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  1. War has not always had a corporate agenda, war has been engaged in by states, militias, cheifs, etc for a long time before corporations have been around. Since when has making money been synonymous with a corporation? A corporation is a very specific thing. It is a legal entity, comprised of shareholders and a structure of governance, all backed by the power of nation states. What the fuck is limited liability other than the state lending its legislative power to business? The corporations you speak of are basically quasi-state institutions. Their role in modern US warfare is hardly sufficient evidence to declare all big business is running the world. Yes P. Bush was a fascist, so what? FDR pretty much was too. That whole era was dominated by fascism, eugenics and the like. It's inconsequential, like rewinding 150 years and pointing out that some historical figure was racist. They basically all were, its a moot point.
  2. For sure. I should just qualify my previous posts by saying that there is no doubt more to the story than was presented in the commissions report. Though, how much more, or to what end I don't know and am not interested enough in this event particularly to investigate thoroughly. Moreover, I think it is important to recognise the limits of internet based 'research', as the best you can really do is collate a range of other peoples opinions unless you go out and conduct empirical evidence yourself. I am generally of the opinion that if there was a grand conspiracy in the way the 'truthers' generally portray, there would be a shit-tonne of people selling their stories to various media orgs, govs and anyone else who would listen by now. Yet, having some knowledge of the way historical narratives are constructed I can certainly see how certain aspects of the story are enhanced while others are played down or discarded for the sake of political ends. This process can be deliberate from a central org, like government, or can be coincidence based on groups of people all seeking to maximise their own particular interests. I would generally suggest the latter option is much more common. tldr; Official story is probably a highly selective presentation of factual events, whereby inconvenient truths are discarded for the sake of political (in the broad sense of the word) ends.
  3. See I watched most of this video and unfortunately I don't see it as offering any evidence for anything particularly. It can be understood as making psychology based arguments for why people don't accept alternate narratives of the 9-11 event, but not a lot more. Equally I could present a collection of psychologists who all claim some degree of scientific objectivity in stating that people desire a grand narrative surrounding events of this magnitude that gives over-arching meaning to each aspect of the event. I posted an article or two in a thread here a while back to this effect. If anything this video illustrates the fallibility of psychology as a 'scientific' profession. For example, one lady says there is ample evidence to suggest an alternative narrative, so given this evidence the question should be 'why do people not accept it?'. What she has done is begin from the assumption that her reading of the evidence is correct and constructed a theory to explain why people don't agree with her. Sure, her theory is interesting, but it is hardly based on objectivity. It's totally valid to construct speculative theories, I do it quite a often in trying to understand why people are so complicit with horrific state actions, but you also must accept that you, or I, could be completely wrong in our assessment. The realm of the social is a strange, shifting, reality. It is hard, if not impossible, to quantify given that we are all so deeply embedded within it. Objective social 'truths' are, over time, understood to be nonsensical. Less than 100 years ago we understood women and darker skinned people to be inferior, and constructed 'objective' theories to substantiate this. All of which has since been revealed to be a farce. So, the nature of truth in a social context is deeply subjective. Psychology, as a profession, tries to build objective truths on top of a largely subjective field of behaviour. In this way it is prone to make highly disputable claims to 'truth'.
  4. If this was actual graffiti I might give half a fuck. Sucks to have gallery-fag problems huh? *Edit; People used to step up over shit like this, now they blog about it. Dope subculture we have these days..
  5. (1)Sure, a couple of companies are funding militias in Africa, this hardly equates to running the world. This shit is bread and butter for governments. (2)So CEO's do more damage than air-strikes? Is that what you are saying? I doubt you could find enough corporation related deaths combined to match the death toll of the Iraq war alone. You could even include corporate OH&S related deaths if you liked to bolster the numbers. (3)The power of wealthy individuals pales in comparison to the coercive power and reach of most governments. Bill Gates might be one powerful motherfucker, but even compared to New Zealand he aint shit. Bill Gates doesn't have an army, or the power to enact laws over people. He couldn't even operate his business in the way he wanted to because it was argued he was 'too dominant' and was forced to buy a share of apple or break up his company in the late 90s. Try telling the US gov they are too dominant and need to break up their federation to allow greater global competition. (4)Ever read the business section of any major newspaper? On any given day you will find a number of articles discussing the outcomes of various shareholder votes.
