"And who will be there to help corporate America enact its plainly monstrous anti-human agenda? Well, Christian nationalists and racists, of course."
let's not forget about the Mormons, with their billions of dollars in real estate and equity holdings, who are *not* Christians (they're racist cultists who basically believe in aliens), who've captured the FBI, and literally refer to their magical "clean" holy utopia as Zion. huh! what a weird weird coincidence!
it's so interesting to me that every analysis about what's happening in the US right now conveniently forgets to include these guys. they've infiltrated social media (the tradwife trend, to name one example), every branch of government, and don't have to pay a single dollar in taxes on their massive pile of hoarded wealth. failing to include them by name when we're describing the mechanisms behind the downfall of American society into this uber-capitalist hellscape might be one of the best branding campaigns i've witnessed in modern history.
"In recent weeks, an ongoing procession of companies—Trader Joe’s, Amazon, Starbucks, SpaceX—have begun to argue in court that the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional, and should, presumably, be wiped off the face of the earth."
I am wondering what would happen if one embraced their arguments and then applied some of those same arguments to show that corporations (corporate personhood, limited liability) are unconstitutional.
Limited liability runs against all libertarian principles.
Jesus and Ayn Rand....they have to be kidding. Where was that match made? By Reverend Sun Myung Moon at one of his mass weddings in Madison Square Garden?
Which is ironic, when you consider how many people are completely bilked by religious cults and grifting televangelists.
We had a squirrel in our block, who lost his tail, probably to a dog. It didn't keep him from climbing trees and telephone poles, eating nuts, running along telephone wires, and doing squirrel stuff. We named him "Stubby." He was a fine squirrel.
Business interests vigorously opposed the passage of the NLRA in 1935. As labor law prof Karl Klare pointed out long ago, this "massive employer resistance was met by one of the most dramatic strike waves in the annals of labor, culminating in the 'sit-down' movement and the rise of the
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)." The 1935 law was the Wagner Act, and it has been so profoundly declawed over the decades by Congress and the federal courts that one wonders what would happen if the NLRB disappeared. Our labor laws protect worker interests just enough to keep overheated passions on the back burner. The truth is, the NLRB has protected employer interests for decades. If it goes, then what? What makes Trader Joe's think its angry employees won't still demand to be recognized as a union? Who needs an NLRB-run election? Who needs an NLRB to tell you what you can and can't demand to bargain over? Who needs an NLRB to tell you when you can go on strike and when you can't? This isn't what I hope for. I am not radical or optimistic enough for that. But there IS a history of the laboring classes saying "Enough!" (Here's the Klare piece: https://repository.library.northeastern.edu/files/neu:332779/fulltext.pdf)
Absolutely. I hope that you'll someday cover your thoughts on WHY people vote to support this garbage. And what to do about it. It baffles me that people whose loved ones died fighting the fascists are now drooling over the swastikas and pretending that Trump is God.
People will bow and scrape to Trump in Canada, which is even more bonkers. What is this going to get you in Canada exactly? He can't run for office here, and Poilievre doesn't like him at all!
Very true. I would add that with the number of counter-majoritarian institutions in the US, Republicans don't always need 51% to enact their will. The book Tyranny of the Minority gives a good overview of these institutions and their effects
Also, they're locked out of Social Security. Likewise, domestic workers.
When the new deal was implemented, these workers were largely black. Now they're largely Hispanic. Funny how that carveout precisely targeted minorities both at the time and continuing for almost a century. ~~but we needed it to get southerners on board~~
Anyway, where's a liberal to explain why compromise is necessary and good. Gotta make sure we reify white nationalism a little as a treat, with our social legislation. God forbid we say no to evil EVERY time.
"Capital is more radical than any protesters in the street will ever be, because it is not burdened by having a heart.": But don't lose sight of the fact that capital, in this context, means the people who control these corporations, people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Howard Schultz. These people don't have to behave this way. They choose it freely (and, I suspect, maliciously, bolstered by a preposterous presumption that they're our natural superiors).
