Empathy For Corporations. Really

I don’t necessarily blame greedy corporations for their actions.  Their corporate charters (by law), require them to produce a profit for their shareholders regardless of the social, economic or environmental consequences.  Corporate monopolies and destruction of small business is the natural course of capitalism.  The greater the government regulations protecting the public, the less power these companies have.  Unfortunately, with control of greater portion of the country’s wealth, these companies can (and do) weaken these protective regulations, lower their own taxes, drum up the war beat on profitable but destructive wars, manipulate public opinion into privatizing public institutions and property and through ownership of the majority of media outlets and influence in the education system, ensure the continuation of an economic system that privatizes profit while socializing costs.  I’m afraid this notion that the problems today could be solved if only people had better work ethic, government would get off our back and people weren’t so damn greedy; but the groups advancing this view are the ones who continue to gain the most from it.  Seen from an outside perspective, there are very limited freedoms in a capitalistic society, even if it is claimed to be politically democratic.  There are alternatives to capitalism available and we can change the system now while there is still a livable planet and resources left, or we can let the destructiveness of capitalism take it’s course until it cannot expand any longer on a finite planet and our civilization goes out as the biggest “flash in the pan” of recorded human history.

-M.C. Pletcher