  6. You know what? Lets keep this really simple; when was the last time McDonalds launched an air-strike on a state it didn't like? Or even, when was the last time Nike made a law stating that people could only buy their shoes or face coercive penalty? I'm really no corporate apologist, but the comparison is beyond ridiculous.
  7. I have no doubt that there is collusion occurring between firms at any given time, but what you are suggesting is that collusion is stable which I vehemently disagree with. The best chance that big business has to collude is where government aids in the process by cartelising an industry though law and regulation, which restricts further entrants. In absence of this occurring, even where all the actors within a particular industry manage to collude and fix monopoly prices for a service, the profit margin they manage to achieve operates as an alarm signalling to other firms who might wish enter the market and undercut the cartels price. Thus capturing a share of the market and destabilising the cartel. To say that corps have the money to lobby governments is true, they can influence legislation this way far more than you or I. However, this assessment infers that poor government actors, who are simply trying to do the right thing, are helpless to the shady corporate advances. This is nonsense. Governments gain from the process, hence why they allow it to happen. In fact, while corporate lobbying is of a different magnitude it is hardly different from you or I, or some special interest group, asking for one type of government privilege or another. While there is an obvious power indifference between the lobbying parties, both of these examples rely on the complicity of the government actor. Hence it would be absurd to treat their part in the process as benign. Regardless, if you are saying that these various corporations run the world I suggest that it is your responsibility to demonstrate who, exactly, holds this power. If it is not shareholders, then is it CEO's? No doubt they remunerate themselves generously for their work, but they are ultimately beholden to the shareholders they represent. They are essentially custodians for the investment money of, perhaps themselves, yet for the most part others. So how is it that they run the world? Particularly given they are state chartered organisations, legal entities, that have no coercive power of their own. This is something that they rely entirely on governments to lend. Corporations are powerful entities, no doubt, but to say they run the world is way off.
  8. This is a wild statement to make. Can you demonstrate this point? There is nothing in the article, to my recollection, that says corporations conspire, simply that there are major nodes in a network analysis. In fact, even these nodes are in no sense proof of major power conglomerates as there connectivity proves nothing other than that they draw resources from a wide pool. Pension funds and other similar major financial organisations are likely to be recognised as such nodes as they invest widely with a large and diverse composition of shareholders. Shareholders of a pension fund can hardly be described as running the world. They probably have little understanding of what their money is even doing within this organisation. Like KMART pointed out before, these nodes are not necessarily any proof of a vast concentration of wealth and power. They are perhaps a starting point for further research but nothing more.
  9. Money is a tool for storing value and a medium of exchange. It is a misdiagnosis to say money itself runs the world due to its ubiquity and universal demand alone. Similarly it would be a misdiagnosis to say that time rules the world as we are all slaves setting our lives in accordance with the clock. There is a fundamental distinction to be made here; the power of people to influence world affairs is very different from the various mediums which facilitate that influence. Money as a medium is a facilitator of power not a power itself.
  10. I am a Rothbardian Anarcho-capitalist. That said, I would argue for a gradual deconstruction of the state rather than a rapid one. I think that any sudden, drastic, change would be more likely to push people towards even greater tyranny. Perhaps in this sense you could call me a conservative anarcho-capitalist (haha). If you look on the Mises.org site, they have listed most, if not all, of Rothbard's books. Probably 'For a New Liberty' would be a good place to start if you were interested. Up until a few years ago I was a staunch social-democrat with Marxist leanings. The shift began to occur when I gained a better understanding of economics. All of a sudden it became clear there was a stark consistency between classical liberal political theory, economics, and moral philosophy. An inter-disciplinary consistency that is largely unavailable to other ideological traditions. I retain a neo-marxist/post-modern approach to power analysis. I am very interested in what I see as a largely unrecognised synthesis between Foucault and Heyak, for example. So my position is nuanced rather than unabashed libertarianism. My sticking points in making the transition were really welfare related. I found it difficult to accept that those who are disadvantaged in life would not suffer, then I came to see that the method of welfare delivery causes as many problems as it prevents. I have posted a bit about this, but I think it has mostly been deleted. What exactly are these social-democratic leanings you have? It might be beneficial to you to hash them out and could be good fodder for discussion.
