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Happy Independence Day, Jose
Now and then, even among the cowed, comfortable and generally unconscious citizens of the Corporate Republic, a hero arises. On this July Fourth, let's award the Slashdot Order of the Penguin to one Jose Bove, whose international crusade began last year in protest against U.S. duties on Roquefort cheese.
Bove, a French farmer and union leader, may seem like an unlikely figurehead for the emerging political struggle of the 21st Century. Even though he isn't an American citizen, he's got a pretty good grip on what used to be considered American values, and is thus an Independence Day icon for the increasingly-resented United States, the Corporate Republic's world headquarters. The United States is now a place where a robust economy, conformity and market research are national religions, and a nation where kids who dissent and act strangely are routinely tossed out of school or thrown in jail.
Bove spent a week in jail last year for his assaults on a McDonald's under construction in his hometown of Milau (he faces up to five years in prison). For obvious reasons, McDonald's has become an international symbol for the globalization, mass-marketing and homogenization that U.S.-bred corporatism is spreading like the measles. Now Bove is drawing an odd agglomeration of supporters worldwide as he stands trial. His day in court is drawing thousands of anti-globalization protesters, environmentalists, trade unionists, students and other campaigners cramming into Milau, a small market town in southern France.
"This is not just about food," Bove told the demonstrators. "It is about the struggle of small people, leading simple lives, to free themselves from the dictatorship of the multi-nationals."
Bove's particular issue is what he calls the industrialization of agriculture. He could just as easily be talking about the industrialization of education, technology, law, medicine or work. He's dubbed his town "Seattle-on-the-Tarn," a reference to the local river and to the protests he joined during the World Trade Organization's Seattle summit last year.
The struggle of small people to free themselves from the multi-nationals has a lot to do both with technology and independence. From market monopolies like Microsoft to giant entertainment conglomerates like AOL-Time/Warner that will seek to dominate information and its distribution to corporatist invaders of privacy, the struggles of small people will increasingly resonate around the world. And this is all before the rise of the gathering bio-tech conglomerates, soon to dominate genetic research and try to use the Human Genome Project to mass market the perfect human, all the while screening their work behind talk of cancer and aging cures.
Corporatism threatens to overwhelm individuals all over the world, from cheese farmers to outspoken employees to bright and idiosyncratic students -- its virtues are promoting conformity, corrupting the political system, suppressing dissent and creativity. Its primary target is individualism, its primary enemy individualists -- which means hackers, programming entrpeneurs, renegade teachers, small businessmen and farmers like Bove, odd-ball filmmakers. Bove has put the struggle as eloquently as anybody could.
So have his supporters, carrying signs through the streets announcing "The World Is Not For Sale." This message stings in the United States on Independence Day. What in this country isn't for sale?
It's strange to be watching this odd drama in another country, when the issue itself is so American. Perhaps Bove will sail over here when AOL/Time-Warner opens its first franchise office in the United States and give us all an example to live by.
Happy Independence Day, Jose.
I would like to retract my statement that Jose Bove is believed to have ordered the fatal Breton attack, and offer my personal thanks to those who corrected me on this point.
I did not set out to malign him. I simply found that Katz' article didn't tell me anything about the person he was applauding. Hence the title and initially biographical tone of my post. I simply wanted facts. After over an hour of reading French/US articles, and getting contradictory impressions, I stumbled into some shocking (seeming) facts, which seemed too noteworthy to ignore.
In the days after the April terrorist attack, Le Monde and several other media reported that "Jose Bove is being questioned by the authorities" -- but there were no corresponding headlines saying "Jose Bove seems to be cleared". Also search engines can lag 1-2 months behind content, so the few exculpatory 'minor articles' in May/June were not fully indexed
I feel paticularly embarrassed because I had a friend who was in a similar situation many years ago. I first saw it on a front page headline "Prominent Senate Intelligence [sic] aide caught with a kilo of heroine!" That was the afternoon edition, just hours after the arrest, but he was already cleared before the papers hit the street (the drugs were from a vengeful ex with whom he was 'planning a future' until he learned she was involved with drugs. They verified this with her supplier and ID'ed the anonymous tip) His arrest got headlines or was cited on the front page of many major national papers, but Follow-ups tended to get a few column-inches on page 36... eventually, if ever. That's how the media work -- and the ranking system of search engines (as well as the indexing delay) will only make this problem worse in the future -- A word to the wise.
