COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY THOMAS FRANK IN THE GUARDIAN
“Trump's enemy is not
your friend: why we shouldn't defend Amazon
“Why must we choose
between the worst president of our lifetimes and one of the most rapacious
corporate enterprises in the country?”
All monopolies or near-monopolies or
cancerously-large companies of any description are not your friends, no matter
what kind of benign Big Brother expressions they wear. Or what kind of
casual-looking outfits, such as grey tee-shirts, they are addicted to wearing.
That includes our much-concentrated corporate press and
broadcasting and all of the Internet giants.
Lord Acton said it for all time in general terms for human
society: "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts
absolutely."
A related concept is found in classical economic theory,
which very much warns of the costs and hazards of monopolies and oligopolies.
But it requires an authority, a government willingness to
act, in order to control this.
You see, to keep a free and competitive society, indeed,
free and competitive, it requires regular oversight and corrective action.
Do you see anyone anywhere in the West ready to undertake
that kind of activity?
The United States today is a driver of corporate gigantism.
And if American corporations are gigantic and powerful, you can hardly expect
governments in Britain or France or Germany to act in anti-monopoly or
anti-concentration ways. They will not be able to compete internationally.
So, we are all fixed into a kind of vicious-cycle,
travelling along on a clanking conveyor belt we have no control over which is
taking us to I don’t know just where, but I am pretty sure it will come
increasingly to resemble the Feudal structures of the 13th century.
America’s government contributes in more than one way, too.
The Washington Establishment has set in writing for all to read the national
goal of what is called "Full-spectrum dominance, everywhere."
If you have that kind of national goal on the military,
economic, and diplomatic fronts, you are hardly going to start breaking up your
gigantic firms of any description.
After all, their activities are part and parcel of your
national goal.
Our future is not bright under such an international
structure.
After all, we all recognize the dangers of dictatorship in a
single place or country. How much greater is the risk of a dictator for the
planet?
Internationally, one of the epic battles of history may well
emerge over this matter. It really is that big and threatening.
So, any competition to America’s complete dominance in the
world – even if from countries we do not regard as being as free as our own
idea, or illusion, of our past - is in a sense an ally to us all in the
struggle.
