On 23/01/2018 11:00, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
Equally as bad is the fact that, in these same countries, large corporations have become so powerful that, by contributing equally to the campaigns of each major political party, they’re able to demand rewards following the elections, that not only guarantee them funds from the public coffers, but protect them against any possible prosecution as a result of this form of bribery.
There is in fact a negative relationship between political contributions and above market profits. This suggests that when politicians want some contributions, they threaten to harm a business, and then get paid to leave them alone. Thus, for example, the upsurge in political correctness, political censorship, and massive political contributions by silicon valley corporations reflects the end of the Silicon Valley exemption. Silicon valley used to be able to get away with meritocracy, unlike the rest of America, but now the eye of Sauron has fallen upon it. We would expect this to decrease, rather than increase, the profitability of Silicon Valley, and that indeed is what has happened. A pretty good example of big corporations doing evil was Transpacific Partnership: https://blog.jim.com/politics/trump-is-on-the-ball/ The Transpacific Partnership was not so much a free trade agreement as a system of economic regulation by the “International Community”. Free Trade for corporations big enough to own a skyscraper in a major city and fill it full of lawyers. Lesser businesses would find themselves criminals because of a thousand pages of regulation that no one reads and no one understands, least of all those enforcing it. The practical consequence of the Transpacific Partnership would have been regulation by far away bureaucrats rather than near at hand bureaucrats. Now arguably this would benefit corporations who are big enough to afford skyscrapers full of lawyers at the expense of smaller corporations, but it is mighty obvious that the chief beneficiaries would have been "the international community", rather than evil giant corporations.