Showing posts with label corporate greed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corporate greed. Show all posts

Monday, December 17, 2007

Winning Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry



It always bothers me when I hear some lofty expert talk about corporate corruption and destructive practices with apologetic forgiveness. They say things like, "Corporations are only doing what they're supposed to do: worry about the bottom line. They are there to make a profit for their investors; they are obligated to do that."

That implies that you can't really blame corporations for putting out cheap deadly products, ripping people off, killing people, cheating people, ignoring complaints, destroying local economies, paying off the government to legalize and cover their crimes etc.; it's just business and they are obligated to do it. The apologists even go so far as to say that corporations are legally required to do this or they open themselves to lawsuits for failing to seek to increase the value of the shares their investors have purchased. To put moral concerns or egalitarian motives above making ever increasing profits is literally, supposedly, against the law. How convenient.

I don't doubt there are laws on the books like this after seven years of bushco plundering and pillaging our country with their corporate globalist agenda and mindset. They came to conquer the world through what they call business. In fact, it's nothing less than piracy. It's legalized crime. It's about using secrecy, force, deceit, collusion, conspiracy and all forms of legal trickery veiled in credibility by calling it business. It's all fueled by unbridled greed and the belief that it's every man for himself; winner take all and screw the rest. In the name of personal gain the end justifies the means. Winning means never having to say you're sorry.

What constitutes an obligation to others? Money? Does it take a written contract sealed with the empty kiss of cold hard cash to create an obligation on this earth? What about their pre-existing obligation to their fellow man? What about their American obligation to be good citizens? To be honest? Ethical? To help instead of harm? What about respecting the rights of others? How about justice? Is every basic moral obligation erased by simply creating a contract stating the intent to increase personal wealth? Does money excuse us from our basic moral obligations to each other? Is that the message here? It would seem so.

We have seen this 'money is everything' trend steadily rising in America over the last few decades and I don't like it. It's a very dangerous, rather insidious total reversal of our human-based value system. It's steadily morphing into a corporate value system where profit is all that matters. Profit is the final criteria and the law is changing to support that. The law allows corporations to profit by allowing all the harm they cause and all of the damage they do. Human needs and quality of life considerations are simply swept off the table to make room for corporate ideology. Life itself is taking second place to profits.

It's too expensive to get medical care, so forget medical care; it's too expensive to care for the elderly and the disabled, so let's pull the plug and let them die; it's too expensive to give people their full money's worth, so screw people; aesthetics are an unnecessary expense, so forget beauty in architecture and city design; it's too expensive to educate people, so dumb them down and let them deal with the consequences; it's too expensive to pay a living wage, so let the taxpayer make up the difference. More and more, every day, in endless categories we are receiving the message that money matters more than human life. Money matters more than happiness, more than peace of mind, more than love and families and human dignity, more than justice, more than the environment. Money and the goal of getting it outweighs all other human needs and the pursuit of wealth has been classified as the highest purpose of man. Excuse me, but that's incorrect. In fact it's downright horrifying.

Spelling it out in plain English, if it were written plainly into the laws of our land so that anyone could understand it, perhaps including it in the constitution, how would it read? It might go something like this:

"There are a few among us who have the highest calling: the accumulation of great personal wealth, given to them by God. It runs through their veins. They are driven to pursue ever increasing wealth above all else and nothing shall be done to stop them or slow them down or detour them. If others must die so that they will be richer, then others must die. If they must lie, cheat and steal, if they must poison water supplies and air quality, if they must destroy the land for profit, so be it. They shall not have to endure lawsuits to recompense those they have killed or undermined or harmed by removing their means of survival. They shall not be detracted from achieving their goals or questioned or audited because their calling is truly the highest, most admirable purpose of mankind. They shall be found faultless and blameless in all complaints against them. They shall be endowed with pure entitlement and for evermore be held up above all others and given every special privilege and every advantage they desire. The people shall fund it all; indeed, they shall fund their own demise and shut up about it. The people are hereby notified of their obligation to die and to forfeit their fair share of prosperity and justice to those who seek to accumulate all the wealth in the world for themselves. The people will not resist or make a fuss because this is true freedom and democracy in its highest form."

I wonder how many of us would warm up to that if Congress decided to amend the Constitution and add it in? My guess is- the only ones clapping would be the thugs of big business: the very same ones who already do all of these things and more and get away with it. No one else would celebrate the formal acceptance of this new doctrine into our lives because doing so would officially reduce all of us to insignificance. Imagine becoming legally insignificant, how would that feel?

