Late Preface
This is from September 15, 2008. It’s a bit old and contains some outdated information. The feelings I expressed in the first part will surely not change for many, many years, if ever.
The Post
Think back to The Incredibles, if you’ve seen it. The villain of the film creates a robot monster so large and strong that the only thing that can hurt it is itself. The villain loses control of the monster, and the heros have to use the monster against itself to defeat it.
This is the way business works in capitalist society. Small companies are easy prey for larger companies, and larger companies with their massive resources and redundant systems are nearly invincible… except by even larger companies.
Their only vulnerability, as recently exhibited by Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and even Merrill Lynch, is themselves. The United States, one of the largest companies of all, is rescuing (and essentially taking ownership of) the first two. Bank of America, another supermassive corporation, is purchasing (and therefore rescuing) the latter.
This is in some ways insanely bad, and in others, very good. When it comes to our financial security, our assets and debts, our credit and accumulated wealth, the security of these great behemoths is reassuring. However, if we feel that they are operating in a bad way, our tiny voices cannot be heard atop those pillars of industry. We are ants to them.
Actually, that is an imperfect metaphor. Ants work for their own colony. We work for the megacorporations. Even if you are not employed by Exxon Mobil, they get your money. Even if you avoid their gas stations. Even if you don’t drive. If you pay taxes, they receive some measure of your money through their subsidies. Ants are slaves to no one, while we are willing slaves to the masters of business. We fill their pockets, buy their yachts, and pay their country club dues.
The great decision makers at these failed companies are going to receive wonderful incentives or severance packages for their trouble. They will in no way be punished for their gigantic failures. They will be rewarded. We will fund those rewards.
We have one means and one means only of enacting any change in the world at all. We must vote. I mean this both at the polls and at the register. We vote with our ballot and with our dollar. If we like a politician, we need to vote for him or her. If we dislike a politician, we must vote against him or her. If we like a product or company, we vote for it with our purchase. If we dislike it, we vote by NOT spending that dollar.
My wife and I have gathered all the money we received as wedding gifts, and we are using it to stock our kitchen with quality cookware. We are making several votes at the same time through this process. We are buying things on ebay and at the salvation army. We are buying Le Creuset cookware, primarily, but we are only buying used pieces. We are voting for quality products. We are voting against mining by purchasing things that are not newly created. We are voting against China (as most newer products are made there). We are voting for ebay, which is kind of a bummer, because they’re investing so much money in killing craigslist. So we’re making a compromise there.
On great dilemma I have right now is our cable provider. We are currently voting for Comcast, and I am deeply dissatisfied with that choice. We are having signal problems, and the support that Comcast provides is, at best non-existent and at worst a complete waste of my time. I wasted an hour today waiting for and participating in an online chat with someone who spoke only in pasted phrases. There was a massive lag that made me think he could only be located on the other side of the planet somewhere. After literally an hour of waiting and typing and waiting, we still had not finished the identification process. It’s just outrageous.
And I don’t know what to do about it.