Running a company or running the country...
Thom Hartmann Show uniting progressives on left and right
This is a blog post and then link to a show from last December on why progressives on the left (Hartmann's core audience) need to be going tospeaking with those in the Tea Party movement.
Banking and Investment
Several articles in the Globe the past few days inspired me to gather together some recent articles/videos on investment and banking in the U.S. And somewhat tangentially--I'm hoping Rep. Kaptur runs for President someday.
This first editorial, " A case study in profits and job losses," was prompted by Steve Pagliuca’s campaign for Ted Kennedy’s senate seat. The author, Josh Kosman, discusses the practices of the private equity firm, Bain Capital, which Pagliuca and Mitt Romney were both partners in (Romney a founding partner). Basically private equity is the same as leveraged buyout—as one reader explains in a review of Mr. Kosman’s book—it’s like a homeowner buying a house on a balloon payment. But private equity firms are not about maintaining their investment or getting the company to turn a profit. They borrow to take over the company, but leave before the debt comes due, in other words saddling the company itself with the debt used to finance the takeover. Kosman details what happened when Bain took over Dade Behring, an Illinois lab equipment manufacturing company that was eventually left with $450 million in debt:
“While lab-equipment manufacturers typically allocate 10-to-15 percent of sales to research and development, under Bain, Dade spent nearly half, 6 to 7 percent - $61.7 million in 1997 and $88.2 million in 1998. The anemic R&D spending fit the pattern of recent private-equity excesses - first because Dade Behring needed money to pay off the debt Bain had loaded it down with, and second, because Bain lacked the proper incentives to build a company it planned to exit within five years.
Like clockwork, nearly five years after its initial investment, Bain was practicing its exit dance, changing the employee benefits package for many workers from a defined-benefit pension plan, in which employees were entitled to about 75 percent of the average of their combined salary in their last three working years, to a cash-balance plan, saving the company perhaps $10 million to $40 million from the conversion. The same month Dade used the projections of that very savings as part of the basis to borrow $421 million, $365 million of which it turned around and used to buy back some of Bain and co-investor Goldman Sachs Capital Partners’ shares…
With added debt, new areas had to be cut. Dade’s Miami office, which had 850 employees in 1999, consolidated operations with a similar division in Germany. Pagliuca told the Globe that job cuts were necessary to improve Dade’s performance. But by then it didn’t matter how many divisions were consolidated or workers fired. Nothing could save the company from its crushing debt load. Finally, the decline in the value of the euro, which Dade was too cash-strapped to hedge against, caused the company to collapse. It filed for bankruptcy in August 2002.
Dade’s creditors took over the business, and Bain lost all its shares. But, Bain and Goldman - after putting down only $85 million to buy Dade and receiving the $365 million distribution, made out like bandits - a $280 million profit. Later, the Globe reported, creditors alleging these gains were “illegal dividends’’ got the private equity firms and other entities to pay them back $68 million of the $365 million.”
And here's a link to Kosman's book “The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis”
Follow-Up Article on Tax Breaks to Private Equity Firms
A follow-up story on recent moves in Congress to eliminate the tax benefit for private equity firms which are taxed at 15% on investment as contrasted with 35% on income.
“The main proponent of eliminating the special tax treatment in the House, Democratic US Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, said in an interview his motivation is not just deficit-cutting, but equal taxation…
Levin’s proposal would require that certain kinds of partnership earnings be taxed at the top rate of 35 percent for ordinary income. He described the tax equity issue this way: If a partner makes a profit by investing other people’s money, then those earnings should be taxed at the higher rate for ordinary income. But if a partner invests his or her own money, then that would be taxed at the lower rate for capital gains.”
Banking: "Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist"
An article from last spring by Harold Meyerson advocating anti-trust laws applied to the financial sector and describing the relation between banking practice and the failures in the auto industry:
Representative Mary Kaptur (D, Ohio), follows up on Meyerson’s article:
Give America back to the Americans
Representative Bernie Sanders, (I, Vermont), on the “irony” that 3 of the 4 megabanks that led us into economic collapse are now bigger than they were before the financial crisis. Sanders is also advocating for his “Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist” bill.
Senator Sanders Unfiltered: “Break ‘em up”
Senator Sanders and Senator Lindsey Graham (R, South Carolina) will be appearing on the ABC show “This Week” on Sunday.
Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Petition
Finance Reform
Thom Hartmann's book "Uneual Protection"
I've been listening to thom Hartmann's radio show sometimes on my commute which led me to investigate his book on the history of corporations in the US. I haven't read it yet, but it sounds like it might be more focussed on history then Rushkoff's similar book "Life, Inc."
