Corporations are a bigger threat to you than the gov...

Originally posted by christina-66
reply to post by Wonderer2012

 

unelected people - dictating to government - that's why it equated to fascism

Yes, but who are they serving?

At the very top of the pyramid, who is running the show?

reply to post by christina-66

Yup,....

That's why all of the elections and voting and so on, will never change anything.

Things are allowed to change only enough for the people to fall back into their media induced stupor.

Something has changed considerably in the way we live today. In the past we went to school, left and trained for a job. A bit later got engaged, saved, married and moved into a tiny home which we had bought together.

We then moved up a bit homewise, had families, worked till we retired and then managed on a pension. Some chose different lifestyles to that model, they remained single, had children rather than careers etc or chose a completely different lifestyle, but they were free. Free to choose it and to live it without the strangled feeling of life today.


Today that world has gone - disappeared as though it never existed.

Now Its all about money, debt, expectations and then for many crushed expectations. Nothing seems reliable or honest any more. The trust in our institutions has totally gone. Our police are caught out lying and are violent when it sujitgs them. Our press is nothing by a propoganda service. Our tv is cheap and booring.

The cost of living is above the minimum wage and the infrastructure has been bled by lack of investment for years. Education has declined, and whatever one deals with in everyday life one simply does not seem to get a fair deal - the cost of food, transport, hidden taxation, lack of social services. Recently a friend tried to make an insurance claim for her car and I had someone damage a garden wall. Both of us were insured and in both cases we have been kept waiting for over two months by the insurance companies. She has had a settlement figure which is so low, its fraudulent, especially as she has been insured for years and has never made a claim. I am still waiting. The majority of these services are all run today by corporations. They can only be reached by email or a call centre, in short they are invisible.

It all started to go wrong once the Monopolies Commission evaporated and these corporations have grown so big -yet are controlled by such a small group of individuals all of who are hell bent of greed and power.

This seems to have its roots in the stock exchange with the merciless buying, selling and taking over of small companies, their assets stripped and many of their workers sacked. Also the gambling on different markets etc these destructive practices sanctioned by the regulators, governments, bankers and you guessed it - the corporations!

reply to post by Wonderer2012


Satan himself

They're self serving power and money seekers.

What do you think?

Originally posted by Wonderer2012
So corporations control the government...

...But who controls the corporations?

No one does. Watch the free documentary Corporation.
That it the scary part. Not even CEO's and investors can control them.
That is why from the start an iron grip should have applied - the collective spirit that arose from letting them do freely as they wished - trickle down - is not very far from those of Mussolini or Hitler.

It is easier to make wars abroad though.

Scapegoats: everyone from "the welfare queen" to the "terrorist"...

Originally posted by christina-66
reply to post by stormson

 

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

People aren't being sarcastic when they describe the US as a fascist state - it is a sad reality.

Jibjab say it best

excellent!

reply to post by stormson


Of course they are. What do you think the recent spying of NSA is all about? It's not the spy game, it's about economics. The companies are using this collected information for marketing, not catching terriosts. I think this will come out more and more. Really, think about it. What in the world would the government use all this personal information for? The average American does not need to be listened to except, to find out where you shop, what your travel plans are etc. they are using or selling, this information to companies so they can adjust marketing to increase sales, or move products around for better sales.

Then do me and the rest of us a favor.

Write down all the products you buy that are linked to big corporates and don' use any of their products.

When you starve and have to walk, come back and tell me how much you actually need their products to survive on.

Outlaw lobbyist. It’s tantamount to bribery, nothing more and nothing less. I’m staggered that it’s actually allowed to continue. They bail out these big corporations to “save the jobs of thousands of people”! At least that’s the guise of it. Just how my Government is handing out billions of dollars in grants to car companies like Ford and Holden (GM) just so they continue to build cars here and save people’s jobs... All because in Australia we receive relatively fair wages for our work, in most cases, therefore when the US and Asia pay far less for labour manufacturing gets up and leaves this country, and with it jobs, industries and trades in general. We don’t make much here these days, and what we do make is priced through the roof in most cases, but the quality is always of a very high standard.

Originally posted by tridentblue
reply to post by stormson

 

The guy who said corporations are the government nailed it. Right and left paradigms don't make sense anymore, as its the 'private sector' who gets the taxpayer money. The centrists took the worst of the left (high taxes) and the worst of the right (inequality favoring the rich) and combined them. They took the best of each (aid for the helpless, and liberty) and threw them out the window. But the right left BS keeps people too divided to act.

I agree. Here's my thought on that:

Instead of taking the best of several ideologies, what we see is the worst aspects of each ideology all rolled together. We don't really live under the US anymore so much as we live under many overlapping governments. We are the citizens of Bank of America, of Northrop Grumman, of the NSA, etc etc ad nauseum.