After reading the facts presented by the other posters, I reviewed the source material for my post, and found that other statements that I relied upon may have been media sensationalism as well. Yhese had made me very skeptical of his claims of nonviolence, but after examining those incidents in some detail (which is why it's taken me so long to repond) I now have a great deal more respect for Mssr. Bove's methods, even if I do not necessasrily agree with his politics.
I apologize for my error, and especially for emphasizing it in my earlier post. I let my shock get the better of me, and in that I am no better than the media I criticize.
I realize that public retractions seem to be unpopular on Slashdot, but I think it's only right
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
Woefully, this sort of lie works on most people. I doubt if the poster even realized that they were lying, as the numbers are basically accurate as far as they go. The problem is that the standard "rich are getting richer" line only works if you compare the present day with an economically depressed time period. If you were to compare today to the time just before the stock market drop in 1987, you would find that the rich have gotten poorer. If you were to compare today to 1930, you would find that your numbers paint a comparitively rosy picture.
Wealth is a poor benchmark. It really doesn't matter how much money Bill Gates has, for example, as long as joe blow on the street can buy enough eggs and milk to feed his family. Thus, measures of cost of living vs. income per region and per neigborhood are usually the best way to determine just how people are doing. Looked at in this way, the situation has only started to get bad where I am (Boston area) recently, due to housing prices mostly.
Of course, it's always easier to say "McDonalds is ruining our world." In reality, population is our single largest problem, and has been for about a century. Just about every activist issue (from polution to deforestation to energy-production to impersonal global corps.) has its roots in population growth. If you want to work for something that will better the human condition, work for population control. There are basically three ways to do this:
- Teach birth control early and often, and create incentives for single-child homes
- Have more wars / kill people in some other way
You may feel that either one is a bad idea for various reasons, but that really is about the only way you can do it. Of course either method can be coupled with a strong dictatorship (or other totalitarian state) for more sure results, but I don't recommend it.This form of direct action is actually quite common in France, it has not been long since French farmers stopped lorries carrying lamb entering France from the UK and burnt the (already slaughtered) contents.
At the moment it is not just french peasant farmers that are suffering. In the UK small upland farmers are going bankrupt at an amazing rate. One of the problems is increased new legislation, which I believe has been heavily lobbied for by the multinationals and large producers, which is forcing smaller abatoirs to close. Small farmers have to then take their produce a long way to get it slaughtered, and they cannot afford this.
There is also a problem with the buying power of the supermarkets and multinationals. You sell at our rates on our terms or you don't sell at all.
It is not all doom and gloom though. Organic produce is more popular than ever, and the rise of farmers markets in many towns is throwing a lifeline to the smaller producers.
I've already read many comments on this topic that seem to basically say "This guy is an anticapitalist nutter. Fuck him". This is a topic that many people in the EU (including myself) care passioately about. I visit the states regularly on business, and I have seen what unconstrained capitalism can do. Jose, I salute you and say "Vive le Roquefort".
And one more thing - beer guy, this is one thread where you will be so on-topic it will hurt!
regards,
treefrog
Since when did terrorism and vandalism become American values?
Since April 19, 1775.
Don't they teach American history in schools? What was the Boston Tea Party but an act of vanadalism??
In obedience to your Excellency's orders, I marched yesterday morning at 9 o'clock with the 1st brigade and two field pieces in order to cover the retreat of the grenadiers and light infantry in their return from their expedition to Concord.
As all the houses were shut up, and there was not the appearance of a single inhabitant, I could get no intelligence concerning them till I had passed Menotomy when I was informed that the rebels had attacked his Majesty's troops who were retiring, overpowered by numbers, greatly exhausted and fatigued, and having expended almost all their ammunition - and at about 2 o'clock I met them retiring rough the town of Lexington - I immediately ordered the 2 field pieces to fire at the rebels, and drew up the brigade on a height.
The shot from the cannon had the desired effect, and stopped the rebels for a little time, who immediately dispersed, and endeavored to surround us being very numerous. As it began now to grow pretty late and we had 15 miles to retire, and only 36 rounds, I ordered the grenadiers and light infantry to move of first; and covered them with my brigade sending out very strong flanking parties which were absolutely very necessary, as there was not a stone wall, or house, though before in appearance evacuated, from whence the rebels did not fire upon us. As soon as they saw us begin to retire, they pressed very much upon our rear guard, which for that reason, I relieved
every now and then.