This description of the beginning of the book from Amazon intrigued me: "He begins by uncovering an original eyewitness account of the Boston Tea Party and demonstrates that it was provoked not by 'taxation without representation' as is commonly suggested but by the specific actions of the East India Company, which represented the commericial interests of the British elite."
Essay on Vice President Wallace and Fascism
Hartmann has a very interesting esssay on Vice President Henry Wallace (FDR's VP before Truman) and Wallace's warnings in regard to fascism in the U.S. Wallace wrote in a piece in the "The New York Times" in 1944 that:
"The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
"Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after 'the present unpleasantness' ceases." (I think here of the possible tie between Bayer and the Nazis which DL cited below.)
Wallace warns of the danger to capitalism:
"Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself."
And of the way in which fascism uses prejudice as dstraction:
"The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination..."
I think about the hatred/fear that seems to have increased in focus against GLBT people and immigrants.
Hartmann's essay is "The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: 'It Can Happen Here' "
Chinese Communism
Was going to post this by itself somewhere and then realized some of the ways it fit here. The article was about how the persistence of Chinese Communism has been a surprise to many analysts who predicted that an increasing middle-class and access to media like the internet would lead to the downfall of Chinese Communism. Throughout the article the author contrasts China with Western democracies, especially the U.S., but where he saw contrast I was noticing similarity.
The article notes for instance that the rising middle-class is actually supportive of a stronger authoritarian government: "urban elites have realized that, at least in its initial stages, political freedom could threaten their economic gains, by opening opportunity to a wider spectrum of society and, potentially, by allowing populist politicians to redistribute wealth."
Thought it was interesting that the phrase often associated with communism "redistribution of wealth" is actually something a communist government acts to prevent.
Here the author explains why new media hasn't brought about free access to information:
"It has also become clear that the spread of information technology does not necessarily open up politics. The party successfully filters information before it even gets to average Chinese, so that they receive a skewed, limited view of the world. Yet because the filters, which include blocking certain websites and ensuring certain stories never appear in the domestic media - are not readily apparent, the Chinese media appears as professional as the West, and most citizens have little idea they are not getting the whole story."
It doesn't seem to me that the media just appears as professional as the West. Just listening to the BBC, I often realize how much is being filtered out of American news media.
The summary of how an authoritarian regime stays in power: "just enough reform to co-opt the middle class, using nationalism to shore up the regime, and moderating (and monitoring) the flow of information into the country."
That just really looks familiar to me.
And so the truth reveals itself...
... the US and China have both used the same tools to establish hegemony.
Why this hasn't been obvious to everyone all along I don't know. Why it continues to elude people (including the author of the article!) baffles me even more.
Nice catch, Jaz!
MRSA, H1N1, the market and the government
This editorial by Dr. Barry Eisenstein points to a link between MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and deaths from H1N1. Dr. Eisenstein goes on to point out that one reason that antibiotic resistant strains like MRSA have developed is because of the use of antibiotics in livestock and poultry in industrial food production. And the reason why new R&D isn't being done to produce new antibiotics to cope with things like MRSA is that antibiotics are not profitable compared to other drugs. So industrial food production and pharmaceutical production results in a situation where there is increased health risk--which then the government steps in to manage by suggesting mandatory vaccines--at least in the case of health care workers, and the vaccines are also manufactured by pharmaceutical companies?
Does Bayer have ties to Nazi medical experiments?
...and if so, what have they done to purge themselves of this reputation?
"The History of the"Business With Disease"
"The most powerful German economic corporate emporium in the first half of this century was the Interessengemeinschaft Farben or IG Farben, for short. Interessengemeinschaft stands for "Association of Common Interests" and was nothing more than a powerful cartel of BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies. IG Farben was the single largest donor to the election campaign of Adolph Hitler. One year before Hitler seized power, IG Farben donated 400,000 marks to Hitler and his Nazi party. Accordingly, after Hitler's seizure of power, IG Farben was the single largest profiteer of the German conquest of the world, the Second World War. "
xxx
A 10-year Chairman of Bayer, for example, was a convicted Nazi war criminal.
The Bayer executive Fritz ter Meer, sentenced to seven years in prison by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, was made head of the supervisory board of Bayer in 1956, after his release.
xxx
Wiki:
The Bayer company then became part of IG Farben, a conglomerate of German chemical industries that formed a part of the financial core of the German Nazi regime. IG Farben owned 42.5% of the company that manufactured Zyklon B, a chemical used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other extermination camps.
xxx
"Dr. Fritz ter Meer, a director of IG Farben who was directly involved in developing the nerve gas, Zyklon-B, which killed millions of Jews, was sentenced to seven years in prison but was released after four years through the intervention of Rockefeller and J.J. McCloy, then U.S. High Commissioner for Germany. An unrepentant Fritz ter Meer, guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, returned to work in Bayer where he served as Chairman for more than 10 years, until 1961.
xxx
Bayer is the third largest pharmaceutical corporation (In 2002 Bayer AG acquired Aventis CropScience and fused it with their own agrochemicals division).
