Contributed by Daniel Celovsky May 12 2022
It is 2022. At this time in history we are under the rule of large global mega-corporations.
But we continue to hear the standard rhetoric. “We live in a democracy.” “We must protect our democracy.” “Our democracy is under attack.” Guess what? That rhetoric is pure garbage.
We do not have a democracy. The facts contradict the rhetoric. You simply cannot have a society ruled by corporations and still declare there to be a democracy. It cannot be both. One is not the same as the other.
Let’s examine this. What do the people ‘own’ in a democracy? They own the legislative, judicial, and institutional bureaucracies of government. They own the “commons” - those lands and assets titled to the government. They own the government - the government that is designed to represent them.
What is the reality? The lawmakers in our legislatures are representing the corporations, the courts are ignoring corporate crimes, the bureaucracies are nothing more than institutions that issue corporate welfare, contracts, and largess to corporate interests. Any laws that remain to restrict corporate activities have either been marginalized or had their enforcement levers neutralized.
Government bureaucracies ingratiate corporations with access to public lands on request - either for corporate infrastructure or to extract their natural resources. Most of these ‘gifts’ return little if anything back to the public in terms of rents or royalties. Many times, lands desired for corporate activities are taken under government rights of imminent domain and simply taken from private land-owners and given to the private corporate interests. That is not what imminent domain rules are for. These rules are flagrantly abused.
Institutions belonging to the public - and established to serve the public - are privatized with consistent and predictable consequences to the public they were established to serve. This includes significant portions of the prison system, the health-care system, the financial system, and many others. Corporations turn these once-public institutions into sources of profit - each time inflicting reduced levels of service, increased costs, and the exclusion of “unprofitable” citizens from even participating.
The revolving door between senior level bureaucrats and corporate jobs is flowing like a two-way expressway without any dams or restrictions on that flow. It is all rooted in one thing: corruption. Why is it that senior bureaucratic positions are consistently filled by corporate leaders? And this is completely immune from which political party is elected into office. In what sense would anyone place executives from the criminal enterprise known as Goldman-Sachs into positions leading financial and monetary institutions? The conflicts of interest are abundantly clear. There is no justification for these appointments.
Let’s quickly examine the military industrial complex - the very structure we were warned about by Eisenhower at his farewell address. Wars are constant - and constantly feeding lucrative contracts to the corporations and private contractors that profit from wars such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, etc. Add in that the US military budget approximates half of all discretionary spending - and is completely not subject to any audit - it is literally a blank check without any accountability!
What about Big Pharma? Corporations that have reaped record profits during the Covid pandemic and since then. Literally corporations that profit from vaccines developed primarily on taxpayer-funded investments and then restricted by patents that these corporations refuse to publicly release.
Big Oil? The climate science community is adamant - sternly adamant - that this industry must be shut down. Their projections? Nothing but growth - blessed by our governments. Their profits? Breaking records as they milk consumers with higher prices and blame the Ukrainian war for them (which is war profiteering - and a violation of international law in itself). Did you expect the government to enforce those laws? Oops - apparently that is not in the cards - actually there has only been government encouragement to expand fossil fuel extraction.
Go to the grocery store. Only a few large global corporations dominate the food and beverage choices offered - there is little to no free market competition. And very little government oversight on the food and beverage choices offered. Ever wonder if a corporation might select to choose profit over food safety? There is little to no protection against it. This will ultimately - and very predictably - cause direct harm to many of us.
What about corporations offering products to our children? They target their advertising to children starting at four years old! They represent food and beverage choices that lead to unhealthy outcomes and - from age 7 and up - to addictive behaviours. Government regulation? Forget about it. Absent.
What about big retailers such as Walmart and Amazon? These mega-corporations have literally rendered communities into virtual commercial ghost-towns and decimated the incomes of their employees. They literally destroy many of the communities they enter.
We all certainly and immediately recognize the banking and financial industry consolidation of power into the few - from the crisis this industry itself perpetrated in 2008 - and being literally bailed out by the government when they were destined to fail. Too big to fail? You bet they are. Were there criminal prosecutions as a result? No. Many of the very executives that created the mess were awarded massive bonuses - and many were even added to the following federal government administrations in senior positions! Since then, these same criminal financial enterprises have only gotten much bigger. Too big to fail only got bigger. Where is the government action? Absent again.
Corporate consolidation is everywhere and in virtually every industry. What is corporate consolidation? It is the removal of free market economies. Free market economies (that most of us believe in and hold dear) are literally destroyed by these global capitalistic behemoths.
It is high time that we - the public - hold these corporations and their enablers (the government that is supposed to maintain checks-and-balances) to account. We must press for the break-up of these corporations that are too big to fail. The trade-off is the public being fleeced further as these behemoths suck every dime out of the public’s pocket with no end in sight to their greed.
It is time to change course. Way past time. That will require us all to embrace civic responsibility and assume the levers of control of our government to work for the people - not the corporations.
The courts may assume their position that “corporations are people”. However, that is unacceptable. To hell with the courts. We need laws created by our political institutions that work for us and our neighbours - not law-making institutions that are seated by spineless politicians that work for the corrupt corporations and are sending us in a very bad direction.
We need our democracy to spring back to life. That requires civic responsibility from each of us. We can take back our political institutions - throw out the corrupted politicians who have repeatedly and consistently failed us. We can change everything - but we need to assert our democratic rights to do so.