what if . . and I know this is crazy but hear me out . . what if corporations are controlling more and more

[ProfessorPlum]

of our lives (including more and more of the government) and making things better and better for corporations and worse and worse for people?

What should people do about this? Because as far as I can see, the levers of power are all being removed/placed in corporate hands.

[Fiendish Thingy]

1. Answer: vote for progressive Democrats. Nt

[ProfessorPlum]

2. I do

then what

[Elessar Zappa]

4. That's the best thing you can do.

Other than that, vote with your wallet. Research how companies operate and make decisions based on that. Unless you live like a Stone Age hunter/gatherer, you can’t avoid dealing with corporations but some are worse than others.

[Think. Again.]

30. I absolutely agree...

Vote as far left as you possibly can.

[c-rational]

3. Vote, vote and vote, and when Dems control all three branches, change the lunacy of equating a

corporation with a person. From what I understand this agrument was specious at best, and argued in the 1880's? by a jurist who turned down a Supreme Court seat for private practice because of money.

[ProfessorPlum]

7. great idea.

which the corporations wouldn't allow

[live love laugh]

5. Each one teach one. TRY helping someone else to "get" it

and ask the student to become the teacher. Rinse and repeat.

[Raven123]

6. It's not crazy. It's true. Consider Citizens United.

Money rules, sadly

[justaprogressive]

8. Consider "Rollerball" 1975 (NOT the stupid sequel)

The world run by (they're the government!) and for the Corporations.

If we don't get them out of the way the world will perish collectively and with finality.

[Voltaire2]

9. We were basically a corrupt plutocracy up until the new deal.

Last edited Tue May 14, 2024, 11:43 AM - Edit history (1)

There were interludes of reform, but the financial and industrial plutocrats have controlled this country for a very long time. The new deal created a federal regulatory system that up until the 1980s kept the plutocrats in check. We are in the process of finishing off the last remnants of that great reform era and reverting to our historical norm.

[jalan48]

10. I think we have been living in a Corporate State for awhile. That's where the money to control things resides.

[malaise]

11. You mean rule by plutocrats, oligarchs and banks?

Makes a lot of sense
Rec

[DoBW]

12. choose truth

[k55f5r]

13. Snowcrash by Neil Stephenson

Is a chilling and entertaining book about the coming corporatcraty.

https://images.app.goo.gl/B3qSWQsiWJXyDFbw6

[twodogsbarking]

14. Eat some bacon. That will help.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

15. Jon Stewart's diatribe last night was on Congressional corruption.

Even Pelosi defends clearly corrupt actions in Congress.

[OldBaldy1701E]

16. Oh, I know what to do, but it has been described as 'recklessly extreme'.

So, I will just say that you will have to remove the power of whatever it is that gives them power.

(Hint: money.)

Being 'recklessly extreme' may be our only option. Or, we as a nation sit and play at taking action, like we usually do.

[Archae]

17. I remember reading a short story...

Where we had a dictatorship ruled by corporations.

Consumer goods were heavily advertised with glitzy names like "Pain-B-Gone,", but they didn't work.
Or worked erratically. (Like the power company)

Anyone who complained was sent off to slave labor camps.

[Lonestarblue]

18. Corporations have been controlling our laws and government for decades.

They’re the ones with money for lobbyists and big donations to politicians to get them to introduce and pass beneficial legislation that protects corporations rather than workers. Think of all the many millions of dollars the fossil fuel industry has used to essentially buy the votes of Republican legislators, as have the gun manufacturers and NRA lobbyists.

Their decades-long efforts to undermine and prevent unions kept wages flat and workers poorer and poorer. The loss of union power also helped speed the loss of defined benefit pensions, which were replace by 401k plans that shift much of the burden and risk onto employees. Years also, almost all employees were covered by pensions. Today only about 55% participate in a 401k plan. Many workers make too little to participate or their employers have used part-time jobs to avoid paying them any benefits. Contracts workers also receive no benefits.

If you think of most of the negative impacts on workers and average Americans over the past several years, most of them were created by the power and money of big corporations.

[wiggs]

19. IIRC from last time I saw stats, approx 2/3 of the worlds largest economies are corporations. nt

[wss2001]

20. Misplaced Anger

I agree, I’ve been saying for years that people’s anger with government should be directed towards big business. They are increasingly controlling many aspects of our lives giving people a sense of helplessness. Government is an easier target. We may work for these same firms that are impacting our daily life. It’s kind of like we have a collective Stockholm syndrome in regards to corporations.
Big businesses treat us like walking ATMs. Until we redirect our anger this will continue.

