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	November 23, 2004

RESIGNING FROM CORPORATION AMERICA I've been re-reading Joel Bakan's book The Corporation, and it suddenly occurred to me that the US is behaving less and less like a nation of democratic citizens and more and more like a hierarchical corporation. The House elections were all fixed by gerrymandering, just like the elections of Directors in big corporations are fixed by a handful of controlling shareholders. US elections today are just like corporate sales promotions, the system is dominated by a two-party oligopoly just like most industries are dominated by price-fixing, choice-reducing oligopolies. And politicians and corporate executives both rant about their constitutional right to lie to the people. In Bakan's book, he describes the modern corporation as being certifiably psychopathic, according to standard psychological criteria. He cites: callous unconcern for the feelings of others incapacity to maintain enduring relationships reckless disregard for others' safety deceiving others for personal gain incapacity to feel guilt failure to conform to social norms and lawful behaviours These criteria fit the Bush Regime, and to some extent to every recent US administration, just as much as they apply to most modern corporations. Many have already noted that the behaviour of most American citizens today with respect to Bush's excesses resembles that of an abused spouse or child. The citizens of America are treated not merely as consumers of political propaganda, but even worse, as employees of Corporation America, humiliated, forced to do degrading work, and constantly having their benefits taken away from them while the executives pocket more and more money themselves. This got me thinking about Thom Hartmann's prescription (in Unequal Protection) to remove 'personhood' rights granted in 1886 from corporations -- and hence deprive them of the 'right' to give money to politicians and political causes and parties; the 'right' to locate anywhere they want even after multiple criminal convictions or where their presence is predatory and will devastate local entrepreneurs; the 'right' to dominate military production and lobby for wars to increase demand for such products; the 'privacy right' to block government investigators and conceal crimes; the 'right' to economic activity free of regulatory restraint and to buy, sell and own other corporate 'persons' (this right, for other persons, is called slavery, and it leads to oligopoly, the 'cornering' of markets, price-gouging and other market-distorting behaviours). Hartmann also calls for the automatic revocation of corporate charters (requiring immediate liquidation) for extreme or recurrent criminal activity. Governments hide behind similar exemptions -- Politicos get 'immunity' from prosecution for many acts that mere citizens could be locked up for. Civil servants and soldiers are scape-goated for following orders from unelected higher-ups who escape unscathed, or are even rewarded, for their misconduct, and who enact laws to give themselves immunity or to pardon each other without any citizen oversight or right of appeal. So why not extend Hartmann's prescription to government 'corporations' as well? Deprive them of the right to immunity from prosecution for criminal wrong-doing, and after especially heinous or recurrent wrong-doing, automatically revoke their 'charter' to govern -- and require an immediate election of a replacement government (for which the convicted criminals could not be candidates). And if a government becomes so dysfunctional that it no longer appears capable of reflecting the will of its constituency (because it tolerates gerrymandering, for example), maybe we need a process to permanently and completely revoke its charter, and simply disband it. That would be an extreme action, I admit, but I'm sure there are lots of other levels of government who could and would step into the void. Why should the institutions of nationhood be prohibited from evolving to meet changing public needs, just like any other public institutions? Such a model might allow political entities to evolve naturally, enable the simple elimination of duplicative levels of government, and for the first time ever, allow the people the true right to self-determination. Why should a community be forced to stay an unwilling part of a state or nation if the large majority of its citizens chooses to secede, establish their own political infrastructure and provide their own public services? Why couldn't communities be allowed to self-manage their political, social and economic affairs? Yes, it's a recipe for anarchy, but the Internet has shown that with some very loose coordination, anarchy works very well indeed. Finally, if the US is now more like a corporation than a state, instead of protesting should those who are being mistreated be resigning? "I've resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered!" 7:53:10 PM  trackback []  comment []

SPORTS GETS BACK TO ITS BLUE-COLLAR ROOTS -- THE WISDOM OF CROWDS COULD HELP TOO When I was young, going to the theatre or to a sporting event was affordable to everyone. Now, between outrageous salaries and corporate gouging, the best seats are reserved for those with big expense accounts, and the working class watch sports mostly on TV and rarely go to live theatre at all. This year the Canadian Football League realized that their sport was one of the most affordable spectator events going, and capitalized on the fact that CFL players earn such modest salaries that most of them have second jobs in the communities they play in. A  'blue-collar' CFL promotion program stressed that these are just average guys like you and me, most of them playing for fun rather than the money, and most of them knowing that they're never going to be superstars in the NFL. The program produced a huge increase in attendance, and this past weekend's Grey Cup final was the most watched ever. Now, with the overpaid NHL hockey players on strike, and locked out by price-gouging team owners, many Canadians are turning away from both greedy groups and showing up in record numbers at Junior hockey league games, where ticket prices are cheap, players play their hearts out for modest salaries, the teams are evenly balanced, and every seat in the house is a great one. Community theatres are booming too, as many Canadians are fed up with prices for the 'blockbuster' shows that run in excess of $100 a seat. This past weekend I paid a mere $20 for a ticket to see a concert that featured Murray McLauchlan, Marc Jordan, Ian Thomas and Cindy Church, who between them have over 60 international music awards (mostly for songwriting) -- and the stars came out at the end of the show and mingled with the crowd! [Great concert, BTW, and I'm going to see Marc at his solo concert next month in Mississauga launching his new CD Make Believe Ballroom]. All of this is bringing a lot of people who started cocooning when the hassle and price of tickets just wasn't worth it any more, back into the crowds of sporting events and concerts. It's like a quiet revolution going on, and I sure hope it succeeds. I'm already starting to go out a lot more. And soon we'll be able to take our own wine into restaurants, which will make eating out more affordable, too. Speaking of sports, I thought of an idea to make sporting events even more exciting. If you really want to engage the 'crowd' in a baseball or football game, what if you gave the crowd the chance to make all of the key decisions for one or even both teams? You'd have to enroll/register in advance, so no one could vote twice. Then, in a baseball team, you could log into a special Wisdom of Crowds website (or use those wireless electronic voting machines, if you were in the stands) to tell your team's pitcher what to throw (with the consensus relayed to the catcher by transmitter so he could signal to the pitcher), decide when to pull the pitcher, when to call for a steal, when to put in which pitch-hitter, and all the other decisions that are usually made by the 'experts'. In football, you could select which play to use from the playbook, decide whether to go for it on fourth down (third down in Canada), etc. Would the 'crowd' call a better game than the coaching staff? Would the Yankees fans call a better game than the Red Sox fans? You'd need some pretty tight software security to keep the calls from being intercepted by the other side, but it should be possible. It might be best to try it out during an exhibition game or even an all-star game. I think it would be a hoot, and add a whole new dimension to the strategy of the game. 6:34:23 PM  trackback []  comment []

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