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I chuckle when I hear corporations run America

Very well meaning and smart people are always saying that corporations buy politicians and have too much influence on policy in America.

Well lets visit some of the most powerful corporations of the last decades and see what their influence got them.

There was IBM, so powerful the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, Southern District of NY spent years in litigation to stop the monster. No antitrust verdict ever came in, IBM wasted away as many corporations did when faced with new competitors. Do you fear IBM today? Many people did years ago.

Xerox was a power, Kodak was a power, GE was a power, US Steel was a power, General Motors was a power (does anyone fear GM today, or do we hope it will eek out existence long enough to pay our father’s retirement?), Bell Telephone was so powerful it was broken up into regional companies (wasted effort as the internet made it irrelevant and other companies took over its market), Exxon-Mobile was a great power, until it was no longer a great power.

But somehow their power was not sufficient to ensure their survival in the Dow Jones Industries.

The department of Indian Affairs still exists. The major universities still exist with the same institutions at the top that were at the top 200 years ago (Harvard, Yale, Princeton). But the corporation which run America somehow waste away to be replaced by new social media companies. Weird power they have that does not insure even their survival.

Chuckle.

In Classical America, I would say from 1800 to 1900, the average person had unprecedented freedom to do as he wished and make his own life. Even in my father’s time, say 1950, he could ignore Washington and its minions with no detriment to his life.

Ordinary people loved America and the elite hated America.

Obviously the “elite” did not like this arrangement. Ordinary people are inferior.  The elite called them racist to better discredit them. So the elite  worked tirelessly to reduce the freedoms of ordinary people and increase the power of themselves.

Who are the elite?  The members of Congress, teachers at colleges, executives and personalities at major media, newspaper people at the New York Times and Washington Post, people at NGO’s, high ranking FBI and CIA bureaucrats, movie stars, the leadership of many private corporations.

Not elite: rank and file military, union members, working stiffs, religious people, middle management, franchise owners, car dealer owners, small businessmen, service employees,  real estate agents, supermarket cashiers.

Certain canards just get me going.  When I read any of these my blood pressure spikes and I see red, and I seem to be reading a variation of one or another of these all the time.

• Capitalism requires low wage workers. This is generally expressed in the context of “why the establishment favors unlimited immigration, both legal and illegal.”  Capitalism requires private property, enforceable contracts, and rule of law. If you have those, then the natural desire of people to better their situation takes over and arranges the things that are present in better arrangements over time.

Japan has few immigrants but a very high first world standard of living. The economy of Japan is stagnating, but that may be because they abrogated the rule of law to prevent their banks from going belly up. One can keep zombie financial intermediaries alive forever with the brute force of unlimited government but you can’t expect the efficient allocation of capital thereafter.

Similarly, I often see “the modern economy relies on cheap energy, with energy getting more expensive to produce the good times are over.” In truth, the cost of various things are sometimes cheap and sometimes dear. If something gets too expensive people substitute other things.  Running a household once required one or more servants. Even poor Raskolnikov had a landlady who prepared meals and tea. When servants became prohibitively expensive, people substituted refrigeration, washing machines, appliances, etc.  Try asking your landlady in Manhattan to do your daily shopping and serve you a snack.

Capitalism, because it embodies freedom, merely rearranges the building blocks available in an order that increases value.

• Rampant Consumerism is a great evil somehow destroying America.  In reality, consumerism means the average person gets to buy services and things that he very much desires, just as rich people have always been able to.

 

• Financialization is destroying us.  Truly, I don’t even know what is meant by financialization.  Online sources seem to feel part of it is the increasing size of the financial services part of the economy.  Believe me, I remember when “industrial” was a respected word: The Dow Jones Industrial Average, The US Savings Bonds Industrial Payroll Savings Committee. These names were not accidents, industry was the business of America; bankers were 3-5-3 people, take deposits at 3 percent interest, loan the money out at 5 per cent interest and go home by three o’clock.

Truly, things have changed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average includes Facebook, Amazon and Google, not industries in anyone’s book, maybe it includes Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. Industry created value and bettered people’s lives, but so do other things. Would you like to live in a world with no literature, or musical performances, or interior design services? Anything that satisfies people’s wants or needs is a valid subject of capitalistic enterprise.

Another criticism is over the increased influence of finance institutions over other aspects of business. Under this view, financial institutions and financial elites have way too much influence over the business of America. Just let Henry Ford produce the cars that got America on the road,  not have Steve Jobs forced out of his own company once it went public and the finance people didn’t like the rate of return.