[pfitz59]

21. Victory gardens and guillotines

and STOP BUYING THEIR SHIT!

[barbtries]

22. it's fascism and you are not crazy.

we should rise and resist for ourselves and all the next generations of Americans, who will be the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

[MiHale]

23. You are not crazy...

I believe it’s why corporations get away with so much for only one example…taxes.
A simplified application of logic would probably say if corporations paid their taxes correctly the government would have loads more money to help its citizens. Yet the money pile sits undisturbed while the infrastructure they use and abuse falls into disrepair.

Then the whole corporation as a human. Come on…really? It didn’t get that way on its own the individual citizens didn’t vote it in…our congresspeople did with corporate blessings. Not saying what those ‘blessings’ are but I don’t think it a congratulatory pat on the back.

That’s just the obvious stuff.

[Johnny2X2X]

24. What if life is getting better in America right now?

Joe Biden has been the most transformative president since Johnson. He's made a lot of progress on nearly every problem facing the American people.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

25. See first link in my 'sig' line...

[wendyb-NC]

26. You are not crazy

[Vinca]

27. I've wondered that, too. It seems to me grocery prices might be artificially high with the thought

a pissed off voter will go with Trump who will deliver all kinds of goodies to big business.

[Martin68]

28. "What if?" It is currently a daily threat.

[ancianita]

29. Heck no, you're not crazy. Also remember that corporations are the shields that oligarchs hide behind.

Corporations have existed for centuries to accumulate permanent wealth across human generations.

Corporations have lived for the benefits of human use with little to no responsibility for human progress — only when human progress is profitable. So, oligarchs have come and gone, but they've still done damage in tandem with corporations.

There was a time when corporations were only allowed limited lifespans in order to complete certain projects. Not so anymore. All the more reason humans should be adamant about bringing those legal stipulations, and rescinding corporations equal protection under the US Constitution.

[CrispyQ]

31. Here's Reclaim Democracy's corporate personhood section.

https://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-personhood/

Slavery is the fiction that people are property;
corporate personhood is the fiction that corporations are people.

They have that somewhere on their site. Here's a timeline of personhood rights granted and/or taken to/from people & corporations. They've gained a lot!

https://reclaimdemocracy.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/personhood_timeline.pdf

Corporations have turned into an instrument for the rich to protect their personal wealth from their irresponsible and/or incompetent behavior. At the very least we should make them accountable to their stakeholders not just their shareholders.

[usaf-vet]

32. I hear you. I have voted in EVERY, local, state, and federal elections since I reached the voting age in 1967.....

.... BUT, I feel it may be too late to reverse the corporate billionaire's downward anti-democracy trend.

But until I can no longer vote (enough said), I will do the same in 2024

[jaxexpat]

33. Wait a minute. How could that be? We live in a land that prides itself on free speech.

Between our right to bear arms and the right to shoot our mouths off no matter how stupid our words, this is utopia! Right? And don't forget our hallowed and hollowed out free press. The monopolized media with its predesignated built-in bipolarism provides an array of fashion preferences guaranteeing to fit perfectly with any discriminatory taste, complementing our well-informed electorate, complete with matching sectionalism, featuring options sure to please and ideal for cozy-conspiracy-get-togethers or corporate sponsored mass-demonstration. All of this is and can be yours if you promise to just die at your scheduled, maximally convenient moment.

Oh.....you may want to participate but, sorry and too bad, that option has been reserved since long before you were even born and you missed the moment. You didn't get the memo?

[HighFired49]

34. Read Thomas Jefferson's concerns re corporations

For example:
"England exhibits the most remarkable phaenomenon in the universe in the contrast between the profligacy of it’s government and the probity of it’s citizens. and accordingly it is now exhibiting an example of the truth of the maxim that virtue & interest are inseparable. it ends, as might have been expected, in the ruin of it’s people. but this ruin will fall heaviest, as it ought to fall, on that hereditary aristocracy which has for generations been preparing the catastrophe. I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country." [link:https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10-02-0390|

Also: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/thomas-jefferson-feared-aristocracy-corporations

More: “I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Volume 10: 1 May 1816 to 18 January 1817

Thomas Jefferson saw this danger over two hundred years ago, but we still have not been able to slow down the rape of our country by corporations. All that has been accomplished is for the corporations to grab more power. Unfortunately, the correction will probably be a very violent one, as money doesn't give up power willingly.

[TBF]

35. #1 on the list - Citizens United needs to be overturned. nt