#Political Influence of Corporations

[omegaphilosophia]

The Harmful Impacts of the Profit Motive on Society

The profit motive, while often driving innovation and economic growth, can harm society in various ways when it is prioritized over ethical and social considerations. Here’s how the unchecked profit motive can have negative impacts:

1. Exploitation of Workers and Resources

Labor Exploitation: When profit becomes the main objective, companies may underpay workers, push excessive hours, or disregard workplace safety to cut costs, leading to poor working conditions, low wages, and limited job security.

Environmental Degradation: To minimize costs, profit-driven industries may exploit natural resources unsustainably, leading to deforestation, pollution, and a significant ecological footprint that can harm biodiversity and human health.

2. Compromised Product and Service Quality

Reduced Quality and Safety: The focus on profit often leads companies to reduce product quality, cut corners, or neglect safety standards to reduce expenses. This can lead to consumer harm, such as when products are hazardous, or healthcare services are inadequate.

Planned Obsolescence: Many companies design products with a limited lifespan to ensure repeat purchases, resulting in waste and forcing consumers to spend more frequently to replace items.

3. Increased Inequality

Wealth Concentration: The profit motive often drives wealth to those at the top, leading to income inequality. Wealthy individuals and corporations have more economic and political influence, which can marginalize the needs of lower-income populations.

Limited Access to Basic Services: When essential services, such as healthcare, education, and housing, are profit-driven, they may become unaffordable or inaccessible to those in need, exacerbating social inequality.

4. Erosion of Social Values

Undermining Public Interest: When companies and industries prioritize profit over public welfare, they may lobby against regulations designed to protect the public, such as environmental protections or labor laws, which can harm society at large.

Consumerism and Materialism: The profit motive fuels consumerism, encouraging people to equate happiness and success with material possessions. This can erode values like community, sustainability, and personal fulfillment, leading to overconsumption and societal discontent.

5. Health Risks and Misinformation

Unethical Marketing Practices: Companies may exploit consumer vulnerabilities to boost sales, promoting unhealthy foods, addictive products, or misleading information to maximize profit. This can contribute to public health crises, such as obesity, addiction, and misinformation.

Healthcare Disparities: In profit-driven healthcare systems, medical decisions may prioritize financial incentives over patient care, leading to unnecessary treatments, inflated costs, or a lack of care for those unable to pay, worsening health disparities.

6. Weakening of Democracy

Political Influence and Lobbying: Profit-driven entities often use wealth to influence legislation and policies that favor corporate interests over public good, which can lead to deregulation, tax benefits, and weakened accountability.

Reduced Government Revenue: When corporations avoid taxes or lobby for lower tax rates, it reduces government revenue, limiting funds available for public services like education, infrastructure, and social safety nets that benefit society as a whole.

7. Environmental and Climate Harm

Climate Change Acceleration: Profit-driven industries often prioritize short-term gains over long-term environmental sustainability. Fossil fuel companies, for example, may prioritize profit despite the known consequences of climate change, worsening environmental challenges for future generations.

Resource Scarcity: Unsustainable profit-focused practices, such as overfishing, deforestation, and pollution, deplete natural resources and harm ecosystems, making it harder for future generations to sustain their way of life.

While profit can drive innovation and economic growth, an unregulated profit motive can lead to exploitation, environmental harm, inequality, and a decline in public welfare. Balancing the profit motive with ethical considerations and social responsibility is essential for creating a sustainable and equitable society that prioritizes both economic prosperity and the common good.

[bouncinghedgehog]

Homelessness

[stephen-barry]

The state of Florida's voter information page was down... on Election Day...

I'm sure that's merely a coincidence.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

 The real choice isn’t “pragmatism” or “idealism.” It’s either allowing these trends to worsen – destroying what’s left of our democracy and turning our economy into even more of a playground for big corporations, Wall Street, and billionaires – or reversing them. And the only pragmatic way of reversing them is through a “political revolution” that mobilizes millions of Americans. 

