The Evils of a Global Economy

While recently listening to an academician extol the virtues of a global economy and corporate outsourcing in a televised seminar lecture sponsored by George Mason University, I was immediately impressed by the way he expediently circumnavigated the issue of an independent nation-state?s sovereignty over its own unique and sufficiently productive trading economy. The monolithic quasi-governmental paradigm he proposed for the implementation of a global free-market demand system, inter-connecting the economies of industrialized First, Second, and Third World states, was cleverly disguised as socially innocuous by an apparently superficial appeal to a common utilitarian good. I couldn?t more strenuously disagree with this application.

By using David Ricardo?s and Adam Smith?s postulations concerning the productivity resulting from a capitalist?s investment-reinvestment motivations, in seeking unlimited profits, the academic pundit, supposedly a doctor of business and economics sponsored by the University of Michigan, applied this principle to investment proliferations of multi-national corporations. His transparent apologetics rationalizing the fallacious reasoning behind a corporate agenda of outsourcing, what would be, $15.00 per hour jobs in the United States to people of Third World nations for $5.00 per hour were extremely lame. The most outrageous of his postulations was the notion that a nation?s federal government (referring to that of the United States) should legislate laws enhancing a global union of economies placing its control in the hands of private quasi-governmental entities, such as the Federal Reserve Board or the World Bank.

Reducing the number of available lucrative jobs within the United States by hiring people of another country at lower wages, all for the purpose of increasing corporate profits, only serves to accomplish two things. It further destabilizes what is already a lop-sided U.S. economy, while establishing a veritable economic caste system with artificially contrived limitations on whom may produce certain products, and why they are to be produced. In essence, such a system would create a de facto economic dictatorship, where the unit of economic exchange would be standardized among the states comprising the system (much like the Euro), and the products produced, along with the means of production, would be corporately controlled. This type of global economy would preclude small businesses from being successful in developing and marketing products. While there are many existing products and services available around the world, there are a limited number of providers. In a global system, you would have something much like what is represented by Microsoft and Walmart. Microsoft has a virtual monopoly on computer operating systems around the world, and Walmart has the upper-hand in distributing software to the public, along with countless other products. When a Walmart Super-center moves into a U.S. or foreign metropolitan area, 90 percent of all other smaller businesses selling the same products are shut down because they cannot compete with the prices offered by the larger store. In a global economic system, the only productive businesses in the cooperating nation-states would be the Microsofts and the Walmarts. People would either be forced to buy from them or have nothing.

Corporations have continually proven to be counter-productive to all small business investments. This can be observed historically through the evolution of 17th, 18th , and 19th Century mercantilism in Britain. The kings, over the centuries, realized that more taxes would come into the Crown coffers if trading companies were controlled and operated as appendages of the government. This became the goal in colonization in North America, and the British trading companies (early multi-national corporations) accomplishing the business of establishing British trade with other nations were controlled by the British Crown. The advent of British socialism, in its initial stages, was advanced in England when it was apparent that small independent businesses could not provide extensive social security for their consumers. This, of course, resulted in incremental changes promoting socialized medicine and other industries which were essential to lives of British subjects. Nonetheless, the present day UK had to go through a long painful period of economic adjustment to clearly understand the evils of unchecked imperialism and government corporations. Still, there are few essential industries in the UK which are not controlled and operated directly and indirectly through Parliament and Queen Elizabeth II.

Invariably, controlling corporations succeed in smothering smaller competitive businesses in a purely capitalist system if buy-out efforts fail. Both Smith and Ricardo extolled the power of competition in promoting increased levels of productivity in order for capitalists to derive the highest financial profits their investments. Adam Smith stated that the individual should always do what is best for him in reaping profit from an investment of time and money. Later, Princeton?s Dr. John Nash came along in the early 1950?s to say that Smith was basically wrong in his speculation that a person should be essentially greedy in working only to benefit himself in an investment, that doing what is best for a concerned group will promote the best productive ends of an investment. But this theoriization only yielded greater profits for the corporate system through increased cooperation among united participating corporations.The greater good, or increased freedom of choice among consumers, was drastically decreased, while productivity for all of the cooperating corporations was substantially increased.

