Left-wing rant

Conservatives always say that the problem with the country today is that people don't take responsibility for their own actions. Welfare, abortion, crime, unemployment, debt, etc... These people are doing what they want and looking to the government to bail them out when things go south.

They do not say that corporations take responsibility for their actions. A corporation is an entity that holds accountablity in place of individuals that make decisions in a company or other organization. Why aren't conservatives calling for corporations to pay their taxes, or clean up the environment, or pay their union and non-union employees decently?

Why aren't conservatives calling for corporations to deal fairly with people here and in third world countries? If a company is going to turn huge profits by taking manufacturing and programming jobs overseas, shouldn't they give those countries more than subsistence salaries and money to corrupt government officials and military leaders? Shouldn't they help build roads and town halls and schools as well?

As conditions improve and the local population demands higher salaries these corporations often leave and take jobs and machines and means of productions back out with them to places where people starve and work for nothing. Those factories used to get "nationalized" and stayed where they were built. Now with NAFTA and the WTO, I'll bet that doesn't happen.

We have this idea that the sole responsibility of a corporation is to make money for it's investors and we allow them to justify any action they take with the idea that if they don't turn a maximal profit they will not survive.

I say these are evils of the world today but stories you hear these days from places like China are much like stories you would hear in the days of Carnagie and Pullman, stories of the industrial revolution. Only it is now on a global scale.

In those days people would turn to the ideology and mythology of Marxism to fight industrial exploitation. Perhaps today countries will couch this conflict in terms of nationalism and a culture war. Much like Islamic people in the Middle East, saying "we don't want to be middle class democratic Americans drinking your diet coke and shopping at the GAP, we want to be what we are and live by our own traditions."

Capitalism is the dominant ideology and culture. It is the ideology with the most money, and guns. If you don't play the game, the game will play you.

I think I have had too much caffeine today.