NationStates Jolt Archive

People of various professions have been making comments that our civilization, humanity or "the world" has been making a slow hapless slide into a corpracy. That we will soon be immersed in a McWorld brought to you by the Wonderful World of Disney with ours brains hardwired by Mircosoft. But can't you see how utterly ridiculous this sounds "A world of billions enslaved by a few corporations" , any person of reason would fail to even grasp the meaning of these words. How could such a thing be possible? What this is saying is that a few rahter ordinary but I will give you intelligent people have managed to enslave the entire planet, without the use of any extraordinary means (these people ain't Supermen or a master race folks). this would mean that people like Bill Gates. Michael Ovitz, Donald Trump, Akio Morito, Warren Buffet etc. have enslaved a world of millions of smart, capable people who love living lives of peace and freedom. How can that come to be? Can we actually put the total blame on these corporations if they do manage to somehow "enslave" the entire human race? Or will we wake up to the facts and the reality of the situation and take responsibility for our own lives and acknowledge that it is not that the corporations have enslaved humanity, it is humanity that has enslaved itself.

That is all. Go back to your regular programming. :)

That's like saying that humans are responsible for EVERYTHING that happens to humans...which is just about true (barring unforseen natural disasters NOT caused by global warming....um....). We are responsible for all sorts of terrible experiments...facism, communism, monarchism...corporatism and other assorted -isms. Of course we are creating this corpocracy ourselves by allowing the desire to consume to become overweening. We will also be responsible for destroying corpocracy and replacing it with some other system that won't quite work. So on and so on. We can always strive to get better, but these things go in cycles. I just hope my involvement can help to create a positive cycle.

Yes, the company town owned you back in the 19th century. There appears to be a shift back towards this economic model with the far right in control of the USA and UK.

People of various professions have been making comments that our civilization, humanity or "the world" has been making a slow hapless slide into a corpracy. That we will soon be immersed in a McWorld brought to you by the Wonderful World of Disney with ours brains hardwired by Mircosoft. But can't you see how utterly ridiculous this sounds "A world of billions enslaved by a few corporations" , any person of reason would fail to even grasp the meaning of these words. How could such a thing be possible? What this is saying is that a few rahter ordinary but I will give you intelligent people have managed to enslave the entire planet, without the use of any extraordinary means (these people ain't Supermen or a master race folks). this would mean that people like Bill Gates. Michael Ovitz, Donald Trump, Akio Morito, Warren Buffet etc. have enslaved a world of millions of smart, capable people who love living lives of peace and freedom. How can that come to be? Can we actually put the total blame on these corporations if they do manage to somehow "enslave" the entire human race? Or will we wake up to the facts and the reality of the situation and take responsibility for our own lives and acknowledge that it is not that the corporations have enslaved humanity, it is humanity that has enslaved itself.

That is all. Go back to your regular programming. :)
this has happened, and will continue to do so. ordinary people simply do not see it - the power of the leaders of the 'superpower corporations' (like McDonalds and Microsoft) are behind the scenes, political - influencing ordinary people's lives through an indirect method that they would never be aware of. The corporations act through influencing politicians. Take the Bin Laden family, for example (Farenheight 911), they may not be seen as typical heads of superpower corporations but their business investments in the US stock market equate to approximatley 2% of american GDP. That is a lot of influence. Similarly Bill Gates and many many others.
The people who are espousing this slide into corpracy may simply be seeing the truth. I personally do not necessarily agree with this point of view (first time i've ever heard the term 'corpracy') but see it as perfectly logical, and perhaps has more than a shred of truth.

That's like saying that humans are responsible for EVERYTHING that happens to humans...

Precisely. :)

People of various professions have been making comments that our civilization, humanity or "the world" has been making a slow hapless slide into a corpracy. That we will soon be immersed in a McWorld brought to you by the Wonderful World of Disney with ours brains hardwired by Mircosoft.
God, I hate it when people say things like that! Like when someone said that Bush could suggest in his State of the Union address to give the EPA $0, and that Congress would pretty much have to do that, politically...I just got freaked out. I know that things are possible, but it just isn't proper to say out loud...

And you apparently are unaware of the influences that propaganda can have on people. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley has some good stuff on that.

I love how people always assume that these are the worst of times and that life is over as we know it... ALL the time.

2005, 1995, 1985, 1975... it's all the same. Only the names have changed.

this has happened, and will continue to do so. ordinary people simply do not see it
And whose fault is that if they don't "see" it? If somebody is hiding the truth from the people they sure aren't doing a very good job of it since you know about the undue influence of major corps in politics, in fact every of reasonable age know about it since its been going on for a very long time. But nothing has been done and why is that?

In America, we have made huge steps in limiting the "hapless slide to corpocracy", as you put it. The power of antitrust laws has grown, the SEC has made corporate level executives more accountable than ever (after the current president, it should get even better), and public ownership of corporations and stock is higher than it ever was. Corporatism would be a problem if government regulations were not imposed and the ownership of corporations were not spread out, but that is not the case.

bump

This slide into corporations becoming even more powerful will continue as long as people continue to think that money is teh only thing that matters. While I am a capitalist, I think that there are things that money should take a backseat to. Unfortunately, I think that I am in a minority in Western Civilization.

This slide into corporations becoming even more powerful will continue as long as people continue to think that money is teh only thing that matters. While I am a capitalist, I think that there are things that money should take a backseat to. Unfortunately, I think that I am in a minority in Western Civilization.
I second that - while I am a Libertarian Capitalist, I don't believe money is the key to happiness

And whose fault is that if they don't "see" it? If somebody is hiding the truth from the people they sure aren't doing a very good job of it since you know about the undue influence of major corps in politics, in fact every of reasonable age know about it since its been going on for a very long time. But nothing has been done and why is that?
people not seeing something is not the same as some conspiracy being covered up. this natural progression is 'not seen' because people accept it as the status quo and most simply do not care (at least the people i know don't)

people not seeing something is not the same as some conspiracy being covered up. this natural progression is 'not seen' because people accept it as the status quo and most simply do not care (at least the people i know don't)

Thats what i am saying..if the corps do take over...whose fault is it?