Conspiracies are almost always bunk (but note that word ‘almost’). In the vast majority of cases, there are other better explanations for why things happen. Also, it ain’t a conspiracy if it is right out in the open for all to see. And by out in the open, I do not mean people saying “we are going to screw you over”. No, forget what people say, just focus on what they do and try to actually make happen. Once you understand what their objectives are, and the incentives they respond to, you can (almost) always parse their proclamations and get what they actually mean. An oil company’s objective is to produce oil, right? So, why would an oil company support phasing out internal combustion engines? Well, an oil company’s objective is not to produce oil, it is to make money and keep its employees in their jobs. And you can also make money by having governments give you taxpayer’s money to develop alternatives.
Big business seeks unified, market-based approaches ahead of climate summit
Corporate executives and investors say they want world leaders at next week’s climate summit to embrace a unified and market-based approach to slashing their carbon emissions. The request reflects the business world’s growing acceptance that the world needs to sharply reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, as well as its fear that doing so too quickly could lead governments to set heavy-handed or fragmented rules that choke international trade and hurt profits.
– Reuters (2021)
Note that phrase “fragmented rules”. There is even a photo in the article of some poor impoverished fellow titled “A farmer burns paddy waste stubble in a field on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India”. No doubt this man is filled with a frisson of excitement at the prospect of having his costs massively increased by getting rid of internal combustion engines, and maybe even having some patented GMO seeds foisted on him that he has to pay for annually.
So, here is another quote.
Fascism is the organised attempt to introduce socialist planning with the consent of big business
– Edward Conze (1934)
Conze’s quote is very illuminating and even from the perspective of a deeply unpleasant man writing in the 1930s it is on the money. Where I think Conze’s observation needs a bit of updating is fascism (or alt-socialism) circa 2021 does not look exactly like fascism circa 1934. The ‘organised’ bit these days lacks jackbooted chaps marching down the street (well, usually), and modern neo-racism is tactically different to the way it was done in 1934, albeit the primary objective is still segmentation of populations into manageable groups.
Admittedly, Chinese Han nationalism is a bit more like paleo-racism than the neo-racism of the 白左 Wokesters of the Western world, complete with jackbooted thugs marching down streets, but in most other respects, the Chinese Communist Party has provided a master-class in how an ineffective Marxist socialist regime can quickly adopt the more effective and pragmatic outsourced fascist approach to planned socialist societies. A lot of people in the west look at China and rather like what they see.
When big businesses argue for higher taxes and more regulation, it takes wilful blindness to not see why they are saying these things. It is because it gives them a comparative advantage over less well capitalised up and coming rivals who lack huge compliance departments. Moreover, it strangles future would-be rivals at birth, making it too expensive to even try and get a business based on little more than a good idea off the ground. Just make sure the regulations and costs apply to everyone, no “fragmented rules” that leave gaps in which dangerous weeds might grow.
It is not a conspiracy, because not only is this completely out in the open, it is just a confluence of interests between people with monetary and political power, bureaucrats public and private looking to maintain their power and prestige.
It’s still an organised attempt, just that the fuckers organise it at Davos & the Leaders Summit on Climate rather than in beer halls in Munich.
It is indeed partly true that Big Business supports higher taxes and more regulations in order to prevent competitors rising – but this not the full story.
For example, why do the entertainment companies (the big ones – Disney, CBS Viacom….) put on shows that they KNOW people do not want? And they do know – yet they put out films and television shows that they know get terrible ratings, they have done it for years now.
The other corporations do such things as give vast amounts of money to Marxist terrorist groups (such as BLM) and openly come out in support of ELECTION FRAUD – well “Never Trumpers” who, privately, admit the 2020 election was rigged but say it was “just about Trump”, how do you feel about ALL FUTURE ELECTIONS BEING RIGGED?
Even the mildest safeguards against Election Rigging, for example the recent law passed in Georgia, are denounced by Big Business – virtually large large Corporation is now in support of Election Rigging, not “just” for 2020, but for every future election.
Corporations also push adverts that are designed to disgust their customers – think about that. For example razer companies push adverts attacking men (their customers), and pushing things such as “Trans Rights” for children.
Mr Biden knew in 2020 that he could support the sexual mutilation of EIGHT YEARS OLD CHILDREN (his televised “Town Hall”) because he knew the election was going to be rigged – so it did not matter what he said, about anything (the alternative view is that 80 million Americans voted to support such things as the sexual mutilation of eight year olds – in which case the United States is damned, and I am not using a figure of speech).