Tangentially....
Did you know, for example, that one of the chemotherapy drugs still used in cancer centers today was originally developed under the chemical weapons program of Nazi Germany?
Wow...
thalidomide is still a last resort
I found a less political discussion of thalidomide here. It's still a drug of last resort. The side effects can be horrific. It was actually taken off the market at one point.
"Thalidomide's exact mechanism of action on cancer cells is not clear. It may act by inhibiting the growth of new blood vessels (angiogenesis) in tumors, enhancing the status of the immune system, or decreasing cytokine and growth factor production."
Acrylamide: The consumer health scare that isn’t
Consumers love to get their teeth into a good health scare. So how is it that acrylamide has slipped under the radar? (click link for full article from NutraIngredients.com)
"Acrylamide is a suspected carcinogen that occurs in a whole host of commonly consumed foods including French fries, potato chips, cookies, breakfast cereals, roast potatoes, bakery products and coffee. Last week it was added to Canada’s list of toxic substances, the US Food and Drug Administration requested comments to form the basis of industry guidance, and the EU proposed that the chemical be included on its list of Substances of Very High Concern.
That’s right, all in one week – but I would guess that you’re still enjoying your breakfast cereal and your morning cup of coffee. No worries then.
Acrylamide is formed during the cooking of starchy foods at high temperatures by a process called the Maillard reaction, in which sugar reacts with an amino acid called asparagine to give baked and fried foods their brown color and tasty flavor. But despite a huge amount of attention from global regulatory bodies, consumer research released last week found “virtually no awareness” of acrylamide among US consumers.
It is a natural by-product of the cooking process, rather than an easily targeted additive; and a predilection for well-done toast or crispy skinned baked potatoes leads to unwitting Maillard reactions in domestic kitchens too. This is not a problem for the food industry alone.
...
"At a time when consumers are savvier than ever before about what might be ‘hidden’ in their foods, food and ingredient makers need to make sure that nothing is hidden, and they are vigilant about their products’ safety. If question marks do emerge, they too need to be dealt with transparently. "
Take acrylamide as an example – if industry takes health concerns into its own hands, consumers don’t have to. "
Acrylamide in Coffee
I did a bit more research on acrylamide in coffee because I had heard somewhere that coffee that had been filtered through paper versus french press style (no filtering) was better for you--that is that the filtering process removed some toxic chemicals. But not acrylamide apparently. According to one abstract I read, french press, filtered, and instant coffee all had similar amounts. What does make a difference is the degree of roast--the darker the roast the lower the amount of acrylamide. However a reduction in acrylamide also reduces the positive antioxidant levels.
acrylamide in coffee
Hey, thanks for looking into that! Definitely a topic I'm curious about.
Despite the acrylamide, there have been numerous studies on how coffee prevents certain cancers - like liver cancer etc. It makes me wonder if there is something in the coffee itself that offsets the effect somehow.
I'll be keeping a lookout for more articles.
Interesting article about American relationship to work and play
In the context of Labor Day the Boston Globe ran this article about the divided American attitude toward work and play. I especially found interesting the history of the Merry Mount settlement (which was run on much more pagan and playful lines than the rival Puritan settlement) and the current irony of working so hard--often to construct products of leisure (which kind of reminded me of the treadmill image at the end of The Story of Stuff.)
Biotech firm's business strategy
I read a description of a business strategy used by Genzyme and now being copied by other biotech firms which I found completely enraging. I'm not sure what can be done about it. I guess I'll begin by writing to my reps. I wonder what change in healthcare policy in the US might do? Some kind of cap on price of medication?
Essentially what Genzyme has done is to establish a monopoly by manufacturing drugs for very rare diseases. It will then charge an incredibly high price for the drug--in the case of the drug in this article, Cerezyme, $160,000/year. The article mentions that the profit margin for Genzyme on this drug is 90%.
After exhausting the patients needing the drug in the US, Genzyme does research to discover patients in other countries--particularly countries with universal health care where the government pays for people's prescriptions. They then contact the patients and their families--making themselves the "good guys" out to save the patient and putting the government in the position of either having to deny coverage or paying out a huge sum for a single patient and then being unable to afford coverage for a large number of others.
This is the part of the article that just really got to me--clearly showing where Genzyme's priorities lie and the complete moral deficiency of this strategy:
"In Genzyme's new glass Kendall Square headquarters, the president of the firm's international group, Sanford Smith, keeps a brass gong outside his office. Every time a foreign government agrees to pay for one of the company's drugs, he takes out a mallet and rings it."
