The Inauguration of President Trump: State Capture in the Age of Anxiety

As Donald Trump takes the oath of office and is sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, I am reminded of the words attributed to District Attorney Jim Garrison by Kevin Costner in the film JFK:  

"If you let yourself be too scared then you let the bad guys take over the country, don't you? And then everybody gets scared."

Trump's candidacy, campaign and eventual election have been critiqued endlessly over the months - on the grounds of his character and temperament, his lack of political experience, his outrageous statements, Trump's nativism and anti-immigration stance, and his populist rhetoric devoid of meaningful policy substance. 

Meanwhile, comparatively little attention has been paid by Trump's detractors to what may well prove to be the overwhelmingly significant issue of the 2016 election: the capture of the United States government by corporate forces bent on their own economic agenda. 

Of course, the powerful role of big business is nothing new in American elections. The influence of corporate-funded lobbies and the power of the military-industrial complex have been well-recognised elements in American political life since at least World War 2. The election of Donald Trump, however, has taken this trend to a new level of intensity, such that State Capture is not too extreme a term to describe the consolidation of the rule of corporate interests in the American political system. 

This underlying fact - the consolidation of an elected plutocracy in one of the world's historic democracies - will prove key to interpreting and understanding the policies of the Trump Administration in the coming months and years. Promises made during the election about immigration, trade deals and draining the swamp of Washington insiders were merely the rhetorical devices used by Trump to secure his election, aided by a virulent campaign against his main opponent - a campaign which may well have been supported by the Russian intelligence services. The actual substance of Donald Trump's rule will be pro-big-business activity that benefits him personally as well as other billionaires who have supported him. 

The new President's cabinet reflects this distortion towards super-rich corporate elites. With personal net worth greater than the GDP of over fifty smaller countries, the new executive team are estimated to own about $11 billion in personal assets. Writing in the Boston Globe, Matt Rocheleau notes that:

President-elect Donald Trump boasted about his wealth during his campaign. Now he’s surrounding himself with people who have similarly unimaginable riches.

Collectively, the wealth of his Cabinet choices so far is roughly four times greater than President Obama’s Cabinet and nearly 30 times greater than the one George W. Bush led at the end of his presidency.

       

In 1952, Charles E Wilson, former CEO of car giant General Motors and later Secretary of Defense under President Eisenhower, revealed the following belief:

For years I thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa. The difference did not exist.

Replace General Motors with the name of their own corporations, and Wilson's statement would be a fair summary of the political paradigm of the new incumbent and his administration. Their agenda will be dominated by creating conditions for large businesses to prosper. This will be the thread that runs through domestic and foreign policy. Economic decisions, environmental regulations, healthcare, education policy and relations with China, Europe and Russia will be created, maintained or reformed according to the extent that they facilitate corporate deal-making.   

Against such a backdrop, we should expect little room for those areas of governmental activity that cannot be easily commodified - human rights, environmental protection, police reform or race relations. 

It is indeed a scary time. 

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Managers: Why do we have them?

Center for a Stateless Society » Taylorism, Progressivism, and Rule by Experts

I've yet to read an article by Kevin Carson that I haven't found stimulating and insightful.

This one on the historical origins of the idea of management - in business and politics - is no exception.

"The first corporation managers came from an industrial engineering background and saw their job as doing for the entire organization what they’d previously done for production on the shop floor."

Fascinating. 

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

The Levellers as Left Libertarians

High Speed Rail (Photo credit: loudtiger)

Center for a Stateless Society » The Levellers as Left Libertarians

Apart from being an interesting historical essay about the common political goals of two groups active during the English Civil War - the Levellers and the Diggers - the above article also has a number of practical applications for the contemporary economic and political context.

Although the author Julio Rodman writes primarily for an American audience, the practical policy areas addressed are relevant to many developed western economies in which state regulation is widespread, and disproportionately beneficial to large corporations rather than small business owners. Three areas are mentioned that, if reformed, could contribute to a significant re-balancing of the economic playing field in pursuit of the author's stated aim of a Jeffersonian model of a republic of property-owning citizens: 

1. National transport infrastructure

The subsidising of the costs of national rail, road and communications infrastructure, it is argued, disproportionately benefits large national and global corporations at the expense of small landowners, farmers and business owners. Kevin Carson has made a similar arguement with more in-depth economic analysis of the cost benefits to various parties of the state subsidy of national railways in C19 America.

