Off the top of my head

Just had an odd thought. An odd series of thoughts.

I was thinking about the economic crisis, about how so many more foreign companies are buying up American companies. For instance, a company in India bought out a company I have been contracting with for over a decade. My payment on certain projects has dropped by a significant percentage at the same time my overall workload has decreased. I'm in no position to bargain.

So I was thinking from there how all of these corporations are changing hands from American ownership to foreign ownership. And I was also thinking about the Citizens United case, the relatively recent Supreme Court ruling granting corporations greater citizenship rights. One of the most disturbing elements of the ruling is that it recognizes corporate campaign contributions as political free speech protected by the First Amendment. Money is speech.

Uh, no. Money buys the delivery mechanism for speech, meaning money is more privileged than speech. In other words, given a choice between having the right to vote or the right to contribute money to political parties and candidates, the smart money is on money. Now, given that corporations have the most money and do spend it for political influence, allowing unrestricted campaign spending by corporations is all but a formal giveaway of the U.S. government from the people to business institutions.

Including foreign corporations. Even foreign corporations owned and operated by foreign governments. Like China. So, China already owns massive amounts of U.S. debt and may soon find itself able to buy U.S. elections.

I was just reading an article called "The Organ Dealer" in the April 2010 edition of Discovery magazine. The article starts off detailing the happenings of the bust of a Delhi black-market organ trading ring and, in the process of providing the global context of the trade, mentions that in China "kidney harvesting from executed prisoners has supported a lucrative transplant industry." Wonderful.

Yup. Imagine China crafting future health care legislation in the U.S., the same China that may someday own much more substantial stakes in corporations doing business in the United States. China is a national robber baron, more than okay with indentured servitude and even slavery. Human rights are a foreign concept. With a billion-plus people and growing, China would probably prefer to simply create Nazi-like concentration camps, both to control population and to harvest organs. "Growing" humans for organ harvests for the purpose of profit. Heck, sex trade then organ trade.

I'd like to see that filmed, personally. I'm thinking Terry Gilliam. An aerial of an industrial organ harvesting factory "town," slowly zooming onto a particular plant, and through the roof of a hangar-sized warehouse to see lines of humans chained to cots, row after row after row, IVs hooked up to them, "surgeons" and "nurses" operating on numerous patients, delivery men and women rushing the organs off in coolers to another huge warehouse nearby where there is exactly the same layout, but in this one the cots are occupied by paying customers receiving kidney, heart, liver, and other transplants and medical procedures. Factory harvesting, factory surgery. Maybe machines performing both harvests and transplants.

If there were no restraints I have absolutely no doubt that the world would be that way as a whole, a seemingly unimaginable dystopia, but only unimaginable for late 20th-century Americans. Anyone from anywhere in the world now should know better and most of the rest of the world knew just how bad "civilization" was and is. Americans are getting a much richer taste of the results of the democracy-destroying legislation and policies that began in earnest during the deregulation years of the "Reagan Revolution."

But what I was thinking about when I began writing was that if this is the "new world order" (so to speak) then it would actually behoove the citizens of the United States to compel the U.S. government to purchase stakes in stocks, bonds, futures, etc., etc., etc. In other words, if we, the people, want a say in politics and the benefits of capitalism then ownership of the global corporate pie is only really accessible through the government purchase of corporations.

Now, I just laid out the most likely doomsday scenario. But how about this as just one of many possible alternatives. The U.S. government purchases huge stakes in business institutions through the financial markets. By doing so, the government can control the behavior of corporations through majority ownership. In that case, corporations would be vulnerable to corrections through the electoral system in much the same way elected candidates are now. In other words, piss off the public and expect to be punished by shareholders through the actions of the U.S. government due to public pressure on a possible government "investment agency" to correct the behavior (think Toyota and the acceleration fiasco).

Imagine a team of Warren Buffets or whatnot making investment decisions for the U.S. government and, as citizens, being shareholders. The entire structure of economics would change radically. Taxation would have to be completely reconsidered. If dividends and capital gains through trading generated enough income, taxes could feasibly be eliminated. At least reduced and possibly dramatically ... for individuals. Even while valuable government services are created and expanded. Bottom line is that quality of life goes up both materially and in terms of greater control of corporate behavior.

Then there are all the foreign policy issues and yada yada yada. Of course, power is power and if corporations are citizens then through their monied speech rights they would own the government that owns them. Chicken or egg. This isn't a dissertation, folks. This is just off the top of my head.