In this manner we retired for 15 miles under incessant fire all round us, till we arrived at Charlestown, between 7 and 8 in the evening and having expended almost all our ammunition. We had the misfortune of losing a good many men in the retreat, though nothing like the number which from many circumstances I have reason to believe were killed of the rebels. His Majesty's troops during the whole of the affair behaved with their usual intrepidity and spirit nor were they a little exasperated at the cruelty and barbarity of the rebels, who scalped and cut off the ears of some of the wounded men who fell into their hands.
While I think that Mr. Katz's writings are crap, the fact of the matter is that the US was founded by a violent revolution, one of the few (if not only) British colonies to engage in such.
The problem with holding Mr. Bove up as a hero is that he is not the victim of 'corporatism' that Mr. Katz would have us believe. He is the victim of a government bureacracy acting to restrain free trade - some thing that multinationals hold abhorent, and the very thing that the anti-corporatists propose in order to protect their petty national self-interests.
Face it folks, globalization is the natural evolution of human society on it's way from tribe, village, city-state, nation towards a real world society. Anything or anyone that tries to fight this is simply a socio-luddite, and is in fact opposing the progress of the human spirit towards a world where the tragic consequences (holocausts, ethnic cleansings, nuclear proliferation) of adherance to petty social groups (i.e. nations)
are no longer tenable.
THINK, DAMMIT!
[This Chapter] in particular deals with the Constitution and Confederation, and what was intended by the men who created it. The [next chapter] deals with the Bill of Rights.
The entire book is worth reading, because it will alter the way you view your rights and freedoms. Things aren't as charming as you've been brainwashed to believe: you are not free, it is not a democracy, and your government is slowly but surely destroying the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Of course, most people won't ever read the book and will go meekly along like sheep to slaughter.
Frankly, I think most of you should be getting a bit more educated, a bit more aware, and a lot more politically active. You need to wrestle control of your country back from the corporations, powermongers and religous fanatics that are destroying it.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
More information about the McLibel case can be found on the activist's group McSpotlight which also contains information on the current French trial of José Bové, and the French Peasant Confederation.
I bid all the anti-globalisation fighters against multi-nationals striving to deprave us of choice and free speech out there the best of luck.
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
Actually, swine, some studies late last year showed that the tax rate between the US and Canada for people making under 60k (read - the vast majority of folks in both countries) is almost identical (Canada having a 1-2% greater rate). And we have a large safe tolerant country voted #1 by the UN for 7 years running. Where does the US rank? 15? or 20?
I guess you get what you pay for, eh?
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Yeah, sure, biotech is full of wonderful wholesome potential. So was atomic energy.
Now let's look at what these things are used for in the real world. That is, if you don't mind referring, now and again, to the real world, just for a break for variety's sake from the glowing-monitor Metaverse of free-floating theory. But if you do mind, please skip what follows, as it is sure to distress you.
Atomic energy - remember atomic energy? - was supposed to make electricty too cheap to meter, to irrigate the Sahara, and in general to usher mankind into a new era of prosperity and contentment. But in reality, the very first application of it was to smash and/or incinerate about one hundred and fifty thousand defenseless civilians to bloody pulp. Later in its career, atomic energy was used to politically terrorize half the globe, and as a side-benefit, in a mere half-century it has heaped up upon the face of the earth vast volumes of pervasive high-intensity pollutants, which to this day no one knows how to safely store for decades much less hundreds of millennia, that will require something in excess of twenty times the length of recorded history to subside in toxicity to where they are no longer an acute threat to the continuation of mammalian life.
Biotech is supposed to make it possible to grow crops in the Sahara, and to cure all known diseases, and in general to usher mankind into a new era of prosperity and contentment. So let's take a look at the very first two commercial products of this wonderful transgenic technology which the Monsanto Corporation has brought to the marketplace. The first is something called "Roundup-ready" soybeans. These soybeans have been modified so that factory farmers can hose down their soybean fields with hitherto unusable quantities of another Monsanto product, a toxic herbicide called "Roundup," in order to kill off all the weeds. Without the "Roundup-ready" gene, the quantities of the herbicide "Roundup" that are employed would render the field as sterile as a patch in the middle of the Sea of Tranquillity, but the artificial gene makes the customized soybeans immune to this toxin. If you're planning on eating these crops, I hope you too are immune to that "Roundup" herbicide. Not that you'd know, however, because the chemical companies have lobbied our legislators so vendors of this Frankenfood are not required to inform you that that package you plucked off the store shelf contains a product not of nature but of the lab.
