the toads will do it later
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As to the credibility of commonly held beliefs about privatization:
I start from the proposition that all power systems require justification. If not justified, the system is formally invalid. Invalid power systems depend on the production of sycophants. Recruited out of fear, violence, employment, implication, or effective propaganda, the function of these devotees is to excuse justification as a fundamental prerequisite to the acquisition of power over other people.
All my efforts to write about the role of sycophancy trespass unavoidably into severe ugliness, so for the sake of clarity and taste, it is better to go subjective while wandering through this territory.
By the will of a familiar ghost, risen through history, an homage to one enduring dynasty: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind,” – the patriarch, Adam Smith, so shamelessly conscripted (Wealth of Nations, III.iv.10). Alive or dead, witting or unwitting, a legion of pompous narcissists and flag-waving yes men grant the master instantiated authority by obscuring the line between self-interest and propagandized fear-laden drivel, turning Audre Lorde’s famous dictum into self-serving zealotry; the master’s tools are not just the only tools you need, they are the only tools anyone has.
The sycophant is almost a parasite. He seeks to alter the behavior of a host. The primary host, the body politic, is the source from which his kind achieves reproduction. But unlike parasites, which are essential to survival and frequently expunge garbage, the sycophant is merely a hopeless beggar and a fanatic. Blinded by a single goal, and utterly devoted to the instruments of his undoing, the sycophant's principal charge is that of smuggling the master through to places he has no right to go.
No right, indeed.
Apart from crushing one’s body and spirit, which had been a reliable strategy of power systems in the past, the modern corporation takes a camouflaged approach. The task, facilitated by a devoted flock of sycophants, is to skirt one very well-established prerogative of western common law, namely quo warranto (Latin for “by what warrant/by what right”). The legal question is just as important as the philosophical one, particularly in response to the corrosion of democracy by unrestrained corporate expansion. In the United States, attempts to justify corporate power take shape in a variety of rules and laws rendered by democratic institutions through which “the will of the people” is vicariously registered. Be they in favor of corporatization or not, “the will of the people” is at any rate assumed. Cambridge University offers perhaps the most in-depth analysis of the topic. Their researchers measured three variables; preferences of average citizens, preferences of economic elites, and alignment of interest groups over two decades. When combining all three variables for analysis, “the estimated impact of average citizens’ preferences drops precipitously, to a non-significant, near-zero level. Clearly the median citizen or ‘median voter’ at the heart of theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy does not do well when put up against economic elites and organized interest groups.”
Quo warranto? By what right do corporations claim individual legal protections, exert the right to move capital around the world with complete impunity while exercising near-immutable control over political decision-making? Can legislative and judicial decisions offer justification for corporate power when corporations exert effective control over the placement of legislators and judges? Of course not. It merely begs the question. It is power seeking to justify itself by wielding power and relies semantically on circular evidence that is indistinguishable from its conclusion. Arguments like these are literally without meaning. So, what gives corporations these rights? Nothing.
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As to the question about regressive taxation and job creation:
The always cited rationale for excusing the wealthy from equitable tax liability is that the money they save will induce job creation, thereby improving people’s livelihoods, opportunity, and the economy. There are at least two separate points to track on that topic (call it supply-side economics, or Reaganomics, for reference). The more obvious point relates to the integrity of the economic claim and the fallacies that follow from it. It’s not widely understood and deserves attention.
But then there is the point about those jobs (jobs is a technical term for profit). The army of gophers recycling the mantra of privatization and corporate privilege assume virtually without question that those jobs are worth having. Their intellectual and civic laziness ignores what unchecked corporate growth, and the resulting acquisition of power by private actors, will mean for the society writ large and for every person with the misfortune of being crushed by it.
Corporations are tyrannies by every standard definition of tyranny. They exercise arbitrary and largely unrestrained control over their employees. They are virtually unaccountable to anyone beyond a small number of shareholders. Whether to promote products or chosen politicians, their advertising is far removed from traditional economic theories of individual rationality and weaponized by people with specialties like “neuroeconomics” and “neuromarketing” on their resumes. The messages are intended to undermine markets, democracy, and the taken-for-granted belief in the rational consumer. They are habitually abusive to their employees, to the communities in which they operate, and the natural environment. All power within these institutions emanates from the top and cycles back without mediation. A private corporation is not obliged to concern over public burdens, and those in charge take for granted their sinecures and the cherished belief that their power is natural and self-justifying. They are psychopaths and sociopaths cloaked in brick and mortar, wielding intangible monetary inventions as a garrotte to economic and social mobility.
A considerable number of the jobs these entities create are horrific insults to human dignity and freedom. The only effective bulwark against their historically bloody, violent, and always destructive abuse, namely the unions, are now dismantled anachronisms, victims of a manipulative politics fashioned by the same people perpetuating today’s trickle-down exploitation. It’s noteworthy that the Republican Party of the 19th century regarded the wage-based work on offer from the emerging corporate conglomerates as worse than official slavery (in 1869 The New York Times described employment in the industrial north as "a system of slavery as absolute if not as degrading as that which lately prevailed at the South.") The comparison isn’t trivial. When ownership of humans prevailed in the old South, a rational slave owner would, in theory, behave within a set of boundaries defined by an economic self-interest to prevent irreparable damage to their “investment.” In the North, The Bosses rented their workers, paying them low wages with no identifiable interest in their welfare whatever. The rented object is easily replaceable, and it’s worthless when not in use. The terminology here, raw though it is, is intentional — the upper-class conflict between people as investments and people as objects brought about a bloody chapter in US history and, ultimately, the 14th amendment. Referring to “all persons,” it secured citizenship through birthright, protection by due process, and established the fundamental rights of freed slaves in particular. But because corporations had already been granted legal personhood by 1868, the amendment was immediately (and subsequently) used to expand corporate rights while blacks and poor people of every color remained consigned to oppressive regimes, like peonage. And the real issue was decided; people are to be regarded as objects (numbers, statistics, whatever unit applies most efficiently) unless they have money to escape designation.
