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Globalization and the Rise of Monopolization Speeds Economic Failure
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by viralvideo | November 10, 2008 at 09:15 am
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Globalization and the Rise of Monopolization Speeds Economic Failure
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Capitalism's base tenent of supply and demand requires a healthy environment of competition. Many of the calculated moves toward a global market have undermined that tenent. In a competitive arena, there are bound to be winners, and the governments used to regulate that to prevent monopolies from consolidating control in market sectors.
On a national level, consolidation has been occurring at increasing rates for the past 20 years. Do you remember the old mom and pop Hardware Stores? They are now rarely, if ever, found. The same has been occurring in the banking industry, as well as in nearly all other sectors. Control supply, and what happens to capitalism's balance? It no longer works.
On a global scale there are "winners" that are taking over the world food supply. The mining industry from Gold to Coal, is being consolidated through mergers and takeovers. Many of the world governments have recently succeeded in placing the diverse interests of investment banks into centralized hands, not to mention AIG.
What does this continuing and quickening trend portend for the capitalist system? It is no longer predominantly capitalist in nature. To continue theoretically as though it is simply begs more disaster. There needs to be a commitment to protecting the foundational precepts upon which the best proven system of economics are based, but can that happen?
Globalization will continue, and we must continue to partner with forces that have commitments to economic ideologies that have proven to be failures. In the west, we have made strides in the past that have inhibited, though not eradicated graft and corruption, but now we are letting our protective shields down in this regard. The result has been to allow monopolies to grab control, and in the resulting position of autonomous power, these organizations have been undermining our economic base with sacrificial, individualist greed.
The <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />United States is still the predominant military and economic power in the world, though admittedly, not to the scale previously enjoyed. The retention of this position, however reduced, begs that the US craft a new approach that will protect our nation from further economic ruin.
Capitalism has worked in the past, and there may be some small comfort in the past, but it is not working now, largely because there has been a sell out of it's base principles. Will a global economy allow the fundamentals of capitalism to be re-asserted to a degree necessary in preserving the system? If not, lets figure out a better way before its too late.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (10)
at 14:12 on November 10th, 2008
It's worth discussing. It seems that the rise of the finance industry has come to dominate what used to be capitalism and that all industry is becoming corporate, and this under the management of the modern state. Whether this system will be satisfactory in the global economy any time soon would probably depend on widely shared trade treaties, so NAFTA style agreements would take the place of OPEC style agreements. In the present world neither capitalism nor marxism would be fully functional.
at 10:39 on November 11th, 2008
I came across this posting by accident, but it makes a terrific point.
Could this phenomenon be the result of technology? Technology lets us manage much larger groups of people across traditionally impossible distances. Has this created an environment where the mom and pop shops are simply out-dated and the open competition is just played on a larger scale?
at 19:09 on November 11th, 2008
This whole mess is all planned out. Markets will crash, dollar will collapse and we will emerge into a New World Order. Gonna get nasty. Get ready
at 04:15 on November 12th, 2008
hard to take article seriously when the first sentence contains such a glaring error:
"basic tenants?"
you meant "basic tenets"
at 22:54 on November 12th, 2008
Hi Nitpicking
You're right about the spelling issue. I wrote this in about ten minutes without much review, and I appreciate your comment. I must admit to being not the best at spelling. Thanks for catching that. I owe you one.
Jeff...
at 11:41 on November 12th, 2008
Of course, in general, I concur with your analysis, viralvideo. Capitalism is failing - completely. But, perhaps it was never working!
While many, especially in business, would consider you to hold a rather liberal view, you hold to a rather romantic view of both capitalism and history.
"Capitalism has worked in the past," you say. But when exactly was that?
I'm going through my history notes (which are based on actual history - not the fictions taught in school) and can find no instance where "capitalism" has "worked." "Worked," being defined as not causing massive poverty, disintegration of society, greed and never-ending war.
What has been dubbed capitalism by the Captains of Industry themselves, is, and always has been, veiled cronyist, monopolist, faux-communism. While harping on and on about the "Free Market," and "competition," and comdemning such "communist" practises as welfare or universal health care, all of the largest companies around today are in their positions through:
A) Government handouts (a.k.a. Socialism/Communism): Many of our largest corporations do not pay taxes. Many get refunds. Tax "incentives" are doled out by municipalities and other governments, as they cave to demands from corporations to make their communities more "competitive." And these are granted. Contracts are passed out without bid.
The last time I checked, capitalism is supposed to be corporations working entirely without government intervention in the Free Market. Government ownership or crucial support of industry was called communism.
B) Monoplism: As you point out, corporations like to own each other - at ever-increasing rates. But in your article, you act as if this is new phenomenon. It is not. It has been, in fact, the rule - not the exception - since this diseased system, "capitalism" was invented. It has just taken time - with mergers and acquisitions happening one company at a time - to get to our current situation where the monoplies are so strikingly naked.
