I dunno what they are up to at the Santa Fe Institute, and I dunno why people would equate "complexity theory" with "chaos theory" when they are two distinctly different things. But basic computational complexity theory as I studied it in Grad School is about as controversial as the notion that 2+2 equals 4.
because one of the main jobs of the government is to protect that 95% of the wealth from us peons.
Rash, popular-opinion-driven statements like this one make me ashamed to be a liberal. One of the main jobs of the government is to tax that 95% and re-distribute large portions of it to the rest of the country in the form of jobs, welfare, infrastructure, etc etc.
The type of people who like Britney Spears are the people who like whatever the mass media consumption-encouragement machine tells them to like this month.
You don't think this is a little arrogant of you, do you? "The things *I* like (and all the other people who like the same things I like) I like because I am an intelligent, freethinking individual. The things the masses like they like because they are thoughtless mind-slaves."
Yes, Britney was test-marketed and the executives found that teenage girls really loved her. They rolled her out, promoted her, and...SURPRISE! Teenage girls love her. It seems to me that this has a lot more to do with executives trying to predict the tastes of teenage girls than with executives controlling brains.
The American consumer is so innundated with attempts at psychological influence that it's meaningless to talk about what the people want.
Again, this line of reasoning seems pretty conceited to me: "The average reader of independant media is so innundated with inaccurate, biased reporting and ego-aggrandizing anti-establishment rhetoric that they can no longer think for themselves."
I just pointed this out in an above post as well. The people who do the most bitching about corporations tend to be the people who know the least about how they actually operate.
It's almost as bad as the delusional fools that claim it was fought over slavery.
My college professor, who has a PhD in history and who's area of focus is the Civil War, insists that the Civil War *was* primarily fought over the issue of slavery. This is in contradiction to what I was taught in high school.
"Most people will die for free for their nation or their god. No one will die for Sony for any amount of money."
What is a bodyguard? A mercenary? Even rent-a-cops and 7-11 workers have a signicant risk of death in their jobs. How does reality fit in with your maxim?
Actually, I was specifically thinking of rent-a-cops and mercenaries when I thought of this--while they will certainly work risky jobs, neither one will willingly die for any amount of money. If the Alamo had been manned by an army of 256 paid mercenaries, they would not have faced down 10,000 enraged Mexican soldiers, they would have ran like sensible people. But because the Alamo was filled with 256 "Texans" they were willing to stay and die for their cause, because their cause was worth more to them than mere money or even their own life. You can't just buy that kind of loyalty, sorry.
Money is *not* power. People keep forgetting this basic fact.
and this is what gets me riled up with posts like sips' where corporations are made out to be these huge mechanical operations-- is that they are people, whether it is the Church or a corporation
Wow, this is exactly what pisses me off about conversations with some people. They try to characterize the "government" or "those corporations" or "Christians" as these vast monolithic entities with no consideration of the underlying complexities of these entities.
You're a notch above the average pseudo-intellectual if you realize this fact, I agree with you and I like the way you think. Sorry if I said anything to piss you off.
i believe that you know (in the epistemological sense) very little about what you speak
You misused the word 'epistemological.' Also, you seem to think that I don't agree with you because I am not privy to the same information as you, when in fact I have come to different conclusions based on the same information. The power of corporations to control individuals, governments and society in general is vastly over-rated, distorted, and over-simplified by reactionaries and alarmists, and I for one don't buy into the hysteria.
it's a sort of biological programming.
Advertisers try to use various psychological tricks to make their product seem more appealing. You make it sound like they control the masses like Pavlov's dogs, and this is simply not the case.
accepting any message can have a detrimental effect on your health or well-being:
Accepting or believing some message can't physically change anything (except maybe the configuration of some neurons in your brain.) Choosing to perform an action based on this acceptance is what you are talking about.
i'm not sure you understand the basics of historical analysis
I understand that you just made up the word "historical analysis" in order to sound educated, and I understand that it backfired.
1. the power to control governments
The methods which churches have used to influence governments (usually granting or denying religious legitimacy to a ruler or policy, as I recall) are fundamentally different from the methods which private companies use (entirely economic in nature). And neither private corporations nor churches can rightly be said to "control" government, just influence it to a rather limited degree.
single corporations can strangle whole regions.
