can't afford to know better. Do we want the world to be nothing than a grinding machine for human misery?
Capitalism is supposed to be the economic system that helps enable the betterment of our lives and the operation of our government for that aim. It's not supposed to be the government system itself. We created it, not the other way around. Like all our creations if we let it rule us, we are doomed by that very creation.
Our idols are always false. Nothing but the Earth is set in stone, and stone itself breaks.
Drug companies aren't interested in producing cures, they want treatments. The drug industry and most medicine, as well as the justice system, depend on the misery of others to exist. Medicine, including drugs, are supposed to cure that misery but make better profits by treating the symptoms.
Mineral and petroleum extraction companies are about exploiting the resources available in the ground the cheapest way possible. Thus they care not what happens to other resources, ones that aren't supposed to run out, like minerals (as long as we stay on this planet) and petroleum definitely will. The faster they rip it from the earth, the quicker it will run out, of course, the quicker it becomes rarer and the rarer it gets the most profit possible.
The large agriculture corporations are trying to make every farmer dependant on their seeds, which are incapable of reproducing and thus need yearly replacement, and fertilizers and pesticides because the limited varieties sold strip the soil of nutrients and lack the genetic diversity and symbiotic neighbours to ward of pests and diseases. Thus farms are addicted to what the corporations sell.
And in the world economy, large financial corporations profit from risky behaviour (aka gambling) and the lack of regulations as well as the people's fear and belief that these people know what they are doing. They continue to encourage greater, riskier debt so they can get more bale-outs when they loose the money that we give them to invest safely and loan at reasonable rates. What has that gotten us? Credit cards that charge more than Chinese loan-sharks.
And since at least the 1980s politicians have been trying to run countries like corporations. The dog often resembles the master. Economic growth, monetary profit, has been the only guiding ideal. If a country is a corporation when does it profit the most? When a large percentage of its labour force are slaves. Just ask colonial Europe, America, Rome, and Ancient Egypt, plus the women of nearly every age gone by. When the most you have to pay your labour force is beer, your economy grows like wild fire. China is well aware of this, and as its middle class is growing, it's growth is slowing. Because the middle class, in fact most citizens, usually want more from their country than a good profit on the balance sheet. They want services, protections, rights, decent living conditions, dignity. Profit is just one part of helping to achieve this. It's no good if it goes just to the CEO and board and a few majority shareholders. In democratic countries we're all supposed to be equal shareholders. We all get one vote.
Democracies can't be run as corporations. Corporations are single psychopathic legal entities with no other concern but profit. Like in most corporations, rising profits don't mean rising wages and benefits unless the workers make their demands and unity clear.
War is the ultimate way to profit from misery. Ask the so-called "Security Council" of the UN. The biggest five weapons manufacturing and dealing countries on the planet. When they ask each other to intervene in an ongoing human rights disaster or armed conflict, they are really saying, "Do you need to profit from this one or can we take it this time? And how long can we milk this one?" The UN might have a chance of working if this Profiteering Council was abolished.
Do we want our countries to be nothing but misery breeding money machines? The Quebec government is giving funding to reopen Canada's shameful asbestos mine. We won't use it here, but we're sure willing to profit by selling it to people who don't know or can't afford to know better. Do we want the world to be nothing than a grinding machine for human misery?
Capitalism is supposed to be the economic system that helps enable the betterment of our lives and the operation of our government for that aim. It's not supposed to be the government system itself. We created it, not the other way around. Like all our creations if we let it rule us, we are doomed by that very creation.
Our idols are always false. Nothing but the Earth is set in stone, and stone itself breaks.
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