"It's ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations ..."

[Scuba]

[RainDog]

1. k&r n/t

[indepat]

2. Noam Chomsky make this issue so clear that even a simpleton should understand

[Egalitarian Thug]

5. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

Upton Sinclair

[bobduca]

37. Key advice for anyone mired in a bog-dwelling subthread

[Ikonoklast]

3. At least Stalin finally croaked.

Corporations are immortal zombies.

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. No, no. They are good and just and will lead us into the the Next Age of Humanity.

Just ask any of the parasites and their followers.

[xchrom]

6. du rec. the bill of rights doesn't apply inside the work place. nt

[reformist2]

7. If everyone had a guaranteed income first, they could choose freely to work for a corp, or not.

[daleanime]

8. K&R....

[blkmusclmachine]

9. ,

,

[woo me with science]

10. K&R

[colsohlibgal]

11. Amen Noam

What never ceases to amaze me is that so many otherwise smart people can't see what the US really is in 2014.

[KittyWampus]

12. Chomsky is such a windbag. There are millions of small, family businesses

in the USA.

Decades ago, I was free to start my own landscaping business which did fairly well

Small businesses:

Represent 99.7% of all employer firms.
Employ half of all private sector employees.
Pay 44% of total U.S. private payroll.
Generated 65% of net new jobs over the past 17 years.
Create more than half of the nonfarm private GDP.
Hire 43% of high tech workers (scientists, engineers, computer programmers, and others).
Are 52% home-based and 2% franchises.
Made up 97.5% of all identified exporters and produced 31% of export value in FY 2008.
Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms.

[cannondale]

14. Congrats

I'll assume you forgot to read Chomsky's quote. Or were you implying that you now own a huge corporation?

If one of the greatest minds on this topic is a windbag, then what do you call people who have less knowledge?

[Jakes Progress]

48. Starts with a K

[Fumesucker]

15. Yep, we all will get wealthy landscaping each other's yards

That whooshing sound you just heard was Chomsky's point flying over your head.

[KittyWampus]

21. getting "wealthy" is your straw man. Chomsky has no point. We do have a great amount

of freedom, as my post points out and refutes Chomsky's first sentence.

And to talk about corporations as 'authoritarian' is flat out Libertarian stupidity.

Now, no where do I laud an unregulated market.

I have, over all the years on DU, consistently spoken out against deregulation of large corporations.

[Enthusiast]

26. Talking about corporations as 'authoritarian' is hardly Libertarian stupidity

when the corporations have usurped the democracy and now write their own legislation/regulation and determine the outcome of elections.

[JoeyT]

32. And now we've stretched the definition of libertarian to include "Doesn't like corporations."

You know those teabaggers that shriek "SOCIALIST!!!" every time someone disagrees with them about something? Boy they sure are funny, aren't they?

[cprise]

50. Those aren't examples of 'freedom'

And there is no question that large corporations are inherently authoritarian. Its a big factor in people becoming politically disengaged and meek.

[JDPriestly]

16. But what small businesses do not realize is that what keeps them going -- the oil and other

natural resources that keep the small businesses going, even much of the food that the owners and employees eat, is obtained and sold to all those small businesses, their owners and employees thanks to an unseen collusion between the government and big businesses. This collusion is used to grab resources from other countries and subsidize big business in a number of ways using tax revenue. It is also used to keep employee's wages low under the excuse of preventing "inflation."

The small businesses pay big companies for "supplies" and the raw materials with which they make their products or deliver their services. But the small businesses are getting a huge subsidy themselves thanks to the protection that the US government including the military provides to keep up the illusion that we are capitalist.

In fact, our economy is not nearly as capitalist as small business owners think. They just don't realize that the taxes they pay go in part to support a lot of activities by their government that lower the prices on raw materials and permit the US to maintain the illusion of a free market while in fact meddling greatly at a number of points, especially with regard to providing energy resources and especially with regard to oil. And especially through our military and diplomatic sometimes heavyhandedness. And much of that heavyhandedness is labeled top secret. We ordinary people are not allowed to look at what is turning the wheels of our economy. Much of it would disgust us beyond belief at least until we tried living in our country without all that heavyhandedness.

