Re: [dvd-discuss] DVD topic return / was: EFF opposes blacklistingspammers

[Jeme A Brelin <jeme(at)brelin.net>]

On Sat, 20 Oct 2001, Bryan Taylor wrote:
> I wasn't really aware of any current global crisis for capitalism.

Wow.  What planet do you live on?

Did you not see fifty thousand people in Seattle, eighty thousand in
Quebec City, and sixty thousand in Genova?

Why did they have to move the next WTO conference to Qatar?

Have you not seen the statistics that the upper classes are getting
further and further from the lower classes and their numbers are
shrinking?

Have you not seen the growing middle-class debt economy?

Usury is killing our economy and wedging the gap between the haves and
have-nots further than it's ever been in history.  This is the situation
that led to WWII in Germany.  This is the situation that led to the Great
Depression in the United States.

Interest and rent, landlords and money-lenders are, as they have in every
single civilization since biblical times, destroying the natural balances
of wealth and creating economic slavery.

I am not anti-business.  I am anti-usury (in the true sense, not the
watered-down, we-wanna-get-in-on-the-jews-racket 14th century Catholic
revision of the term).

I do not oppose business and trade within a framework that outlaws all
forms of usury and treats trade a second-class form of human interaction
that can never supercede the greater goals of society of peace, tolerance,
justice, strength, freedom and health for all living things.

Is sharing destroying your trade?  Sorry.
Can you not manufacture without dumping sludge?  Too bad.

> President Bush in China just spoke glowingly about recent
> international progress of market based economies and the expected
> expansion in coming years. His message was well received by the
> international audience.

Yeah, the rich folks in attendance LOVED all that talk because they'll
continue to get rich while everyone else gets poorer.

Did he mention that real wages are the lowest they've been in forty years
for the lowest 80% of American workers?

Did he mention that if the minimum wage had kept pace with average CEO
salaries since 1985, it'd be more than twenty dollars per hour?

> There may be deep problems in the US regarding special interest
> influence in Congress, but whenever private entities subvert the
> government for there own ends, the harms are due to the absense of a
> free market, not the presense of one.

The WTO and FTAA exist entirely to subvert local governments in favor of
"free trade"... that is, trade without restriction; restrictions like
civil rights and environmental protection.

Due process just hinders due progress!  Profits first, then... well, then
profits.  No two programs are EXACTLY the same price, so if we can make a
dime more by spoiling the air and water, we'll take that dime.  If we can
save a dollar a year by ignoring labor laws, those chaps can work some
place else if they don't like it.

After all, that fellow makes a CHOICE before he works an eighteen hour day
and lives in company shanty without running water.  He could choose to go
without a job (and a home).  Or, better yet, he could be entrepreneurial
and start his own business.  Isn't that what you'd say, Bryan?

> Bush actually identified corruption as an important obstacle to
> overcome as governments struggle to expand trade. He's somewhat in
> denial about the US situation and needs to hang out with McCain a
> little more, but his statement is accurate.

He's not in denial, he's on the payroll and his dad's on the Board of
Directors.

And I just love it when capitalists (who usually barely understand the
nature of the system and just recite, without any evidence, the mantra
that "free markets" yield perfect competition) use the term "government
corruption".  What does it mean for a government to be corrupt?  It means
that the interests of the few have superceded the interests of the public.  
But a private business is ALWAYS more interested in the few (those
collecting the profits) more than the public.  Does that make every
private business corrupt?  Well, it does if that business is supposed to
be providing public services.  So why on Earth would we EVER privatize
public services?

> The free market depends critically on legitimate rule of the
> governement, as absoletly cannot be reconciled with a system where
> market favors are brokered by corrupt politicians.

Legitimate governments destroy free markets because it's contrary to the
public benefit.

So-called "free trade" undermines local economies and makes poor countries
poorer.  Before the US forced open the South American grain markets to
American agribusiness, Colombia was the region's largest supplier of
wheat.  But wheat prices fell through the floor when the agribusiness
giants moved in (operating at a loss to cut out local competition) and
local farmers were left without a stable market.  So they turned to coca.  
And while the geurillas BEG for help in developing new agricultural
products to replace coca, their US supported government shakes its head
and drops the US supplied bombs because fighting coca distributors is
their number one source of income.

Free markets have DESTROYED local economies across the third world.  A
company doesn't move in unless it can draw out more money than it
spends.

That's exactly why only corrupt governments are pro-capitalist and why the
WTO, WIPO, FTAA and NAFTA were created.  These are super-governmental
agencies designed to strike down local legislation where it conflicts with
free trade.  The will of the people shall not supercede the will of the
transnational corporation.

A legitimate government receives its power from the people and, therefore,
cannot pass illegitimate law.

Only a government "corrupted" by private interests can pass law that is
illegitimate.  So why do we build an organization driven by private
interests to challenge the laws of legitimate government?

And if it can get the local entrepreneurs (or local fronts for foreign
bueinsses) to take out some high interest World Bank loans to "get the
ball rolling", so much the better!  The loans go out and when the business
suddenly evaoporates (oh, like the fellows skip town with the money or
fail utterly to compete with trans-national mega-conglomerates) the
International Monetary Fund (IMF, or "Vinny the Enforcer" to its friends)
comes in and does a little "restructuring".  See, the loan needs to be
repaid, but the local currency isn't worth diddly to the banks that
insured the loans.  So the whole local economy is reorganized to provide
goods for the American market so the return is cold US dollars that the
bankers love.  All of a sudden, we have cattle ranchers in South America
growing beef for McDonald's in Chicago to sell for $.39 a patty to fat
Americans while people six miles from the ranch itself can't get quality
meat for less than a week's pay.

This is the state of "free market" policies worldwide.

We've just barely touched the tip of public reaction and the negative
effects on our own fatcat economy are just prairie-doggin' up to the
surface.

Of course, we'll have situations like Iraq, Panama, and Chile where the
CIA subverts the local democratic government in an attempt keep the cheap
oil, transportation, and labor flowing to US businesses for a little bit
longer.  But as anti-US sentiment grows in the regions we subvert, we
could see something like a worldwide class war.

J.
-- 
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme@brelin.net
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