Comparisons with the UK government's goal of building a High Speed Rail Line between London and certain northern cities is inevitable. If Carson and Rodman are correct, the HS2 proposal - with a price tag of around £50 billion - will effectively transfer wealth from tax payers (many of whom are non-asset holders) to large corporations such as the engineering and rail companies who will build and run the network.    

2. Professional Licensing

The ever-growing  tendency to seek state-backed licensing of various sectors of business professionals (the author cites the extreme examples of florists and fortune tellers!) is a further barrier to individuals entering profitable trades and businesses, according to the article.

Earning a living as I do in one of the last license-free areas of professional activity, I note with some alarm the voices being raised in favour of state-sponsored registering of private educators and tutors. Although voluntary professional bodies are to be welcomed as a means of ensuring high ethical and professional standards, and although appropriate criminal background checks are an essential part of safeguarding children,  I agree with the above article that the state's involvement in further licensing represents a barrier to small business owners. 

3. Restrictions on street vending

An economic mainstay in many countries, the restrictions on selling goods on the public highway is a further barrier to individuals getting started in business. Although such prohibitions are often cited as being in the interests of consumers, protecting them from unethical traders, Rodman in my view correctly analyses the actual reasons for such trading restrictions: 

"This is largely at the urging of immobile business owners who sell the same or substitutable goods and thus have an interest in eliminating competition, and at the pressure of various powerful economic actors seeking to maintain a bourgeois aesthetic in the urban environment surrounding their place of operation which is incompatible with the street vending ambiance."

Street vending provides, potentially, a great economic opportunity for those without assets to get a foot on the ladder of owning their own businesses and becoming economically self-sufficient. The restriction of the practice is to the disadvantage of such groups within society.

Rodman's article highlights areas that do not often receive attention in macro-economic discussions, but which, if implemented, have the potential to empower groups of individuals to become asset-owners through self-employment. The economic and social benefits of such a model are considerable, in my opinion.   

 


If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Clash of Values

Joe Strummer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Driving round today, I saw a white van covered in a logo and advert that made me laugh:

The Rock Project:
School of Rock and Pop
(Franchises Available Nationwide)

It reminded me of some lyrics by Joe Strummer from back in the day:

The new groups are not concerned

With what there is to be learned.

They've got Burton suits,

They think it's funny,

Turning rebellion into money.

(From White Man in Hammersmith Palais by the Clash. Go on, have a listen. You know you want to.)  





If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

KPMG: A Family-Friendly Company?

Two tweets from separate sources caught my eye this week. They both concerned accounting giant KPMG, "the largest integrated accounting firm in Europe" according to their website.

One tweeter commented that, 

"In [an] interview with KPMG was asked if had kids. I don't. They said good, because they weren't going to employ a mother." 

Another mentioned that when she worked there, a colleague who announced she was pregnant was told: "Oh dear what terrible timing with promotions coming up".

Is this stuff legal?

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Do it Yourself

Interesting thoughts from Kevin Carson at C4SS today:

Even though the micromanufacturing movement is in its very early stages, a garage equipped with homebrew digitally controlled machine tools can do most of what once required a mass-production factory — at a cost two orders of magnitude cheaper. We’re now seeing a reversal of the technological shift that brought about the concentration of economic power and the predominance of wage employment two centuries ago: a shift from expensive machines affordable only by large organizations, back to general-purpose craft tools affordable by individual workers.

Projects like Open Source Ecology are rapidly expanding the range of tools that can be built cheaply for the garage factory, while 100kGarages is continuing its pioneering efforts in networked micromanufacturing. We’re approaching a time when most of the stuff we consume can be produced in a microfactory with under $10k worth of tools, using open-source digital designs, and marketed to the surrounding neighborhood. When the cost of a factory is three months’ wage, “how ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm?”

Source





If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Turning Public Servants into Service Partners | ResPublica

Turning Public Servants into Service Partners | ResPublica

Devaid Erdall puts forward the case - and the steps needed - for turning public service providers in the UK into worker-cooperatives or employee-owned businesses.

