Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
The corporate oligopoly we're seeing emerge before our eyes is an example of hundreds of millions of people all doing what works best for them, without malice, leading to consequences that will be very bad for most of us collectively.
There was a time when American legislators broke up companies when they got as big as Amazon or Google/Alphabet. When they recognized that colossal companies that could absorb or smash all competitors were bad for free markets and bad for democracy. No longer. America wants their corporate titans to remain huge so they can stand up against China's titans. And, of course, American legislators have rolled over on corporate taxation - Republicans have been relentlessly cutting the budget of the IRS for years, resulting in 10s of billions of corporate taxes going uncollected.
There's going to be a reckoning down the line. If we're fortunate, the masses of citizens with no meaningful work will be pacified with cheap entertainment and drugs. But if those low-skilled workers with no future get more uppity, well, just look to what's going on in France right now and imagine it being a more or less permanent state of affairs across the developed world. And that's not to mention what society's losers can do to elections when roused by a demagogue.
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I see massive corporations vs. humanity as the core struggle within our society right now. We can wax political all day about how these titans can be brought to heal through legislation, but that's probably an impossible task at this point, their talons are in way too deep now.
The real power we have is voting with our dollar and attention, all we collectively have to do is pump the brakes on our materialism and make an effort to spend our money ethically, but that's where people seem quickest to roll over.