Feudalism Corporate-style

The US is leaving Afghanistan (too slowly), but just think of the profits big corporations can make on its most important export.

Really, there must be some way Pfizer, Novartis, etc, can profit on Afghan opium (Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's crop). Big corporations increasingly dominate world trade. They're pressing globally for patent rights even to basic food crops. Patents as monopoly grants, provide corporations monopoly profits.

Corporations promote war, any war: they can make obscene amounts on it. They have a near monopsony, as well: the US Defense Department; it buys more from defense corporations than all other buyers combined, close to a definition of the word, monopsony.

The US strides, giant-like, across the world--trampling, too. But it, and almost every other nation, is bowing to a multiplicity of fiefdoms called corporations.

When the Roman Empire was self-destructing in the late 300's to late 400's, it was ruled by a class that created the model for what came after: Roman Senators lorded it over huge latifundias, with estates from Gaul to North Africa, all manned by hundreds to thousands of serfs and slaves. Senators also provided the bureaucratic skills to run the Empire, usually to their personal advantage. Over time, the Senators' holdings grew as there became fewer of them (small families), but then shrank as the Empire withered: losing estates in North Africa, for example, when the Vandals took over there--due to incompetence and rivalry between Imperial services.

But what prevailed became the feudalism of the Medieval period, dominated by Germanic conquerors--rampaging hordes that settled down to enjoy their pillage in one place.

Something similar is happening today. Corporations are the new Senatorial latifundias, spreading their thirst for profits worldwide, but in their own niches. We have feudalism of food production by Monsanto, or of pharmaceuticals by Glaxo-Smith-Kline, or of oil and coal production by the Koch brothers.

Workers are treated increasingly as serfs, as unions are driven out, workers are laid off, wages are cut and the remaining employees work harder in fear for their jobs.

Now, with the secret negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the ascendancy of these corporations lurches forward. Only "stakeholders" (not the public or Congress) are permitted to know what the negotiations entail, but leaked accounts indicate that corporations will be able to sue to block environmental and labor laws, expand patent and copyright rights, and generally override sovereign nations' regulations, as long as they can claim their profitability/interest is threatened.

Corporate feudalism is like the Roman Senators, who held life and death power over their 'dependents.' But once the nation-state is pushed aside, will there just be rampaging corporations? No governments will be able to protect the people from the corporate hordes.

It's Not Working!

The vaunted American system of politics.

We have endemic and pervasive gun violence in the cities, and frequent massacres of innocents by crazies in the suburbs, and make it easier to buy and keep guns than any other "developed" country. And yet, the Senate can't even get to a vote on expanded background checks (supported by about 90% of Americans), because the murderous, corporate NRA cows most Republicans and enough Democrats.

Immigration reform may be stopped in its tracks for the same kind of reason: a small minority represented by a disproportionate number of Senators and/or Representatives, will try to block any immigration reform bill because, in this case, majorities in the South and the under-populated southern mid-section of the nation, are paranoid xenophobes.

On the other hand, Monsanto can insert special language in the Food bill, privileging GMO's, in what has been unofficially labeled "the Monsanto Protection Act." It passed and Obama signed it.

Finally, we have a Democratic President who won reelection championing defense of Social Security and Medicare, legacy programs of Democratic Presidents, but now he attacks them in the name of reform. Obama proposes to cut benefits through indirection: changing the price index used to calculate Social Security benefits, and by cutting payments to providers like doctors and hospitals, to "reform" Medicare.

Social Security does not contribute to government deficits: over the years, Congress and Presidents have borrowed trillions from its trust fund to pay the bills, and now it needs to be paid back. It has pre-funded the bulge in senior boomers, but 'bidness' wants to get its greedy little hands on those funds. Social Security won't need additional funding until the 2030's. Obama's "reform" is splitting his party, and he still won't get Republicans to support it.

A better case can be made for reform of Medicare/Medicaid: to make medical care more efficient. The US shouldn't spend double what other countries pay for comparable medical care. A restructuring is in order, involving what is paid for: patient outcomes, or discrete tests and hours; drug prices should be negotiated, not monopoly prices and hospital fees need to reflect medical needs, not business priorities. Maybe that's what Obama has in mind.