C) Cronyism: The well-known "revolving door" policy in Washington (and any other "capitalist country) has guaranteed that government now serves corporations. Americans put the CEO of Haliburton into the VP position, for Chrissake! George Bush 1 now helms the world's largest corporate broker of weapons & arms. How could the US not go to war for oil? How could corporations not get favoured treatment?
Taking all this into account, I find it hard to actually define when capitalism, as taught in textbooks, ever existed, let alone when it was ever successful.
Plainly and simply, we have been living under a system of unfettered greed, plastered over with a veneer of benevolent competition, since the 1800s. I wish there were a way for it to work, but there isn't and it's time to admit it and look for a viable alternative.
at 23:15 on November 12th, 2008
Hey Enjneer
I appreciate your comments, but I feel you may have read more specifics into my general comments than I actually put there. Some of the absolutist statements that you made both toward my perceived position as well as to the capitalist system and the activities of big players in commerce seem a bit reductionist and to not address either the true complexity of the issues or the simple fact that capitalism (which has never been pure) has been the system that's presided over the rise of mankind out of six thousand years of sticks and stones into the past two hundred years of simply incredible advances in civilization, health, science, industrialization, art, education, and population.
Life is not a laboratory. In competitive human society the scum rises to the top. There is nothing really good about capitalism or Marxism because they are both managed by fallible, corrupt, and greedy sycophants. This does not however, reverse the past functionality of the system as compared to any other of which man has ever tried. The questions I raised were not implying that capitalism has been perfect or without failings. It simply asks if the system has outlived its usefulness, or better yet, if things have changed under it to make it obsolete for future employ.
Things change though, and capitalism has been an exploitive system as you've pointed out. There is certainly less and less in the way of raw natural resources to exploit, and thus less certainty to speculation. In the past, fish, oil, timber, gold, Iron, and other materials that were easy to acquire and that could be translated to ready cash served to feed the capitalist debt economy with a stabilization factor that shored up all of the EXTREME speculation. Things change.
It's too complex for us to really answer, and even if we could, as you pointed out, the war mongers and power brokers wouldn't let a good answer work anyway. There's too much power base behind weapons, oil, and chaos. There is a lot of money still being made through mismanagement and destruction. Why would they change now?
Jeff...
at 11:53 on November 12th, 2008
at 07:45 on November 13th, 2008
Here, here, Fairbanks!
Trotsky, Marx and Lenin were all funded by the West - Mainly Rockefellers, Morgan/Rothschild. Another well-hidden, but actualy easy-to-find truth. Think I'm crazy? Look it up (but not in a textbook - Rockefeller-backed NGOs provide 80% of all textbooks in America.)
How did the Nazis go from crippled under the Treaty of Versaille - one of the poorest nations in Europe - to the richest; with an army of the highest-tech weapons available on Earth and coolest-looking Hugo Boss-designed uniforms?
The money came from, wait for it, the Rockefellers, among other high-level financier families For instance, Standard Oil's latest high-tech fuel additives were necessary for the Luftwaffe to fly their fancy planes that bombed the crap out of London and Europe and shot down our troops. Let me be clear: without Standard Oil (Rockefeller), the German planes would have been grounded.
Or how about another familiar name: Bush. W's grampa actually had his bank shut down in the 50s by the FBI under Hoover for trading with the enemy!!! Bush and his family aided and abetted the Nazis - even continuing after the war to finance the "Ratlines" - the underground railroad that brought over all the top-level, murderous, Nazis to North & South America.
Why didn't the US stop Standard deliveries and cooporation with the Nazis? The war would have been over without having to slaughter millions of Allied troops. Why was Prescott Bush allowed to keep his standing in high society and spawn two Presidents? Why is this all unknown to people - when it's right there to be found?
When are we going to wake up?!?
"Democracy" has never existed, "capitalism" never existed, "communism" never existed, and now "terrorism." Guess what, "terrorism," nor, "terrorists," exist either!
at 09:53 on December 11th, 2008
Hurah Enjneer
Scum rises to the top. The corruption of the religious, political and commercial elements of human society is laid out plainly for men with minds. The majority of us are so fat on pabulum and Pollyanna that we cant see our shoes anymore because of the shiny fatness of our bellies.
Truth is not pleasant, but without it doom finally awaits. It has happened cyclically over the millennia and we are reaching some kind of apex right now. The down swing in the past has been brutal for the masses, but before it was relatively local in scope. Now however, with modern civilization tied so closely together, the crash will be a thing to behold, and we may yet live to see the fall.
The scum of today's heights are no less craven to depravity than those of the past, but in that they preside over a greater mass and power, and so cause greater pain and horror.
I will propose that Democracy, Capitalism, Communism, and Terrorism did and do exist as ideologies that guide and have guided policy makers and governors in their exercise of the shifting renditions. They are always changing, being manipulated, and masking dark things however. The corruption that you mention is shocking, but should not be. Wise men know that it is going on right now with those in power. And yet the masses still vote for entrenched corruption.
Those who dreamed up these ideological precepts were like the scientists who weaponized uranium. They were pawns in the hands of corrupt and desperate power brokers. Their concepts and discoveries were twisted into monstrous application. The same may be said for the ideologies of which we are here speaking.