centralized oversight

[Joseph Tracy]

This is simple and undisguiseable truth, no flag can cover all the dead bodies and the miserable human conditions created by unbridled corporate power . We have to stop telling the capitalist fairytales. The reference Laura gives is perfect, thorough and conveniently ignored by the feel-good lies of "recovery".  Corporations as currently configured are engineered  to  be socio-pathic viruses that turn a living planet into zombie zones and mountains of money for the .1% . 
Until we demand  a political conscience that seeks to treat  all others as we want to be treated, the potential benefits of  investor capitalization and corporate division of labor will always be dominated by monstrous plunder.  Those who pander to the dreams of the continued growth and tremble before bankers and extractors are pimping for the wars that are sure to follow their White Rolls Royce cruising through the marble dreams made in china. 


On Dec 3, 2011, at 9:01 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> There are two reasons that Americans (well, many of them) have lived in a prosperous bubble: one is that we (yes, I include myself) were being subsidized by the slave labor of our less prosperous brothers and sisters across the planet.  The other is that our government still had some bite (before Reagan began the dismantling)to control the excesses of corporate greed.  Sure, a lot of the poorest people are doing better now - on the face of it, it sounds almost like Christian retribution, with the meek inheriting, etc.  But here's the difference:  there's no check on corporate greed now.  If you think the kids in [fill in a country] are going to grow up in the same bubble of prosperity that post-war Americans (well, many of them) enjoyed, guess again.  The corporations don't care if their consumers live in the Americas or Europe or Asia or Africa, nor do they care where their slave labor lives, so long as the internal logic of the profit system can be driven onwards.  When the wages in the new not-rich-but-not-starving countries cut too deeply into their newly-unregulated profits, the corporations will move their factories elsewhere.
> 
> Here's an example:
> 
> http://www.globallabourrights.org/reports?id=0220
> 
> LK
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>> Sent: Dec 3, 2011 7:24 PM
>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Subject: Re: centralized oversight
>> 
>> I don't think those who oppose the new economy have a moral compass,
>> but are motivated by the same things that motivate those who will
>> outsource their jobs. The goods news is that other people in the
>> world, people who have long suffered poverty and all that goes with
>> it, are the new market for both jobs and conusmption. The American
>> will, as the economy recovers here, slowly but surely, do her share of
>> consumption as usual, but the new economy doesn't depend on the rich
>> consumers of America and Europe; not with Brazil, Idia, now China,
>> next  Africa turning consumers loose. The new wave of jobs is not old
>> manufacturing or telephone outsource, but in new areas like financial
>> engineering, medicine, physics, computer science, robotics. The
>> American can continue to blame corporate greed and globalization for
>> her troubles, but it won't change anything. The poor are ready to be
>> wealthy and they will be. What will happen to the planet? Hey, you
>> Americans should have thought about that when you were developing and
>> getting rich. But the new economy is doing a better job and it will do
>> a better job, it has the advantage og backwardness and leapfrong, and,
>> it will force the Americans to pay for what they did, continue to do,
>> and must stop doing so the rest of the world can grow rich. Hey,
>> Americans are tough, they can handle it.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> We might agree about the increasing powerlessness of the presidency, but I don't share your relaxed attitude to being on the losing side.  The global corporatocracy isn't going to usher in an era of benevolence - it's going to be a hellish period in human history when these giant bodies maraud the planet and fight amongst themselves for dwindling resources (such as water) and casually discard anything they can't make a profit off of (surplus humans).  Sure, they'll be winners around the globe in that scenario - there always are - but eventually, they too will succumb to evolution or revolution - but not in our grandchildren's or even great grand-children's lifetimes.  All we (those of us who are less sanguine towards corporate hegemony) can do is take snipes at them anyway we can, whether in the form of Occupy movements, boycotts or as yet undiscovered anti-corporate tactics.  No, it won't hasten the revolution, and no, we don't expect utopia.  But if opposing the corporate powers-that-be helps us retain our humanity and our moral compass, so be it.