Coronavirus: Thread

[grarpamp]

Merging State and Corporate Power Is Not ‘Libertarian’

https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/dear-sean-hannity-cato-institute-merging-state-and-corporate-power-is-not-libertarian/
https://www.opensecrets.org/dark-money/basics
https://vocal.media/motivation/jordan-peterson-on-ideological-possession

https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/corporate-or-state-rule-vaccine-passports-coming-to-american-neighborhoods-either-way/
https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/covid-propaganda-roundup-cnn-says-the-carrot-is-no-longer-going-to-work-dont-get-the-vaccine-you-cant-go-to-the-supermarket/


“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is
a merger of state and corporate power.”

-Benito Mussolini

Like a child with spaghetti, the US corporate state made a mess of
libertarian ideology.

Other Western political cultures do not recognize the exceedingly
awkward and cowardly simplistic US version of corporate
libertarianism, which goes something like:

    Public domain bad; private domain good
    Competition bad; monopoly good
    Government bad; corporations good

Unlike some ideologies, libertarianism need not necessarily deal in
the black and white. As humans gifted with free thought and the
capacity for reason, we should be also capable of nuance. Each of
these propositions can be true in any given context:

    The corporation can be an effective organizational structure for
facilitating efficient economic relations between willing partners

AND/OR

    Left unchecked, the corporate machine will merge with the state
into a rent-seeking, anti-libertarian foe to human prosperity

… In short, the corporation, like fire, makes for a useful tool and a
dangerous enemy.

The executives of any given corporation are tasked with maximizing
profit above all. Public executives, in fact, have a legally
enforceable fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit as their
primary function. In and of itself, this is a morality-free
imperative, neither inherently right or wrong; it is only the nature
of the beast.

What does a corporate entity have to say of human liberty? Nothing –
not now, not ever. Profiteering is the ethos, nothing more.

If maximal profits are to be made in a free society, so be it; if
maximum fortune is to be mined from a sea of enslaved zombies, just as
well – it’s all the same to the shareholders.

Given those machinations, what happens when the corporation becomes
the state? When the profit-seeking imperative of corporate enterprise
merges with the control-seeking imperative of government?

Here, in 2021, the interests of the state and corporations converge –
so that it doesn’t matter which entity forces the adoption of “vaccine
passports”:

    “At least 17 [US] companies or nonprofits are developing websites
or apps that might be used by sporting venues, restaurants and other
businesses seeking to keep their customers and employees safe,
according to… the executive director of the Health Innovation
Alliance, a broad coalition of health providers, tech companies,
employers and insurers.”

Ask yourself: if you can’t work, send your kids to school, fly on an
airplane, cross borders, or even potentially shop at grocery stores
without a “vaccine passport” (as CNN recently suggested), does it
matter whether the state or a private corporation develops the app and
runs the program?

The end result is the same: a dystopian hellscape void of any
meaningful human freedom.
The Modern US ‘Free Market’ Is Delusional Fantasy

What fruits does a system bear when it allows the corporate state to
rig the rules of the game in its favor? Runaway profits for a small
handful of politically-connected conglomerates inconsistent with the
growth of the overall economy.

In 1994, Congress passed the multinational trade agreement NAFTA that
essentially allowed multinational corporations to rig the economy in
their favor (incidentally, which Donald Trump ran in opposition to in
2016 and won on).

As the graph above indicates, corporate profits skyrocketed precisely
at this moment in history while once-great American industries,
especially manufacturing in the Midwest, atrophied:

    “Negotiated behind closed doors with hundreds of official
corporate advisors, NAFTA was radically different than past trade
deals that focused on traditional trade matters, like cutting border
taxes. Instead, most of NAFTA’s provisions grant new powers and
privileges to multinational corporations… The U.S. government has
certified more than 980,000 American jobs… NAFTA has also lowered U.S.
wages, increased inequality, and hurt U.S. manufacturing and wiped out
small farmers in all 50 states.”

Meanwhile…

The slow death of the American middle class

No one you know – in your town, in your family — voted for NAFTA; the
decisions were rendered by Washington officials whose campaigns are
funded by the very same interests (often in secret via “Dark Money”)
that stood to benefit from its passage.

So they did what their donors wanted them to do.

The last 30 years was no “libertarian” victory; it was a huge win,
rather, for an offshore oligarchic elite with no allegiance to
American prosperity — other than as a vehicle to parasitically
generate more wealth for itself — or to any conception of  a “free
market.”
The Fundamental Libertarian Tenant: ‘[Political] Power Corrupts,
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely’

It turns out, when a population hands over the reins of power to a
handful of unelected elite, they abuse it. Such was the case in the
waning days of the Roman Empire, of the Bolsheviks and Maoists of
communist fame, and the of petty tyrants of history from Iraq’s Saddam
Hussein to the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte.

In this narrow regard, the espoused political ideology of decadent and
corrupt power structures, whether socialist or Ba’athist, runs the
gamete and is ultimately irrelevant.

Markets are tools a free people use to generate abundance and to
organically allocate finite resources most efficiently based on merit
and effort — not unknowable, mystical entities to be worshipped as
deities.

Liberate Yourself From Ideological Possession

Jordan Peterson on a phenomenon he coined “ideological possession“:

    “About the necessity for consistency in ideology, it’s like, I’m
not hearing what you think. I’m hearing how you’re able to represent
the ideology you were taught… I could replace you with someone else
who thinks the same way. And that means you’re not here… And that’s
the pathology of ideological possession… It’s like, why have a
conversation? I already know where you stand on things.”

Refuse the role of playing anyone’s fool – least of all, for the sake
of Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos.