International Business

                     Ruled By Slaves

Although the corporations that rule the world

govern themselves with strict rationality,

given their assumptions,

it is the deep irrationality of those assumptions

that have sent human life into a downward spiral

that even the corporations are unlikely to survive

in the long term.

Key amongst these rationally flawed assumptions

is that the law must consider corporations

to be persons – almost the same as you and me –

at least as far as rights are concerned,

if not responsibilities.

One of the many rational difficulties

that this doctrine presents

– such as that corporations obviously aren’t really people –

is that corporations are the property of their shareholders,

and so, as persons, are obviously slaves,

thereby violating every national law and international covenant

outlawing slavery.

One major practical consequence

of this form of legal slavery

is that corporations have no choice but to serve their masters

by doing everything possible

to maximise their profits and equity,

no matter how harmful this may be

to the welfare and well-being of anyone or anything else.

Being ruled by slaves such as these is no picnic for most,

and the greater their power the less of a picnic it becomes.

        Curious About Evil

I wonder what it would be like

to wake up every morning

surrounded by luxury and things,

yet dissatisfied with the obscene amounts

of egregious wealth and power

that are mine – all mine,

to dress in elegantly custom-tailored clothing,

to have a breakfast

of what is only food

– imported or at least gourmet food, perhaps,

but still only food –

and then to sally forth

to justify my material rewards

by way of the hard but self-satisfying work

of extracting wealth

from the blood of ordinary people

in various parts of the world,

while underlings brown-nose me obsequiously

and leap to do my bidding –

the only things that come close to satisfying me –

although I could never get enough.

Yes, I do wonder what it would be like.

I don’t think it would suit me at all, though.

         The Business Model of Education

Once the self-centred, parasitical sociopaths

who operate corporate fascism

extended their nasty grip

to include what used to qualify as universities,

starting of course in the United States

and radiating out as best they can elsewhere,

the usual outcomes,

such as enormous remuneration packages

for the chief executives,

whether called chancellors or presidents,

which grew faster than the dicks

of horny student-athletes at frat parties,

and squeezed-down incomes

along with precarious employment conditions

for almost everyone else in the system,

as well as general dumbing-down policies,

followed like consumers in the thrall of a popular brand.

The only quandary inherent in this business model,

at least as far as I can tell,

is how the students fit into it:

basically, are they the corporate universities’ customers,

or are they its products?

The problem being that by maximising the customer base,

which means lowering standards and making passing a cinch

(“Cs get degrees”)

they reduce the quality of their final product, or graduates,

thereby reducing the value of their degrees,

and their attractiveness to new customer-students.

It’s a toughie.

          The Thing About Bullets

The thing about bullets,

bright, shiny things that they are

that would make excellent conversation pieces

if poured into a globular crystal vase

and set on the coffee table,

isn’t just that they’re harmless

unless somebody shoots them

out of a gun at somebody else;

they also have a fairly long shelf life,

which means that

unless somebody shoots them,

whoever owns them rarely needs to replace them

except for those fired in target practice,

so that inducing people

to shoot them at other people,

or at least making it easier for them to do so,

speeds up turnover,

and is therefore good for business

for those in the bullet business,

even though the Pope said

that people who are in the bullet business

can’t be good Christians,

even though the Vatican Bank

owns a major stake

in Baretta,

one of the world’s largest bullet factories.

       The Lobbying Workforce

These operatives,

the ones who muck in the grime

of face-to-face corruption,

beefing up their expense accounts

wooing and schmoozing pliable politicians

and public executives and regulators,

buying them with campaign contributions and worse

– we all have our weaknesses –

providing them with tailored-to-order research,

and promising them cushy jobs

when they leave the public service,

these operatives tend to be

good-looking, with straight teeth

and easy confidence,

former captains of their sport teams,

the first in their classes at prep school

to get laid, if men,

or, if women, the most popular

and always the best dressed.

These operatives are, professionally,

easy people to like.

Their bosses, who are indistinguishable 

from those whom they bribe,

since they slither seamlessly back and forth

between public and private payrolls,

tend to be older, of course,

and although some may retain vestiges

of their formerly attractive selves,

their faces, whether saggy or re-done,

almost inevitably carry the baggage

of lifetimes of narcissistic corruption and evil.

            Corporate Leaders & Those Who Suck Up To Them

Ego self-glorification –

and a little bit of greed –

this agglomeration of people

who’ve sussed the system

and have no semblance of decency

in their characters

go busily about

gleefully fucking things up

for their own grandchildren

with enormous displays

of self-righteousness.

          At The End Of The Day

It’s not as if

they wring their hands together

whilst rolling their eyes maniacally

and cackle with demented glee

as they plan to rule the world.

They’re more likely to look respectable,

and dress conservatively,

even when fishing

from their luxury motor yachts.

They’re also likely to speak,

with superficial rationality,

in measured, well-modulated voices,

stressing their responsibility

to act irresponsibly

in order to maximise

their corporations’

bottom lines

at the end of the day.

They have, of course, no interest in optimising

anybody’s quality of life

at the end of this century,

let alone the next,

and consider any real democracy

anywhere

for any purpose

to be an unwarranted obstacle

to their power

to maximise their corporations’

bottom lines

at the end of the day.

Ruling the world all by themselves,

after all,

would be much less messy.

         The Maximum and the Optimum

The United States of America

is not responsible for, or complicit in,

all of the human suffering the world –

just most of it –

currently and for the next century or so,

at least.

It’s not just its love of war,

or the complacent, hypocritical American assumption

of being entitled, both individually and collectively,

to more and better everything than others.

It’s also, among other things,

its business model that takes it as axiomatic

that businesses’ sole purpose

is to maximise profit,

and its evangelising of this evil notion globally.

This has resulted, for example,

in the heinous suffering

of tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of the workers employed

by Chinese subsidiaries and suppliers

of such all-American firms as Apple, Wal-Mart, and Disney,

despite China’s enlightened national labour laws

and the noble-sounding corporate policies,

which the profit-maximisation system currently in place

provides local enforcement agencies and businesses

enormous incentives to ignore.

The Dutch Nobel Prize winning economist Jan Tinbergen

summarised the eventually self-destructive insanity of all this

with the maxim, ‘The maximum is not the optimum’ –

something I know personally to be true

from my own experiences with whisky.

 {As Performed Live by the New Millennium Beatniks}