Reply #21: Great thread [View All]

[yltlatl]

thanks for this! I have to say I'm w/ Squirejons and TBC, but I'll go you one better. The ONLY effective countermeasure to unregulated greed is--you guessed it--REGULATION. And if corporations are going to become anational (I would argue they largely have already via the pyramid of ownership), then we need to regulate them at the INTERNATIONAL level. Everyone around the world who suffers from the actions of these corporations needs to find common cause and force our governements to submit to international pressure and to strengthen international institutions (and eventually we need something far better and more directly representative than the UN).

Like it or not, part of that internationalization process will probably result in Americans having to compromise on our so-called "standard of living". We will have to become on average somewhat poorer. (Considering that we live a life of opulence thoroughly unimaginable to most of the world and suck up ungodly amounts of resources tells me that might not be a bad thing.) To me though, the amount of security we would gain by taking this route would be well worth the trade off--that would be a standard of living with some value.

P.S. All this talk about our corporations "competing" will remain so much hogwash while profit margins are as high as they are and upper level executives earn hundreds of times the amounts their workers earn. We need to bust these corporations down and yoke them to serve (rather than ravish) our social well-being.