Is money the bottom line in geopolitics?

Was the truth of the matter given to us in 1976?

Ned Beatty's NETWORK speech-by Paddy Chayefsky

www.youtube.com...

I saw the speech above when I was much younger. I studied it. I heard researchers refer to the speech as an important statement of fact. But, I couldn't come to grips with the idea that the world could be the way it is described in that speech.

I've come to believe the speech is a statement of fact at its core, I'm not saying all the details are true. I didn't want to believe it but my study of world geopolitics led me to believe it.

Look around the world, the governments of the world do not get involved to preserve human rights and human dignity outside of their borders unless it helps their bottom line (GDP or other similar measures). Increasingly, governments won't even get involved within their borders in such cases unless it helps their bottom line.

If it were any other way, a country like Saudi Arabia would be cut off from the world until it massively improved its human rights. They should be boycotted by the entire rest of the world but human rights in Saudi Arabia will not affect world trade so the world turns its back on the innocent victims of the vicious, hideous Saudi Arabian government. Now, if an improvement in human rights could help other countries earn MONEY then we might see sanctions against Saudi Arabia until they improved their human rights.

If you look at it closely, the vast majority of countries today act like corporations. Many of them actually are corporations of course. I think most people here know that the United States is a corporation. Incidentally, I'm a big believer in trying to live in countries with histories that go back thousands of years. Those countries are inherently different from the others IMHO. Generally speaking they do not act like corporations. Greece is an excellent example of that.

As for the countries of the world that are corporations (or act like corporations)...we should expect corporations to put profits ahead of everything else. We should expect corporations to only act when something affects their bottom line.

We should expect a "college of corporations" (quoting the video above) to work exactly as the totality of the geopolitical system of the world works today.

We should not be surprised that money is the bottom line in geopolitics. And short of a worldwide revolution, we should never expect any different.

Duh.
Worthless pieces of paper is why we kill.
Get with the program.

a reply to: Profusion

I'm quite certain that money is the end-goal of all politics, with very, very few exceptions. Well, at least when it comes to state and federal governments around the world.

I always end up with translating the value of money as it is obviously removed from concrete value. What is more, to a non-human even gold or other ancient equivalents are worthless.

Money is and has always been the result of a social agreement among members of the race Homo Sapiens.

Another way of looking at it (a more pessimistic way) is that it translates to power over another human being. If I hold the required dollar note and go into a shop or a restaurant, they will give me what I want. If not, they call the police or arrest me for theft or robbery. A piece of property means that you control other people entering it - exclude them etc. Nature will not respect property boundaries, people will.

If money is an abstract social agreement, does it make sense to hoard at others' expense?
Or to create "virtual money" like "selling futures"?

Not likely, but neither investor clubs, nor most rich people are smart. There are exceptions such as George Soros who wrote a book about why the so-called basic law of supply and demand does not work in the stock exchange. He even risked his own money to demonstrate in experiments at the NYSE that the law regarded as fundamental in economics is false.

Your other point: I mistrust cultures infected with the relatively modern fever of nationalism. Which did not really exist until the nineteenth century in the form of nation states, or the demand for them. Greece is indeed fine, but locals do not always like it when you bring up their ancient roots, as that is what the neo-fascist Junta always did after the world war... to repress social change.

The Monkey said it best. Back 'in the day' politicians played the money game in secret, behind closed doors. In recent years they've become brazen and flaunt it openly. They take money from their corporate masters and make decisions based on benefiting them --- not the people they allegedly represent. When your politicians routinely come out of politics more wealthy than they went in you know something is wrong. Look at the insane proportion of Congresspeople that are millionaires. How the hell are they supposed to 'represent' people they rarely even come in contact with? It doesn't matter what we vote for. It doesn't matter what's in our best interest. It doesn't matter what they say when they campaign. It always, always goes back to where the money is. Plain and simple. We'd all be better off if people just came to realize this simple truth.

a reply to: skunkape23

It isn't even real paper anymore.