If you mean an economic repressive policy towards a geographic region, then it's pretty clear that the methodology by which a private corporation would accomplish such a thing is fundamentally different from the method which an organized religious entity would accomplish it.
Additionally, you may be getting your information on the Monsanto case (India, right?) from some biased and unreliable sources if you have been led to believe that it consitutes "a single corporation strangling a region."
learn to think.
In the future, you should save this kind of insult for someone who genuinely doesn't think, rather than someone who simply doesn't have the same opinions that you do.
Because the same ruling class and church hierarchies that promoted religion were the ones who benefitted chiefly from the toil of the peasants.
You seem to be labouring under some popular misconceptions. For one thing it can hardly be said that the "ruling class" and the Church cooperated with any degree of consistency: they frequently were at odds with each other. For another thing it is a vast over-simplification to characterize the religious situation in Europe for 800+ years as simply as "those mean old priests controlled the peasants by keeping them ignorant." Per usual, the reality of the situation was more morally ambiguous than that. And yes the Church and its doctrines definitely were a general source of comfort for most serfs, the average priest was a compassionate individual, the burnings and torturings were less frequent than you have probably been led to believe, and usually were opposed by factions within the Church itself. Why do you think the Church had so much authority, unless it inspired a type of loyalty beyond mere economics?
What better proof that corporations offer comfort based on faith is there than television advertising and billboards?
Corporations offer concrete, temporary products and services in exchange for money without requiring the individual to change their world-view in any significant way. Religions offer things which are not concrete, not temporary, and do require the individual to accept certain fundamental beliefs.
Again, for the Naderites and anti-corporate hysterians, I must assert my maxim: "Most people will die for free for their nation or their god. No one will die for Sony for any amount of money."
Corporations have been telling us how to be comfortable with ourselves for years.
This is patently absurd. Corporations communicate with the average individual mainly through advertisement, which you the individual have the option of tuning out, disbelieving, or accepting with no detriment to your health or well-being. They don't "tell" us how to be comfortable with ourselves, and they certainly possess almost zero of the features or powers of an organized religion, particularly the one that was extant in Europe in the Middle Ages.
Coverups and news spinmaking is still very much alive and well.
Actually, these things are so common that they are now virtually dead at this point.
Once upon a time, when all of your information came from one or maybe two sources, it was possible to 'control' the information intake of the average individual. With the growth of technology that ability to wield centralized control over information has gone the way of the dinosaur. For any piece of biased information that you access today, there are a myriad of alternatively-biased pieces of the same information available somewhere else. Every Tom, Dick and Harry can now 'spin' and misrepresent information as good as the big boys
Which leaves the modern individual in the dilemma of trying to decide which parts of who's bullshit to believe.
If Sony chose to raise an Army, I have no question that they could succeed in taking over a small nation in Southeast Asia.
I'm about positive that the massive stock sell-off would kill Sony within 24 hours after the world found out Sony was embarking on such an amazingly expensive, risky, and unprofitable venture. We're talking about several billions of dollars just for the hardware, not to mention transportation, upkeep, maintaining an all-mercenary army. (relying completely on mercs to mount an invasion against soldiers defending their home territory? Generally a Bad Idea....)
This is not even taking into account the fact that your business competitors are now driving you out of the markets that you are neglecting while you invest all of your income in this private war....
Corporations are utterly dependant upon their ability to sell goods and services to people in order to maintain their existence, they must pay a salary to the members of their "population" and they must always appease their stock-holders. And because of this (and many other things besides)they simply do not have the same powers that a nation has.
Hell, they could probably just buy the damn thing. Now you're talking a little more sense.
Many corporations wield enough monetary power (cough, cough, Microsoft) that they can do pretty much what they want without consequences, much like a nation/state could.
Despite popular misconception, money is really only one figure in the equation. While corporations wield a lot of power by virtue of having a lot of money, the power and authority of a nation-state is on a whole other level, far above anything even the largest private corp in the world could dream of.
Take your example, Microsoft. We all just saw Microsoft get slapped down by the federal govt. A group of people who collectively make a fraction of Gates' income were able to tell him what he could and could not do because they have an authority that supercedes mere money. Being the richest man in the country did not protect Gates from the subsequent negative media backlash (from journalists to South Park) that occured afterwards, either.
