The Matrix
Remember the movie The Matrix? Recently I have been thinking about the role of corporations and how they are creating a Matrix. Can you imagine a world without corporate influence? It is hard to do isnt' it? It seems that corporate advertising is everywhere. TVs, Radios, Bill Boards, Signs; you can't turn without being bombarded with consumeristic messages. Are they colonizing our minds? Are they using marketing to control our thinking? The ads are glitz and glamor, but the reality is that we are wasting this earth. Chemicals are spilled and the poor pay the price. Cancer. Death. Disease - they don't show that. We're living in a false corporate reality.
How do we get rid of them - the corporations? How can we fight back? How is it that corporations are offered all the legal rights that a person has. The matrix thought gives way to my thinking of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. Corporations are the beast in the book. What started as an experiment has gotten out of control. Far more powerful than originally intended - hurting everyone and everything in their insatiable quest for more money and power. No conscience. How can we kill the monster? Do most people even realize that the monsters exist? Is it the monster that should be killed or the system that allows it to thrive. Remember the movie The Matrix? Unplug. Abort. End.
How do we get rid of them - the corporations? How can we fight back? How is it that corporations are offered all the legal rights that a person has. The matrix thought gives way to my thinking of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. Corporations are the beast in the book. What started as an experiment has gotten out of control. Far more powerful than originally intended - hurting everyone and everything in their insatiable quest for more money and power. No conscience. How can we kill the monster? Do most people even realize that the monsters exist? Is it the monster that should be killed or the system that allows it to thrive. Remember the movie The Matrix? Unplug. Abort. End.
posted by John in Montana at 7:20 PM
4 Comments:
Do you think un-incorporated entities or even individuals creating profit in a marketplace would be any easier on the environment? Would be less interested in marketing products, ideas, lifestyles? I just think coprorations are a symptom of a deeper malady.
Here I would have to agree with Trout. The maladies stem from the system not corporations. Corporations exist, in all their ugliness, as a result of a system.
I do think that un-incorporated entities would be easier on the environment. A corp can go bankrupt while the CEOs remain millionaires. Their is no accountability. The corporate veil protects CEOs from liability and allows them to pollute. That isn't to say that people won't pollute if we eliminate corporate personhood; just that they will think about it much harder when the damages are coming out of their pocket. It gives more incentive to be protective of the environment.
The malady may be the system, but I think corps can and should be described not only as symptoms, but maybe more importantly as the henchmen of the system. They have every incentive to perpetuate the system, they are a fundamental component of the system. By eliminating corporate personhood we will begin to dismantle the system. Can it be done any other way? Can we eliminate the system with one fell swoop? Obviously not, that is why I think eliminating corporate personhood is a good starting point. Trout, you said that you thought the idea of Democracy was a decent idea in and of itself. I think that by eliminating corporate personhood you will move towards freeing the political process from the death grip that corps have on it. Where would you guys propose as a starting point to attack the system?
John,
You make a good point. Changing the system is not as simple as attacking it at one single point. We must be multi-faceted and multi-pronged in our approach. Eliminating corporate personhood would be a great victory, were it possible. I just doubt the probability of it ever happening. This by no means suggests it shouldn't be undertaken. I think, defeatistly, that the resistance to this kind of an attack would be overwhelming. Doesn't mean it shouldn't, or perhaps "hasn't", been tried. It seems to me that there have been whole organizations founded around this effort. Have you looked into the existing efforts to legally change the personhood status of corporations? It would be interesting to look at the length of this battle.
My interests and efforts is subverting and hopefully changing the system is perhaps equally, if not more, quixotic. I believe education is a starting point and I look at the potential immediate ripple effect it could have on a community, then I turn to the longer term effects of having contact with the future leaders of our state. Secondly, I believe we have to get organizing through our labor and apply pressure on the system and dominant institutions through the one thing that perpetuates the system: production. Again, this is a frustrating avenue like education because, like education, labor is not organized along the lines of working class interests but painfully bureaucratic and usually beholden to the ruling class/corporate line. We need to take back our unions! Most teachers I work with aren't interested in discussing politics, aren't interested in what the union could do for them, etc., etc. Finally, I believe we need to start living the way we want see our society look. We need to start collectives and cooperatives. From them we need to become overtly political and add to the political discourse driving the spectrum to the left and demolish the myth that Democrats represent the "left." We need to put Democrats in the center and Republicans on the right wing where they belong.
These are my areas struggle where I see possibility for cracking the armor of this oppressive system. But I think eliminating corporate personhood would be a great victory were it to happen. An interesting thing about the left is our inability to coordinate our attacks. We often get caught up in our own niche and fail to see the coordinated effort it is going to take to change the system. So I suggest someone working on eliminating corporate personhood keep it going and they can expect my support, but I would appreciate collaboration on my areas of resistance.
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