One girl's hope, a nation's dilemma
Tell Obama's Anti-trust czar: Investigate Monsanto
(from Credo Wireless activist alert)
Massive seed corporation Monsanto -- through acquisitions and cut-throat business practices has cornered 90% of the soy, 65% of the corn, and 70% of the cotton market, and has a rapidly growing presence in the fruit and vegetable market, all without government anti-trust officials raising an eyebrow.
Not only that, but in order to grow to maturity, the entire line of Monsanto's seeds all but require the use of Roundup herbicide, trapping all of their customers into buying it. And who owns Roundup? You guessed it, Monsanto.
There is no question, Monsanto has become a monopoly.
I just sent a message to President Obama's antitrust chief Christine Varney, asking her to investigate Monsanto and its abusive business practices.I hope you will, too.
Good to know...
Arbitration and Accountability
DL just quoted Thomas Paine in another thread about medical research being funded by pharmaceutical companies: "A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody."
That quotation made me think of something I heard about Halliburton and arbitration on NPR yesterday. The story was meant to highlight the way in which mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses are protecting corporations from lawsuits. These are the kinds of clauses people often sign, sometimes without realizing the full implications (they often are part of credit card company agreements for instance) in which the private individual waives their right of access to the court system in case of a dispute with the corporation. Sometimes it does not even require that the individual have signed something to have given up their rights--the acceptance of an employee manual can sometimes be taken as waiving one's right to the public legal system: "In the fine print of those contracts is a provision that says that they can never sue the company if they have a dispute," Arkush says." Instead they have to go a private, secret tribunal chosen by the company."
The particular case that NPR began with was horrific. It involves a young woman working for Halliburton in Iraq who was raped by coworkers. A separate issue from the arbitration one, but it seems that contractors at Halliburton generally felt that they were outside any legal jurisdiction. This is not true in theory, but seems to have been true in practice as the DOJ under the Bush administration was refusing to pursue these cases. Only when this women's case grabbed a lot of media attention did the DOJ follow through (3 years after the incident).
In the meantime her attempt to sue the company separately was stymied by the fact that as an employee she was subject to mandatory pre-dispute arbitration.
The NPR story is here: Rape case highlights arbitration debate
And you can write in favor of the Arbitration Fairness Act here: Halliburton's Arbitration Trap
Accountability and Regulation
Found out something I didn't know about the National Transportation Safety Board today--they have no regulatory power. Congress separated the board from the regulatory agencies. So would putting the two together be a good idea? This article points to recent disasters in which recommendations haven't been followed. The reason cited is economic:
"In the Washington transit crash, one of the trains involved had cars built more than 30 years ago. Metrorail spokeswoman Candace Smith said it would have cost $888 million to replace 296 cars built more than 30 years ago, including the one that slammed into a stopped train.“They just can’t afford it,’’ said John Tolman, vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, who has assisted on more than a dozen NTSB rail investigations. “They are totally underbudgeted, and you have to weigh that against the cost to the customer.’’ "
So I don't know--different budget priorities? more regulatory teeth to back up recommendations? It just seems like these kinds of accidents are on the upswing to me recently.
Rotten Corporate Tomatoes
The ongoing federal lawsuit was filed against employees at SK Foods in August last year, accusing them of distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, price fixing, and mislabeling offences. The California-based company supplies about 15 percent of the bulk tomato paste and diced tomatoes supplied to American manufacturers of salsa, ketchup and juices.
Prosecutors said that he had taken bribes between 2004 and 2008 during his employment at B&G Foods and previously, when he was employed by Nabisco.
Turner has agreed to pay the bribe money back to his former employers. He is due to be sentenced on August 4 and faces up to 20 years in prison."
The business of running ruining running
This essay posits that the many and varied running injuries that plague runners in this country and that send them to seek out better and better running technology in their shoes (and also supports a lot of sports medicine) is none other than...running shoes themselves.
"Until 1972, when the modern athletic shoe was invented by Nike, people ran in very thin-soled shoes, had strong feet, and probably had much lower incidents of knee injuries."
The author goes on to describe his experience of learning to run by copying the running style of Native Americans in Mexico: "And once I learned how to run barefoot-style -- landing on the balls of the feet, while keeping my feet directly under my hips -- like the Tarahumara, my ailments suddenly disappeared. Plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinitis, sore knees -- all gone. Today, I wear something similar to a rubber glove for the foot (it has the thinnest of soles to guard against abrasions), and I haven't looked back."
Ginger, Turmeric, Neem Declared "Hazardous" in Thailand
Chemical Companies Try to Protect Pesticide Profits.
Corporate Espionage, politics and Industrial agriculture...This just goes to show how this has become a world wide problem.
(NaturalNews) Because natural pesticides are less toxic and substantially cheaper than imported chemical pesticides, recent years have seen large numbers of Thai farmers abandoning chemical products.