By comparison, Pakistan has its own internationally-recognized currency, a military, territorial boundaries, an actual population, a penal system, taxation powers, and a few other things that no corp in the world has. Think Sony could invade Pakistan? Ha!
Trust me, people with money can act, to some degree, with the sovereignty of a nation (say like....Pakistan or another third world nation).
Certainly money is power "to some degree." But I know from repeated professional experience that if a gov't-level authority says "No can do" then it is "No can do" even if you work for one of the largest corps in the world. (Think Time-Warner could market p0rn in Iran?) Governments are just on a whole other level of power and authority, there's really no comparison.
sovereignty (svr-n-t, svrn-)
n., pl. sovereignties.
1. Supremacy of authority or rule as exercised by a sovereign or sovereign state.
2. Royal rank, authority, or power.
3. Complete independence and self-government.
4. A territory existing as an independent state.
Hence, not a Nation State Actor.
Mobil isn't going to fund a university that researches methods of eliminating oil from the world's energy supply - it's not in their best interest.
If it benefits society that much, then someone is going to get very rich off of it. If Mobil isn't researching it then their competitor is.
It is easy to see where Corporate America and Political America screw the people.In the case of news, we have the excellent example of US television covering the 1996 Olympic Beach Volleyball Quarterfinals (where the Americans were playing), and not broadcasting the Soccer Gold medal competition
The average US citizen would rather see the US play in the quarterfinals than Argentina play for the gold. Corporations and politicians cannot be blamed for this. In fact, it sounds very much like ordinary human nature to me....
This type of reporting happens all the time - the major news services are not interested in bringing us the news - they are interested in selling more newspapers with something like the OJ hype or the Lewinsky "issue", while there wars going on around the world.
The events in Chechnya/Bosnia/etc were always receiving massive amounts of coverage in the US press during the Lewinsky/OJ circuses. But since the potential impeachment of the President and a racially-charged double-murder trial test of the US justice system were/are far more relevant to the life of the average American than a minor war fought between foreign powers on the other side of the planet, Lewinsky and OJ made better headlines and top stories. How do you figure that corporations and politicians are to blame for this? Shouldn't you be blaming the American public instead? Better yet, shouldn't you blame human nature (ie, what we tend to find interesting/boring) instead?
Who the fuck do you think owns television, cinema, and print?
I'm well aware of who "owns" these media. Now address the point at hand. Do you deny that sitcoms, movies, and news programs consistently present corporations and corporate executives and politicians as "the bad guy?" Mainstream popular media are constantly painting corporate executives and politicians in a very negative light. Popular journalism is extremely quick to jump on instances of corporate greed, it's practically their bread and butter. Anyone who has watched TV (in America, at least) can't deny this. Why then is Katz telling us that we cannot trust such media outlets to be anything more than corporate pawns?
I'm probably voting 3rd party this year. But not because I buy into some contrived paranoid fantasy about the media cabal's control of the collective unconscious. But your reasoning is faulty: Perot lost 11% of the American public's support all on his own. Being short, whiny, having an obnoxious voice, and refusing to speak to the average American's interests is not a good campaign strategy.
The government in this country [USA] does a pitiful job of promoting the intersts of private citizens.
Over-generalization. I could come up with massive pieces of evidence both supporting and contradicting (and in some cases both supporting AND contradicting) this statement.
(As an OT example, last time I saw the numbers, the city of Hamburg, Germany, spent more money per year promoting artists than the entire yearly budget of the US NEA.)
...and as a result there is almost certainly a surplus of crappy, self-important "artists" in Hamburg.
Not-for-profit organizations -- the Government and its labs, and the Universities -- make substantial contributions to our technology base which companies later run with, and I'd like to keep it that way.
Exactly. The system ain't broke. Why do so many people want to fix it?
Is it just me, or does it seem like this guy is one of those people who sees exactly what he wants to see rather than what is actually there? It sounds like he's become so self-satisfied in his own ability to form opinions that he's decided the entire rest of the world is composed of stupid, unthinking cows waiting to be exploited by those evil, bad corporations. And he's going to paint the world according to his dogmatic beliefs regardless of what the evidence says.