Well, to one extent or another we've all already experienced what it feels like, some of us more than others. Because even though this amendment to the constitution has not been overtly added so that everyone can gaze upon it and soak in its significance, it has nonetheless been steadily woven into our laws so that it does reflect reality. This is the law of the land today, and unless we stop it, it will only get worse.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Intellectual Wrongs

I don't know about you but I've about had it with all of this intellectual rights nonsense. What is it exactly that all the heavy handed threats are about?
A news article from the Associated Press that I wanted to put on my website had this at the bottom: This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Well gee whiz, are we allowed to talk about it? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the purpose of the news to inform people? "Spread the news". Ever heard that saying? News is supposed to be spread. The news can't inform people if it doesn't get out there.
But don't even think about spreading it. Not any more.
God help anyone who wants to put one of the AP's news articles on their website, they'll be breaking some logic defying law. The law of acting like a selfish greedy panty wipe and having bleeding eyeballs over your NEWS ARTICLES getting out in the public domain complete with all the credit and self glorifying garbage you need to smear all over every little thing you do. It's an outrage.
It also serves to suppress information the public needs. What about that?
The news is just somebody writing a description of something that happened somewhere. It's not like the news industry owns the event. They don't. They can't say jack about it. They can't claim that the information they wrote about belongs to them. It doesn't. It's NEWS. It belongs to the public.
What about all those offices out there with clients that come and go all day and pick up the same newspaper? It gets read 50 times. Are you going to crack down on all those hair salons and doctors offices too? What's the difference?
It's self evident when it comes down to protecting some fat cat's profitability, or protecting common sense and the people's right to know, that the people and common sense can F.O.
Profits take it every time.
With whatever respect is due, the rip-off rich corporations aren't going hungry these days. More importantly, where do these people get off?
They can't have it both ways. Your news articles used to be sold to people in hard print. You had a good thing for a long time. You never came unglued over people trotting articles to the copier at work and passing them around. Why all of a sudden does the idea of people spreading important news articles amongst each other once YOU PUBLISH THEM seem like some kind of crime to you? How so? What's different?
Has anyone else seen the big name newspaper that thinks it gets to charge $4 just to read one of it's articles? Four dollars? For one article? Pick a butt cheek pal, and pucker up. That's just not going to happen. I've never paid $4 for a whole newspaper, I'm sure as heck not going to lay down and let you plunder me. What is wrong with these people's minds?
Once the news is published, it's out there. Something happens and it's something well known in the news industry. As soon as something's out there, it's open season. Every other paper in town can grab onto it and print it in their own papers too. Just change a word here and there and boom, it's not even plagiarism. It's business as usual. Moms and Dads clip articles and mail them to family members in Idaho. It spreads all over the place. It's supposed to.
You've gotten paid for your work. But now you feel compelled to assert some right to toss a fat juicy chicken into a fox hole, and then piss and moan when the foxes come up to eat it. That's just stupid.
Once you publish the news, it's out there. It's public domain. Copyrights prevent people from putting their name on your exact printed version, but it starts spreading. You've published it, it's out there. It's over. Let go. There's no claiming you've got strings attached. It's like the folks who used to tie a string to a quarter and put it into the candy machine, then get their candy and pull the quarter back out. You want to have your cake and eat it too. It doesn't work that way.
Give me one good reason why I can't put your articles on my website. I make absolutely no profit on it. What is it exactly you're losing out on? There's no money involved anywhere. If your article sits idly on a server somewhere or if it's on my website, what flaming difference does it make, really? What is your problem?
It's obvious to me that this is about more than rabid greed. It's about being an asshole. And that's something any giant corporation can do better than anything else. It's the war of the assholes, and we're the targets. And they buy the legal right to be assholes from our dear, trustworthy law makers who slime us with lies, take corporate money and grant them anything they want, no matter how outrageous.
Well, I've got a little birdie for the lot of you crooks. And by the way, Bite Me. I'm redistributing whatever I find out there, it's finder's keepers. If you don't want your precious stuff touched then put it somewhere safe. Don't throw it into the middle of the public square and then shout foul when people pick it up and use it. That's the law of nature.
News corporations need to choose. Do they want to profit by selling the news to the public, which means we get to keep it? (SELL remember? Money for NEWS. An exchange. A trade. It's ours now.) OR do you want to write all those stories and lock them away where no one can see them? Because you can't have it both ways. It's out here or it's in your safe deposit box, but don't tell me what I find in my own living room doesn't belong to me. I guaran-damn-tee you it does.