Corporations are not RATIONAL critters: Free Market Henhouse Security is Poultry-Assured Destruction

[nashville_brook]

At the core of Free Market Capitalism is the assumption that corporations are "rational creatures" like economics professors or your brainy uncle from Rochester who always seems to do the right thing.



These rational creatures, we are told, wouldn't/won't/can't do anything to hurt their ability to exist and prosper (say, by poisoning dairy products or crashing the economy), because if they did, they would soon suffer "market correction" and the consumers of their products/services would go elsewhere with their money, insuring said rational creature's untimely demise. Ergo, corporations are rational because they have a survival instinct.

This is the enormous fallacy on many levels, not the least of which is face value. Every living thing from house flies to eels to rhinos has a survival instinct. Do we pretend that mosquitoes are rational because they seek out the wet environs needed for survival? By this logic, the best we can say about corporations is that they display a form of biomimicry, which is a far, distant cry from rationality.

GREED IS GOOD
We have been told that whatever makes money is 'good' because by its very nature, it's unable to harm itself and its money-making potential (survival instinct). It takes a boatload of faith to make the leap that corporations are then disinclined to harm people in their bid for survival. That 'leap of faith' is the giant non-rational turd in our economic punchbowl right now. We are learning more everyday about how little corporations care about the survival of people. As a matter of fact, we are seeing that corporations require human life-blood in order to survive. This isn't the happy state of nature we've been sold on.

FOX HENHOUSE SECURITY, INC
What the Barons of Free Market Capitalism have said for so many years is, "putting Mr. Fox in charge of Henhouse Security makes perfect sense because who would suffer most from a decline in Hen population than Mr. Fox?"



Unfortunately, you can't put the foxes in charges of the henhouse and expect to have any chickens left at the end of the day. But that's exactly we did, and now the foxes are clamoring for the one last chicken that has heretofore escaped capture. Foxes, like corporations, are not rational creatures in the sense that when you combine their prey drive with the fecund odor of the henhouse, they quickly turn into hen-murdering machines. It's difficult to imagine these little adorable critters as murderous monsters, but it's a fact so true that we've got the 'fox in the henhouse' cliché for describing the disaster of allowing predators free reign of their prey. Putting Mr. Fox in charge of the henhouse is poultry assured destruction.

The lie we've been sold is even more absurd than the simple henhouse security model that I've described. Because we're "rational" people, we've said that if we're going to have foxes watching over the henhouse, then we need to have someone watching over the foxes in order that the inevitable chicken massacre is staved off long enough to make some damn money. So, some of us scream and shout that we can't trust the foxes. We bargain that if the foxes must have access to our chickens, the least we could do is keep an eye on the furry murders.

But the foxes are wily and they've convinced many that they are shy, and can't do their business when watched. Like a child in potty-training who can't pee under supervision, we are to understand that Fox, Inc will correct itself without the gaze of regulation because, regulation stops the flow of their "business," which seems more and more like a steady stream of hot piss on us, the American People.

IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES
In a world where we (supposedly) elect the President we'd most like to "have a beer with," it's not been a popular notion that ideas have consequences. But that is the sorry truth of a world that is dominated by thinking monkeys. If we weren't thinking monkeys then ideas wouldn't bring much to bear on our reality, as we'd be mostly consumed with picking nits off our neighbor and digging for roots. In our world (unfortunately for the beer-sodden apes) ideas not only matter, they are the blood coursing thru civilization.

Two weeks ago Naomi Klein addressed a group of University of Chicago faculty members opposing the creation of an economic research center to be named the Milton Friedman Institute. In her speech she quoted a Donald Rumsfeld speech given in 2002 in honor of Friedman's 90th birthday. Rumsfeld's quote: "Milton is the embodiment of the truth that ideas have consequences." Klein lays out a devastating argument that the economic chaos we are now experiencing is the direct result of Friedmanism, and the global crisis we are now experiencing is the indictment of that ideology because our crash is not the result of Friendmanism going horribly wrong -- it's the result of Friedmanism going horribly right (poultry assured destruction). Here's a snippet:

"... what we are seeing with the crash on Wall Street, I believe, should be for Friedmanism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for authoritarian communism: an indictment of ideology. It cannot simply be written off as corruption or greed, because what we have been living, since Reagan, is a policy of liberating the forces of greed to discard the idea of the government as regulator, of protecting citizens and consumers from the detrimental impact of greed, ideas that, of course, gained great currency after the market crash of 1929, but that really what we have been living is a liberation movement, indeed the most successful liberation movement of our time, which is the movement by capital to liberate itself from all constraints on its accumulation.

So, as we say that this ideology is failing, I beg to differ. I actually believe it has been enormously successful, enormously successful, I don’t think the project actually has been the development of the world and the elimination of poverty. I think this has been a class war waged by the rich against the poor, and I think that they won. And I think the poor are fighting back. This should be an indictment of an ideology. Ideas have consequences.

Here's what's been chapping my ass raw for the last few weeks: since Reagan, we've steadfastly dismantled our system of checks and balances and sacrificed democratic principles to market forces. We've given into government by and for corporations. We've treated our government as if it were a dirty chore we don't have time for. So we've contracted it out as if hiring lawn care. But here's the thing -- it's still our mess to clean up.

We still own the empty henhouses. We still have children to feed and educate and a whole civilization to try and knit back together, and what's happening right now is the global henhouse has just a few ragged chickens left and all we're hearing is, "Lets say we eat it. Who's with me?"

We could take the chicken and eat it. Or, we could bonk the Fox on the head, and rescue that last chicken, and spirit it away to a safe place where it can heal and thrive and makes more chickens. For this to work, we're going to have to drastically change our relationship to the chicken. We have to agree -- no more eating poultry. From here on out we protect our chickens and eat only eggs.

[BlooInBloo]

1. "Corps" might not be, but their executives most certainly are.

[nashville_brook]

2. so, you've got supposedly rational people "running" corps -- but they are paid by corps to make corp

profitable -- not to make life better for people. so, these rational people don't use their reason to better the lot of people -- they use it to better their very own lot and make that company profitable come hell or high water. that's not rational in the sense of working a rational "member of society."

but, i agree. in the strictest sense, we should assume that CEOs are possessed of reason.

[Two Americas]

3. but, but, but

You are talking as though we were Democrats.

[nashville_brook]

4. are we not?

[Two Americas]

5. one would hope

I find that too often expressing the traditional principles and ideals of the Democratic party and the Labor movement is seen as controversial or novel.

Good work as always nashville_brook and good to see you.

[nashville_brook]

6. i finally got a job!

haven't had as much time to write. this was lifted straight from dinner conversation.

[nashville_brook]

7. ...