Wednesday, September 17, 2003

Source: How to Save the World It's time to make the export and the elimination of American jobs the number one political issue in the 2004 campaign. It threatens the social fabric of the country, and represents everything that's wrong with excessive corporate power, the undue influence of the rich, the privatization of everything, and so-called 'free trade'. There is a massive political and psychological fraud being perpetrated against the American people, and it goes like this: The world is a single global market, and competitiveness means producing goods at the lowest possible cost. To do that, jobs need to be eliminated as much as possible, since labour is a major component of cost. Jobs that aren't eliminated need to be filled with people who are prepared to work for the lowest possible wages; these people are almost invariably in third world countries. Another way of reducing costs is to manufacture and operate in the country that has the lowest possible social and environmental standards and regulations; the damage that this creates in that country is not the corporation's concern. Trade barriers need to be eliminated so that the corporations that can produce a product at the lowest possible cost can dominate the global market; the labour dislocation this creates is not the corporation's concern. In order to eliminate those trade barriers over the objections of local country citizens and governments, all world governments need to be coerced to sign 'free' trade agreements that require them to eliminate any domestic social and environmental regulations that are one iota higher than the most lax regulations in the trade area, on the basis that such regulations represent 'unwarranted restrictions on trade'. Trade protection and subsidies given to domestic corporations need to be disguised and hidden by convoluted legal and economic agreements, so that these corporations sustain their competitive advantage over new upstart organizations, particularly those operating in low-cost, third world countries. Corporations must minimize any social and environmental responsibility to the communities in which they operate and sell products, and simultaneously maximize their rights in these communities, by using batteries of lawyers and political influence to obtain 'personhood' rights. These 'personhood' rights can then be used to stifle all criticism of corporations for false and misleading advertising (right of 'free speech'), for producing defective products (right to sue anyone criticizing their product for defamation) and for buying political favours (right to contribute unlimited amounts to political campaigns). All of these coerced advantages, and unwillingness to take any responsibility for the consequences of corporate actions, must be blamed on the corporation's mandate and the demand of shareholders to maximize corporate profits at any cost; this allows greedy, unscrupulous, socially and environmentally negligent corporate management to be protected from litigation for any damage that any corporate actions produce. The endgame of this insane and out-of-control abuse of power is a cowed, beaten, unemployed and underemployed American workforce, the unraveling of decades of social programs and standards, privatization of all public property to a small corporate elite, and the destruction of the environment. This is the proverbial race-to-the-bottom, achieved through a barefaced coup that turns over all power, all wealth and all resources, resources that rightfully belong to all Americans, to a tiny elite. And the final ignomy is that Americans, turfed from well-paying professional and technical jobs that are eliminated or exported to the third world, can only afford with their drastically reduced income to buy the shoddy, inferior products produced by the equally downtrodden third-world labourers who took their jobs. It must be stopped. Americans must start working together to use the only resources that haven't already largely slipped from their control -- their votes and their dollars -- to stop the coup and take back their country from rapacious corporations and their political handmaidens. To do this they must: Demand that political leaders support aggressive programs to end corporatism and undue political influence, including the elimination of corporate 'personhood' and other corporate 'rights', campaign finance reform, and the elimination of indemnity of corporate managers and directors from litigation for corporate misdeeds. This will be the most difficult change, since it literally requires politicians to bite the hand that feeds them. Demand that political leaders reform corporate taxation to prevent corporations from using offshore tax havens, strongly discourage them from eliminating or exporting jobs, and penalize them for environmental destruction and wasteful resource consumption. Demand that political leaders put a total moratorium on the sale to private interests of public lands, property and resource rights, on the basis that these public resources belong to the people. Demand that political leaders revoke 'free trade' agreements, and replace them with statutes that strongly discourage international trade in goods and services that can be readily provided locally (even if they can be produced elsewhere cheaper), and strongly encourage international trade in goods and services that cannot be readily produced locally. Refuse to buy imported products when domestic products are, or should be, available, even when those imported products are cheaper in price. Refuse to support retailers that import the majority of their merchandise. Identify, publicize, and organize nationwide boycotts of the products and services of corporations that have eliminated valuable jobs (and hence lowered the quality of their products and customer service) or exported jobs to lower-cost countries. Support local businesses that employ people at reasonable salaries and show social and environmental responsibility for the community. Learn to take responsibility for their own employment by establishing new local businesses with high labour standards, and high social and environmental standards, which place a greater value on the well-being of their people and communities than on their profitability. Politicians will only learn to behave responsibly when they are held to account by informed citizens, and forced to wean themselves off the patronage of corporate elites. Corporations will only learn to behave responsibly when they are stripped of legal and tax protections that encourage them to behave otherwise, and lose in the marketplace to businesses that put people and community welfare above profits. This problem is not unique to the US. It is as global as the reach of the corporations that created it. But the 9-point prescription above that can solve it is universal. It applies equally in every country in the world. [How to Save the World] 6:40:48 PM    trackback []     Articulate []