The government of Thailand has classified 13 plants - traditionally used as herbal medicines and natural pesticides - as "hazardous substances," causing outrage among farmers and advocates of traditional medicine.
The plants - including ginger, turmeric, neem and chili - have been classified by the Industry Ministry as "hazardous substances type 1," requiring all manufacturers, growers, importers or exporters of any products made from the plants to follow strict safety and quality control rules or face up to six months in jail and a 50,000 baht ($1,400) fine.
Setting Goals
This article discusses research that questions whether setting goals always has a positive effect. Most of the negative results seem to be taken from corporate goal setting examples (General Motors, Enron), though there is also an important finding about individual goal setting about 2/3 of the way through. Generally goals focus the attention, and by doing so we can lose sight of other things (research about how people who were told to focus on counting the number of times a basketball was passed among a group failed to notice a woman in a gorilla suit walk through the middle of the group).
The corporate examples though don't really seem to be about "goals" to me as much as they are about top-down mandates--which unsurprisingly lead to cheating and overlooking of design flaws (like the infamous exploding Pinto produced by Ford). And I agree with the researcher who says the problem isn't with our goals but our values.
Very Interesting Development of the Economic Downturn
"As the economy collapsed last fall, so did the job prospects of thousands of college seniors, especially those who had set their sights on Wall Street.
But after the initial panic, some students said they felt an odd relief....
"There's always that push to make money and be comfortable, but the financial crisis made me think that there's a lot more in life than going to get that corporate job," said Matthew Clair, a Harvard government major who will spend the next two years teaching at an Atlanta primary school. "It gave me a good excuse to take some more time off to do what I'm really passionate about." "
Generally the article talks about the way in which the combination of the economy and Pres. Obama's focus on public service is sending a great number of recent graduates into the public service sector.
It's so Cool!
I also liked this quotation--just 'cause of the serendipity of the President of Harvard's last name :-)
"The path to Wall Street was so clearly defined, so if you weren't sure what direction to go, this direction was filled with signposts and rewards," Faust said in an interview.
Economic collapse puts graduates on unforeseen paths
History of incorporation
It used to be that corporations were given exclusively a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society. Initially, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively to enable activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end. States also imposed conditions such as:
* Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
* Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
* Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
* Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
* Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
* Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.
Citizens governed corporations by detailing operating conditions not just in charters but also in state constitutions and state laws. Incorporated businesses were prohibited from taking any action that legislators did not specifically allow.
States also limited corporate charters to a set number of years. Unless a legislature renewed an expiring charter, the corporation was dissolved and its assets were divided among shareholders.
In Europe, charters protected directors and stockholders from liability for debts and harms caused by their corporations. American legislators explicitly rejected this corporate shield. The penalty for abuse or misuse of the charter was not a plea bargain and a fine, but dissolution of the corporation.
Attempts were made to keep strong charter laws in place, but with the courts applying legal doctrines that made protection of corporations and corporate property the center of constitutional law, citizen sovereignty was undermined. As corporations grew stronger, government and the courts became easier prey. They freely reinterpreted the U.S. Constitution and transformed common law doctrines.
From that point on, the 14th Amendment, enacted to protect rights of freed slaves, was used routinely to grant corporations constitutional "personhood." Justices have since struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws enacted to protect people from corporate harm based on this illegitimate premise. Armed with these "rights," corporations increased control over resources, jobs, commerce, politicians, even judges and the law.
A United States Congressional committee concluded in 1941, "The principal instrument of the concentration of economic power and wealth has been the corporate charter with unlimited power...."
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/history_corporations_us.html
Our Hidden History of Corportations in the United States,© 2007 ReclaimDemocracy.org, February 2000
Endowing Nature with Rights
A bit of a tangent--but there was an article today about the pros and cons of endowing nature with rights as a way to fight for ecological interests through the courts.
In one way I can see this as analogous to what people did when they saw animals as members of their tribe and then honored their sacrifice when they killed the animal. But it also seems very problematic to me. The article talks about the history of various human groups moving from being seen as property to being seen as individuals with rights (slaves, women). I think that duality is a problem, though I don't know how one transcends it--at least through the legal system.
Sued by the Forest
Jefferson & Madison: the attempt to prevent monopolies
One thing I read in an exhibit at the Capitol building when I was there recently was that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison attempted to include an amendment to the constitution (an 11th amendment) which would have prevented monopolies.
"This proposed Amendment would have prohibited “monopolies in commerce.” The amendment would have made it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, or to give money to politicians, or to otherwise try to influence elections. Corporations would be chartered by the states for the primary purpose of “serving the public good.” Corporations would possess the legal status not of natural persons but rather of “artificial persons.” This means that they would have only those legal attributes which the state saw fit to grant to them. They would NOT; and indeed could NOT possess the same bundle of rights which actual flesh and blood persons enjoy. Under this proposed amendment neither the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, nor any provision of that document would protect the artificial entities known of as corporations." (Sounding Circle)
There needs to be an movement...