I agree with the tone and general direction of this proposal and believe this represents a genuine alternative to slashing public services or maintaining them at a time of unsustainable levels of public debt.

Broke: A Film About Music

As one interested in small businesses, self-employment and finding new ways of working in the post-recession age, I was interested in this short video about making it independently in the music business.

Broke* Trailer (in production) - http://www.brokedoc.com from Mindfree Entertainment on Vimeo.

For those not looking for fame and fortune, it appears that a solid fan base of 1,000, coupled with producing and selling their own CDs can enable an independent artist to make a full-time living.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Corporations Profit From Permanent War: Memorial Day 2010

The following article by Bill Quigley is reproduced from today's Truthout under an Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Creative Commons Licence.

US law officially proclaims Memorial Day "as a day of prayer for permanent peace."

However, the US is much closer to permanent war than permanent peace. Corporations are profiting from wars and lobbying politicians for more. The US and the rest of the world cannot afford the rising personal and financial costs of permanent war.

Number One in War

No doubt, the USA is number one in war. This coming year, the US will spend 708 billion dollars on war, and another $125 billion for Veterans Affairs - over $830 billion. In a distant second place is China, which spent about $84 billion on its military in 2008.

The US also leads the world in the sale of lethal weapons to others, selling about one of every three weapons worldwide. The USA's major clients? South Korea, Israel and United Arab Emirates.

Our country has 5 percent of the world's population, but accounts for more than 40 percent of the military spending for the whole world.

Harm

Our nation does not respect our soldiers by engaging in permanent war. War is grinding up our children. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost over 5,000 US lives and tens of thousands more lives of people in those countries. Over 20 percent of those in our military who served in these two wars, 320,000 people, have war-related traumatic brain injuries. Suicide rates are up by 26 percent among 18- to 29-year-old male veterans in the latest Veterans Administration study. Mental health hospitalizations are now the leading cause of hospital admissions for the military, higher than injuries. On any given night, over 100,000 veterans are homeless and living on our nation's streets.

Rising Costs of War

Since 2001, the US has spent over $6 trillion (a trillion is a million millions) on war and preparations for war. That is about $20,000 for every woman, man and child in the US. Iraq and Afghanistan alone have cost the US taxpayer over a trillion dollars since 2001.

No End in Sight

Earlier this month, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chair of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Army Times that the US can expect continuing war "for as far as the eye can see."

In the name of this perpetual war against terrorism, the US still jails hundreds without trial in Guantanamo, holds hundreds more in prisons on bases and in secret detention worldwide, tries to avoid constitutional trials for anyone accused of terrorism, admits it is trying to assassinate an American citizen Muslim cleric in Yemen and launches deadly drone strikes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, killing civilians and suspects whenever they decide.

Who Benefits From Permanent War?

One support for permanent war is that there are corporations in the US which openly lobby for more and more money to be invested in war. Why? Because they profit enormously from government contracts.

President Dwight Eisenhower, who believed in a strong military, warned the US about just this in his farewell address to the nation in 1961. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."

War Is Big Business

War is very big business. People know that private companies are doing much more in war. In January 2010, the Congressional Research Service reported that there are at least 55,000 private armed security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan and maybe many more - as many as 70,000 in Afghanistan alone.

But much bigger money is available to defense contractors. In 2008 alone, the top ten defense contractors received nearly $150 billion in federal contracts. These corporations spent millions to lobby for billions more in federal funds and hired ex-military leaders and ex-officials to help them profit off war.

For example, look at the top three defense contractors, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. They demonstrate why perpetual war is profitable and part of the reason it continues.

Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin is the largest military contractor in the world with 140,000 employees, taking in over $40 billion annually, over $35 billion of which comes from the US government. Lockheed Martin boasts that they have increased their dividend payments by more than 10 percent for the seventh consecutive year - perfectly in line with the increase in war spending by the US. Its Chairman Robert Stevens received over $72 million in compensation over the past three years.

Lockheed's board of directors includes a former under secretary of defense, a former US Air Force commander of the US Strategic Command, a former deputy director of Homeland Security and a former supreme allied commander of Europe. These board members receive over $200,000 a year in compensation. Its political action committee gave over a million dollars a year to federal candidates in 2009, and is consistently one of the top spending PACs in the US. They appeal to all members of Congress because they strategically have operations in all 50 states. And since 1998, Lockheed has spent over $125 million to lobby Congress.

