I don't think I need Thomas Piketty
to point out that massive conglomerations of Capital and the drive
toward monopoly are one of the failure modes of Capitalism in which
consumers have not only fewer choices but less money to fuel the
system. Perhaps it's a bit like Stellar evolution where using up all
the hydrogen causes bloat and eventual implosion.
The traditional
anthems sing about competition and opportunity, but in truth any
capitalist enterprise wants to stifle competition and give competitors
as little opportunity as possible and when the enterprise in question is
control of information and opinion and even of desire and ambition in
the public -- well the prospect of media consolidation in a country
that depends on that industry for its information and opinion is simply
frightening. We might as well just hand over the keys to the Capitol
along with our proxies when elections here become as much of a one party
farce as those we used to laugh at in other countries.
AT&T plans to buy out DirecTV
in a 67 Billion dollar deal and while current DirecTV customers like me
will probably start to worry that my current $170 a month bill will
escalate further and my service will decline to U-verse levels of not
giving a damn, our real worry should be, as Professor Picketty would
doubtless agree, that it's beginning to look a lot like Orwell.
Isn't
it time to suggest that all this blather about Obama the Socialist is a
smokescreen put up by interests with no other interest than to
monopolize the country and reduce us all to penury, inescapable debt and
serfdom? struggling to pay for what they want to sell us? I think it is
and I think our biggest danger as a free and prosperous country is to
protect what they, the media, the voice of monopoly tell us is our
freedom.
American Capitalism is definitely in need of restructuring.
ReplyDeleteCompetition is healthy... when competition occurs on a level playing field and opportunity is not squashed to preserve some special interest.
And that's precisely what the anti-regulation crusade is fighting - fair competition as though anything that restrains one player from taking it all was "Communism" or "tyranny"
DeleteThere are, (were,) only four big players in the game of internet access and related access to television content. Verizon and AT&T on the wireless side and Comcast and Time Warner on the cable side. AT&T may still dominate land telephone lines. It probably no longer matters very much. The only delivery system for very fast internet access is optical, although the providers seem to be cooperating in keeping its availability very low. Although AT&T has installed optical fibers in many neighborhoods, it has not always chosen to activate these underground cables. In other markets, the cost of digging up the shielded copper cable and replacing it with fiber optics does not seem practical or economical. The very fast internet access of one hundred megabits per second provided by fiber optics is required for fast uploads and perhaps for internet-based telecommunications. Fast downloads only require traditional cable-based or wireless internet access.
ReplyDeleteThe dominant cable companies got together in the 1990s to make sure that their footprints did not intersect geographically so that most U.S. markets only have one choice for cable TV or internet. This ensures a type of duopoly where each conglomerate enjoys a monopoly on its own share of the market.
The acquisition of DirecTV by A,T&T is a very dangerous monopoly indeed. This speaks to the importance of providing content. NetFlix has been forced to promise to pay more to protect its customers' access to content, as may YouTube be at some time. Although this may not be in the offing, since YouTube has been acquired by Googol recently. A greater issue is that of net neutrality and the monopolies surrounding internet providers.
If anyone is truly interested in this complex issue. I would highly recommend watching Susan Crawford's lecture Retaining Government Power to Make Economic Policy for Internet Access: The Role of the First Amendment with Susan Crawford.
This was given on May 12, 2014, just before the announcement of AT&T's planned acquisition of DirecTV. And just after Verizon's acquisition of Comcast. It does take an entire hour. But if you wish to be informed, you will not regret spending the time.
Efforts by Corporate America to undermine Constitutional democracy are not merely limited to consolidated communication businesses. These efforts go back to the mid 1970s, according to this analysis which states:
ReplyDelete“The Conference Board, a mainstream business organization, held a set of strategic brainstorming meetings with groups of top business executives to understand these threats to free enterprise and begin to chart a course to fight back. They openly expressed their worries whether democracy, in the long run, was even compatible with capitalism [my bold]. “One man, one vote has undermined the power of business in all capitalist countries since WWII. “ said one participant. Said another, “We need to question the system itself: one man, one vote.”
Compatible with Capitalism? The Koch brothers and their privately funded stinks tanks, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and their stable of American conglomerates, the Allegheny Foundation run by the Scaife family, the Castle Rock Foundation run by the Coors family, over 300 corporate members who “own” over 2,000 government leaders and legislators (such as John Kasich, Rick Perry, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Joe Wilson, Scott Walker, and Jan Brewer, as examples)… these conspire behind closed doors to rewrite the laws the govern our rights.
It will take a lot more than angry villagers brandishing pitchforks to rid ourselves of this pestilence.
Essentially, democracy and unregulated capitalism are at odds when it comes to the distribution of power and money and the more closely related are those two things the more tyrannical the owners can be and ultimately will be.
ReplyDeleteThe more concentrated is ownership and power, and the more disenfranchised the population, the more dangerous they become and the more desperate the corporate entities become and the more protective of their "rights." When they own the distribution of information, the ability to instill opinions friendly to themselves the more able they are to maintain their positions and privileges. Soon there will be only the internet to oppose the massive and 3effecive distribution of Newthink and so we see that medium saturated with lies and propaganda benefiting the powerful We will soon see that coupled with the ability to stifle unwanted opposition, unwanted facts, unwanted commentary and advance the speed of lies and the web will go back to it's intended purpose of selling product and selling acceptance of getting screwed.
I used to talk in terms of a return to feudalism, but really there is little if any difference between unlimited capitalism and feudalism and both produce large numbers of surplus people who have, according to historical precedent be exported or exiled, which is no longer possible, or squeezed to the point of rebellion.
The source of such doomed dreams of revenge, common both to ancient Palestine and the Europe of a hundred years ago have frighteningly much in common and the irony is that they are seeking to protect a system that always causes it's own downfall, like the people who fight for their right to smoke and overeat as though the outcomes like diabetes and lung cancer weren't predictable.
In my opinion, philosophically based though it may have been, the American Revolution was largely about a reaction to aggressive English capitalism and the oppression and alienation from power it required whether it was taxation without representation or outright slavery. Remember very many of our early settlers were hardly "pilgrims" but indentured servants and either de jure or de facto slaves. Slavery itself is the ultimate form of Capitalism and the fight against health care, debt relief, birth control, access to education and the ability to vote continues unabated and will always do so as long as we see Capitalism as a religion and not as a tool.
More money, more power -- more power more money. It accelerates like a falling object and the gravitational field grows and the acceleration grows until you have a black hole and nothing gets out. Is it illusory to think there's any free will?
And please excuse the sloppy writing -- just getting over the flu.
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