History of incorporation
One of the most egregious uses of the corporation as person has been the application of free speech rules to allow corporations to give as much money to political campaigns as they want--because to limit donations it to limit the speech of the person (corporation).
I've been hearing things about the history of the corporation and of the charter system mostly through the Rushkoff blog. There was a podcast (which I think I linked somewhere but am doing again) of a lecture in which he talked about the founding of the charter system in the Middle Ages, and also about the development of a centralized currency. I think I remember about the latter that he said that there used to be local currency systems in which currency had a limited time in which it was usable. So currency was used as a kind of symbolic system in place of direct barter--but if you didn't use the currency you had received in a short period it became useless. A centralized currency is not something which symbolizes value in the same way--it doesn't stand in place of a trade. Rather it is a promissory note--it's the sign of a debt rather than a value. And so companies cannot exist without always growing because there is more and more to pay back. "There is no such thing as a sustainable business." We work to grow money rather than to sustain life.
And this is a kind of paraphrase of what he says about corporations. They begin at the same time (Renaissance)--and begin so that the aristocracy could get a piece of the burgeoning merchant class. So the King grants charters which lock a particular merchant into the money making enterprise--granting a monopoly. The merchant becomes further removed from making the product--eventually hiring others to run the company. More distance is created between the owner and the product as the owner becomes someone whose purpose is to make profit rather than product. And to make profit you want to hire people who can make the product as cheaply and quickly as possible (not well)--the worker becomes less and less skilled and then replaced by machines, and then is told to work as fast as the machines. We are alienated from our experience of work and our allegiance becomes not to the value of a product, but to money(debt) and to a set of rules (charter).
You can read some of the same information in this interview with Rushkoff as well.
Ruskoff
I have to say I've been out of touch and I'm glad you reposted this.
There is a lot of really good information and I loved some of the topics that interview brought up:
"The institutions that are here supposedly working for us and the utilities that are here to help us, aren't really helping us at all. They are really meant to work in the same way corporations have worked for 600 years, to extract value from people and resources in order to promote central authority."
-I do think that this fact is not thought of very much by the typical consumer. I think that corporations can be tied to a great deal of the economic and policital woes going on right now.
I like that he gives suggestions to improve the situation that are doable and not as overwhelming as these large issues themselves"
"Ways to re-connect. If the majority of the book is about the ways we have been disconnected from one another -- disconnected from land, as land turned into property; disconnected from value as value turned into money; disconnected from each other, as people were turned into individuals and consumers and shareholders -- I'd like to see us start to look at the processes that can help us reconnect. "
I truly think that this idea is key.
"Anything and everything that allows people to create value for one another directly, instead of running it through one or the other corporation that has been set-up to extract our labor through its process rather than provide any kind of goods and services to us."
It would seem to me that this would be a rather cost effective approach as well. Any exchange like this is going to be a "win-win". Offhand, I think C.S.A.s are a great way of doing this and I'm glad he brought them up.
"There have been a lot of ups and downs in history, but by the late Middle Ages things were actually going pretty well. There was a really short workweek, people were fed really well, people were super-healthy and had all sorts of what we would call alternative medicines working for them. There wasn't plague, there wasn't widespread disease. There was a lot of great stuff going on. "
I watched an old British series recently called "Connections" and was amazed at the things people used in this regard on the small scale. It stood out to me also that in communities like this, because the residents were part of the process it prompted more environmentally friendly practices. There was a lot of recycling of natural resources. The cost of production was not artificially separated from the environment and the standard of living benefitted from this. As he points out here:
"It's really no different than an American corporation going into New Guinea and putting a big factory on people's land and ruining their top-soil, making agriculture impossible, being the only employer in the district, and then actually selling people grain that they used to make themselves at higher prices than it would have cost them to make it themselves. And their standard of living goes down, even though the GNP of that region (which is what the corporations and the World Bank and the IMF measure) goes up. Even the cleanup of the toxic spills, the treatment of the cancers of all the kids in the area, is actually measured as part of the GNP and is on the plus side if the balance sheet."
"Business is good, commerce is good. Money as a way to alleviate the burdens of the barter system."
I agree with this point and am glad he stated it. This is not just some activist battle cry and rebellion with little to no thought. Both sides of the issue should be carefully considered.
"And corporations really do work in the same way [as they used to in the East India trading company days] today. The code and rules written in those days have become embedded in corporate culture today, to the point where people don't even know they're there. It's just taken for granted that that's how corporations work. "
I would point out that people take for granted that spending their dollars is actually a way of "casting a vote" and it gives a consumer more control over their own situations than they realize.