Robert Reich (via azspot)

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 2, 2024

On February 25, 1901, financier J. P. Morgan’s men filed the paperwork to incorporate a new iron and steel trust, and over the weekend, businessmen waited to see what was coming. Five days later, on March 2, the announcement came: J. P. Morgan was overseeing the combination of companies that produced two thirds of the nation’s steel into the United States Steel Corporation. It was capitalized at $1.4 billion, which at the time was almost three times more than the federal government’s annual budget.  

While the stock market was abuzz with news of the nation’s first billion-dollar corporation, Vice President–elect Theodore Roosevelt was on his way from New York to Washington, D.C., where he and his family arrived at 5:00 in the evening. The train was an hour behind schedule because the crowds coming to see the upcoming inauguration, scheduled for Monday, March 4, 1901, had slowed travel into Washington. 

Two days later, President William McKinley took the oath of office for the second time, and Roosevelt became vice president.

McKinley was a champion of big business and believed the role of government was to support industry, dismissing growing demands from workers, farmers, and entrepreneurs for the government to level the economic playing field that had tilted so extraordinarily toward a few industry leaders. McKinley had won the hard-fought election of 1896 handily, but by 1900, Republicans were so concerned about the growing demand for reform that party leaders put Roosevelt, who had won a reputation for standing up to business interests, on the ticket, at least in part because they hoped to silence him there.

Roosevelt hoped he could promote reform from the vice presidency, but he quickly discovered that he couldn’t accomplish much of anything. His only official duty was to preside over the Senate, which would not convene until December. He was so bored he asked the chief justice of the Supreme Court if it would be unseemly for him to enroll in law school to finish his degree. (Horrified, the justice offered to supervise Roosevelt’s studies himself.)

But then, in September, an unemployed steelworker assassinated McKinley, and Roosevelt became president. “I told McKinley it was a mistake to nominate that wild man at Philadelphia,” one of McKinley’s aides said. “I told him what would happen if he should die. Now look. That damned cowboy is president of the United States.” 

Two months later, on November 13, J. P. Morgan and railroad magnates brought together the nation’s main railroad interests, which had been warring with each other, into a new conglomerate called the Northern Securities Company. Even the staunchly big business Chicago Tribune was taken aback: “Never have interests so enormous been brought under one management,” its editor wrote. 

Midwestern governors, whose constituents depended on the railroads to get their crops to market, suggested that their legislatures would find a way to prohibit such a powerful combination. Northern Securities Company officials retorted that they would simply keep all business transactions and operations secret. When Roosevelt gave his first message to Congress in December, industrialists watched to see what the “damned cowboy” would say about their power over the government. 

They were relieved. Roosevelt said the government should start cleaning up factories and limiting the working hours of women and children, and that it should reserve natural resources for everyone rather than allow them to be exploited by greedy businessmen. 

But Roosevelt did not oppose the new huge combinations. He simply wanted the government to supervise and control corporate combinations, preventing criminality in the business world as it did in the streets. He asked businessmen only for transparency. Once the government actually knew what businesses were up to, he said, it could consider regulation or taxation to protect the public interest. 

Senators and businessmen who had worried that the cowboy president would slash at the trusts breathed a sigh of relief that all he wanted was “transparency.” According to the Chicago Tribune, the “grave and reverend and somewhat plutocratic Senators immediately admitted in the most delighted fashion that the young and supposedly impetuous President had discussed the trust question with rare discrimination.” 

But they were wrong to think Roosevelt did not intend to reduce the power of big business. In early January 1902, Minnesota sued to stop the Northern Securities Company from organizing on the grounds that such a combination violated Minnesota law. While the Supreme Court dithered over whether or not it could rule on the case, the Roosevelt administration put the federal government out in front of the issue. In February, Roosevelt’s attorney general told newspapers that the administration believed the formation of the Northern Securities Company violated the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act and that he would be filing a suit to keep it from organizing.

Businessmen were aghast, not only because Roosevelt was going after a business combination but also because he had acted without consulting Wall Street. When J. P. Morgan complained that he had not been informed, Roosevelt coolly told him that that was the whole point. “If we have done anything wrong,” said the astonished Morgan, “send your man [the attorney general] to my man [one of his lawyers] and they can fix it up.” The president declined. “We don’t want to fix it up,” explained the attorney general. “We want to stop it.” 

