11-30-2020, 09:54 PM
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The point. Abuse of power arises inevitably from its concentration in self-proclaimed priests, generalissimos, experts, owners, and administrators. Concentration in ownership or command results in the potential of abuse at any time, and in view of the tendency of people holding power of life and death, or even enrichment or impoverishment to become abusers of power (this is quite possibly even more true of those who inherit power than of those who take it in some Crisis or foundation) it is the concentration of wealth and power that creates the monstrosity.
Big Business needs Big Government as an enforcer of corporate power over employees and customers. This may not be the sort of government that many want in enforcement of monopoly control of the economy and of such horrors as peonage contracts, but for whoever experiences the enforcement of such it is at the least the wrong sort of (repressive) government. Just think of Apartheid. Abusive, corrupt government always has its pampered constituency, so we can all assume that when something is thoroughly rotten and in need of pervasive reform to make it human... there are powerful people who like things that way. Slavery in the United States did not fall because slave-owning planters started to feel guilt about mistreating property described as '3/5 of a person'. Slave-owning planters typically saw themselves as unqualified benefactors to each '3/5 of a person'.
You see small business as no better than giant enterprises such as Exxon-Mobil, Wal*Mart, General Motors, Krupp-Thyssen, Sony, Disney/ABC, Comcast, Bank of America, MacDonnell-Douglas, MacDonald's, IBM, Kraft-Heinz, Tyson, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Warner Brothers, Koch Industries, Nestle, Daewoo, AT&T, PG&E, Unilever, or Royal Dutch Shell. Giant businesses that have monopolistic or oligopolistic power over an industry have the funds with which to corrupt the electoral process and use them. Small business can't. Small-scale operators are often family businesses that may earn what looks like an impressive family income, but the Vietnamese-immigrant family who owns and operates a "Chinese" buffet often earns altogether a little more than what Daddy could earn as an auto mechanic, what Mommy might get if she were a registered nurse, and the kids what they would get working in a chain restaurant or a store. Because small business owner-operators do much of the work that proles would do, they are obviously not capitalists in the sense that someone who owns 100,000 shares of Wal*Mart stock is a capitalist.
If you want to see an economic order that works, then just look at the Old Order Amish. They are unabashedly capitalist; they own the farm, and they often sell produce on the side.. or they make furniture far better than what is available at Wal*Mart. You might find it unsettling that their world has little use for white-collar bureaucrats.
In America it is often the corporate bureaucrats, an executive class similar in practice to a Soviet-style nomenklatura, that is paid very well for treating workers badly. Does a sane social order really need that?
The point. Abuse of power arises inevitably from its concentration in self-proclaimed priests, generalissimos, experts, owners, and administrators. Concentration in ownership or command results in the potential of abuse at any time, and in view of the tendency of people holding power of life and death, or even enrichment or impoverishment to become abusers of power (this is quite possibly even more true of those who inherit power than of those who take it in some Crisis or foundation) it is the concentration of wealth and power that creates the monstrosity.
Big Business needs Big Government as an enforcer of corporate power over employees and customers. This may not be the sort of government that many want in enforcement of monopoly control of the economy and of such horrors as peonage contracts, but for whoever experiences the enforcement of such it is at the least the wrong sort of (repressive) government. Just think of Apartheid. Abusive, corrupt government always has its pampered constituency, so we can all assume that when something is thoroughly rotten and in need of pervasive reform to make it human... there are powerful people who like things that way. Slavery in the United States did not fall because slave-owning planters started to feel guilt about mistreating property described as '3/5 of a person'. Slave-owning planters typically saw themselves as unqualified benefactors to each '3/5 of a person'.
You see small business as no better than giant enterprises such as Exxon-Mobil, Wal*Mart, General Motors, Krupp-Thyssen, Sony, Disney/ABC, Comcast, Bank of America, MacDonnell-Douglas, MacDonald's, IBM, Kraft-Heinz, Tyson, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Warner Brothers, Koch Industries, Nestle, Daewoo, AT&T, PG&E, Unilever, or Royal Dutch Shell. Giant businesses that have monopolistic or oligopolistic power over an industry have the funds with which to corrupt the electoral process and use them. Small business can't. Small-scale operators are often family businesses that may earn what looks like an impressive family income, but the Vietnamese-immigrant family who owns and operates a "Chinese" buffet often earns altogether a little more than what Daddy could earn as an auto mechanic, what Mommy might get if she were a registered nurse, and the kids what they would get working in a chain restaurant or a store. Because small business owner-operators do much of the work that proles would do, they are obviously not capitalists in the sense that someone who owns 100,000 shares of Wal*Mart stock is a capitalist.
If you want to see an economic order that works, then just look at the Old Order Amish. They are unabashedly capitalist; they own the farm, and they often sell produce on the side.. or they make furniture far better than what is available at Wal*Mart. You might find it unsettling that their world has little use for white-collar bureaucrats.
In America it is often the corporate bureaucrats, an executive class similar in practice to a Soviet-style nomenklatura, that is paid very well for treating workers badly. Does a sane social order really need that?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.