In my humble opinion, (IMHO in the old school Internet) the allocation of capital is the most difficult and the most value adding aspect of a free market. The US Government has allocated capital as it sees fit.  There was the synthetic fuel  corporation under Jimmy Carter.  During the oil embargo who could not better humanity by creating synthetic oil? Well, you haven’t heard of the synthetic fuel corporation because millions of dollars were sunk into it with 100% loss.  Then there is the strategic oil reserve. The US government bought oil when it was expensive and scarce (driving up the cost to taxpayers and to drivers, home owners, and everyone else who used oil). Now oil is overabundant and cheap. The reserve could be filled at half the cost, but the government is thinking of selling a portion of it.  Great investing. The solution to high prices are high prices. The market produced more oil and lowered prices. The government intervention was unneeded, costly and wasteful.

 

 

Everyone says The Civil War decided once and for all that the individual States could do nothing against an overreaching Federal Government. Whatever the Feds want, I’m good with it, says the States.

Does anyone think that in today’s emotional environment the Federal government is going to wage domestic war? As a culture, we can’t hurt the feelings of a delusional male who thinks he is a female. States that openly allow pot sales against Federal law suffer no repercussions. No one is going to fight a war against the citizens of a State because they don’t follow the Federal line.

What they would do is stop some Fed swag. No highway money. Companies would withdraw business. Entertainers would refuse to concert there.

Perhaps the states would assert what pressure they could against the Feds. Stop local banks from remitting income tax collections until the Feds honor their legal obligations. Stop cooperating with Federal law enforcement. Execute no Federal warrants, particularly for Federal tax issues. Stop all cooperation with Federal police authorities. Require the Federal government to explicitly authorize with a statute anything it wants to impose on the States (the supremacy clause provides that Federal law superceeds State law but says nothing about Federal regulations or administrative dictates). EPA directives, not Federal law, IRS regulations, not Federal law, etc.

Here’s the key. I have learned that the best way forward is often to not ask permission and then litigate afterwards. The best way is often to do and let the other party litigate if it thinks you are prohibited. Many of these questions are unclear. If you ask, “May
I,” it might take years. If the States do several of these things, and the Feds have to exert force or litigate , the entire State / Federal balance of power would shift rapidly.

Look, if you have the world’s reserve currency, other countries will need to accumulate your currency. Every country needs dollars in their bank account (could be treasury securities or anything else priced and convertible to dollars).

You can’t conduct trade in dollars when your checking account has zero dollars.

So, to get dollars they sell us stuff.  They need to sell us more stuff than they buy from us to get the dollars they need. Or they could buy the dollars on the foreign exchange market which just means other countries would have to sell us more stuff then they buy from us to get the dollars to sell on the foreign exchange markets.

Having the reserve currency means the really great thing that lots of people have to hold your currency, giving you real value to get it, and the difficult thing that domestic producers have to see more goods come in than go out. The goods have to come in so other countries have dollars to fill their checking account

Determinism is  au courant. It’s stylish. It’s fashionable. It’s up to date.

Why so much interest today in an obscure and ancient philosophical question?

Of course the negation of free will is vaguely part of Marxism. The collapse of capitalism is predetermined no matter what the participants want. It’s “You didn’t build that.” It’s “the root cause of crime”.

But the best part of the pro determinism frame for leftists is the attack on objective reality and knowledge of objective reality.

They say that what you believe about objective reality is simply an adaptive evolutionary fiction that increases your chances of survival. You know nothing about reality; you know only representations that are useful to you.

If you claim that even if  you are on the wrong side of history, you are nonetheless on the right side of reality. They can respond that there is no knowing reality. If you claim that men and women are different and you can support that by the number of hours worked or choice of occupations. They respond that your evidence is only belief in a manufactured “reality” that forwards your survival prospects.

Of course, since people do have beliefs they are quick to attribute beliefs to social influence. All beliefs are malleable, the ones you subscribe to now are a reflection of a certain societal power structure. If women had more power their choice of occupations would mirror men and their hours worked would be statistically identical to those of men.

The one belief that is not doubted is the belief in their theory of beliefs. There, they are correct. It is not a group of leftists seeking to influence fellow citizens and policy for their own self preservation. It is observation and reason proving that observation and reason cannot prove anything. Science proves that science is meaningless.

Wishful thinking finally is the final determinant of what we should do.