The tyranny of the market

[Skidmore]

A phrase we can use? Have we come to a time in which we can talk about market tyranny and change the wave everyone has been surfing for so long.

[drm604]

1. Interesting Idea. I like it.

We need some good examples of it that ordinary people can relate to.

[Autonomy]

2. What does it mean? nt

[Skidmore]

3. In what ways has the market limited people or outright harmed

them? Lets talk about the many coverups for defective and harmful products and employment practices in the workplace, poisoning of the body and environment, rampant deregulation that has been harmful, financial manipulations to toss over obligations to workers for profit...

I'm thinking along those lines.

[antigop]

5. And look what kind of health care system the "market" has delivered

Our health care system is a disaster.

[bryant69]

6. The problem with the phrase is that it blames the

market for something individuals do. Or that's how it will be taken. The problem isn't that we have markets, it isn't that we have a capatalist economy (in my opinion) - the problem is that we have insufficient oversight and regulation to prevent people from acting badly in those spaces.

I think the key word is oversight - for too long Republicans have run things and have been hands off - forget Reagen's Trust then Verify - they stopped at Trust. And people in both the economic and the government sector took advantage of their laxity. We need to change this. We need a Congress that watches what these people are doing and smacks them down when they step outside the bounds of fairness and decency.

But I am a capatalist, so I'm not interested in a systematic attack on capitalism.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[undergroundpanther]

26. The market is made

up of INDIVIDUALS. The market is a human invention.
Human beings are what make it sick because human beings are not free in a market driven life.

[bryant69]

28. Pie in the sky utopianism.

Humans are not free in the market? They are a free as they have ever been. Freer, even with all the problems and errors that need to be corrected.

[Autonomy]

7. Ah, okay... I'm with you.

I vehemently strive against the "market forces as God" people. Such forces cure few ills, and create many more.

Not sure tyranny is the right word, though. I'll tell you my instant reaction on seeing the phrase: that someone is suggesting that market forces do nothing but harm all the time. But you seem to mean that market forces harm some people some of the time. I would suggest the phrase "market failings".

JMO. For what it's worth. Maybe you have a better reason than I understand.

[porphyrian]

19. People should watch The Corporation.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0379225/

It should give you the background you need for the class, without reading a bunch of books. Although, if you're a fast reader, or just want to read, I'm sure people can list a bunch of material here. Think of The Corporation as the Cliff Notes.

[rman]

4. "profit uber alles" nt

[FormerDittoHead]

9. Business is amoral. Businesses' goals are financial, not economic.

Economic costs (impure food, pollution, dangerous products, toxic waste, etc) aren't the businesses' problems.

[Skidmore]

11. That business is amoral is the BS fed to business professionals

cranked out of the MBA programs of the 1980s. What happened to responsibility? Citizens are expected to take responsibility for their actions and to pay for them when they harm others. If the business creates the problem (e.g. poisons the watershed in area, purposefully markets a product they know is harmful), they most certainly do have an obligation to the community to rectify it. After all, THEIR PROFITS COME FROM THE COMMUNITY... in the form of the community's purchasing of their goods, the infrastructure supported by tax dollars, and the labor provided by the worker.

[undergroundpanther]

14. Amoral?? It's downright psychopathic.!

[undergroundpanther]

27. Well if they think

It's OUR problem.. and THEY are who with their wastes from making 'product' fucked up OUR world for their own profit and dare to say it's OUR problem now? Than obviously it's up to us to MAKE it their problem for THEY are who polluted our planet ruined it, extracted the resources ,hoarded them, kept secrets,bribed the watchdogs,and they are who have the means to CLEAN it up..
It IS the corporations problem... specifically the psychopathic person who OWNS the corporation's problem.They want to have all the perks and none of the work,or responsibility, corprations are not even alive they are paper fictions,running roughshod over our lives .. well mr Ceo YOU need a come uppance and soon.

[Double T]

8. 'tyranny of the market' is an excellent phrase to describe the.........

'sellout' and 'rip off' currently under way by corporate america, wall street, k street, our government and greedy investors; the American consumers and workers are being robbed by a bunch of criminals. The Banking and Financial Industry, Health Care, Utilities, Energy Companies, Pharmaceuticals, Housing are just examples of sectors that are 'screwing the hell' out of the American consumer in order to 'steal' insane compensation. A perfect example of this 'insanity' is found in the following article, 'WE' need to stop THIS ABUSE AND TOTAL CORRUPTION of 'the markets'.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/4328345.html :puke:

[Skidmore]

10. You understood my point exactly!!!

As long as the political power and economic power is invested in this criminal endeavor, the average Joe will be enslaved by the markets.

[Double T]

12. The masses are ALREADY slaves to 'the markets', many just have NOT.....

realized IT or accepted IT yet! It will take an economic and financial 'train wreck', that I believe is NOT far off, to 'reset' the flagrant widespread abuse and corruption that is rotting the social, economic and political core of our nation.

