Once upon a time, I
saw a documentary, The Corporation. They worked up the psychological
profiles of corporations, and found that they were psychopaths. It made a lot
of sense.
That probably
sounds pretty harsh, but the point was that when you set up a corporation, it's
sole purpose becomes to produce profit. When you have a person at the head of a
company, they will want to make profit as well, but their humanity may still
play a role in their decision making. Corporations are structured in a manner
to reduce the human factor.
I have written
before about how after reading a few Ann Rule books, I was stuck by how common
it was for these cold-blooded killers to be so acquisitive, and then I realized
I probably had it backwards. Their greed gave them motivation to turn off their
consciences. Maybe they did not have much to shut down in the first place, but
the data seems to indicate that it's even easier for a company to get there.
So, when the Supreme Court or Mitt Romney tell you that corporations are
people, it somehow becomes even more chilling.
Now, much of what
conservatives promote for the economy is moving towards privatization, and that
the free market will resolve everything. The problem is that private industry
basically wants to make money, and government needs to accomplish things.
Government may have goals that are based on concerns other than economic.
Beyond that, the total economic good will not always align perfectly with a
single company's maximized profit.
For example, The
Jungle (from what I've read) is a pretty socialist book, but even people
who hated socialists felt like maybe the meat-packing industry did need some
reform, because hey, I'm eating that. Eventually, and with some resistance, you
get the Food and Drug Administration. Yes, keeping unwanted things out of the
food costs some extra money, so companies would not necessarily volunteer to do
it, but you make it a law and give some teeth to enforcement, and it works out.
It is probably just
a coincidence that about the time that the government shutdown pulled funding
from the FDA, which suspends regular testing, that there was a large salmonella
outbreak, because after all that one seems to go back to March, but still, it
would not be at all surprising to see other outbreaks, because that's just how
it goes. There are areas where government regulation of business is important.
The government has
an interest and a responsibility to keep the armed forces fed. With good
bargaining and oversight, you might be able to do that well through a
contractor, but disdaining the involvement and government leads to things like
Halliburton not delivering food, or Supreme Group over-billing. This is
profitable for those companies, but it did not serve the interests of the armed
forces or the country, and was probably not beneficial to the economy overall,
or at least not more beneficial than a scam-free process would have been.
Thomas Frank's
excellent book The Wrecking Crew argues that this is actually the point
of conservative policies, and not a bad side effect. Looking at what is
happening right now, it's hard to argue.
It's reasonable to
worry about government overreach, but going in the opposite direction to
full-on contempt for the government doesn't work that well either. I do believe
it requires an informed and engaged citizenry, and again, the conservative
movement is not giving us that. But then, you could argue that based on their
bent for construction, it is long past due to stop calling them conservatives.
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