While the differences of the left / right ideologies are real, they are not nearly so insurmountable in positive compromise as those in power would have us think. In fact, the biggest issues of the day are not left / right issues, but the paradigm of corporate / populist ideologies where one prefers as much self rule as possible, and the other imposes the rule of many corporate nation states, unbound by geography.

This stuff of demonizing vast entities generally frustrates me, like "the government" or "corporations."

Bold statement, anyone who claims either one to be evil or a threat. No, it is small factions within these centers of powers that are a threat- not the institutions at large. The key to empowering individuals and communities is decentralization in both government and business. Thus, taking the approach to legislate power away from the corporations is not wise as it just transfers a similarly big power center to the government and that is where the threats will migrate.

None of our problems are best solved legislatively, they are solved culturally. We can decrease the power of corporations AND the federal government by building more self sufficient community economic structures that do not rely on mandated tax dollars. The problem I see with current political paradigms is one side vilifies government, the other vilifies corps when neither should really be vilified and excessive power should be checked in both.

Americans can localize a lot of food production, health care, poverty assistance, and manufacturing if the effort is made and large scale profits are sacrificed to some extent. This can be accomplished while minimizing government programs and tax rates if the American market were to put it's mind to a disciplined spending pattern that rewarded local, private, initiatives that reward the community at large and create jobs and products.

You make some valid points... But be clear the Govt has the ability to lock you up. Corporations do not. The Govt can kill you with impunity. Corporations cannot. The Govt rights the rules/laws the Corp can do business under not the other way around. Spare me the talk about lobbyists. I know. I was a Poli Sci Minor. If the minimum wage was say 33$ how much do you suppose a 20oz Coke would cost? It wouldn't be 1.49$ it would be like 18.00$

You make good points about Wal Mart and how they trap workers in a cycle of being beholden to Walmart. I live in Indy. A couple years ago there was a lawn care company who had almost nothing but undocumented employees. The owner of the company supplied housing for a cost. So these workers were basically given money only to hand it back to the guy on a weekly or bi weekly basis.

I was certain when I saw the thread title you would be talking about corporations stealing our data and then selling it. I do think its possible that may be a bigger threat then the Govt but in a vastly different way.

I think it's silly to think of Corps as a bigger threat than a Govt. When was the last time a Corp audited you? Or sent your son to the front line of a war?

Penhallow v. Doanes Administrators (3 U.S. 54;1L.Ed57;Dall.
54) defines governments succinctly:

"Governments are Corporations." Inasmuch as every government
is an artificial person,an abstraction, and a creature of the mind
only, a government can interface only with other artificial
persons. The imaginary- having neither actuality nor substance-
is forclosed from creating and attaining parity with the tangible.
The legal manifestation of this is that no government, as well as
any law, agency, aspect, court, etc. thereof, can concern itself
with anything other than corporate, artificial persons and the
contracts between them.

Hee Hee......

Again....

b. "the contracts between them" involve U.S. citizens, which are deemed as
Corporate Entities:

c. "Therefore, the U.S. citizens residing in one of the states of the union,
are classified as property and franchises of the federal government as an
"individual entity"",* Wheeling Steel Corp. v. Fox, 298 U.S. 193, 80 L.Ed.
1143, 56 S.Ct. 773

SORRY, that posted 3 times for some reason

If I am a "corporate entity", I would be wise to find out who the shareholders are which trade me as a "Human Resource".

Who sits on the board of directors?.

I always felt uneasy when referred to that way, but that's what they call all of us now.

Resources are to be exploited.

Feel it yet?.

The big corporations and government are one in the same these days.

reply to post by GArnold

I think it's silly to think of Corps as a bigger threat than a Govt. When was the last time a Corp audited you? Or sent your son to the front line of a war?

Corporations audit you all the time. What is your credit score/slave score?

Corporations send people to the front line of wars all the time.

Corporations don't quite have the power to lock people up in jail, they still have to bribe some local gov official, but it could be just around the corner the way things are going.

Corporations already take our property away on a regular basis, without any type of trial.

I think it is silly people defend the actions of these corrupt corporations. If and or when corporations succeed in taking back control of the U.S., you won't think it is silly.

The Revolutionary War was fought against the corporations that ran the original 13 colonies. They teach us in school that the revolution was against the crown, but it was corporations running the show in the colonies.

I think it is foolish not to stand up against the threat that growing corporate power poses to our liberty.

Whoever has the power to pass legislation holds the most power & last time I checked corporations don't pass laws. Without support from the government, corporations are subject to the free market, ie capitalism.