From the perspective of the working class, all forms of slavery are equally qualified for abolition. That’s what Americans of the 19th century thought, anyway. But the same conditions lamented by Republicans of the 1860s still exist today in their essential form. If someone is less than satisfied with their job, The Bosses and their bootlickers exhort the freedom to quit the job and find another. Notwithstanding the cycling prospect of high unemployment, reliance on employer-provided healthcare, the inability to survive a single month without a paycheck, and the next corporate triggered economic crash, the major corporations are so ubiquitous in their power and influence that the range of options available to the typical middle and lower class American will generally fall between the old tyranny and the next one. Not to mention, it misses the point; the point is – and, albeit grudgingly, always was – to abolish tyranny and oppression.
And that oppression is indeed widespread and pretty fucking clear. A sample of employment opportunities for the poor and middle-class today will uncover an environment where 10 minutes to use the bathroom every few hours is a standard policy not only recorded and enforced but one that employees are made to accept with appreciation. In keeping with the spirit of totalitarian systems, one is almost invariably required to wear a conspicuous outfit forsaking the otherwise natural right to dress in the manner of their choosing. It’s a practice so pervasive that real skepticism exists even among those oppressed by it as to whether normal operations could continue were the costume code not enforced.
The employee is made to believe that they are subject to near-constant surveillance. They are not allowed to stop for an ordinary human opportunity to talk with a friend or to take a rest without internalizing the anxiety that comes with upsetting The Boss, and whatever reprimand that follows. Notice that the uncertainty among the workers as to the limits of their capacity for self-determination is by design. It is a play on human instinctual survival capacities. It produces stress, thereby modulating basic neural circuitry responsible for analyzing risk and reward. Most assessments result in a response that keeps the work going and the wealth moving upward, always upward. Should you accept one of the jobs they promise, you will be provided a 15-minute break somewhere within the space of eight hours, and perhaps even 30 minutes, thanks to past union victories (though it’s worth mentioning that employers agreed to break time policies on the basis that they seem to bring measurable improvements to productivity). Nevertheless, this aspect of your day is, of course, non-negotiable, and likewise, the expectation is that you will regard it as a privilege for which you should be thankful.
Employee monitoring takes place to such an extent that the company will demand fingerprints to prove employee efficiency and attendance. When the work is too slow, a supervising algorithm will flag the employee responsible. A demerit of some kind is then warranted to keep everyone in compliance with rules and expectations. The Boss will know that condemnation is best served in full view of the other employees and misrepresented so that it implicates the individual, not the system; this is to discourage solidarity among the workforce. Patterns of shortcomings will lead to further embarrassment, depression, hopelessness, and termination.
Employees are dependent on their employers to provide them with access to healthcare, which is almost always exclusively offered to full-time employees as a benefit, not a right. Healthcare is a significant source of control for the wealthy elite, and they will not give it up without launching billions of dollars worth of propaganda to prevent a public healthcare option (money that is rightly the property of the workers, or would be in a society that valued productivity alongside ownership, or in spite of it). Employees are forced to submit to blood, urine, hair, and other invasive biological examinations, often at random, to discourage them from thinking they have any right to control what they do with their bodies or the time they spend away from the job. Personal use or consumption of anything deemed inappropriate by The Bosses, however victimless and beneficial it may be, usually results in immediate termination. And if you happen to be an average person with a natural resentment toward systems of coercion like these, you are not in luck. Many capable people die in pits of terminal poverty on account of an inborn handicap that prevents them from operating inside an oppressive and definably tyrannical system of control. Call it dignity, and they will lose even that somewhere in the gutters before the end.
Doctor Thompson wrote in 1966 while embedded with the Hell’s Angels that, “A man who has blown all his options can't afford the luxury of changing his ways. He has to capitalize on whatever he has left, and he can't afford to admit — no matter how often he's reminded of it — that every day of his life takes him farther and farther down a blind alley... Very few toads in this world are Prince Charmings in disguise. Most are simply toads... and they are going to stay that way... Toads don't make laws or change any basic structures, but one or two rooty insights can work powerful changes in the way they get through life. A toad who believes he got a raw deal before he even knew who was dealing will usually be sympathetic to the mean, vindictive ignorance that colors the Hell's Angels' view of humanity. There is not much mental distance between a feeling of having been screwed and the ethic of total retaliation, or at least the random revenge that comes with outraging the public decency.”
That is a vivid description of the situation in America today. And it might be worth remembering the people lurching away in the gutters while the corporate wasteland spreads around them. They may not roll over and die, at least not before they assemble the means to retaliate. And when toads revolt, they seldom have a good idea in mind for what they will do after they destroy the place. The result is a power vacuum, and equitable, peaceful societies are not known to spring from power vacuums. But warlords and dictators are quite fond of them. Remember that when a person starts into the semantic gymnastics needed to defend ideas born in the broken minds of stupid, masochistic worshippers of wealthy people. Stop it in its tracks, or the toads will do it later.
It’s useful to remember too that The Bosses will pay less in taxes this year than you will.