In the paradigm laid out by the lecturing academician, the person model is conveniently replaced by the legal artificial person known as the corporation. However, in both cases, the person and the corporation, the element of investment motivation enters into the formulation, which propels the corporation, and the individual capitalist entrepreneur, toward maximum realization of profits without regard for the necessary common good of all those others who are affected by the end product of the investment. When all cards are on the table, this motivation almost always turns out to be unmitigated greed, a simple human condition which pre-supposes that an individual or an investing corporation can never be too wealthy and can never achieve a high-enough profit, at the expense of the consumer. Yet, American constitutional government was theoretically established among men, in 1789, in order to insure that all Americans would be treated equally before the law, so that monopolies, trusts, and syndicates, benefiting the few and depriving the many, would theoretically not exist. This theoretical application of government made the laissez faire notion of unrestrained capitalism practically unworkable in a regime where the poor person is actually valued as greatly as the wealthy aristocrat.
Yet, it is quite obvious that this is not a practical working reality in the present-day American republic. While the theory of constitutional government is clearly defined in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution as, ?establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, and promoting the general welfare,? the real effects of capitalism have dramatically illustrated that laws are not truly intended to insure justice, but, instead, social order through maintaining a status quo.

Policies created by a government, actually of the people, by the people, and for the people (as according to Abraham Lincoln) realistically benefit the greater good of the whole society, comprising the very poor, the middle-class, and the affluent wealthy. A global economy and a government designed to regulate such an economy would certainly not be concerned with the plight of the poor. The poor have always existed as a basic element of society, since the dawn of time, as a direct result of the most deadly of the seven cardinal human sins, unbridled greed. The poor will continue to be a part of any society that is based upon the economic survival of the fittest. This is the fundamental thrust of capitalism, which is the lifeline of a perpetual economic aristocracy. A global economy will only serve to create and maintain a classified power hierarchy based upon wealth, where the poor will continue to be used and victimized by the caste which is most wealthy. For some one in such a system has to do the dirty work. Hence, agreement by an nation?s intelligentsia with the precepts of a global economy indicate two very illuminating aspects about such an educated group of individuals. First, and foremost, this coalescence defines the moral priorities of a people more interested in feeding the rapacious appetites of controlling corporations an their investors than caring altruistically for the poor portion of a state?s population that cannot care for itself. Secondly, members of this supposedly intellectual group of individuals are relegating their identities as citizens of a republic, or of a particular nation-state, to a monolithic, quasi-governmental entity that has ever-expanding borders.

The study of the historical nature of U.S. economic development is not encouraging, for when the American republic was born through revolution, in 1776, the individuals representing the dissent were the wealthiest men in the American colonies. When these individuals got together to later frame a federal constitution through compromise, they could have, at first, thought about the plight of the poorest citizen of the new fledgling nation and his dependents before legislating laws for the benefit of whole nation. Yet, the primary economic motivation of the members of the Constitutional Convention was a preservation of the representatives? financial status quo and its eventual betterment. They weren?t about to relinquish their wealth through any type of laws that would bring about a social equality inimical to their financial interests. Their minds, at the time the U.S. Constitution was framed, weren?t set upon the basic human needs of the run-of-the-mill lower-class Americans who had fought with every last bit of their resources and physical strength against the British during the revolution, but, rather, upon the wealthy aristocracy. Even the federal division of land, and the laws passed by the First Congress allocating a certain number of acres of real estate to every man who had fought with the Continental Army, was not implemented as it was legislated. According to the original Congressional Record, the affluent men who passed the law ?regretted their allowing the best land to pass into the hands of those indigent who would not develop it to the best financial end.? Consequently, the law was changed very quickly afterward to allow land to only those who had the financial means to improve it. As much as elected federal congressional office is today an entrance for the privileged few into affluence, one can easily understand why an individual, dedicated to hedonism, would seek a political office in the House of Representatives or the Senate as a potential career. For example, I know of a former county prosecutor from Washington State who, at a county salary of $55,000 per year, was supported by a state Democratic Party coalition to run for Congress. A less than formidable lawyer an effective prosecutor, he was elected and re-elected twice and now has a salary of $190,000 per year plus plush federal amenities and benefits. As a part of the ruling elect, is there any plausible, self-serving reason for him not to continue to seek re-election, besides the probability that someone else might do a much better job of representing the people of his congressional district? This might be why the utilitarian good, which is the greatest good for the greatest number, or majority, of a nation?s population, is hardly a consideration when corporate profits are concerned.

For instance, introducing mass transit throughout the United States might have been a long-term goal of the federal and state governments at the same time Ford Motor Company was producing automobiles with a goal of providing a car, at an affordable price, for every family or person. Surely, someone of vision, in the federal government, might have suggested the viability of developing mass transit when motorized transportation became a reality. But a planned infrastructure has traditionally been considered inimical to the capitalistic free-market. In fact, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the mere mention of state planning by government was regarded as evil. Consequently, the production of tens-of-thousands of automobiles was encouraged and supported by federal legislation as thousands of poor people began working gainfully in Michigan in the mass production of cars.