If you think that's sinister, contemplate the second commercial application of biotech. It's called "Terminator" . It has precisely one purpose: to render food crops sterile. See, ever since the days of the Sumerian Empire and even before, humans practicing agriculture have saved a certain amount of year X's harvest as seed for year X+1's planting. But Monsanto sells seed to farmers in eighty-plus countries, and, insanely, Monsanto claims that one hundred percent of the genotype of these seeds they sell ("developed," in the main, by nature and evolution across geological eras of time) is all Monsanto's "intellectual property". Well, just like any other greed-crazed industrial megalith, Monsanto is pathologically protective of its "intellectual property" and the profits which flow therefrom.
Suppose I am a farmer in, say, India, and I buy a load of Monsanto-brand seeds and plant a crop. When I harvest my crop, as farmers have done since prehistoric times, I save a portion of the grain for next year's seed crop. Now I don't need to go back to Monsanto and buy more, right? Which God forbid! Why, that would be like allowing a heroin addict to grow his own poppies. Where's the big profit for the drug lords there? The only difference being, of course, one can kick heroin addiction, but who can kick the eating habit?
So to prevent the catastrophe of a Fortune 500 corportation losing any potential profits, the genetic engineers at Monsanto inject a special gene - the "Terminator" gene - into the seeds I bought, so that they are fertile in the first generation but totally infertile in the second.
That's pretty bad in itself, my farm becoming helplessly addicted to purchasing Monsanto's seeds, but it gets worse. You're an adult, you know about the birds and the bees, right? Even plants have sex, dreamy plant-like sex, and sex means they trade their genes back and forth. So when the pollen from "Terminator" treated food crops drifts over the fence into my neighbor's field, his crops can end up infected with the diabolical "Terminator" gene. Now his next year's crop comes up OK at first but suddenly it all drops dead after about eleven weeks. Gee, won't he be happy! Now imagine this effect taking place en masse all across a continent. It would take the psychotic sensibility of PKD's "Null-O" to dispassionately contemplate the vast and unprecedented human catastrophe that would occur if, say, one year a third of the Asian rice crop were accidentally wiped out by the uncontrollable dissemination of this destructive gene.
OK, those are the very first two applications of biotech out of Monsanto. Have I made my point yet? Sure, biotech is full of promise. But biotech is not being employed by civic-minded scientists with benevolent goals. Today biotech is owned and operated by capitalist corporations, despite the fact that the entire scientific foundation upon which it rests, and half of the innovations, are the direct product of research paid for by the taxpayers in general - just like with the Internet, the taxpayer pays for the basic research, then after it becomes commercially viable corporations patent all the good parts and stuff the profits in their pockets. And as everyone knows, everything that capitalism touches it turns to shit.
In theory, biotech may have potential for good results, but so long as it is employed solely to deepen the wealth gap between the investing class and the rest of us, I am convinced that it will only yield evil results.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
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3) Find the name Jon Katz in the list of AUTHORS (try not to wince in discust while reading his name):
X JonKatz place an X here
4) Scroll down to the bottom of the page and find a button that says savehome and click on it.
Your /. experience will now be as informative and interesting as before but without those dreadfully trollish rantings from the tiresome and clueless yonny cats.
___
You know, the real way to protest McDonalds opening in your neighbourhood is - don't eat there.
Yeah. That's worked so well with Amazon.com over their "One-Click Shopping" patent. Ooo! Ooo! I don't use Microsoft software. How much longer until they're gone?
You know, the odd thing is that I already don't eat McDonalds because I don't like the food. I wonder why the ones near me haven't closed yet?
Reality is funny that way.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
John, this was one of your worst articles.
Who is José Bové, and is he admirable?
He is a Frenchman who was born in Bordeaux in 1953, and grew up at Berkeley, as his parents studied Biochem. Back in France, he refused to do his military service and dropped out of Bordeaux University to immerse himself in various leftist political and ecological movements. In 1975 he and his wife decided to move to the country, take up sheep farming and join a local peasant movement (Confédération paysanne), which he terms 'a trade union', though I do not understand in what sense he means this) against a plan to extend an army base in southern France. He was arrested for "invading" the base during a 1976 protest, and he spent three weeks in prison. (The military project was canceled five years later, more due to the economy than nanything else
In 1998, he blew up up a silo (which belonged to the pharmaceutical firm Novartis) because it contained genetically modified corn. Here's Mssr. Bove's own statement about his actions and motives. It appears to have been written in English, or at least be an authorized translation. I haven't found a French original or variant translations.
