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I love the concept of laissez-faire market capitalism. An individual creates a product or service that they voluntarily exchange with another producer of a product or service for mutual benefit. This benefit creates both wealth and specialization, which allows for larger community groups to diversify their labor and grow. Businesses are formed in order to expand operations and people exchange their labor for a medium like dollars to have their own lives, and to engage in this diversified society.
In today’s economy, we are experiencing the tipping point of several things nearly simultaneously. Corporatization of the various industries has become so prevalent that it is routine practice for corporations to have both a horizontal and vertical reach, meaning corporations are building up their own manufacturing and distribution networks, keeping profits in house and allowing them to re-invest into their own infrastructure projects.
There is a term called regulatory capture, in which the regulating agencies are corrupted or “dominated by the industries that they are charged with regulating.” The short version of the long story is that the larger corporations pour massive amounts of money into influencing the politicians and bureaucrats that are supposed to keep them in check, thus garnering favorable regulations and free reign over their industries. This can be accomplished by a number of different avenues: studies, foundations, non-profit organizations, statistical analysis, speaking engagements, political contributions both for and against. And the money is sufficient enough that the individual is more and more often left out of the discussion, or at best, given the promise of a blue-ribbon panel to investigate why the thing might have happened with a report to be generated within six months. Everyone gets their complaints heard, the politicians “fulfill” their promises, and nothing changes.
Meanwhile, businesses that rise to a certain level are adopted into the fold or squashed if they compete too closely with one of the adopted companies. Parler is a particularly good example of this, and hopefully pending litigation will undo some of the massive damage dealt by the giant multi-national corporations of Amazon, Google, and Twitter.
Looking at the groundwork, and particularly seeing the amount of intertwining with much of our staples, I am seeing two things. First, there is a whole lot of my money going in one way or another to large multi-national corporations. And two, that I, as an individual am very ignorant to the depth of that scope. I am a proponent of small business, but act in hypocritical ways because I don’t think about them. That can’t continue to exist.
The larger the corporations get, the more power and influence they have in not only their industries, but in surrounding industries and in government. We, as a society, must begin to ween ourselves off the corporate teat, or they will soon find ways to justify more and more deliberate and obvious infringements upon our liberties. While my heart favors private business doing what they wish, I know that when a private company acts as a proxy to a regulating agency, they should be held to the same standards. Freedom of expression is something that needs to be kept as an absolute freedom, with strict scrutiny given to any objection and very high standards when it comes to the regulation of “controversial speech.” For if that foundation is cracked, then any speech will become controversial, and it is only a matter of who is in power to determine what speech is acceptable, a reality with terrible historical precedents.
Shop small, not just with your business transactions, but in your grocery purchases. Support the independent companies, dig into how they treat their workers, where they get their materials, how they assemble, do the work. Buy direct from the retailer and cut out the corporate middle-men whenever possible. Find local, and work at keeping the corporations out of your life as much as the government. That’s what I’m going to start doing, as tough as it is.
A Place 4Politics 