The most positive aspect of Obama's retrograde offer: Republicans will defend both programs in order to attack him.

It seems that only through the courts, sometimes, can progress be realized, as in the Pennsylvania Judge who found that corporations could not claim proprietary secrets for fracking fluid. How long will that "anti-corporate" ruling last?

The Supreme Court may attempt to sidestep the same-sex marriage issue, yet it boosted corporate power in Citizens United when that wasn't even the intent of the suit.

Who rules? The 0.1% and the corporations they own, whom I've labeled "our Roman Senators", like the Selfish Senators of 5th Century Rome. Their influence may be even more pernicious.

The Stalemated State

Lobbies, and the corporations behind them, block almost all change in the US.

Back in the 1830's, de Tocqueville rhapsodized about how the new United States had groups organized wherever he went. He saw it as the blossoming of democracy.

Now, however, organization itself is big business. Lobbyists in the thousands insure that the powers-that-be maintain their monopoly-oligopoly, their stifling of innovation that might threaten a lock on their markets--as well as a government that caters to their interests and therefore discriminates against smaller, more nimble competitors.

The IMF recently held that subsidies for traditional energy companies (oil, coal, gas) were holding back the move to non-traditional sources (wind, solar, bio-fuels). Still, even the elite-led demand for reducing government expenditures hardly touches on those subsidies: billions a year to companies making billions in profits. In addition, thanks to people like VP Cheney, drilling companies are largely free of regulation. We still don't know what poisons frackers inject into the earth in order to force out oil or gas, because that's a "proprietary secret." Pennsylvania even gives frackers powers of eminent domain!

Chemical companies (mostly petroleum based) are also protected. Smaller competitors attempting to replace toxic materials like styrene with bio-based non-toxic materials are stymied: the EPA is not allowed to declare styrene's known carcinogenicity, let alone ban it, and similar hands off treatment is SOP for a whole raft of other chemicals. In addition, Monsanto succeeded in inserting language in the new food law that virtually exempts GMO's from regulation. Meanwhile, the FDA can't require them to be labeled as GMO's, either.

Big Pharma protects its monopoly patents world-wide, but especially in the US, and Medicare/Medicaid is required to buy drugs at inflated prices (often 10 times a possible generic); no negotiated prices are permitted.

So, it's not surprising that Congress, after much effort on the part of gun victims families, gun control advocates, governors and even the President, may or may not pass the most minimal of gun control measures: universal background checks, despite 90% support for it in most polls. Gun manufacturers have organized the NRA and now the even more militantly "pro-gun" Gun Buyers of America, to lobby all their captive Congressmen against any regulation except for militarizing the schools with subsidized armed guards (creating another subsidized market).

The ultimate subsidized market is Defense. Corporate contractors still get cost-plus contracts, still get reimbursed even for hotel taxes in Maryland--and then, Lockheed has the chutzpah to demand that Maryland reimburse it, too! And that's in addition to the huge subsidy derived from US insistence on maintaining hegemony worldwide.

The US is truly a corporate state wedded to outdated technologies, corporate behemoths and the greedy class, our Roman Senators, who own them. Stalemate will doom it, unless it and the corporations are able to transfer their dominance worldwide. That's why the Indian decision against Novartis is so important: the sclerotic American Empire is losing control.

Gay Marriage, Drones & Inequality

Social progress seems slow, but in societal terms it's probably moving about as fast as it can: acceptance of gays, even if the Supreme Court can't keep up with the changes in society, is lightning fast.

On the other hand, environmental progress is moving in reverse along with economic equality. War and instability have become more destructive, even if there is no "world war."

Post-Citizens United: corporatist conservatives must punch themselves with glee: successes small: sneaking through "the Monsanto protection act" in the Food bill, and big: persuading the chattering classes inside the Beltway that the deficit/debt is an urgent problem that only can be solved by cutting what they derisively call "entitlements," not subsidies to the burgeoning wealthy.