In 1999, he became a 'national hero' (according to his supporters -- he's certainly a cult figure) for damaging an unfinished McDonalds with a bulldozer, and later organizing a massive giveaway of Roquefort cheese to protest US import restrictions. He also is known for staging 'illegal' free Roquefort and French bread picnics in front to McDonald's during the WTO protests in Seattle. Distributing the cheese was 'illegal' because it was unpasteurized. Time magazine did a piece on him
But he's not in jail for the bulldozer attack. he spent 20 days in jail for that in 1999. He calls that the greatest favor the judge could have done, due to the publicity it gave him.
On Wednesday, April 19, 2000, an attack on a McDonald's resulted in the death of a '28 year-old waitress'. Jose Bove is believed to have ordered this attack. He has always proclaimmed his movement (Confédération paysanne) to be nonviolent, but admits that violent means have been used, and often refers to the groups actions as 'combat' (same in French as English) I found a French account of the attack that you can babelfish, if necessary
I also found an 12/99 interview where he outlines his current views. He is not an ultra-liberal (in fact he denounced ultraliberalism as 'suicidal'), his personal views are a patchwork of conflicting insistence on individualism and collectivism, (which becomes harder for me to render coherently, the more I read) Politically, he opposes 'internationalization' and insists that 'each nation has a right to choose what it wants to eat' (he supports French Bans on US food, while protesting US bans on French foods)
I leave an analysis of his ideology to others -- anyone but Katz.
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
I visit the states regularly on business, and I have seen what unconstrained capitalism can do.
Tariffs are constraints on capitalism. Tariffs are bad (as you and Jose seem to agree). Please don't confuse corporatism with capitalism. Corporatism is the belief that your corporation's agenda is more important than any other objective. Capitalism is the belief that free market economics (elimination of tariffs and other trade barriers, unrestrained competition, free flow of information, etc.) will result in the rapidest financial benefit for all, including labor and management, foreign and domestic.
The worst aspects of America's economy are the result of corporatism (tariffs, patents, auto insurance, health care, Microsoft, etc.). The best aspects are the result of free market capitalism (high standard of living, opportunity to try a startup, ubiquitous Internet access, etc.). I agree that America has problems, but capitalism is not at fault.
Regarding the stricter restrictions on food processing, I wish to avoid salmonella and mad cow disease, and am in favor.
Bob (rbb36)
God in Heaven, are you ever wrong about that. The class war in the U.S.A. is alive and well. It's just that only one side is fighting, the other side, my side, is mostly standing around, numbly, dumbly staring mouth agape at the TV, taking the blows and not fighting back. That's what's wrong with this country, why we've gone down the tubes so bad these last couple of decades. The family at the median point of incomes in the U.S.A. works something like fifteen weeks more per year than in 1975 for the same amount of goods, meanwhile the top one percent of incomes has doubled their share of the national wealth, but you never noticed at all. It's because suckers like you refuse to pay any attention, that our enemies in the ongoing class war have made the devastating inroads that they have.
Why don't you tune in to the economic news in your daily newspaper? The Fed has been raising the prime rate for years now with the naked intent of running the unemployment rate up to what is to them a more comfortable figure. Sooner or later the recession they are so assiduously engineering is going to kick in, and then the shit's really going to hit the fan. Who will you blame then, "welfare queens"?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
You know, the real way to protest McDonalds opening in your neighbourhood is - don't eat there.
You don't eat there, they close up shop and go home. You eat there, Micky D's makes some money, and opens up another franchise down the street.
Capitalism is funny that way.
France banned hormone-injected American beef that was not labelled. Instead of labelling our meat properly, our government childishly responded by adding a 100% tax on Roquefort cheese and other French delicacies.
Yes, he broke the law when he vandalized a McDonalds. However there is one very American thing most of you forgot about: Civil Disobedience - breaking the law as a form of protest. It is indeed a valid, time honored way to get your point across, and as long as you aren't directly hurting anyone and are willing to pay the consenquences, is a noble act.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Ahem.
Jose, can you see
By the dawn's early light....
-JD
He also embodies what used to be considered American values.
What, using violence as a means to get what you want without concern for the consequences or ethics? If that's what you mean Jon, then I fully agree that he's a role model for the history and "values" of the US, a nation which started a bloody revolution over taxes.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
To the French, culture is all important. I suspect they would rather starve than allow anything to destroy a distinctively French culture.
They see Micky D's as more than just an abomination of the local cuisine. They see McDonalds as the first wave of an american cultural invasion which caters to the lowest common denominator and rolls like a bulldozer over parochial cultural concerns.