But Corporations face “elections” every day – so why are they putting out adverts that can only REDUCE their sales?
Overall the Milton Friedman view of Corporation, which is also the LEGAL position (corporations and trusts are legally supposed to be for the benefit of their owners and beneficiaries), that they are neutral profit seekers just seems to be mistaken – wrong.
Modern corporations (like most universities and churches – which are also corporations) act in a way that shows a fanatical devotion to leftist doctrines – and a disregard for CUSTOMERS (customers being seen as disgusting creatures – whose principles and preferences are to be spat upon).
Corporations are normally controlled by hired managers who have no long term interest in whether the corporation exists in the next generation (they are not going to pass it on to their children), and most shares are today owned by INSTITUTIONS which are themselves controlled by hired managers.
So hired managers supposedly answerable to other hired managers with no real owners. Even when shareholders take the managers to court (as shareholders took Sir Victor Blank to court for DELIBERATLY destroying share holder value at Lloyds Bank, to please his pal Prime Minister Brown – by taking over the already bankrupt HSBC and thus dragging down Lloyds) the courts essentially tell the shareholders to “go away”.
I remember going into Lloyds and seeing endless video propaganda playing behind the head of the cashier – none of the stuff playing to the customers was about banking. It was all about homosexuality and various races and stuff.
This was being played in a town in the middle of England – and no doubt everywhere else to.
HSBC has an endless propaganda campaign that Britain is “not an island” – which is a lie, because Britain is an island. And the message is that we must accept the “New Normal” a “better” world of totalitarian control from the cradle to the grave.
Even if I agreed with the totalitarian politics of HSBC why would I be happy with a bank lecturing me about the need for totalitarian world governance?
None of the stuff Big Business pushes makes any sense – UNLESS they see their future as just endless subsidies from government and the Credit Bubble banks.
I would be quite happy to see big business get what they want – higher taxes and more regulation. Obviously the regulation would be stuff like banning stock options and diversity training. And banning political discrimination in provision of service.
My only stipulation would be graduating the introduction of such extra taxes and regs. Maybe beginning to kick in when you have a market cap of ten billion or so.
As for taxes, I think I might start with a 50percent sales tax applied to revenues from advertising and sale of internet derived business information. Kicking in once such revenues hit say 100 million or so.
I’d also be reforming the rules for the taxation of offshore income, not necessarily to the advantage of very large corporations.
I’m certainly open to other suggestions.
It would be nice if people would look outside for once and ask themselves, if CO2 causes the temperature to rise then why doesn’t it? Since the “Climate Crisis” seems to be the justification for all kinds of authoritarian rules and regulations, pointing out that there isn’t one might be useful.
As for the Global Warming caused by human emissions of C02 theory (now called “Climate Change” – so that even COLD weather can be taken as evidence “proving” the theory) – this is based on historic temperature figures.
But as Tony Heller (realclimatescience.com), and others, have long pointed out – American government agencies keep CHANGING the historic temperature data.
And when scientists object to the FRAUD (which is what changing the historic data is) they are subjected to threats of having their funding cut off – and they are even SHOT AT (as scientists at the University of Alabama found out – when their office was shot up one “Earth Day” for the “crime” of refusing to rig their temperature data).
Physical science depends on honest data – but honest data is precisely what the establishment will not allow. Just as they will not even allow the science of biology to honestly exist – they will not allow such basic facts as that there are genetic differences between men and women (including in the brain) and that cutting off the penis of some child does not make a boy a girl – it creates a castrated male, not a female.
Almost needless to say – Big Business supports all of the above, rigging historic temperature data, pretending that castrated boys are girls, all of it.
For decades we were told that it did not matter that the humanities were being undermined, but the physical sciences are also undermined. Such journals as the Lancet (medicine) and Scientific American are now little more than far left propaganda publications.
Perhaps the human emissions of C02 cause Global Warming theory is TRUE – but it is impossible to know that as the historic temperature data is systematically rigged, the fraud is blatant and not just in the United States – remember Michael Mann and the merry band of fraudsters at the University of East Anglia, and elsewhere.
Even the killing of hundreds of thousands of human beings, by denying them Early Treatment for Covid 19 (indeed systematically smearing Early Treatment) goes on with the active help of the establishment.
There is a total indifference to medical and scientific truth – all that matters is a POLIITICAL AGENDA of international “governance”. With a dreadful disease, Covid 19, just being seen in POLITICAL (not medical) terms.