And as cars were produced, people hastened to buy them, not with cash, but with installment contracts for a price of about a thousand dollars. This price wouldn?t have been affordable to most middle-class Americans but for the installment buying plans corporately concocted to allow consumers to immediately obtain the product with a low down payment and a sizeable monthly payment (for the particular timeframe) with interest for two years or more. Ford Motor Credit Company, a Ford corporate subsidiary, was established just for that purpose. In addition to the retail price of the car, the consumer ended up paying thirty or forty percent more for the car by the time all of the payments were made. This definitely increased the Ford Corporation?s total profits, which propelled it and the governmental policies paving the way for corporate reinvestment, toward corporate control over the means of transportation.

When a large number of deaths resulted from the use of automobiles, in the mid-1920s, an early federal court case, to determine whether or not cars should be banned by the federal government as dangerous to the public, established a legal precedent that set the Ford Motor Company and the seven major competing automobile corporations on the road to perpetual fortune. A federal district court judge declared the motorized car a necessary evil. Instead of that decision, the ruling court could have declared the need for a federal bus system, or a rail system, inter-connecting the nation?s cities. This, however, would have severely affected the prevailing popularity of automobiles and the corporate power to produce them.

As the issue of timeliness, or getting to someplace more quickly or obtaining something in a shorter amount of time, became an overly-pressing concern to more-and-more Americans during the early 1920s, the notion of self-gratification became a trend in American society. The whim ?why wait for something when you can have it now? became fashionable, which made the average hedonistic American use the avenue of installment buying to satisfy an appetite for what corporate America was providing, that being food, shelter, entertainment, and personal transportation. Then the Great Depression and bleak Black Friday, in 1929, arrived to herald a wake-up call to Americans who were enjoying possessing houses, appliances, cars, and many other valuable items without actually owning them. When, suddenly, a great number of Americans became bankrupt and out-of-work, when money became scarce, the average consumer sadly realized that installment buying wasn?t what it was flippantly advertised to be when everything he owned was repossessed.

A global economy for the express benefit of corporate America is a goal that has been nourished since the 1950s within the emerging realm of neo-conservatism, in university classrooms, especially at the University of Chicago, and in meetings unknown to the public, between federal officers of the executive branch and high-ranking officers of private industry. It?s quite amazing how many cabinet-level appointees, chosen by American presidents, were corporate officers and CEOs prior to assuming the duties of Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, etc. Look at Dick Cheney, for instance. Isn?t it remarkable how Haliburton, the multi-national corporation for which the current Vice-President was CEO, got the main government contract for the extensive reconstruction in Iraq? There were at least twelve other corporations biding for the contract. I wonder how Haliburton won the bid? Some people, in the know, freely say that Cheney had a direct hand in getting the contract approved for the corporation, which had made him a millionaire twice over. It is also true that Cheney presently owns quite a few Haliburton stock options, which increased greatly in value after the contract for Iraq was approved. The federal government obviously allowed Cheney to get away with such obscene graft.

Some public servants in the federal government will say that corporate officers, especially former CEOs, make the best cabinet-level officers. I will, however, have to admit that most corporate CEOs are extremely devious and pragmatic in their attempts to produce great profits for their parent corporations, and that their honesty and integrity are dubious. The crimes that they commit over time are frequently so horrendous that countless ordinary people are financially ruined through their devious collusions. And, unfortunately, most of them get away with their ill-gotten gains. Ken Lay, of the Enron Corporation, was a token example of unmitigated graft and corruption brought to justice. The number of financial murders he committed through his underhanded dealings is inestimable. How he compared to the ordinary street burglar, who steals and inadvertently kills during his crime, is quite interesting, for there are both serious crimes in the streets and in the suites. While a street crime usually affects only one person or family, a suite crime many affect thousands detrimentally. I seriously believe that token investigations and subsequent prosecutions for corporate crimes are prominently publicized by the federal government to make it seem to the public that efforts are being made to curtail corporate crime. Unbeknownst to the uninformed American public, there are many more corporate crimes being ignored, and actually encouraged, by government. A global economy would cast the most evil corporate aspiration upon human society through government permission. It would make the domination of a poor individual human?s basic life (that is what the person eats, the clothing he wears, where he resides, how he gets from one place to another, and, essentially, what he is allowed to purchase) the ultimate goal of a global corporate union.

By: Norton Nowlin

Source: http://www.greenchristmasappeal.org/news-and-society/the-evils-of-a-global-economy

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