'The deadliest threat facing democracy today?'

April 9, 2001 6:54 AM

'The deadliest threat facing democracy today?' Noreena Hertz thinks that governments' steady withdrawal from running their own countries' affairs and the concessions made to big business are leading to a society which has lost faith in the political process. I guess there are a few people in California at the moment who'd agree.
posted by Markb (5 comments total)

Speaking from my own little niche on the lunatic right -- I believe that once a business grows beyond a certain size it becomes a quasi-governmental entity and should be subject to a lot of the same constitutional limitations we apply to government itself.
posted by jfuller at 7:16 AM on April 9, 2001

I don't know what kinda right that is, jfuller, but it seems like a better kinda right than I've ever seen.
posted by Doug at 10:05 AM on April 9, 2001

> I don't know what kinda right that is, jfuller

Well, there's vast numbers of self-interest conservatives and a few of what I call (fuller dislocates shoulder patting self on back) conscience conservatives. For example, I can't imagine a more natural issue for conservatives than conservation. So where are all the conservatives who ought to be clamoring for conservation? Generally they're the ones driving the dozers and logging trucks. Self-interest conservatives, who really don't care about preserving anything but their particular scam.

For about the past fifteen years, whenever I have seen something I thought should be preserved and defended (e.g. outfield walls covered with ivy instead of advertising) it has seemed to me that the bad guys are large corporations more often government (though the government is pretty detestable in its own right.)

The dilemma, for which I have no answer, is that one looks around for some weapon to use that's powerful enough to resist the encroachments of, say, Microsoft or Nestle or Shell, and one doesn't see anything but the government. And that's a false hope, I think, because government in general isn't really an adversary of corporate encroachment -- they're all in bed with each other. Ike Eisenhower (a Republcan prez and certainly Mister Conservative in his day) was the one who warned us against "unwarranted assumption of power by the military-industrial complex." It's become more general since Ike's day; now it's, in my jaundiced loony-rightwing view, the government-industrial complex. How one is to resist and control a thing like that is more than I know.
posted by jfuller at 11:24 AM on April 9, 2001

i agree jfuller.
corporations have gotten out of control in the power that they wield over our daily lives; (does anyone here in the u.s. think their grocery store food is NOT genetically modified?) and, the government's main concern is to insure that those same corporations continue to supply them with their campaign contributions. without knowing what the answer is, I can only say it's going to take a full reversal of today's current power structures.. the corporation has to become accountable to the individual again if they are to be held in check.
posted by bliss322 at 1:11 PM on April 9, 2001

jfuller: so you are the "authentic conservative" Noam Chomsky refers to in this article (second paragraph)...
A refreshing reclaim of misused terms this. Although I consider myself a member of the "lunatic left", I can't find much to disagree with.
posted by talos at 5:52 AM on April 10, 2001