Making the case against
Corpocracy and its exponents.
Reverend Al Sharpton says in an ad on MSNBC: …”A lot of
things are acceptable, until we stop accepting them.” This has really put me to
think and encouraged me to write this essay. Indeed, we all too often accept
all sorts of actions, statements, procedures, traditions and decisions, when
they may be outdated, counter-productive, unfair, or just plain stupid!
At some schools where I taught, final (written) exams were
administered as many as three on the same day. I asked my principal once, why
put so much stress on the students and why not spread them over more days? He
said, this is how it has been done ever since he remembers and he gestured that
it was the end of the conversation.
When you watch TV, be it the news, a sitcom, a talk show,
anything, you will be captive audience for 10- 15 minutes for about every hour
to “commercials”. Most of those are trying to sell you goods and services and
you know the words and music to them by heart. They become very annoying, even
if you mute the set. We accept them, but I think these are some of the most
heartless intrusions into our privacy right in our home.
The invasion and abuse of our mail box is another of those
examples. The environment is screaming to stop the junk, but the junk just gets
thicker and thicker. I estimate that more than 90% is immediately becoming
trash, the rest a bit later and oh, about 5% is looked at and about 1% is acted
upon. This process has a huge “carbon footprint”. It must be one of the most wasteful endeavors
of our time. But we accept this unpleasant intrusion and labor at sending it
off in recycle bins.
Enough? No way! The Internet is doing the same. They have
junk mail, spam, pop-ups and lately (what I call) “left-behinds”. These
left-behinds are not halves of asses, but graphics that remain hanging on your
screen after you exit the Internet. You do not have a choice, you must close
those windows yourself. You don’t have a setting to automate it either. Many
apps don’t work if you don’t allow pop-ups. One champion of the “left-behinds”
is Netflix. You just can’t get rid of them!!!!! They want your business.
OK, I think you had enough examples. But wait, you get
sticky address labels that you don’t need, from countless non-profits and from
businesses that thank you for whatever business you did. Sheets upon sheets of
sticky labels that your shredder chokes on. Notice, I did not even touch the
political ads. Not yet. It’s coming though, but for now I am focusing on Business
invading (and infesting) the individual all the way to saturation.
So, you see, my friend, Business is using some of the
cruelest and most despicable ways to penetrate our lives. They hope to make us
memorize their mottos and slogans, their phone numbers and their websites. Even
if you ignore it all, you are forced to take action. You will mute your TV, you
will close an ad before the video you wish to watch (if you can) and you will
have to close the pop-up that blurs what you really wanted to see. Getting angry
yet?
Mind you, there are other interesting gripes I have. Why in
the world do you have to take action to protect your information to be shared
by inter-related businesses? You get notices about privacy practices that are
cumbersome if you decide to read them, and you have to reply in a business
envelope, if you want to keep your info private. Hmmmm… Are they crazy? Oh, but
we came to accept this. Many of us toss those privacy notices, or postpone
reading them, until too late. This
practice was instituted oh, about 10-15 years ago and is still mandatory for
business to notify you.
The problem is that it is Business that has the upper hand.
They send this mass mail (fine print mostly), that you must read, understand
and act upon, to fend off an even more morbid invasion of your mailbox, SMS
messages and junk email. It is incredible. And you get this stuff yearly, so
you must renew your input, otherwise it will be gone.
On the Internet it is so easy to miss, or just give up the
right to privacy. True, you are asked if, say, Facebook could share your
information with another site, or app, but to not share always leads to more
cumbersome tasks and sharing is always a time-saving proposition. It should
always be the other way around, but you don’t pull the strings, it is BUSINESS
that has the upper hand.
Add to this mixture the political ads, robocalls and junk
mail that an election generates, and you can see that this is nothing short of
carpet-bombing. You are being bombarded. You may not die from this, but you may
lose your sanity. Most certainly, I would love to see a psychological study
what happens to individuals who are bombarded with repetitious, annoying
messages in every conceivable form 365/24/7. Do they go to the Funny Farm? Or
does their home become the Funny Farm?
Are you surprised that imbeciles like Loughner decide to
just shoot it all out? Or the Joker goes berserk? Or some old guy just kills
himself, because of what his world has come to?
I say that if we don’t change the way we do things and we
just keep accepting things, because that’s the way tradition dictates, we are
really doomed. That’s why Albert Einstein said, he does not know how WW3 will
be fought, but WW4 will be fought with stones and sticks!
We are crazy to accept all this BS weighing us down and
wearing us down, when we have alternatives. For one, we have to loosen the grip
Business has on our lives. Before business, come the rights of the
individual. Individual freedom, the pride and joy of America are
chipped away by Business. It is Business that oversteps it’s boundaries as it
invades privacy, your spare time and wants to grab your attention. It’s “child”
is Consumerism, not a good development either.
As I am writing this, we are just a few months from a
historic election. With that in mind, even ignoring any of the most important
issues that will make or break a candidate, just look at this one (quite
complex) issue and think what it will mean to elect candidates who want fewer
regulations, fewer restrictions, less accountability and more tax breaks for
Business. You know who they are, they go under the Conservative label. The more
conservative, the worse for individual freedom. Don’t let them talk from both
sides of their mouth. Most of all, know that if we drop our guard, Corpocracy
(dictatorship by corporations) is ready to be instituted. Mr. Romney has
prostituted himself to become the very first Corporate Dictator of the world.
He bought into the TEA Party’s extreme mantra and you hear him (albeit with
robot-like stiffness) repeat their fact-challenged slogans.
We, freedom-loving and defending Americans already have
numerous ways to give our freedom up. We fall pray to drugs and other
addictions, organized religion, sex/porn addiction and the like. We fall for
fads that practically consume us and we are supposed to be the freest of all.
Why on earth would we want more imposition on our freedom and our right to
pursue happiness? Yeah, by Business.
And no, I am not against Business, how could I be? It is in
my family and it has been the bread and butter of my children. This outburst is
mainly about the excesses of Big Business and their incessant pursuit on
dominating every aspect of our lives. If the only way Business can survive is
to prey on our freedom, then they are the ones who need restraint and more
regulation. That is the idea behind my essay.
