World War Three, the Ongoing Economic War

The Consul

The Cold War may have been lukewarm on a military level, but it was white-hot on the economic level., particularly when the neoliberal neutron bomb was detonated. When the first atomic test was done, they feared the chain reaction might not stop, consuming the atmosphere and perhaps the entire planet. It didn’t but the neoliberal bomb has done just that. The chain reaction continues to destroy. The Soviet Union was defeated by an arms race that crippled the development of its economy coupled with the neoliberal mutation of the capitalist systems. It burned itself out.

The Cold War began World War Three, a war of economic imperial domination with the U.S. at the top. The weapons are corporations. Most effective than neutron bombs, they leave people and structures available to serve their masters but too weak to resist. The weapons served the U.S. well, until they became more powerful and turned on their creator. Driven by the one directive and purpose for existence, they maximize shareholder profits at all cost. Once they became multinational conglomerates, their masters were no longer necessary. 

The corporate tyranny is the greatest danger to humanity. Unlike most political, religious, cultural, or philosophical ideologies and government structures all corporations follow the same directive. This is shared regardless of individual and regional differences. It is unification by greed, understood innately in every language. There is no possibility or room for dissension, division, or alternatives.  The realization of this singular selfish goal is a global monopoly through dominance of all sectors and industries enabling the influence of all governments. Control without accountability. Those rivals not destroyed are absorbed until everyone and everything serves the one corporate state. 

There can be only one.

If you think it’s a good idea for corporate tycoon to runs countries like businesses, wait until they assemble the redundancy lists and begin downsizing. When the world is a corporation where do you turn when you’re let go?

Corporations use job-creation, investment, competitiveness, and tax havens to threaten nations into incentives and tax-breaks. Then they set up off-shore tax-dodges, shift operations to unregulated countries, and demand that governments pay for the training their new workers will need, all the while ignoring new workers to hire experienced temporary workers from unregulated regions. Why not? Their economic dominance has enabled them to crush the spirit and power of most unions in most places where they had achieved victories. Corporations grow by crushing or devouring competition thus throwing people out of work not creating jobs. They protect the profits they claim they don't make and the bonus granted by and through share prices by cutting jobs and quality. They get public help setting up buildings and factories then sell them and claim the loss when they pull out without ever operating. They runs themselves in huge time and cost-overruns and then beg for government investment to keep on doing it while giving out bonuses to those responsible.

And, when their massive gambles in search of bonuses, share bumps, and quick profit result in disaster they beg for hand-outs, bailouts, grants, interest-free loans, and public investment. They are too big, too vital to be allowed to fail. The economy and democracy depend on their profitability and expertise. Any enterprise that is truly that big and vital to the nation should not be in private hands, vulnerable to profit motive, monopoly, and corporate raiders. This is the definition of an essential service that requires nationalization.

Corporations are supposed to be creators of jobs and the engine of the economy. Corporations attack competition, quality, choice, rights, and the environment. Corporations are powered by shareholder investments made through the financial serves industry. It has been shown that the large the financial industry of a county becomes, the more it drains the economy by diverting and trapping wealth with creating anything. The financial industry is comprised of corporations that fund corporations and 8 old men control over 50% of the world’s investment ability.

See a problem?

It doesn't take a vast complex conspiracy to control the world, or even an explicit one. Just 8 men taking an interest in the other seven's investment strategies and exchanging the odd call, sharing a meal, or playing eighteen holes. A couple of carts could hold them all.

"Conservatism" decries anything that attempts wealth redistribution for the common good, however, it worships neoliberalism's ability to redistribute 50% of the world's wealth to eight men more efficiently than anything else in history.  "Liberalism" has been stricken blind to the chain-reaction and staggered right past the centre, mutating as the right moves backward farther. Neither are fighting the problem, too intently tugging on their end of the burning rope of democracy, abandoning to the economic wasteland citizens desperate for anything to counteract the chain-reaction.

World War Three is ongoing. The Economic War’s debt and monopoly conquer much more cost-effectively than armies. The neoliberal chain-reaction continues unopposed, mutating economics and politics and truth to turn democracy into the permanent war envisioned by Orwell. We’re nearing our last stand, our last chance to stop the boot of consumerism stomping on faces.

A taxpayer is just a civic consumer. A voter is just a single shareholder among millions. A citizen is a partner in the work and profit of the ongoing creation of a nation. Corporations consume everything and anything they can, usually to produce and inferior result such as processed foods or products planned to become obsolete. They are turning us into empty consumers devouring our humanity along with the rest of the world. A heroin addict is a consumer. Flesh-eating disease is a consumer. Tax-dodgers who profit from society are consumers.

I’m a citizen.

So many good points in this Sunday Edition interview.

Sunday January 22, 2017

Charles Taylor's clear-eyed vision of our distress, coupled to a deep-rooted celebration of humanity

(Oleksandr Makhanets/Wikipedia)

Listen 35:06

It's 2017, and much of the world has a major case of the jitters.

No one knows exactly what to expect from it, but not many people, aside from Donald Trump's more fervent supporters seem to expect much good to come of it…aside from thinking it couldn't be much worse than 2016.

With such a cloud hanging over the new year, the media and public and political discourse are full of rancour, anger and fear. The wisdom of philosophers struggles to be heard above the din of so much shouting and deploring. They don't have nearly as many followers on Twitter as Trump, after all.

But the voice of one of the world's most renowned thinkers, Canadian Charles Taylor, does seem to be reaching some people with its unflagging optimism and generosity of spirit.

I think democracy depends on a sense of what I call "citizen efficacy" in a large number of people - a sense that there's somewhere you can go, some levers you can push, some votes you can make, and that revivifies democracy. Just think back eight years. What was the great slogan of Obama's campaign? It was "Yes we can"...When that goes, a real kind of panic takes over, a real sense that it's getting worse, out of control, it'll go on getting worse.   - Charles Taylor

He is a professor emeritus of philosophy at McGill University. In October, Professor Taylor won the inaugural Berggruen Prize, a million-dollar award to honour "thinkers whose ideas are intellectually profound but also able to inform practical and public life across the range of world civilizations."

He spoke with Michael about the politics of resentment, political impotence and restoring people's faith in democracy and collective movements.