They look to the United States and see that, since about the 1990's, you cannot tell the difference between a shopping mall in Long Beach and a shopping mall in Atlanta. Of course in the United States, we strove for this sort of bland conformity in order to make it cheaper and easier to manufacture goods and services to a larger audience. And nothing better exemplifies this sort of bland conformity than McDonalds, where you couldn't tell the difference between a hamburger made in Japan from one made in Baltimore.
To the French, this sort of comformity is a form of walking death.
The French protest McDonalds because they fear a world where walking into a shopping district in Moscow is no different than walking through the French quarter in New Orlenes, where the Lobster and butter is a standardized bland flavor throughout the world, and where we all wear clothes from the Gap.
And to a certain degree I can't say that I blame them. While I appreciate a corporate culture which is attempting to cater to as many people as possible, it bothers me greatly that there is no place to go to find something different. I can drive for almost two hundred miles (I'm in Los Angeles) before I find anything that isn't the same damn shopping mall/fast food/tourist crap/mass produced electronics/mass produced art stuff. Hell, I bet in 10 more years, downtown Tiajuana looks like downtown San Francisco and downtown Honolulu....
The point is that while Jose may live in a republic, that republic has increasingly little control over Jose's society. The real control is held by corporations, and they are not democratic in any way.
Many corporations are richer than many countries now. General motors is richer than Denmark.
Increasingly, corporations are making decisions 'in partnership with' local government, because local government is poor and disorganised.
It is a true thing that increasingly, our lives are not blighted by fat, greedy mayors taking back handers in the town hall, but by greedy companies that simply walk all over the town hall.
The interesting parallel between the US Revolution and Jose is that both occassions were primarily about money. If the UK had been smart, they'd have cut taxes on the US, opened up the trade, and all would have been well.
And if people weren't so desperate to have tasty burgers with 0 effort required, there wouldn't be giant companies walking all over us so much.
-----
Try running some statistics; the poor in the year 2000 are better off than the middle class in 1971. The average work week has gone DOWN by about 2 hours in the last 30 years.
Since 1900, we've gone from 76% of out income being spent on food, clothing, and shelter to 37%, which is why we have *twice* the income to spend on goodies like cars and computers. If you want a workweek half as long, just give up those toys. More good news like this here.
Here's another tidbit. Did you know that bank's create wealth. Say a ``rich person'' puts a billion dollars in the bank. That money gets loaned out to people who buy goods which funds your salary. You, and a million other people put a thousand in the bank. Guess what? There's now two billion in the bank. So what if they have a billion in the bank? You have your thousand in the bank. Who controls more wealth? Your million friends of the big evil rich person? You both have the same wealth; wealth that you wouldn't have had had then not invested it. What does it matter, unless your envious?
That's what annoys me about all this inequitable distribution of wealth crap. If someone has money, they either do one of two things with it. They spend it, funding other people's salaries, or they invest it, where it gets multiplied 10x; with most of that going to other people's pockets.
The federal reserve is the one thing that's kept this economic expansion going so long. Fundamentally, if you make the competetion for labor sufficiently intense, the cost of labor goes up. Businesses then have to raise prices to compensate for the higher labor costs. This raises the cost of living and makes people demand higher wages. IE: inflation. Inflation is hideous, it can wipe out fixed incomes. (If you're retired and have to live on $500/month, having prices double over 5 years is nasty). It forces interest rates up, as banks have to hedge against being paid back in dollars that are worth less. It also makes long-term planning in any contract. If you agree to sell a million playstations for $300 over the next 3 years, and find out that the dollar is worth 1/2 as much near the end; you've wiped out your profit margin. There are places where inflation has been so severe, that prices have doubled every week; people got paid twice a day to help keep up. Either way, lending rates go up discourage lending, and the economy slows down. One's just nastier than the other.
Now, I will agree that a lot of the crap that corporations do should be stopped. I hate corporations railroading over honest people or freedom just because they're bigger. I hate corporations that lie and manipulate people or are hypocritical (like Ben and Jerrys unsafe, dioxin laced ice cream. ). I dislike the WTO or the MPAA.
But on the other side, I dislike the sabotage, terrorism and, most critically, the lies spread by the anti-corporations side.
Like any other human-made system, capitalism and corporatism isn't perfect. The system needs tuning and fixing once in a while. But, overall, it's the best way to run things that we know about. It's not a fundamentally broken system.
Spreading misinformation or lies around just to scare people into joining you is not the way to win. Spreading the truth is. Ultimately, in a democracy, the government answers to the people. If enough people demand something, it will happen.