Use your money to vote.
"What this says is, you don't have to use money for everything. "
This is a powerful and challenging statement.
"Really what I want to do, is rather than create the ultimate website or brand of the new bottom-up counter-culture movement, is just to motivate people. Have an officers club, if you will, of people who are committed to this thing. To share their experiences and more importantly just motivate each other to dig in where they are."
I do think this is also a smart way to do this. Local control should come first and the larger organizations based on a broader ideal. That allows commerce to conform to the needs of the community and the people living within that community instead of being dictated to us by people attempting to make a profit.
Disconnect
I was listening to the end of "This American Life" and the last segment was one in which workers from Circuit City recounted what it was like to deal with management and customers as the stores closed. A lot of what they said made me think of the negative impact that corporate culture has had on our humanity.
Rushkoff links
Reposting his blog address 'cause I think it might have changed.
And then this is a link to part of a new project "Life, Inc.: the Movie" (there's also a book)--they are looking for people to contribute footage:
"This movie will assemble footage shot and found by real people in an effort to illustrate both the ravages of “corporatism” and the promise of local, bottom-up, and networked participation. So we’re looking for footage that depicts one of two contrasting realities:
1 - The highly corporatized landscape. How are people being disconnected from their own labor, their communities, and one another? Consumers and producers, corporate landscapes, the triumph of banking and speculation over the real economy. We are making the point that the system of chartered monopolies leading to the Revolutionary War is still alive and well in government-supported corporate efforts from Wal-Mart to Citibank. The landscape is tilted towards corporate interests, and people are merely human resources from which value is extracted.
2 - Efforts at reconnecting to the landscape of human activity - CSA’s, local currency, community involvement, tutoring clubs. "
Peer to peer currencies
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting video report on the development of peer to peer currency which included Rushkoff as a commentator toward the end.
Life, Inc. update
The movie is now up for viewing.
Life, Inc. contrasting reviews, chapters to read
Amazon has two highly contrasting reviews of the book up which actually made me laugh when I saw the source for the bad review:
"From Publishers Weekly
...His unsupported and flawed assumption that societal interdependence is a natural or even preferable state for all people, everywhere, his disdain for filthy lucre and joyless recasting of independence as selfishness will leave readers weary long before the end. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
From Booklist
...the lines between fiction and reality and friends and market become blurred. Our lives are overextended, and there is no time, energy, or commitment to do anything but work and perhaps consider family. Rushkoff recommends that we fight back by “de-corporatizing” ourselves. His suggestions include thinking locally by participating directly with our neighbors in community activities and using various Internet sites that provide opportunities to contribute directly to a particular school or to extend a “micro loan” to a specific entrepreneur in the Third World. This is an excellent, thought-provoking book. --Mary Whaley"
And you can read several chapters of the book online here.
Rushkoff links
Just briefly... this is the kind of news I like to read about. Thanks for posting this, Jaz!
People really feel helpless right now, and I don't think we understand how simple it can be to reframe and head in the right direction.
I'm currently working on the CSA thing at work. I talk about it a lot. It's been attracting a lot of word of mouth attention. There are at least 3 or 4 new people that are looking into it for their own families. It may take a coupel of years to shift in that direction, but the benefits once explained are perfectly clear and well worth the effort.
Not sure if I'll have time to look into that movie, but it sounds interesting.
Know your audience/Consider the source
I've been churning this around in my head as well.
Beyond motivating people to action, I think the next step is training people to look at information with a critical eye again. In every area where I've run into conflict there have been unspoken assumptions/presumptions that turn out not to be true. The only way to overcome this is to evaluate every situation carefully. It all seems like a breakdown in communication skills that center around the point "know your audience" . Take that from both sides of the equation (in the form of "know your source") then when you're attempting to determine what's true and what is false.
I have to admit... without a lot of feedback here I've been wondering if me posting this stuff is of any worth to anybody here. I sort of feel like I'm talking to myself and taking notes. Is anyone here interested in this kind of stuff like corporations, the pharmaceutical industry, environmental, and communication topics and things that I post? Thoughts I present on naturopathic remedies? I'm just wondering...
Feedback
Speaking for myself only, my lack of response isn't equated to uninterest. I just don't always have something worthy of response/or the time to leave a response when I read the posts. But I do think it is important to stay on top, so to speak, with these particular issues. For me personally what interests me the most is pharmaceutical, naturopathic, FDA-related issues and environmental news. For the record, I appreciate you posting and keeping us updated. Even if the particular issue doesn't directly apply to me, I'm all for learning more.