Northrop Grumman

Northrop Grumman is a $33 billion company with 120,000 employees. In 2008, it received nearly $25 billion in federal contracts. Its Chairman Ronald Sugar received over $54 million in compensation over the past three years.

Northrop's Board includes a former admiral of the Navy, a former 20-year member of Congress, a former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former commissioner of the Security and Exchange Commission and a former US naval officer. The members of its board of directors received over $200,000 each in 2009. Its PAC is listed as making over $700,000 in federal campaign donations in 2009. Since 1998, it has spent over $147 million lobbying Congress.

Boeing

Boeing has 150,000 employees and took in over $23 billion in federal contracts in 2008. With revenues of $68 billion in 2009, its Chair James McNerney was paid over $51 million over the past three years. Its board members are paid well over $200,000 a year. Boeing's directors include a former US secretary of Commerce, a former White House chief of staff, a former vice chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former US ambassador and US trade representative. It hosts the tenth largest political action committee, giving away more than one million dollars to federal candidates in 2009. Since 1998, it has spent $125 million lobbying Congress.

Time to Terminate the Permanent War

These corporations take billions from the government and profit from our perpetual state of war. They recycle some of that money back into lobbying the same people who gave it to them, and hire ex-military and government officials to help smooth the process. Their leaders make tens of millions off this work.

The trillions of dollars that it costs to wage permanent war are taxing the US economy. Yet, where are the voices in Congress, Democrat or Republican, that talk seriously of dramatically reducing our military spending? President Obama and the Democrats are effectively continuing the permanent war policies of the Bush years. It is past time for change.

Remember this Memorial Day that, while thousands have been laid in their graves and hundreds of thousands wounded, private military contractors are prospering and profiting as the business of war booms.

The US should not only remember its dead, but work to reverse the profitable permanent war that promises to add more names to the dead and disabled in this country and around the world.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

The BA Strike and Free Labour

I've been trying to get some thoughts together for a day or two about the court ruling that pulled the rug from under the feet of the BA staff who were planning on going on strike this week.

I've not been able to do so, but thankfully former ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, now of Lancaster University, has done so far more succinctly than I could have.

I agree with every word Mr Murray says on the subject. Seumas Mines has written a longer background piece on the growing trend of courts banning strikes on technicalities. I quote:

"The heavily one-sided nature of the laws under which these cases are brought means it is almost impossible to hold a court-proof ballot... And judges are increasingly introducing tests of "proportionality" and "balance of inconvenience" between workforce, employer and public, which have nothing to do with the original legislation. The rule of thumb is now that if a strike is likely to be effective, and an employer chooses to go to court, it will be outlawed."

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Grace City: Apple & Porn

Grace City: Apple & Porn

Respect to Steve Jobs who does not appear to believe that the customer is always right.

Good for him.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

The Mutual Way To Put Britain Back On Its Feet | ResPublica

The Mutual Way To Put Britain Back On Its Feet | ResPublica:

"Employee-owned firms have outperformed the FTSE-All Share Index over the last 18 years by an average of 10pc.

When shares are distributed to all employees we see a minimum 5pc productivity gain and often more, according to research."

Worker-owned businesses, co-operatives, distributism. It's the future....

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Why Not Rent Your Car Out?

I like the look of this enterprising business, currently based in Australia but waiting for the right person to launch something similar in the UK.

Drive my Car allows car owners to rent their vehicles out to members of the public privately by the hour, day, week or longer.

The site handles insurance and creates a rental agreement each time a renter wants to hire a specific vehicle.

Rental prices are set by the car owner and are typically up to 60% cheaper than the market leaders. In this instance, of course, the beneficiaries are individual car owners.

A smart business, combining a national web-based platform with an individual micro-business model. Nice.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Small businesses are the new mass market | Media | guardian.co.uk

#wearethefuture: Small businesses are the new mass market | Media | guardian.co.uk



More evidence that increased numbers of small businesses are one of the by-products of the economic downturn.




If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Married for Money: The Unnatural Union of Government and Business - LaVonne Neff - God's Politics Blog

Married for Money: The Unnatural Union of Government and Business - LaVonne Neff - God's Politics Blog

I've blogged previously about the problems of the merging of government and large business interests.

