The Magic Lantern
Imagine a magic lantern that, when rubbed, would deposit a million dollars in your bank account, but would in exchange kill a child in the Southern Hemisphere. How many times is is okay to rub that lantern? Is once enough? Maybe ten times? What if you need a billion dollars? Aren't the lives of 1000 people you don't know worth a billion dollars? And when you're done, should that ever happen, do you throw it away, or give it to your children? Do you tell them about the tradeoff?
Bad news folks:the magic lantern is real. We rub that lamp to a fine sheen.
When the US of A was founded, it brought along many of the traditional laws from England, including a general prohibition on "trusts", which were legal fictions designed to accumulate non taxable wealth and shield the owners from liability. It seems their emphasis on accumulating money offended many people. When the legal fiction of the "corporation" was devised, the owners would take an effort to show the public how they were serving the common good by providing a needed good or service. This has helped smooth the way such that corporate business structures are now the standard. But in the recent decades, the notion that corporations exist to do any other than generate profits has flittered away.
This emphasis on generating ever larger profits has done this country a great disservice. The old prejudice against trusts seems wise in hindsight. After a corporation has exhausted the profit potential for its markets, it must then turn to picking its workers' pockets and draining tax coffers to provide an increasing share of money to the very, very wealthy. All with only lip service done towards the notion of community service, and no efforts made toward community integration with jobs, services, training, or health care.
Why is higher education so expensive? Because businesses used to take on a large part of educating their incoming workers, and now they expect them to arrive pre-trained and over-educated. Why is health care so expensive? Businesses had been providing most of the health care costs for their workers, but over the years shifted a larger percentage of that load back on to the workers. Taking care of workers costs money, and the very wealthy need that money. It's important.
As an added bonus, this undue emphasis on profits facilitates economic "bubbles": periods of radical price swings for a given commodity, based primarily on the speculation by a small pool of investors holding enormous piles of cash. There was a bubble -- and a boom and bust cycle -- related to nearly anything you can look out and see on any American city. Land, houses, railroads, automobiles, computers, potatoes... and many other things have all spawned one, if not several, bubbles. Too much money with nowhere to go. And of course, the damage of every crash falls on the not rich, every time.
For the primary investors in a corporation, they rub the lamp, and a million dollars appears in their bank account. And someone in a third-world factory or field dies from exploitation and greed. There's never enough money, they never stop rubbing the lamp. They see this as their birthright to be passed down to their children. Today there are fewer than 500 such people who control the vast portion of the world's wealth. When they sneeze, nations go to war.
What to do? There are things that have helped in the past, and methods folks have used to bypass periods of oligarchy and corrupt markets. Folks used to make and grow nearly everything they needed, and nowdays, folks rarely make their own food anymore. At best they pour it out of a box before they microwave it. A lot of money these corporations make is from processed foods, bulk textiles, and soaps. Any food, textile, or soap that you make yourself or buy from a local farmer type is money that helps community and doesn't go into corporate pockets. And if you're making your own food or textiles, any extra can be bartered for other goods or services.
But this solution only preaches to the crowd. It doesn't convince the well funded to support political changes that make them less wealthy. History has shown that only dire threat is sufficient to induce such support. Although sometimes, after periods of great calamity, we'll get folks like FDR, who was wealthy, but felt he had an obligation to society, and the nation. And don't forget, FDR was despised by the upper class for his higher taxes, as they saw it, their money was being wasted on drunks and Irishmen.
Bad news folks:the magic lantern is real. We rub that lamp to a fine sheen.
When the US of A was founded, it brought along many of the traditional laws from England, including a general prohibition on "trusts", which were legal fictions designed to accumulate non taxable wealth and shield the owners from liability. It seems their emphasis on accumulating money offended many people. When the legal fiction of the "corporation" was devised, the owners would take an effort to show the public how they were serving the common good by providing a needed good or service. This has helped smooth the way such that corporate business structures are now the standard. But in the recent decades, the notion that corporations exist to do any other than generate profits has flittered away.
This emphasis on generating ever larger profits has done this country a great disservice. The old prejudice against trusts seems wise in hindsight. After a corporation has exhausted the profit potential for its markets, it must then turn to picking its workers' pockets and draining tax coffers to provide an increasing share of money to the very, very wealthy. All with only lip service done towards the notion of community service, and no efforts made toward community integration with jobs, services, training, or health care.
Why is higher education so expensive? Because businesses used to take on a large part of educating their incoming workers, and now they expect them to arrive pre-trained and over-educated. Why is health care so expensive? Businesses had been providing most of the health care costs for their workers, but over the years shifted a larger percentage of that load back on to the workers. Taking care of workers costs money, and the very wealthy need that money. It's important.
As an added bonus, this undue emphasis on profits facilitates economic "bubbles": periods of radical price swings for a given commodity, based primarily on the speculation by a small pool of investors holding enormous piles of cash. There was a bubble -- and a boom and bust cycle -- related to nearly anything you can look out and see on any American city. Land, houses, railroads, automobiles, computers, potatoes... and many other things have all spawned one, if not several, bubbles. Too much money with nowhere to go. And of course, the damage of every crash falls on the not rich, every time.
For the primary investors in a corporation, they rub the lamp, and a million dollars appears in their bank account. And someone in a third-world factory or field dies from exploitation and greed. There's never enough money, they never stop rubbing the lamp. They see this as their birthright to be passed down to their children. Today there are fewer than 500 such people who control the vast portion of the world's wealth. When they sneeze, nations go to war.
What to do? There are things that have helped in the past, and methods folks have used to bypass periods of oligarchy and corrupt markets. Folks used to make and grow nearly everything they needed, and nowdays, folks rarely make their own food anymore. At best they pour it out of a box before they microwave it. A lot of money these corporations make is from processed foods, bulk textiles, and soaps. Any food, textile, or soap that you make yourself or buy from a local farmer type is money that helps community and doesn't go into corporate pockets. And if you're making your own food or textiles, any extra can be bartered for other goods or services.
But this solution only preaches to the crowd. It doesn't convince the well funded to support political changes that make them less wealthy. History has shown that only dire threat is sufficient to induce such support. Although sometimes, after periods of great calamity, we'll get folks like FDR, who was wealthy, but felt he had an obligation to society, and the nation. And don't forget, FDR was despised by the upper class for his higher taxes, as they saw it, their money was being wasted on drunks and Irishmen.