Small business owners do some good things. But . . . . what they don't know and don't pay attention to about what is going on, say, in the State Department or the Department of Agriculture or the Securities Exchange Commission or the Commodities Commission or the Attorney General's office or the Fed that actually determines whether they can succeed or will be allowed to fail. Of course, the government does not target certain small businesses for success or failure (at least I have no proof they do), but it is their job to keep the spigots open for small businesses to do their thing. And part of keeping those spigots open is, in a succession of many years of different regimes in D.C., a matter of doing things Americans might be ashamed of and then making sure that Americans don't find out about it.

And so we are in the surveillance and propaganda state and most people don't know it and don't want to know it and would do anything to fool themselves into thinking we are not.

I suggest you read Greg Palast's saga of corruption, Vulture's Picnic. It is an eye-opener. Chapter 6 is especially interesting, but you need to start at the beginning and read the entire book. Tells a lot of fascinating, eye-opening stories. Not a boring read either.

[KittyWampus]

23. I am pretty sure most small business owners understand the concept of infrastructure.

[JDPriestly]

25. Still, you should read the Palast book, Vulture's Picnic if you haven't already.

It's amazing how the corporations collude and how the government can at times be part of the collusion. Chapter 6 is especially interesting. Our government is owned by the big corporations. Small business is a great thing but it depends on that collusion and secrecy at the top without realizing just how bad and determinative it really is.

But I am not putting down small business people like you. I know how aware and active you are on DU for example. But all those "I did it by myself" petty Republicans who think they really are self-made and owe no one a thing have no idea how much they owe to a lot of shady business at the top, the very shady business that the naive Tea-Partiers criticize but refuse to vote to do anything about.

[Jakes Progress]

49. Read a book? Are you kidding?

[stillcool]

28. 'small business' ...I've heard 'Koch Industries'

Defined as a small business. The "Service" Indrusty consists of mostly the "small" businesses I think of, and they in no way meet those statistics. They are restaurants, landscapers, plumbers, painters, builders, nail salons....anything to do with providing a service. It is getting harder and harder to succeed, but if you live in a wealthy area it's better. Poor people aren't real big on paying for landscaping.. Glad to hear you're doing well...especially this time of the year.

[dreamnightwind]

29. When posting stats like that you need a link

so we can see what definition of "small business" was used when compiling those facts.

Surprising to see on this site someone using small business stats to make the case that big corporations don't dominate the U.S. They obviously dominate our political system regardless of small business stats.

It's similar to how nearly half of Obama's campaign contributions came from small donors, yet the large donors are the ones who are in the room when policy decisions are made.

[Rex]

33. Get back to us when you are a huge corporation that owns a few politicians.

I love watching people get that quote purposefully wrong, as if they can relate.

[Marr]

36. You can't possibly be so dense that you think he's talking about small mom & pops.

He's talking about huge corporations.

I'm a small business owner, and have been for decades, too. He is not talking about my little business. I would've thought that would be obvious to anyone.

[Coyotl]

41. Dear Lord. Please, make me into such a windbag.

And spare me from those who toss out info as it it were true without supplying a reference to the source of their "facts".

[fasttense]

43. It's not that there aren't small businesses in this country.

It's that corporations are so much more powerful than the small businesses.

Corporations can afford legions of lobbyists and can pay for politician's campaigns. They bribe judges by hiring their relatives and they give bonuses to their former employees for taking regulatory jobs in government. They buy up their competition and destroy competition with their monopolies.

Corporations never die so their wealth just builds and builds and builds.

The Boston Tea Party was all about a corporation (the East India Tea Company - owned by royalty) getting a special tax rate to wipe out their competition in the colonies. It's truly American to fight against them.

[fascisthunter]

45. He Poopoo in your Grand Illusion Bowl?

And you know he wasn't talking about "small businesses". But you purposefully want others to believe he was.... so transparent.

[qwertyq]

46. The fact is

most average Americans that identify as capitalists or own small businesses are merely hobbyists in the grand scheme of things.

