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Corporate black holes prevent fair play in the U.S. economy

Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple and Microsoft

Like black holes, the largest companies have a reach that seemingly exceeds human capabilities, writes Frazier.

By Kevin Frazier
Aug 23, 2024
Frazier is an assistant professor at the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University and a Tarbell fellow.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Jan 02, 2016 5:25 pm

aedens wrote:http://www.chrismarquis.com/ They know who, and why these burn zones operate.

My primary teaching and research focus is the sustainability and shared value strategies of global corporations.

"Shared value strategies" are to operate as "Transfer Mechanisms" to legitimize stripping of surpluses-------> NOT Sustainable

Alright, it's not a very big secret who owns the country: you look at the
"Fortune 500" every year and you figure out pretty well who owns the
country. The country is basically owned by a network of conglomerates that
control production and investment and banking and so on, and are tightly
inter-linked and very highly concentrated-they own the country. And the
principle of American democracy is that they also ought to govern it. And
to a very large extent, they do. Now, whenever you have a concentration of
power like that, you can be certain that the people who have the power are
going to try to maximize it-and they're going to maximize it at the expense
of others, both in their own country and abroad. And that's just an unviable
system, I think.
Let's put international violence aside for a minute and take environmen-
tal issues, which people are finally beginning to look at. Well, it's been ob-
vious for centuries that capitalism is going to self-destruct: that's just
inherent in the logic of system-because to the extent that a system is capi-
talist, that means maximizing short-term profit and not being concerned
with long-term effects. In fact, the motto of capitalism was, "private vices,
public benefits"-somehow it's gonna work out. Well, it doesn't work out,
and it's never going to work out: if you're maximizing short-term profits
without concern for the long-term effects, you are going to destroy the en-
vironment, for one thing. I mean, you can pretend up to a certain point that
the world has infinite resources and that it's an infinite wastebasket-but at
some point you're going to run into the reality, which is that that isn't true.

"Want" Creation

MAN: But you could say that "to truck and barter" is human nature-that
people are fundamentally materialist, and will always want to accumulate
more and more under any social structure.

You could say it, but there's no reason to believe it. You look at peasant
societies, they go on for thousands of years without it-do those people have
a different human nature? Or just look inside a family: do people "truck and
barter" over how much you're going to eat for dinner? Well, certainly a
family is a normal social structure, and you don't see people accumulating
more and more for themselves regardless of the needs of the other people.
In fact, just take a look at the history of "trucking and bartering" itself:
look at the history of modern capitalism, about which we know a lot. The
first thing you'll notice is, peasants had to be driven by force and violence
into a wage-labor system they did not want; then major efforts were under-
taken-conscious efforts-to create wants. In fact, if you look back, there's a
whole interesting literature of conscious discussion of the need to manu-
facture wants in the general population. It's happened over the whole long
stretch of capitalism of course, but one place where you can see it very
nicely encapsulated is around the time when slavery was terminated. It's
very dramatic to look at cases like these.
For example, in 1831 there was a big slave revolt in Jamaica-which was
one of the things that led the British to decide to give up slavery in their
colonies: after some slave revolts, they basically said, "It's not paying any-
more." So within a couple years the British wanted to move from a slave
economy to a so-called "free" economy, but they still wanted the basic
structure to remain exactly the same-and if you take a look back at the
parliamentary debates in England at the time, they were talking very con-
sciously about all this. They were saying: look, we've got to keep it the way
it is, the masters have to become the owners, the slaves have to become the
happy workers-somehow we've got to work it all out.
Well, there was a little problem in Jamaica: since there was a lot of open
land there, when the British let the slaves go free they just wanted to move
out onto the land and be perfectly happy, they didn't want to work for the
British sugar plantations anymore. So what everyone was asking in Parlia-
ment in London was, "How can we force them to keep working for us, even
when they're no longer enslaved into it?" Alright, two things were decided
upon: first, they would use state force to close off the open land and prevent
people from going and surviving on their own. And secondly, they realized
that since all these workers didn't really want a lot of things-they just
wanted to satisfy their basic needs, which they could easily do in that trop-
ical climate-the British capitalists would have to start creating a whole set
of wants for them, and make them start desiring things they didn't then de-
sire, so then the only way they'd be able to satisfy their new material desires
would be by working for wages in the British sugar plantations.2o
There was very conscious discussion of the need to create wants-and in
fact, extensive efforts were then undertaken to do exactly what they do on
T.V. today: to create wants, to make you want the latest pair of sneakers
you don't really need, so then people will be driven into a wage-labor soci-
ety. And that pattern has been repeated over and over again through the
whole entire history of capitalism.21 In fact, what the whole history of cap-
italism shows is that people have had to be driven into situations which are
then claimed to be their nature. But if the history of capitalism shows any-
thing, it shows it's not their nature, that they've had to be forced into it, and
that that effort has had to be maintained right until this day.

Mike Rowe warns millions of men are quitting work

Mike Rowe, the renowned host of Dirty Jobs, has raised alarms about a troubling trend in the American labor market. Millions of able-bodied men are opting out of the workforce, creating what he describes as a “will gap.” This phenomenon is not only reshaping the labor landscape but is also poised to have far-reaching implications for the U.S. economy and society at large.

The Rise of the 'Will Gap': Understanding the Phenomenon

The “will gap,” as defined by Mike Rowe, refers to the growing number of men who are physically capable of working but choose not to participate in the workforce. This gap is distinct from unemployment rates, as it includes those who are not actively seeking employment. According to Rowe, this trend reflects a significant shift in societal attitudes towards work and responsibility.

Statistics paint a stark picture of this labor market shift. Reports indicate that approximately 7 million able-bodied men in their prime working years are neither employed nor seeking work. This has been highlighted in several studies, including one that Rowe referenced in his discussions. The decline in workforce participation among men is worrying, with potential repercussions for economic growth and community stability.

Communities and industries are feeling the impact of this trend. The absence of a significant portion of the labor force leads to gaps in industries that are already struggling to fill positions. The loss of potential productivity from these individuals not participating in the economy has broader implications, from reduced consumer spending to increased strain on social services.

Higgenbotham wrote: Mon Aug 04, 2025 2:14 am

He also points out that for the citizens of early rapacious regimes, collapse often improved their lives because they were freed from domination and taxation and returned to farming.

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Aug 05, 2025 10:40 am A normal person might say, "You wouldn't think."

YOU wouldn't, but THEY would.

Well, the United States has been quite happy supporting that - so long as
it worked. But in the last few years, it hasn't worked. See, people with
power understand exactly one thing: violence. If violence is effective,
everything's okay; but if violence loses its effectiveness, then they start
worrying and have to try something else.