“Criticism of President Roosevelt’s action was heard on every side,” reported the Boston Globe. “Some of the principal financiers said he had dealt a serious blow to the financial securities of the country.” For his part, Roosevelt was unconcerned by the criticism. “If the law has not been violated,” he announced, “no harm can come from the proposed legal action.”  

In late February, the Supreme Court decided it would not hear the Minnesota case; on March 10, the United States sued to stop the organization of the Northern Securities Company.

In August 1902, Roosevelt toured New England and the Midwest to rally support for his attack on the Northern Securities Company. He told audiences that he was not trying to destroy corporations but rather wanted to make them act in the public interest. He demanded a “square deal” for everyone. As the Boston Globe put it: “‘Justice for all alike—a square deal for every man, great or small, rich or poor,’ is the Roosevelt ideal to be attained by the framing and the administration of the law. And he would tell you that that means Mr Morgan and Mr Rockefeller [sic] as well as the poor fellow who cannot pay his rent.” 

In 1904 the Supreme Court ruled that the Northern Securities Company was an illegal monopoly and that it must be dissolved, and by 1912, Roosevelt had come to believe that a strong federal government was the only way for citizens to maintain control over corporations, which he saw as the inevitable outcome of the industrial economy. He had no patience for those who hoped to stop such combinations by passing laws against them. Instead, he believed the American people must create a strong federal government that could exert public control over corporations.

In a famous speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, in 1912, he called for a “new nationalism.”

“The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being,” he said. He warned that “[t]here can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains…. We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know…whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public.”

Roosevelt had come to believe that a strong government must regulate business. “The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power,” he said. 

After all, he said, “[t]he object of government is the welfare of the people.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[thewordenreport]

Penn police violently manhandled the suspect who allegedly murdered the health insurance company CEO. This was done in front of the media. Hidden corporate taskmasters of local police departments contrary to American democracy?

[cidthecoatrack-blog]

I know this is a pretty obvious observation, and yet...

So the whole Disney v DeSantis thing. Like... DeSantis knows thay he just committed political suicide, right? Nevermind the fascism. Nevermind donors fleeing him. Nevermind congresspeople refusing to back him. Nevermind the public outcry. Nevermind the outright stupidity. Nevermind how stupid it is to go against your state's biggest and most popular employer.

It's DISNEY. When it comes time for DeSantis to run for ANYTHING - president, Governor, local pta, anything - you don't think Disney's lobbying arm, the thing thay has DEFINED COPYRIGHT LAW FOR THE ENTIRE COUNTRY, isn't going to absolutely EVISCERATE him? They will throw so much money against him that not only will his loss be embarrassingly lopsided, it will be the literal end of his political career in any shape or form.

It doesn't matter how things go with the tax district. It doesn't matter how the lawsuits go. He pissed off The Mouse. He is a dead man walking.

[duncans-idahoe]

Yeah I believe in democracy… but America IS NOT and HAS NEVER been a true democracy

Democracy isn’t the problem… the American government is

[myberndpulch]

✌Who Owns the Neoconservatives and the Deep State? A Comprehensive Analysis

Symbolic Photo The terms neoconservatives (neocons) and deep state describe influential forces in U.S. policy-making. Neocons promote interventionist foreign policies to preserve American global dominance, while the deep state encompasses a network of bureaucrats, intelligence agencies, and corporations operating behind the visible government. Ownership and influence over these entities are…

[omegaphilosophia]

The Impact of Extreme Wealth on Society: Unraveling the Complex Web

In the 21st century, the issue of wealth inequality has reached unprecedented levels. The ultra-rich, a minuscule fraction of the global population, possess a staggering amount of wealth, often equivalent to that of entire countries. While wealth accumulation isn't inherently problematic, the concentration of extreme wealth in the hands of a few has far-reaching consequences for society. In this blog post, we'll explore how the ultra-rich have contributed to many of the problems we face today.