[Jakes Progress]

52. Chomsky isn't the windbag. You

don't seem to be able to read. How does "huge corporations" equal "small, family business"?

Why would you deliberately be so obtuse? Spitting out the figures from your local Chamber flyer only shows only lack of honor or intellectual dishonesty.

Or do you employ two or three thousand mowers and shrub pruners? Thats a lot of people you employ there. I guess with your payroll of a thousand gardeners, you are able to spread a lot of mulch and manure.

[Phlem]

13. K&R!

-p

[Nye Bevan]

17. Yes, employees "taking orders" from their bosses is, indeed, effectively Stalinism.

Nailed it.

[MO_Moderate]

18. Never heard of the guy

but if he lives in a country dominated by huge corporations, I don't want to live there.
Poor guy.

[Coyotl]

42. Once you start reading liberal forums regularly you will hear of him a lot.

Also, once in college, his name will come up in classes.

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator and activist. Sometimes described as the "father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy.

BOOKS:

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
The Political Economy of the Mass Media, by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, is an analysis of the news media

Hegemony or Survival
Book by Noam Chomsky
Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance is a study of the "American Empire" written by the American linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky, then a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wikipedia
Published: November 2003

[MO_Moderate]

44. Hey, thanks for a direction

[Rider3]

19. Ain't THAT the truth

I detest Corporate America.

[FarCenter]

20. He must be talking about the military or a government bureaucracy

Corporations, especially those in the services sector, rely on their employees initiative, judgment, and flexible response to business needs. Corporations that attempt the military chain of command model usually fail.

[Fumesucker]

27. The same employees the large corporations conspire against in order to hold down their wages?

That's amusingly naive at best.

http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most-celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages/

In early 2005, as demand for Silicon Valley engineers began booming, Apple’s Steve Jobs sealed a secret and illegal pact with Google’s Eric Schmidt to artificially push their workers wages lower by agreeing not to recruit each other’s employees, sharing wage scale information, and punishing violators. On February 27, 2005, Bill Campbell, a member of Apple’s board of directors and senior advisor to Google, emailed Jobs to confirm that Eric Schmidt “got directly involved and firmly stopped all efforts to recruit anyone from Apple.”

Later that year, Schmidt instructed his Sr VP for Business Operation Shona Brown to keep the pact a secret and only share information “verbally, since I don’t want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?”

These secret conversations and agreements between some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley were first exposed in a Department of Justice antitrust investigation launched by the Obama Administration in 2010. That DOJ suit became the basis of a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of over 100,000 tech employees whose wages were artificially lowered — an estimated $9 billion effectively stolen by the high-flying companies from their workers to pad company earnings — in the second half of the 2000s. Last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied attempts by Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe to have the lawsuit tossed, and gave final approval for the class action suit to go forward. A jury trial date has been set for May 27 in San Jose, before US District Court judge Lucy Koh, who presided over the Samsung-Apple patent suit.

In a related but separate investigation and ongoing suit, eBay and its former CEO Meg Whitman, now CEO of HP, are being sued by both the federal government and the state of California for arranging a similar, secret wage-theft agreement with Intuit (and possibly Google as well) during the same period.

[WillyT]

24. K & R !!!

[woo me with science]

30. kick

[moondust]

31. Jeffersonian.

Quotation: "The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations."

Variations: "The country is headed toward a single and splendid government of an aristocracy founded on banking institutions and moneyed incorporations and if this tendency continues it will be the end of freedom and democracy, the few will be ruling...I hope we shall...crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country. I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."[1]

http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/end-democracyquotation

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

34. Yep. K&R

[Michigan-Arizona]

35. K&R n/t

[marvinsacco]

38. Ain't that the truth

I detest Corporate America.
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[ctsnowman]

39. K & R

[jsr]

40. No truer words

[fascisthunter]

47. We Need Balance in Our Country

There is way too much corporate influence and control in the USA and the rest of the world.

[Laelth]

51. k&r for the truth. n/t

-Laelth