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More Money Less Principles

October 15th, 2019 No comments

Source: LeBron James Faces Backlash Unseen Since ‘The Decision’ – The New York Times

That’s the thing with free speech in a free society; any idiot can say anything they want without concern for any repercussions from the state.  At least that’s the theory. What you don’t expect in a free society is that something that someone says, causes actions to be taken  by another state.  The recent furor over the events surrounding LeBron James, Daryl Morey, the NBA and China and the Hong Kong protests should make some issues very clear to those people ( and there are a lot ) not paying attention to the state of society.

The first issue is the very basic identity of what it means to be an American.  Freedom is the prototypical American trait; fought for by the original founders and enshrined in an hallowed constitution;  supported numerous times by the sacrifice of the nation’s own sons for other nations; and the reason that every aspiring immigrant yearns to become a citizen. legally or otherwise.  The only people who seem to take freedom for granted are the people who live there and have never been without it.  You would think that any American would hold this aspect of their society as sacrosanct and worth defending passionately.  It wasn’t that long ago that anyone seen to be undermining core American principles was viewed with great scorn and suspicion.  Just ask Jane Fonda.

The second issue is the corruption that seems to be the flip side of the coin of obscene wealth.  This is hardly new; it’s been a characteristic of society since they first started making them.  Someone always climbs to the top of a society’s pile. Kings, Robber Barons, Gangsters and Dictators have always wielded huge amounts of influence in a society and generally, the public fared poorly if they happened to get in the way of the powerful elite.  A few generations ago, the perceived dangers of having too much concentration of power in industry led to the breakup of AT&T, then the most powerful and dominant communications company in the world.

The rise of the recent generation of Internet based companies was supposed to be different.  The Internet companies today dwarves the size of AT&T at its peak and their influence today is truly global, not just national. Even as they dominate all aspects of culture and commerce, they stridently craft their public image as being socially responsible, or as they call it in today’s parlance, woke, a nod to their hippie roots.

As it turns out, the most powerful multinational companies in the world, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter as well as retail behemoths such as Nike and Starbucks are every bit as sinister in their commercial activities as their antecedents in the world domination racket.  It seems that warm fuzzy guiding principles which are framed in corporate hallways are less important than shareholder value.  When you consider the size of the Chinese market, it’s not hard to see why that nation’s sensibilities are at the front of corporate decision making. This is Animal Farm at the corporate level. At least the old Kings and Robber Barons didn’t pretend to be doing good things for the people.

The third issue is as important as the first two and that is the realization that entertainers are not cultural and political savants. They sing, they dance, they juggle and they run around throwing and catching balls.  In other words, they are well paid to entertain us doing children’s activities that we wish we could do for a living instead of pushing either paper or brooms.  As a group they are endowed with skills that others will pay them to perform.  They’re lottery winners.  But you wouldn’t heed someone’s opinions on geopolitics just because they happened to win a lottery!

Yet this is the delusion that many of them operate under today.  They think that a narrow physical skill set entitles them to pontificate on things that are clearly out of their intellectual plane. More often than not, their utterances are not well thought out, have little basis in reality and usually fail the simple test of logic. As in this recent case, they can be terribly confused philosophically. They are out of their intellectual depth.  It’s easy to pile onto James for his recent comments, but he’s not alone.  There’s a long undistinguished list of ‘celebrities’ who continue to embarrass themselves by their uninformed utterances.  All Lebron James did was to prove that they should just stick to running and dribbling a ball…no thinking required.  There are lots of geniuses who want to play ball for a living.  James plays ball and wants to be a genius.  Neither is likely.  At least here, in the bosom of a free society, he’s able to express his vapidity.  Too bad for Hong Kong.

 

Bad Companies

September 4th, 2018 No comments

Source: Colin Kaepernick earns support from diverse chorus, including John Brennan, over Nike ad | Fox News

Many may recall back in our university or college days, that the targets of student antipathy were the large mega- corporations that were ostensibly responsible for inflicting all kinds of ills upon society.  Big oil in particular was seen as evil since they were heartless goliaths that trampled upon the rights and freedoms of the plain folk in their single minded pursuit of the dollar. 

Valid or not, protests against the perceived evils of these large corporations became more common as people use their voices to hold large companies to account for their activities.  To this day, if a rare species of grub may be endangered by a pipeline or a dam, a veritable village  of protesters appears to protest the project and by extension, the company behind it.  The standard pushback was against “the military industrial complex” which was the oppressor of the people.  Today, the issues that get people to wearing masks and holding signs are more bizarre and comical, ranging from the protests against drinking straws and grocery bags, all the way to free speech in general. 

With the passage of time, the perception of the evil corporation has not really changed, though many have made significant concessions to public sensibilities.  What has gone unnoticed is the rise of other corporate behemoths whose reach and negative influence is far more pervasive than those demonized in past generations.  

Without exaggeration, the majority of the world is now subject to the activities of a handful of powerful companies.  Unless you have been living in the deep Amazonian rainforest, your life has been touched by Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix,Twitter and Apple.  Together these companies influence virtually every aspect of people’s daily activities.   They all have the same common denominator of providing some form of convenience to a public that needs and craves instant gratification.  This is best expression of capitalism; a need is identified and is addressed by a service.  This continues the legacy of Henry Ford, Eli Whitney and Jacob W. Davis of Levi Strauss fame.  

What’s different about today’s modern behemoths is that they aren’t content just to sell people on products and services.  They are also very much intent on shaping the way people think.  Not happy just to make billons of dollars by selling lifestyle, they are shaping mindsets.  As if they were characters in a Bond film, we have actual real life “Villains” who are controlling the thought processes of hundreds of millions of people. 

The recent announcement by Nike of their new sales campaign posting Colin Kaepernick as their icon, adds that company to the list of mercenary companies that would have been loudly protested back 30 years ago.  To be fair, Nike’s business demographic are younger people, particularly the black demo, who are more likely to sympathize with Kaepernick’s actions.  Older people, less likely to support Kaepernick’s actions are less likely to be customers anyway.  But if this decision is based solely on business, they had every opportunity to propose someone who is of genuinely heroic stature; a guy like Pat Tillman springs to mind.  Some may know that Tillman gave up his professional football career to serve his country by joining the army in the wake of 9-11 and then was tragically killed in action. 

Instead, Nike has chosen to insert their political viewpoint in championing Kaepernick, not in spite of, but because of his protests against the national flag.  He is the Jane Fonda of the modern epoch. 

People once mobilized against what they perceived to be the evilness of large corporations. It’s ironic now that corporations have never been more invasive and manipulative…and no one protests.  It’s much more disturbing that the people currently being celebrated for their actions, are anti-heroes… instead of real ones.