For one thing, it seems to me like the modern American media definitely has a fetishistic affection for the underdog and a sometimes-irrational contempt for the "Goliath." Journalists are constantly dogging out big businesses, exposing corporate fraud and portraying executives as soulless greed machines. I can think of a million negative portrayals of corporate culture in popular media; I am hard pressed to come up with even one positive portrayal of corporate executive culture in television, cinema or print.
Third, and this is the most important, because I don't know of any other country in which someone would say "this is the greatest place to live",
Virtually every Canadian I have ever talked to will tell you that Canada is the greatest country in the world to live in. But then they have a very valid claim to the title, IMHO.
Yes, heroes. In this case it was the policemen who followed procedure and training, did not abuse authority, did not resort to violence to maintain order, and detained this individual in as civilized a manner as possible.
I don't have any love for the cops, I know from first-hand experience that they sometimes abuse their authority, and I am always, always very impressed when they don't. And in this particular case, they did not.
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I dunno what they are up to at the Santa Fe Institute, and I dunno why people would equate "complexity theory" with "chaos theory" when they are two distinctly different things. But basic computational complexity theory as I studied it in Grad School is about as controversial as the notion that 2+2 equals 4.
Rash, popular-opinion-driven statements like this one make me ashamed to be a liberal. One of the main jobs of the government is to tax that 95% and re-distribute large portions of it to the rest of the country in the form of jobs, welfare, infrastructure, etc etc.
You don't think this is a little arrogant of you, do you? "The things *I* like (and all the other people who like the same things I like) I like because I am an intelligent, freethinking individual. The things the masses like they like because they are thoughtless mind-slaves."
Yes, Britney was test-marketed and the executives found that teenage girls really loved her. They rolled her out, promoted her, and...SURPRISE! Teenage girls love her. It seems to me that this has a lot more to do with executives trying to predict the tastes of teenage girls than with executives controlling brains.
The American consumer is so innundated with attempts at psychological influence that it's meaningless to talk about what the people want.
Again, this line of reasoning seems pretty conceited to me: "The average reader of independant media is so innundated with inaccurate, biased reporting and ego-aggrandizing anti-establishment rhetoric that they can no longer think for themselves."
I just pointed this out in an above post as well. The people who do the most bitching about corporations tend to be the people who know the least about how they actually operate.
I notice that the people who bitch the most about corporations are usually the people least informed about how they actually operate.
My college professor, who has a PhD in history and who's area of focus is the Civil War, insists that the Civil War *was* primarily fought over the issue of slavery. This is in contradiction to what I was taught in high school.
What is a bodyguard? A mercenary? Even rent-a-cops and 7-11 workers have a signicant risk of death in their jobs. How does reality fit in with your maxim?
Actually, I was specifically thinking of rent-a-cops and mercenaries when I thought of this--while they will certainly work risky jobs, neither one will willingly die for any amount of money. If the Alamo had been manned by an army of 256 paid mercenaries, they would not have faced down 10,000 enraged Mexican soldiers, they would have ran like sensible people. But because the Alamo was filled with 256 "Texans" they were willing to stay and die for their cause, because their cause was worth more to them than mere money or even their own life. You can't just buy that kind of loyalty, sorry.
Money is *not* power. People keep forgetting this basic fact.
You're a notch above the average pseudo-intellectual if you realize this fact, I agree with you and I like the way you think. Sorry if I said anything to piss you off.
You misused the word 'epistemological.' Also, you seem to think that I don't agree with you because I am not privy to the same information as you, when in fact I have come to different conclusions based on the same information. The power of corporations to control individuals, governments and society in general is vastly over-rated, distorted, and over-simplified by reactionaries and alarmists, and I for one don't buy into the hysteria.
it's a sort of biological programming.
Advertisers try to use various psychological tricks to make their product seem more appealing. You make it sound like they control the masses like Pavlov's dogs, and this is simply not the case.
accepting any message can have a detrimental effect on your health or well-being:
Accepting or believing some message can't physically change anything (except maybe the configuration of some neurons in your brain.) Choosing to perform an action based on this acceptance is what you are talking about.
i'm not sure you understand the basics of historical analysis
I understand that you just made up the word "historical analysis" in order to sound educated, and I understand that it backfired.