Here's another comment on the trend from an Amercan perspective.





If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Smaller Banks

I'm watching with interest as the media is focusing this week on the issue of reducing the ability of banks to drag national economies down when/if they fail.

President Obama's provocative statement that he intends to take action in this area has coincided with British ministers making noises about the issue as well.

In Britain, attention seems almost exclusively focused on taxing banks or requiring them to take out insurance against collapse, so that the tax payer does not have to bail them out again. Most of the discussion on the issue at present seems to be about how to get the banks to spend money protecting themselves.

There is an alternative approach, which I have not heard many explore publicly so far. It is that the actual size of banks be dramatically reduced through legislation. Although this does not, of course, guarantee that a bank will never fail (small banks can overreach themselves), it does at least, by distributing the power of the banks much more widely, reduce the prospect of any one of them being able to hold a national economy to ransom in the way that the large banks did in 2008.

Imagine, for instance, instead of the government owning 84% of RBS, if this bank were broken up into very small units - some as small as single local branches - that were sold off as going concerns. The tax payer would be repaid, the bank(s) would emerge as viable businesses and the national debt would be reduced.

Just a thought.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Naomi Klein on how corporate branding has taken over America | Books | The Guardian

Naomi Klein on how corporate branding has taken over America | Books | The Guardian

Great stuff.

Read it all.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Can Gordon Build a Society of All the Talents?

"Social Mobility for All" was a central theme in the Prime Minister's keynote speech at the Fabian Society New Year Conference on Saturday, held at Imperial College London.

"I believe in an aspirational Britain. Opportunity and reward cannot be hoarded at the top, and it is not enough just to protect people at the bottom. I want to see the talents and potential of all the British people fulfilled: social mobility for the majority.....

"So let me be explicit today; social mobility will be our theme for the coming election and the coming parliamentary term. Social mobility will be our focus not instead of social justice, but because social mobility is modern social justice."

The Prime Minister's vision of what he called an "aspirational society" rests, if I have understood the speech correctly, on three principle actions:

1) a government-backed job creation strategy

2) continued investment in education and training

3) maintaining well-funded public services


The full text of the speech can be found here.


Although I share many of the PM's aspirations for a society where there is genuine social mobility, I am doubtful that merely "inputting" in the ways outlined above will achieve this outcome. This is because such actions leave many of the essential structures that hinder social mobility in place.

Specifically

1. the dominance of global firms - run by elite professionals who wield significant economic and (indirectly) political power - whose size enables them to dominate markets rather than compete within them (except with other global firms).

2. the employer-employee relationship as the primary model of paid work - with the attendant insecurity this brings as workers' wages are seen as an expense to be cut in times of downturn.



As a self-employed small business owner, I have been increasingly looking in the last year or so into the distributist theory of economics. My own preliminary thoughts on distributism are here.

Simply put, distributism envisages a society in which the vast majority of members own private , productive property. Ideally, in the distributist world, as many as possible would pursue individual owner-operated trades which intimately link production with ownership.

In his speech, Mr Brown asserts the need for markets to exist within a moral framework. Jay Griffths argues that part of what defines the morality of an organisation is its size.

"We speak of economies of scale, and I would suggest that there are also moralities of scale."

In my opinion, inputting at the bottom will not create genuine social mobility unless these is forced restraint and limitation at the top. The rules that govern the economy we have - which allow businesses the possibility of unrestrained growth and periodic collapse - are man made. Other economic rules, which not only broaden opportunity but also restrain greed, are necessary if the Prime Minister's aspirational society is to become a reality.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

2010: A golden age for micro-business? | Marketing Donut

2010: A golden age for micro-business? | Marketing Donut

"In a post-recession economy characterised by slow recruitment, there are a lot of talented people who are either unemployed or underemployed. It’s entirely feasible for them to start their own business without taking considerable financial risks - or even to do so alongside flexible working options."

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Car Scrappage Scheme

£900 million has been set aside by the UK government, apparently, to subsidise the car scrappage which pays owners £2,000 to trade in old cars when they buy new ones.

What a missed opportunity. Imagine if that amount of public money had been invested in green, local, micro-businesses rather than in an industry which is in serious decline anyway.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.