(Same goes for you, jaz) : )
Feedback
I'm interested in all of those things as well. I know sometimes I don't comment because I don't have anything to add besides some kind of exclamation or agreement. (And hey, maybe I should post those :-)
I know I also sometimes wonder if people are interested in things I'm initiating (particulary on the subjects of politics and foreign policy). I guess I get a sense that people are reading if it's a brand new post because then I'll see it's had 25 reads or something, even if noone has responded. If it isn't, I can't really tell.
These are some thoughts I've had in relation to my own posting: one is that when I read through something that interests me and think about how I'm going to post it I find I have a deeper understanding of it. Not too surprising--I always find that I'm learning new things by teaching them. So that's a good motivation for me to keep posting.
Another comes more directly from teaching--students who respond in class are actually rare. But I'll sometimes find out later in someone's paper that they've been getting a lot from things I've said in class and in fact, have been able to take those ideas and play around with them and do something new with them--something I hadn't thought of. I have to kind of imagine that there are even students who aren't able to do that while they're taking the class with me, but are able to later on. So the fact that I don't know I'm having an impact doesn't mean that I'm not.
And the last thing which is a work in progress for me (actually all of the above is :-)--this is more in an analogy to when I've presented academic papers. Very often I present an academic paper on a panel with 2 or 3 other people, and in the question and answer session that follows the other people get lots of questions and I sometimes get none at all. That's made me reflect on my presentation--which I continue to do in my posting here. And one thing I've discovered about myself is that I tend to explain things thoroughly. I've really noticed this in a kind of funny way from being on facebook. I have such a hard time writing those simple "status" lines because I think that anything that I mention has to be explained--and then I run out of space on the durn line! Like I think I mentioned something about what my tech group was doing one day and then thought--oh, but not everyone will not what the tech group is... Anyway, you get the picture :-) (I'm doing it again, I think). And then I wonder if that cuts down on the number of responses I get.
Feedback back at ya
Does that mean I've created a feedback loop?
Hopefully keeping this short for now...
I want to thank you both for saying something. It was nice to hear. I think I would really appreciate those small comment posts about your thoughts and the like.
At the same time I know I need to work on this a little bit myself.
First the reason I don't post mainly comes down to time limitations. Either I can't read in depth, watch a video or think for a solid block of time while I'm at work, and yet this is mainly when I read the site. Often I scan over an issue and let it churn for days and I'm finding that I lose the conversation later to the comment scroll.
I've been thinking lately that after a peruse I should just comment on those small things with "that's cool" or "something to think about" without feeling obligated to respond with a formal something right away.
I do have to admit that when a huge number of topics/tangents are brought up at the same time, I am overwhelmed due to these time constraints - though overall I do have to say this creates a richer picture with all of the details. So flipping that back onto myself, I can understand why my posts might sometimes be overwhelming. I often wonder whether my posts are simply unreadable (not because they're "bad" but because they're so "dense"). I try to keep things broken up in smaller readable chunks, but sometimes that's just not possible given what I'd like to address.
More specifically to Jaz - I immensely enjoy being able to read about and discuss politics and foreign policy on this site with you and the things you bring up in that regard. I wish I was able to do it more. There are a lot of things you post that challenge me to think about stuff where I don't have any "expertise". I think it just takes me longer to process than most given my situation. By the time I get to it, it's just not "current events" anymore.
loop di loop
loop di loop
New tricks
LOL...
Dr. Morbius's* "Changing Your Mind(s)"--Or learning how to spiral and stop going round in circles. Yeah I want to sign up for that too...
Alley-oop....hoop-la
*(Forbidden Planet Guy)
Marketing the U.S.
Not exactly the same topic but related I think--this article begins with the recent change in uniforms for the Army football team (to camouflage-patterned gear) to talk about the way in which marketing is affecting national identity--confusing citizens with consumers. One of the central and more generally applicable ideas to me was that meaning is lost to the appearance of meaning.
Management Styles
If, as this article suggests, a President's management style has an impact on the way businesses are run, that would lead to some long needed change under Obama in my opinion. However, I think the mechanism is probably not the top-down model the writer posits (interesting that in writing about a move away from that model he still utilizes it as causal explanation), but rather the fact that the same cultural factors are going to lead to similar changes in both politics and business.
The Fundraising Congress & What to Do About It
Lawrence Lessig in "The Nation" writes a great analysis of what has gone wrong with Obama's approach in his first year--not that he is too far left or right, but too conventional--and particulary conventional in what needs most change--Congress. Lessig looks at the influence of money on politics in Congress, really cutting through things like party divisions. And he suggests that progressives on left and right (tea-partiers and moveon.org) need to unite in fighting this problem that has essentially taken away democracy in the US. No matter what goals one has--smaller government, government regulation--they are not going to be achieved in the present system. It is only money's interests that are represented, not the people's.
How to get our democracy back