1. the power to control governments
The methods which churches have used to influence governments (usually granting or denying religious legitimacy to a ruler or policy, as I recall) are fundamentally different from the methods which private companies use (entirely economic in nature). And neither private corporations nor churches can rightly be said to "control" government, just influence it to a rather limited degree.
single corporations can strangle whole regions.
If you mean an economic repressive policy towards a geographic region, then it's pretty clear that the methodology by which a private corporation would accomplish such a thing is fundamentally different from the method which an organized religious entity would accomplish it.
Additionally, you may be getting your information on the Monsanto case (India, right?) from some biased and unreliable sources if you have been led to believe that it consitutes "a single corporation strangling a region."
learn to think.
In the future, you should save this kind of insult for someone who genuinely doesn't think, rather than someone who simply doesn't have the same opinions that you do.
You seem to be labouring under some popular misconceptions. For one thing it can hardly be said that the "ruling class" and the Church cooperated with any degree of consistency: they frequently were at odds with each other. For another thing it is a vast over-simplification to characterize the religious situation in Europe for 800+ years as simply as "those mean old priests controlled the peasants by keeping them ignorant." Per usual, the reality of the situation was more morally ambiguous than that. And yes the Church and its doctrines definitely were a general source of comfort for most serfs, the average priest was a compassionate individual, the burnings and torturings were less frequent than you have probably been led to believe, and usually were opposed by factions within the Church itself. Why do you think the Church had so much authority, unless it inspired a type of loyalty beyond mere economics?
What better proof that corporations offer comfort based on faith is there than television advertising and billboards?
Corporations offer concrete, temporary products and services in exchange for money without requiring the individual to change their world-view in any significant way. Religions offer things which are not concrete, not temporary, and do require the individual to accept certain fundamental beliefs.
Again, for the Naderites and anti-corporate hysterians, I must assert my maxim: "Most people will die for free for their nation or their god. No one will die for Sony for any amount of money."
This is patently absurd. Corporations communicate with the average individual mainly through advertisement, which you the individual have the option of tuning out, disbelieving, or accepting with no detriment to your health or well-being. They don't "tell" us how to be comfortable with ourselves, and they certainly possess almost zero of the features or powers of an organized religion, particularly the one that was extant in Europe in the Middle Ages.
Actually, these things are so common that they are now virtually dead at this point.
Once upon a time, when all of your information came from one or maybe two sources, it was possible to 'control' the information intake of the average individual. With the growth of technology that ability to wield centralized control over information has gone the way of the dinosaur. For any piece of biased information that you access today, there are a myriad of alternatively-biased pieces of the same information available somewhere else. Every Tom, Dick and Harry can now 'spin' and misrepresent information as good as the big boys
Which leaves the modern individual in the dilemma of trying to decide which parts of who's bullshit to believe.
Regardless of where you stand on this and other issues, such strong opinions are usually the sign of a closed mind.
I'm about positive that the massive stock sell-off would kill Sony within 24 hours after the world found out Sony was embarking on such an amazingly expensive, risky, and unprofitable venture. We're talking about several billions of dollars just for the hardware, not to mention transportation, upkeep, maintaining an all-mercenary army. (relying completely on mercs to mount an invasion against soldiers defending their home territory? Generally a Bad Idea....)
This is not even taking into account the fact that your business competitors are now driving you out of the markets that you are neglecting while you invest all of your income in this private war....
Corporations are utterly dependant upon their ability to sell goods and services to people in order to maintain their existence, they must pay a salary to the members of their "population" and they must always appease their stock-holders. And because of this (and many other things besides)they simply do not have the same powers that a nation has.
Hell, they could probably just buy the damn thing. Now you're talking a little more sense.
Despite popular misconception, money is really only one figure in the equation. While corporations wield a lot of power by virtue of having a lot of money, the power and authority of a nation-state is on a whole other level, far above anything even the largest private corp in the world could dream of.
Take your example, Microsoft. We all just saw Microsoft get slapped down by the federal govt. A group of people who collectively make a fraction of Gates' income were able to tell him what he could and could not do because they have an authority that supercedes mere money. Being the richest man in the country did not protect Gates from the subsequent negative media backlash (from journalists to South Park) that occured afterwards, either.
