Parliamentary corporatocracy

[openspace4life]

I haven't posted in a couple of months partly due to lack of motivation, but also because I've been quite busy, particularly with my apartment move, which will hopefully result in no water leak incidents for quite a while. Anyway, onward...

Martin Luther King said that “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.” There is some truth to that when it comes to the gradually increasing rights of women and minorities, but for at least the past forty years, our democratic system of government has been bending away from justice, in the sense that our elected representatives increasingly represent the interests of wealthy campaign donors rather than those who actually voted them into office. The Citizens United decision, and the recent actions of 18 Wisconsin legislators aimed at destroying the labor movement's power in blatant disregard of their constituents' wishes, are just the latest steps in this long-term trend. We may be able to turn this trend around, but first we must slow it to a halt, and in the time it takes to accomplish that, it seems likely that we will drift into a state of total corporatocracy in which no policy that threatens Big Business's profits can be contemplated, at least at the national level.

So how do we live through such a period of history without allowing irreparable damage to our society and the biosphere? One answer lies in the fact that “Big Business” is far from a single monolithic entity that always speaks with one voice to demand changes in policy. Different industries want different things from government, and just as different political parties in a democracy can act as checks on each other's more extreme ambitions, so it may prove to be with industry groups. Learning to play these groups off against each other may become a key skill for advocacy groups operating in a corporate-ruled nation. And since more than two such groups can easily be identified, the resulting dynamics may come to somewhat resemble those of multiparty European democracies, so we could consider labeling this potential system of governance “parliamentary corporatocracy.”

As a simple example of how this might work, consider the conflict between transportation and telecommunications technologies. Oil companies, airlines, and the tourism industry would prefer policies that promote long-distance travel (and all the air pollution that goes with it), while companies like Microsoft, Cisco, and Skype would prefer that more people use their videoconferencing and related technologies to avoid much of this travel. The latter group may not have enough power on its own to stand against the likes of ExxonMobil, but they could make an alliance with the actual internet service providers and their parent telecom/media conglomerates, such as the recently established Comcast-NBC-Universal, who naturally want people to pay for the high-data-rate plans that HD video calls will require. (Or do they? These networks are already overstressed with the current level of video-streaming traffic, and all those mergers tend to make it less likely that major innovations will arise to solve that problem. But I'm doing my best to be a little optimistic here, so I'm ignoring that issue.)

Overall, while their legally mandated focus on short-term profits means that most large corporations will have a net negative impact on the commons, it's a mistake to demonize “Big Business” as a whole, even when fighting to limit its influence in politics. Partly this is just because almost all Americans depend on corporations for basic necessities like food, but partly it's because there are substantial and growing numbers of fairly good corporate citizens out there. Take this report from Ethical Markets Media, claiming that “Private Investments In Green Sectors Top $2 Trillion” over the four years since 2007. (“This over $2 trillion total does not include nuclear, ‘clean’ coal or CCS, nor biofuels from food or agricultural sources, which we consider unsustainable.”)

None of this is intended to suggest that we can or should try to adapt to such a system to the point where we won't need to go back to government of, by, and for the people. After all, the more aggressively a company focuses on profit at the expense of all else, the more wealthy and powerful it tends to become, which is why ExxonMobil, Wal-Mart, and the banks responsible for the current recession are among the biggest political powers in America today. We may have to work with some of them for a while, but not to the extent that it renders us unable to simultaneously work against the massive political power they wield. This power will be eroded naturally by declines in the oil supply, but we need to move that erosion along as quickly as possible while doing our best to ensure that the power vacuum is filled by the people (that is, by politicians who actually care what their constituents want), and not by another set of rapacious corporate overlords.

Comments

[dimidial.livejournal.com]

Love your site man keep up the good work