  11. One last quick comment, I think Chomsky is misleading when he talks about the success of the interventionist approach in developing economies. When he speaks about interventionism, I assume he means domestically, he draws a false correlation. He ignores the foreign interventionism/imperialism that has given most of the developed economies a drastic 'zero sum game' advantage over the slave bearing, colonised, and vanquished nations. These are all aspects that have facilitated the early capital accumulation aiding western/Japanese development. Considering Chomsky is a champion of anti-imperialism, I am surprised he presented his argument this way. Moreover, it is not that undeveloped nations have a hands off approach that is preventing their development, quite the contrary. It is that their political instability, risk of confiscation etc, that dissuades investors who will build up capital and thus increase economic capacity. For example, tell me who in their right mind would want to start a large scale venture in Zimbabwe right now? Zimbabwe will remain dirt poor so long as Mugabe, or any other leader, insists on using coercive force to intervene through price controls and other methods of veiled thuggery.
  12. The social democratic intent is wonderful, who doesn't want equality and help for those who have struggled in life? It is their lack of understanding of the mechanism they wish to deliver their intent that is their failing. The state is a beast born of militarism, it is hierarchical and coercive by nature. No manor of reform can change these fundamentals. The state is the state, to remove these elements would be to destroy it in favour of another form. In contrast, anything piled on top of this dreadful core leaves these fundamental issues un-addressed. This this is a point that will never be acknowledged by statists as they cannot see the forest for the trees. In a frenzied quest to address their unending micro concerns, they ignore a macro understanding of state based democracy. I should point out that Ron Paul does not believe the state should not act, unless he does so privately. He instead is aware of the problems of state action and seeks, pragmatically, to reduce their harms. He is a true libertarian, not an anarchist. This is the point that I diverge from libertarianism. Having drawn from a common theoretical perspective, I conclude that any state would inevitably use its coercive power to incrementally enlarge itself regardless of structure, constitution, etc. A state reserves the right to employ coercive force aggressively rather than defensively. A state is not self fuelling, it relies on resources it must pilfer rather than produce. In this way, a state has a strong incentive to find new ways to win approval for its privileged position through the use of this coercive ability, yet has a weak incentive to address the past and present problems it has caused in its aftermath. Simply put, it has a strong incentive to expand and a weak incentive to contract. For these reasons I am not a libertarian but an anarchist. Btw, thanks for the positive comments.
  13. Sure, libertarianism is traditionally a left wing movement. It is focussed on individual equality and opportunity rather than demographic based equality produced by the barrel of a gun. A shift by the center-left over the course of the 19th and 20th century from being pro equality to pro interventionism, abandoned libertarians, or classical liberals, to defend individual rights to do with property what they wish without harming others. Thus defending individuals rights to engage in business as they like. These kinds of typological arguments are one of the great sore points for political theorists, exemplified by this debate; do classical liberals fight to reclaim the name 'liberal' from those who have come to see it as representing social democracy, or do they abandon the name and reclassify themselves as libertarian? Personally I don't see it as so important to claim any particular title. I think it is important to point out errors, such as those who might claim libertarianism is a product of the extreme right, but if the weight of the world has moved against you then perhaps its best to roll with the punch. In this case I think Chomsky is taking a small liberty himself in the interpretation of Adam Smith etc. To my understanding Smith was not advocating that in order for markets to work each actor must start from a level playing field, this seems to me a modern 'liberal' interpretation of Smith, instead he was talking about markets delivering equality in opportunity as trade is essentially blind and does not favour the traditionally privileged. I don't need political connections to buy a smart phone, for example, smart phone providers are desperate to market as widely as possible as they see one persons money to be as good as the next. This prompts a point that I find hard to believe that statists do not recognise, in a democratic system; if you empower the state to privileged those you deem worthy you also inevitably empower the state to privilege those that others deem worthy too. This is as you have implicitly approved of the mechanism to privilege some over others regardless of the particular outcome. Social democrats want the state to be empowered to deliver welfare, bolstered unionism, and protected industry, but in doing so they also facilitate the desire of nationalist conservatives who want the state to be empowered to deliver law and order and militarism etc. Democracy as a political system simply does not enable the delivery of all of what one voting demographic wants and none of the other. This is as, by design, it is a coercive system which acts on behalf of the majority against the will of the minority. In this way it is naive to want the state to act in one way, but reject the state acting in another. You must either accept the state acts, or it does not. Thus in order to truthfully advocate democracy, the acts of the state must be accepted, historically, on aggregate. You must both believe that the sum total of the good outweighs the bad, and that the bad is justifiable in order to achieve some good. Personally I don't find this argument to be satisfactory, hence the fact that I reject the state entirely.
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