Wealth Inequality: Perhaps the most obvious consequence of extreme wealth is the exacerbation of wealth inequality. The gap between the richest and the rest has grown to alarming proportions. This inequality can lead to social unrest and hinder economic growth by limiting opportunities for the majority.

Economic Disparities: Extreme wealth often translates into disproportionate economic power. This can result in monopolistic practices, which stifle competition and innovation. Smaller businesses struggle to compete, leading to fewer choices for consumers.

Social Issues: Wealth inequality contributes to a host of social issues, including reduced access to education, healthcare, and housing for marginalized communities. It also perpetuates cycles of poverty that are difficult to escape.

Power and Influence: The ultra-rich have outsized political influence. They can shape public policies to their advantage, often at the expense of the common good. This undermines the democratic principles upon which many societies are built.

Corporate Dominance: Many of the wealthiest individuals are tied to large corporations. Their influence over these entities can lead to decisions that prioritize profits over environmental responsibility or workers' rights.

Political Lobbying: Lobbying efforts by the ultra-rich can influence legislation in their favor. This can result in tax breaks for the wealthy, further exacerbating wealth inequality.

Tax Evasion: Some of the ultra-rich engage in tax evasion schemes, depriving governments of revenue needed for essential public services. This places a heavier burden on ordinary taxpayers.

Public Policy: The ultra-rich can use their influence to push for policies that benefit them financially, such as reduced regulations or favorable trade agreements. These policies may not align with the best interests of society as a whole.

Poverty Alleviation: While philanthropy is common among the wealthy, it often falls short of addressing systemic issues. Charity, while commendable, cannot replace comprehensive government programs aimed at poverty alleviation.

Social Responsibility: Extreme wealth can lead to a detachment from the daily struggles of ordinary people. This lack of empathy can hinder efforts to address pressing social and economic challenges.

The impact of extreme wealth on society is a multifaceted issue. While it's crucial to acknowledge the positive contributions of wealthy individuals, it's equally important to scrutinize the consequences of concentrated wealth and power. Addressing these issues requires thoughtful public policy, increased transparency, and a commitment to a more equitable society. By recognizing the challenges posed by extreme wealth, we can work towards a more just and inclusive future for all.

[bouncinghedgehog]

What kind of democracy do we want

[insightfultake]

The U.S. Election: Democracy for the Rich, A Farce for the Rest

As the United States prepares for yet another electoral contest, it’s easy to get caught up in the drama—the speeches, the debates, the controversies. But to truly understand what’s happening, we need to adopt a critical lens that cuts through the noise. Looking at the U.S. elections from a global perspective—specifically from India—reveals a different picture, one that goes beyond the personalities and the pageantry. It’s a picture of power, wealth, and the global order.

At its core, the U.S. election is a spectacle designed to reinforce a system of corporate dominance. The two dominant political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, may appear to be at odds on a few issues, but when it comes to the big questions—the economy, foreign policy, and military intervention—they largely serve the same masters: multinational corporations, defense contractors, and the ultra-wealthy. This is the real game. The winner of the election might get to wear the crown, but they are all part of the same royal court, bound by the same rules....Expand to read more

[townpostin]

Banna Gupta Represents Corporate Interests: BJP Leader Niraj Singh

BJP’s Niraj Singh accuses Health Minister of neglecting public healthcare Key Points: • Health Minister Gupta criticized for MGM Hospital’s poor condition • Singh claims Gupta prioritizes corporate interests over public welfare • Debate sparked over VIP culture and healthcare management in Jamshedpur JAMSHEDPUR – BJP leader Niraj Singh accuses Jharkhand Health Minister Banna Gupta of prioritizing…

[msclaritea]

"I guess if I was the governor of Illinois @GovPritzker and my cousin was billionaire trans-identified James 'Jennifer' Pritzker, then I might also be pushing for the sterilization and maiming of more 'trans-kids. But unlike this latest tsunami of boys wanting to be girls, 'Jennifer' Pritzker was able to father 3 children before deciding womanhood was for right for him." Bourne, Twitter

[immaculatasknight]

The disaster that is Canada

[actual-nobody]

The One Political Issue That Unites All of Us