By comparison, Pakistan has its own internationally-recognized currency, a military, territorial boundaries, an actual population, a penal system, taxation powers, and a few other things that no corp in the world has. Think Sony could invade Pakistan? Ha!
Trust me, people with money can act, to some degree, with the sovereignty of a nation (say like....Pakistan or another third world nation).
Certainly money is power "to some degree." But I know from repeated professional experience that if a gov't-level authority says "No can do" then it is "No can do" even if you work for one of the largest corps in the world. (Think Time-Warner could market p0rn in Iran?) Governments are just on a whole other level of power and authority, there's really no comparison.
sovereignty (svr-n-t, svrn-) n., pl. sovereignties. 1. Supremacy of authority or rule as exercised by a sovereign or sovereign state. 2. Royal rank, authority, or power. 3. Complete independence and self-government. 4. A territory existing as an independent state. Hence, not a Nation State Actor.
If it benefits society that much, then someone is going to get very rich off of it. If Mobil isn't researching it then their competitor is.
It is easy to see where Corporate America and Political America screw the people.In the case of news, we have the excellent example of US television covering the 1996 Olympic Beach Volleyball Quarterfinals (where the Americans were playing), and not broadcasting the Soccer Gold medal competition
The average US citizen would rather see the US play in the quarterfinals than Argentina play for the gold. Corporations and politicians cannot be blamed for this. In fact, it sounds very much like ordinary human nature to me....
This type of reporting happens all the time - the major news services are not interested in bringing us the news - they are interested in selling more newspapers with something like the OJ hype or the Lewinsky "issue", while there wars going on around the world.
The events in Chechnya/Bosnia/etc were always receiving massive amounts of coverage in the US press during the Lewinsky/OJ circuses. But since the potential impeachment of the President and a racially-charged double-murder trial test of the US justice system were/are far more relevant to the life of the average American than a minor war fought between foreign powers on the other side of the planet, Lewinsky and OJ made better headlines and top stories. How do you figure that corporations and politicians are to blame for this? Shouldn't you be blaming the American public instead? Better yet, shouldn't you blame human nature (ie, what we tend to find interesting/boring) instead?
I'm well aware of who "owns" these media. Now address the point at hand. Do you deny that sitcoms, movies, and news programs consistently present corporations and corporate executives and politicians as "the bad guy?" Mainstream popular media are constantly painting corporate executives and politicians in a very negative light. Popular journalism is extremely quick to jump on instances of corporate greed, it's practically their bread and butter. Anyone who has watched TV (in America, at least) can't deny this. Why then is Katz telling us that we cannot trust such media outlets to be anything more than corporate pawns?
I'm probably voting 3rd party this year. But not because I buy into some contrived paranoid fantasy about the media cabal's control of the collective unconscious. But your reasoning is faulty: Perot lost 11% of the American public's support all on his own. Being short, whiny, having an obnoxious voice, and refusing to speak to the average American's interests is not a good campaign strategy.
Uh, actually, I think that nation-states are the new nation-state-actors in the 21st century.
Over-generalization. I could come up with massive pieces of evidence both supporting and contradicting (and in some cases both supporting AND contradicting) this statement.
(As an OT example, last time I saw the numbers, the city of Hamburg, Germany, spent more money per year promoting artists than the entire yearly budget of the US NEA.)
Exactly. The system ain't broke. Why do so many people want to fix it?
For one thing, it seems to me like the modern American media definitely has a fetishistic affection for the underdog and a sometimes-irrational contempt for the "Goliath." Journalists are constantly dogging out big businesses, exposing corporate fraud and portraying executives as soulless greed machines. I can think of a million negative portrayals of corporate culture in popular media; I am hard pressed to come up with even one positive portrayal of corporate executive culture in television, cinema or print.
Virtually every Canadian I have ever talked to will tell you that Canada is the greatest country in the world to live in. But then they have a very valid claim to the title, IMHO.
I don't have any love for the cops, I know from first-hand experience that they sometimes abuse their authority, and I am always, always very impressed when they don't. And in this particular case, they did not.