The first thought of international health officials should not be “how can we use this to advance a Progressive political agenda?” – it should be “how can we cure the sick?”.
As for Big Business – they push censorship against the truth, the truth in biology, the truth in medicine, the truth in temperature figures, they hate truth in all areas and do all they can to crush truth and spread lies.
I do not think that commercial advantage is a sufficient explanation for the behaviour of most of the big corporations.
Paul’s post mentioning the agency problem arising from the management of large business by people who are not their owners, reminds me of a weird feature of US corporate law in many States.
And that is that getting rid of directors is not simply a matter if voting them out with 50.0001 percent of the votes. The board has all sorts if protections from being got rid of. This results in revolting trough feeding on a takeover, where the acquiring company has to pay greenmail to the targets board to get them to agree to what the shareholders have already voted for.
So I think we’ll be adding a 30 pc income tax surcharge for everyone earning more than say $200,000 if their contract (or state law) says they can’t be sacked “at will.”
That still leaves the problem of the big voting blocks being held by institutional shareholders. Suggestions welcome.
Lee Moore not only supports the international tax cartel idea…
He wants to get into a rule-making contest with business institutions who have perfected the art of making alliances with rule-makers. The more complex, arcane, and international the rules are, the more Big Businesses loves them. Compliance Departments of the World Unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains and a whole world to win.
You can almost hear the sound of millions of securely employed but indifferently paid government employees around the world getting a boner.
Yes, many things need to change but I’m not seeing any good ideas yet.
白左 is the only concept worth a damn to come out of China in the last 1000 years 🤣👍🏻
I’m OK with indifferently paid government employees getting boners, so long as they’re carrying rifles. I havent yet thought of how to distinguish the ones manning desks instead of ships and tanks for the purposes of my “at will” tax surcharge.
No, you miss the point the article makes. Who needs customers when the state can give you their money via taxes? The stupid behaviour makes perfect sense when you realise they’re not in the business you think they are. Follow the party line and the riches of the world will be yours, all blessed by St. Greta.
It’s worse than that. The money does not come from taxes, it is borrowed into existence via central banks. In effect it is produced out of thin air. We used to say “printed”, but they don’t even bother to do that any more, it’s mostly electronic. I think the only reason states keep “taxes” is to provide a fig leaf for their spending, and to promote the misconception that something actually backs it.
The USA has just passed a $1.9 trillion “stimulus” act. I am struck by how often people refer to it as $1.9 billion, which is a rounding error these days. A trillion dollars is so much no normal person can conceive of such a figure. Citizens earning less that $100,000 have received a $1,400 “stimulus cheque”, which they are no doubt meant to spend on Chinese made goods (they do not say whose economy is meant to be “stimulated”.
The fact that the US government can send almost every citizen a cheque for $1,400 tells you something about “taxation” being necessary for expenditure.
Now Sleepy Joe and his gang want a $2 trillion programme of “infrastructure” spending. Some naive types think it will be spent on roads and bridges. Some will, but most will be syphoned off to friends of the Democratic party to provide “green jobs”. Ten per cent may well be kicked back to the “Big Man”.
I think it is clear enough that none of this $1.9 trillion “stimulus” nor $2 trillion “infrastructure plan” will ever be repaid. Not a penny. None of the US government debt will ever be repaid. It will be rolled over, but never repaid. Every dollar “repaid” will be financed by another dollar borrowed.
It is said you cannot taper a Ponzi scheme, and it is true. But when you are the US government, and can create as much of the world’s reserve currency as you like, you can keep the Ponzi scheme going for a long time. Someday it will end, but probably not in Sleepy Joe’s lifetime. We are safe for the next few months.
“Fragmented rules” = countries passing laws in their citizens’ interests, which are inimical to the interests of globalists.
Wokesters within corporate America are inducing companies to spit on significant portions of their customer base. They now issue press releases celebrating that. This draws a roadmap for very profitable hostile takeovers who simply make the completely nondestructive change to the business of treating their entire customer base with respect.
I haven’t done much international research but I doubt that the trend is absent outside the US.
So why not explicitly set up investment funds to do this?
Not absent but less prevalent.
Consent?
Enthusiastic encouragement.
1) Hannah Arendt (‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’) wrote that a totalitarian party is a conspiracy pursued in broad daylight, using the methods of secret societies while emptying them of their alleged purpose, which was to safeguard a secret.
So sort of agreeing with your remark, while noting some subtleties.