Homo sapiens is failing as a social species, in that it's failing to suppress such selfish dominators. Prehistorically, it seems likely that such people were effectively suppressed by shaming, shunning, and, as a last resort, execution. (See anthropologist Christopher Boehm's book "Moral origins" for an introduction to the evidence for this claim.) However, these mechanisms are much less effective in modern populations. Unless more effective mechanisms are implemented quickly and widely - which seems very unlikely - disastrous consequences for all of humanity are practically inevitable. Indeed, such consequences may already be unavoidable via climate change, a phenomenon largely driven by the selfish dominators who control the fossil-fuels industry.
The documentary THE CORPORATION made the point about the sociopathic nature of corporations 20 years ago, but I agree that the alliance with the rest of the contemporary right wing really seems to drive it home. https://thecorporation.com/
Thanks for the link. I know these are old ideas, but I came to this only more recently:
Evolutionary psychology can explain how behaviour such as friendship, gratitude, sympathy, trust, guilt, etc can be explained as adaptations to promote cooperation in kinship systems.
Cultural evolution (see eg Henrich "The WEIRDEST people in the world") can explain how institutions such as the religion, markets, social norms, etc help to scale cooperation in larger systems such as nation states.
Now we are facing the problem of how human civilization can survive on the planet. It is not clear what the next step after biological and cultural evolution should be.
Biological evolution is two slow and cultural evolution also seems stuck or even to go in the wrong direction. Is there a way to get cultural evolution back on track? How?
I dont know the answer, but it seems to me the biggest question of our times.
One aspect of this question is corporate personhood and limited liability. Corporations are by design immoral, or sociopathic, to use another word.
In fact, corporations have to compete against each other to be effective. Cooperation between corporations leads to monopolies and corruption.
So at the same time when we need to find new ways to solve collective (and global) action problems, the most impactful institutions we have, multinational corporations, are unable by design to cooperate.
Go to _Tablet_ and read the essay "Krugman v. Krugman" published yesterday (2/20) comparing his opinions on the economy of immigration 2006 v. 2024. And then tell me which Krugman is right.
"And who will be there to help corporate America enact its plainly monstrous anti-human agenda? Well, Christian nationalists and racists, of course."
let's not forget about the Mormons, with their billions of dollars in real estate and equity holdings, who are *not* Christians (they're racist cultists who basically believe in aliens), who've captured the FBI, and literally refer to their magical "clean" holy utopia as Zion. huh! what a weird weird coincidence!
it's so interesting to me that every analysis about what's happening in the US right now conveniently forgets to include these guys. they've infiltrated social media (the tradwife trend, to name one example), every branch of government, and don't have to pay a single dollar in taxes on their massive pile of hoarded wealth. failing to include them by name when we're describing the mechanisms behind the downfall of American society into this uber-capitalist hellscape might be one of the best branding campaigns i've witnessed in modern history.
"In recent weeks, an ongoing procession of companies—Trader Joe’s, Amazon, Starbucks, SpaceX—have begun to argue in court that the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional, and should, presumably, be wiped off the face of the earth."
I am wondering what would happen if one embraced their arguments and then applied some of those same arguments to show that corporations (corporate personhood, limited liability) are unconstitutional.
Limited liability runs against all libertarian principles.
Jesus and Ayn Rand....they have to be kidding. Where was that match made? By Reverend Sun Myung Moon at one of his mass weddings in Madison Square Garden?
People will believe anything if it benefits them, even that there's a squirrel god. (Ratatoskr)
Which is ironic, when you consider how many people are completely bilked by religious cults and grifting televangelists.
We had a squirrel in our block, who lost his tail, probably to a dog. It didn't keep him from climbing trees and telephone poles, eating nuts, running along telephone wires, and doing squirrel stuff. We named him "Stubby." He was a fine squirrel.
I would have liked to have taken him in as a pet.