Our media is so skewed towards the agenda of the wealthy and corporations, that it doesn't seem absurd that we're slashing government spending when unemployment is far too high. Our media is more controlled by wealth and corporate interests than it was in Venezuela before Chavez. He opposed it with state-owned media, and selective de-licensing.

US media excoriated Chavez as a dictator, while he won landslides in at least five elections, elections certified by Carter as freer than the US.

Venezuela may have more democracy than we do, since Republicans work assiduously to deny the right to vote to likely opponents, and a Supreme Court Justice derides Voting Rights Act Section 5 as establishing voting rights as a "racial entitlement."

The US claims it's exceptional; it isn't, except in things we shouldn't crow about, like the highest per capita rate of incarceration, the most expensive and least effective health care system, a falling working wage, soaring inequality, and endemic violence fueled by our wide open "gun culture."

We don't, any longer, score high on educational attainment: almost every other OECD nation has higher college graduation rates: the US used to lead.

Our military is exceptional: the US has the world's most effective killing machine--long before we started using drones. But it still loses wars: Vietnam, Iraq (really), and now Afghanistan.

The size of our military is also exceptional, but that demonstrates another American failing: like North Korea, we spend more money on war-making than on any other "discretionary" government function--we substitute brute strength for sense. We value guns over children, even our own children (100+ days since Newtown and no new Federal gun control law). But the Bible is "brought to you by Walmart," an American company. Exceptional!

The American Empire hasn't lasted long; it's failing progressively and making enemies everywhere. Soon the muscle-bound US will be only the second wealthiest nation.

Targeting immigrants and homegrown terrorists with drones, disenfranchising minorities (those we haven't jailed) and the poor, the US is also becoming almost as authoritarian as China, our successful competitor.

The Paraguayan Model

On June 22nd, Paraguay quickly impeached its leftist President, Lugo, and installed vice President Franco (from a right of center party), as the new President. A month later, the new President's government pushed forward negotiations with Rio Tinto Alcan for building a huge aluminum plant on the Parana River. It offered $700 million in infrastructure to enable the plant's construction, and agreed to thirty years of subsidizing its electricity supply from its two hydroelectric facilities, enough power to provide electricity to 9.6 million people, while many Paraguayans go without. All this for 2,500 jobs at a cost of about $560,000/job up front..

Former President Lugo had blocked Rio Tinto.

The former President had also blocked Monsanto's application to plant GM. Franco approved it, meaning that large-scale agriculture will continue to dominate the country, in tandem with Monsanto; the majority of landless peasants will continue to be excluded from landownership.

CBS played up, however, Franco's claim of issuing 79 land titles to landless people in his first 15 days in office, while the former government issued only 3 in six months, but it was the dispute over land reform that did in the former President. He had favored land reform, but had been unable to implement it, because of opposition by large landowners, including foreign corporations. The opposition blamed President Lugo for a confrontation between police and land occupiers in which seven police and 11 occupying peasants died. Lugo was impeached by Congress one day and expelled from office by the Senate the next, giving him only two hours to defend himself.

Large multinational corporations benefited from the change in government almost immediately. At the same time, Latin America's Mercosur governments, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and applying member, Venezuela have all denounced the "coup" and withdrawn their ambassadors.

The US pretends to be neutral, just as it was in Honduras, before recognizing the coup regime there, also a pro-business takeover.

Land ownership in Paraguay is even more extreme than the US's unequal distribution of wealth. Much of the land held by the elites was expropriated (sometimes violently) from campesinos who had lived and worked it; they held no legal title: it had been common land, or traditional landholding. Large tracts have been converted into agribusiness holdings, with widespread use of GM soy and intensive spraying of pesticides and herbicides. The toxins have literally driven out neighboring campesinos.

In both Honduras and Paraguay, their takeovers put a small elite, backed by foreign corporations, back in control after a short-lived challenge to their power.

Will the US do something similar through unlimited billionaire and corporate campaign funds? Paraguay looks more like Fifth Century Roman society than does the US, so the parallels between the US and Paraguay highlight US similarities to Roman Senators' takeover of all wealth and power prior to Rome's fall.