2) Fascism arose because (after much effort trying to bring it about), Mussolini and other socialists were forced by experience to conclude that the masses would never become violent revolutionaries in the socialist cause. They were already casting about for an alternative cause with which to motivate them, and thinking that nationalism looked a good bet, when the start of WWI suggested the masses were indeed willing to fight for it. Fascism grafted a loud nationalism onto a watered down socialism/collectivism.
(National Socialism was not fascism but had a similar union aspect, as its name declares.)
The modern ‘neo-fasist woke’ are loudly anti-nationalist. (FWIW, I see this as a practical weakness, while noting that the history of communist Russia and communist China show that a movement can milk nationalism a fair amount while formally decrying it.)
Just my 0.02p FWIW.
This may seem incredibly OT here, but it’s really not:
We used to hide conspiracies in silence. Now we hide them in plain sight, with mis- and mal- and dis-information campaigns that effectively bury truth behind an impenetrable wall of noise.
So, in light of our new National State of Emergency declared today by Biden, can anyone recommend a source of detailed and true information that could transform someone’s knowledge from “The Ukraine – isn’t that over by Russia?” to knowing WTF is really going on there and why we’re evacuating destroyers as fast as they can steam out?
In my addled and uninformed array of knowledge of it all, I’m getting the impression that The Good Guys might not be who I have thought they were, and I’d at least like to know who’s who.
Joseph Biden (or whoever tells this puppet what to say) and the People’s Republic of China want international tax “harmonisation” and an end to “tax havens” – so I suspect it is a bad idea.
How to have a less hostile opinion of Corporations…..
Do not watch or listen to their advertisements – the ad will never be about the product, it is always about race, sexual stuff (but never presented in an erotic way – always both boring and POLITICAL), or “the environment” (or some mixture of all of these things).
Do not watch or listen to anything a Corporations says about a political, scientific or moral matter – as what they say will always be evil, and will often be insane as well.
Try very hard NOT to be employed by a Corporation – although if you are employed by one and you are an honest and plain spoken person this situation will rectify itself (as they will dismiss you). If you fundamentally dishonest and slimy – then you are just what they have been looking for.
If you go to a Corporate place of business (such as a bank or supermarket) think hard about a complicated matter – you will not produce a solution to the complicated matter, but it help you ignore the endless audio and visual messages the Corporation will be broadcasting at you, explaining their “Woke” political and social position.
Avoid “entertainment” produced by the Corporations – as these products (films, television shows, magazines……_) manage to be irritating and boring at-the-same-time.
The odd thing is that I can remember a time when NONE OF THE ABOVE WAS TRUE – it really was not. The business world has fundamentally changed in my lifetime. Terms such as “Social Justice” and “Social Responsibility” were once unknown to managers (and to Business Schools), and Corporations did NOT use to spend their time working for world totalitarianism (not a “conspiracy” as they do so QUITE OPENLY under such names as international “governance”). The change is most unfortunate – as it may help lead to the destruction of the West.
Two words, Babcock International the biggest bunch of woke assholes I have ever had the privilege to work for.
Hardly a privilege then Mark – more like a curse, still there-we-go.
Niall is correct – a totalitarian movement is a conspiracy out in the open. For example, Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum (now officially allied to the United Nations – and most world governments and corporations) has never hidden what the international establishment elite are doing – he has shouted it from the roof tops.
It is not his fault if we did not take “Stakeholder Capitalism” (Corporate State) and “Sustainable Development” (which Mr Kerry is pushing right now – with the authority of the United States government) did not take it seriously.
“But you did not tell us what you were going to to” – “Yes we did – we told you endlessly, but you did not take heed”.
The National Industrial Recovery Act and National Industrial Administration were created in 1933 – and struck down in 1935 (United States Supreme Court – 9 votes to 0) – so the Mussolini style Fascist Agenda of the establishment elite is hardly a new thing.
1933 – so Mr Biden could say, quite correctly, that he is carrying out the New Deal (the end of competition and the establishment of a Corporate State – frustrated by a Reactionary Supreme Court in 1935) – and indeed the agenda of President Woodrow Wilson.
After all Perry – there is nothing in “Philip Dru: Administrator” (written by Mr Wilson’s “other self” Colonel House) with which the modern establishment would really disagree.
Woodrow Wilson was an interesting academic Collectivist (in the Richard Ely mode) – he himself wrote “The State” hundreds of pages of Collectivist ravings which no one I know has managed to read all through (yes I failed as well).
Many people bought it and put in on their shelves – to show they were intellectuals (without reading it).