Business interests vigorously opposed the passage of the NLRA in 1935. As labor law prof Karl Klare pointed out long ago, this "massive employer resistance was met by one of the most dramatic strike waves in the annals of labor, culminating in the 'sit-down' movement and the rise of the
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)." The 1935 law was the Wagner Act, and it has been so profoundly declawed over the decades by Congress and the federal courts that one wonders what would happen if the NLRB disappeared. Our labor laws protect worker interests just enough to keep overheated passions on the back burner. The truth is, the NLRB has protected employer interests for decades. If it goes, then what? What makes Trader Joe's think its angry employees won't still demand to be recognized as a union? Who needs an NLRB-run election? Who needs an NLRB to tell you what you can and can't demand to bargain over? Who needs an NLRB to tell you when you can go on strike and when you can't? This isn't what I hope for. I am not radical or optimistic enough for that. But there IS a history of the laboring classes saying "Enough!" (Here's the Klare piece: https://repository.library.northeastern.edu/files/neu:332779/fulltext.pdf)
Absolutely. I hope that you'll someday cover your thoughts on WHY people vote to support this garbage. And what to do about it. It baffles me that people whose loved ones died fighting the fascists are now drooling over the swastikas and pretending that Trump is God.
People will bow and scrape to Trump in Canada, which is even more bonkers. What is this going to get you in Canada exactly? He can't run for office here, and Poilievre doesn't like him at all!
Very true. I would add that with the number of counter-majoritarian institutions in the US, Republicans don't always need 51% to enact their will. The book Tyranny of the Minority gives a good overview of these institutions and their effects
RE: Musk and farm workers. Farm workers do not have any recourse to the NLRB. Musk or no Musk, they are pre-fucked.
Also, they're locked out of Social Security. Likewise, domestic workers.
When the new deal was implemented, these workers were largely black. Now they're largely Hispanic. Funny how that carveout precisely targeted minorities both at the time and continuing for almost a century. ~~but we needed it to get southerners on board~~
Anyway, where's a liberal to explain why compromise is necessary and good. Gotta make sure we reify white nationalism a little as a treat, with our social legislation. God forbid we say no to evil EVERY time.
"Capital is more radical than any protesters in the street will ever be, because it is not burdened by having a heart.": But don't lose sight of the fact that capital, in this context, means the people who control these corporations, people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Howard Schultz. These people don't have to behave this way. They choose it freely (and, I suspect, maliciously, bolstered by a preposterous presumption that they're our natural superiors).
Homo sapiens is failing as a social species, in that it's failing to suppress such selfish dominators. Prehistorically, it seems likely that such people were effectively suppressed by shaming, shunning, and, as a last resort, execution. (See anthropologist Christopher Boehm's book "Moral origins" for an introduction to the evidence for this claim.) However, these mechanisms are much less effective in modern populations. Unless more effective mechanisms are implemented quickly and widely - which seems very unlikely - disastrous consequences for all of humanity are practically inevitable. Indeed, such consequences may already be unavoidable via climate change, a phenomenon largely driven by the selfish dominators who control the fossil-fuels industry.
Bummer that Xians don’t believe in “tikkun olam “…
Vote Trump
The documentary THE CORPORATION made the point about the sociopathic nature of corporations 20 years ago, but I agree that the alliance with the rest of the contemporary right wing really seems to drive it home. https://thecorporation.com/
Thanks for the link. I know these are old ideas, but I came to this only more recently:
Evolutionary psychology can explain how behaviour such as friendship, gratitude, sympathy, trust, guilt, etc can be explained as adaptations to promote cooperation in kinship systems.
Cultural evolution (see eg Henrich "The WEIRDEST people in the world") can explain how institutions such as the religion, markets, social norms, etc help to scale cooperation in larger systems such as nation states.
Now we are facing the problem of how human civilization can survive on the planet. It is not clear what the next step after biological and cultural evolution should be.
Biological evolution is two slow and cultural evolution also seems stuck or even to go in the wrong direction. Is there a way to get cultural evolution back on track? How?
I dont know the answer, but it seems to me the biggest question of our times.
One aspect of this question is corporate personhood and limited liability. Corporations are by design immoral, or sociopathic, to use another word.
In fact, corporations have to compete against each other to be effective. Cooperation between corporations leads to monopolies and corruption.
So at the same time when we need to find new ways to solve collective (and global) action problems, the most impactful institutions we have, multinational corporations, are unable by design to cooperate.
Buddy what you're looking for here is dialectical materialism, not "cultural evolution"
I dont agree.
Go to _Tablet_ and read the essay "Krugman v. Krugman" published yesterday (2/20) comparing his opinions on the economy of immigration 2006 v. 2024. And then tell me which Krugman is right.