Posted by farid from customer-148-233-71-121.uninet.net.mx (148.233.71.121) on Sunday, September 07, 2003 at 12:57PM :
There's how much money a corporation takes in and then there's the profit. They can take in ninety zillion dollars and still go belly up...as many did recently, because they're being run by jackasses who're looking to skim as much off as they can, or never had a hope in hell of actually doing any business besides reaming investors and jilting customers. But let's say it's a legitimate company we're interested in that takes in say fifty million a year and clears a 10% profit of five million.
Now this company has to grow, has to make more each year...it's just the way they are. They're started by greedy bastards looking to make as much as they can and these guys don't change and things get worse when the companies are bought out by people whose express purpose in life is to make more money than they can possibly use in a lifetime...it's the new "in" thing...to be uselessly, hopelessly and pointlessly rich.
In its efforts to grow it decides that trees are superfluous...block the view, their roots break up asphalt and besides, this company which now only has a business plan to turn pulp into diapers and beer...has a laboratory somewhere where scientists and engineers are perfecting little machines that will make oxygen, at a base price of .56 cents a breath...starting from there and climbing to who knows where once the trees are gone. A brilliant business plan because they make money at both ends, which is what they live for...they make money getting rid of the trees and then make lots more by providing us with the oxygen the trees used to give off for free.
But in order to pull this whole thing off, certain pesky laws and oversight committees have be dealt with. The necessary politicians can be bought easily enough but they need a president who can appoint the right kinds of judges and put in place compliant commissioners and cut back the budgets of certain regulatory commissions...to prepare the ground. Now no one can come out and actually say what they're up to so it has to be cloaked and daggered behind something. The CEO of the corporation notices that there are way too many teen-agers loitering around his nubile daughters so he starts a whispering campaign and holds "breakfast" conferences where concerned citizen zillionaires come to the conclusion that morals are all shot to hell, that licentiousness has once again reared its ugly head, because we've gone "soft"...that this isn't the way Jesus wanted us to live...that "Evil" forces are loose in the world coming from "over there" where too many people are idle anyway and we all know the Devil breeds work for idle hands. He funds a committee to study Evil and sure enough, they find it everywhere they look. The citizenry meanwhile is gratefull that someone is watching out for their sons and daughters who will be teen-agers one day too.
The newspapers, who need cheap pulp anyway, are recruited and soon polls appear and experts are called in to the talk shows and day after day there is a rising "debate" in the country about Evil and how it stalks the unwary. The administration in power is chastised roundly for turning a blind eye to the destructive forces of teen-age Evil and who knows what other kind...the President is found to have diddled a cheer-leader back somewhere and this becomes the cause for a recall campaign...since no one else in the country has ever diddled anyone.
The Opposition, sensing an "Issue", rises to the occasion and finds a candidate too stupid to have ever diddled anyone and runs him and his forlorn wife in the next election...with a lot of cash supplied by the company that wants the trees and your oxygen plus a whole lot of others who also have business plans. The guy wins...he does what he was paid to do and soon "unnecessary" laws that "stifle" initiative are done away with..."moss-back" commissioners are replaced with sleek, modern, "Job and growth-oriented" ones...the people are happy to think there'll be more ways open to them to earn the money they don't yet know will be needed in order for their families to be able to breathe in the near future...
But there is a segment of the population that hasn't been fooled, though there aren't enough of them to turn the tide at the ballot box...a box that may or may not be honest anyway. What's Democracy to do? If the Majority are idiots and the will of the Majority prevails...well you can see where that leads. So the Minority has to become creative and inventive...which minorities have always had to be. Even George Washington and his brave but stumblebum army was in the minority. It comes with the territory.
Politicians need your vote to get into office and if they can only turn more of you off it means less work for them. Now if the politicians can arouse the basest instincts in only a small number, but a dedicated and hard working number...they have it the easiest of all. Morality, being what it is, infuses the most inept but ardent types with zeal and passion and so as long as the politician runs on a Morality Ticket he or she can be assured of the dedicated involvement and turn-out of those who live to be Moral. And since they're all a bunch of hypocrites anyway...everybody is happy.
The rest of the population will go along up to a point...but that's just about the right amount of time to implement the first steps of the grand business plan. Can all of this be stopped in some other way besides at the ballot box and way before the bullets fly?
Politicians may want your votes...but the businessmen who own them want your money. They don't mind if the Left takes it's members and sits out the election...don't mind at all. But they'd mind it like hell, the businesmen and women would, if the Left didn't by their products or use their services. Citizens, down to the poorest ones, have in their wallets what the Power People want much more than they want their votes...but they've learned how to harness those votes to make their zillions with.
That five million the company needs to make a profit with and pay director's salaries with represents 10% of their gross...and the Left also represents 10% of the customer base. But...it so happens the extreme Right also comes to 10%. Now here's the dilemna...which five millon does the company care for the most? They don't much care which it is..they just need five million at the end of the year. If the Left witholds its five million, or the Right does...either way the company goes belly up. If the Left sits out the election...who cares? But the Right won't sit it out because the issues are shot through with the kinds of things calculated to win their interest...morality, rampant sex, a slacking off in love for God etc. and the rest of it...that's why we have such "puzzling" non-issues when all around us the sky is burning and people are getting murdered. Those idiotic issues are what attract the right kinds of voters and turn off the wrong kind. Pablum appeals to the toothless and infantile.
But when it comes to the old bottom line...no one gives a damn what your poitics are or whose wife, if it's a wife, your screwing...there is no such thing as "tainted" money to a businessman, especialy not when we're talking about what counts...not the 45 million it takes to run the factory...but the all important five million needed to make it all worthwhile.
If the Left declares a boycott in response to the company's business plan, which has been leaked...the company is dead. But...if they cave in to the Left, for practical reasons...the Right might boycott and they'd be dead again.
Now what's the compay to do? They company is to get the hell out of the policy making, politician-buying, influence-peddling racket and stick to what it was made for...making money in ways the People decided was legitimate. That's what businesses should be doing. Faced with a "damned if you do and damned if you don't"...being at the mercy of either Left or Right...dependent on either set of their numbers to make their profit each year...businesses might just decide it'd be best for them all around if they got out of politics.
Just a thought.
-- farid
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