[undergroundpanther]

13. The "market" is evil

It's where souls are crushed and planets ruined for profits and very few ever see the profits of such evil. I hate the market and everything it does that keeps people deprived in strife, competing , fighting,struggling backstabbing,manipulating,. mistreating, ect..The market's effect on us has been nothing short of planetary slow death at the invisible hand of a suicidal killer. There HAS to be Another way where NO ONE does without and NO ONE has too much and is permitted to be insatiable.Some people are addicted to domination by wealth.

[Double T]

16. I TOTALLY agree with YOU!!

[undergroundpanther]

18. Secretly

I want it to fall apart. I know this will shock and offend many, but they don't question their market god.. I want to see rich thugs jumping out of windows.I want to see middle class people learn to share, get past bigotries and to be free and find themselves and learn to manage time on their own time,and rest.
I know the poor already know how to survive and a market destroying crash reveals what the rich really are to everyone..Manipulating tapeworms sucking the lifeblood out of millions of lives denied self actualization and a chance to find their own happiness.But I know that the transition to life without markets will not be easy it may very well be very painful. How much tyranny are people willing to tolerate to be"safe"have thier own little island ,be fed and comfy enough and addicted to the shit sold to them is the question?

[Double T]

21. It will take a JOLT out of the 'comfort zone' BEFORE ANYTHING........

can be accomplished

[undergroundpanther]

23. I know

Maybe that is why China owns us,for now.. The elites are trying to get the crowd controls in place stuff like the microwave beams and "non lethal" devices ready . Wonder why they've shipped out the national guard and not the army to that Iraq quagmire? So corporate black-water mercenaries can do the crowd suppression . Crowds of in debt people losing it all are bound to be pissed,people who can't pay up,who were used.. also the new camps being built, they will be OUR work camps where John Q citizen can go to pay off debts with slave labor that never ends. It's their plan to make the new feudal state AU.Debt slavery keeps generations in en slaved in other countries it will work over here, because middle class America believes and like fools pride themselves on that bullshit puritan work ethic.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5582171
For more see my journal
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/undergroundpanther/2

From Unknown
http://www.unknownnews.org/050607a-Panther.html

[Selatius]

15. It's not that I have a problem with market forces

What I do have a problem with is the means of production are owned by a very small number of people. I believe a truly democratic society would mean a society where production is owned by the workers themselves in an economy dominated by worker co-ops and communes all producing goods and services according to the best interests of the owners, the workers themselves, not just a select few elite monopolists.

[The2ndWheel]

17. So then you don't see civilization as a good thing?

Cool.

[undergroundpanther]

20. Hell no

Civilization is cancer in a pyramid shaped tumor.


Civilization isn't mankind's biggest whoop-de-doo. It isn't "the pinnacle of human success. " It ain't even really all that fun, especially for most of the folks who make the whole silly thing possible — the workers and small businesses that are called the backbone of the "economy".

How can I say such "blasphemy"?

Because our kind of civilization, specifically the one we live it, is a large hierarchical social structure coupled with some very rigid beliefs and bureaucracies. In our civilization, all the food is put under lock and key and we must pay for what the earth produces naturally. All the land is "owned" by the force of almighty legal papers, and the mutterings of 'law' made for kings basically makes us slaves to the people who will profit most from this way of life we lead for them. It's killing us slowly and making us miserable, confused, and unhealthy. Even our sugar-addicted over-processed foods are not designed for human consumption, but to maintain a profitable civilization.

http://web.pitas.com/page6/upits100902.html

[The2ndWheel]

22. Damn skippy

That's all I can add, since you said everything that needs to be said.

[undergroundpanther]

25. ...

:toast:

[Selatius]

29. If what we have is defined as "civilization," then no, it's most definitely not a good thing

A system that impoverishes billions of innocent people, kills hundreds of millions for their being guilty of being too poor to buy food, kills tens of millions more in wars of power and profit started by squabbles between powerful people, rewards bankers, war profiteers, and industrialists with fabulous wealth just for being greedy and placing human life second to personal profit (See Dick Cheney) is a system that is fundamentally unjust. It is, indeed, globocide. If people want to think privileged ownership over the resources everybody needs to survive is the ultimate long-term solution to humanity's problems, the only thing humanity would gain is extinction and a poisoned, polluted planet.

[undergroundpanther]

24. This is what tyranny looks like..

Gradually workers rights go away wages stagnate,Gradually things get worse,Gradually the public is engineered to see torture as OK gradually people are shown the government will disregard them Gradually corporations overreach, Gradually we are isolated and uprooted chasing jobs so that we do not know our neighbors and family is scattered all over and no one cares.Gradually we get used to being told how to live. We gradually accept a world of Piss tests at work and firing for no reason and offshoring..Gradually we come to accept and even desire the forced drugging put forth in The New freedom Commission on Mental Health and Testing of pesticides on kids.Gradually we begin to accept the false failed economics of Reagan,accept tax cuts for the wealthy while we cannot afford heating oil.

By stealth, our bodies, minds, loves, dreams,fears, privacy,tastes, education, individuality, our children, the land,our food/watter,the culture, our freedoms, our democracy, our perceptions of morality, and our lives themselves

have been systematically and slowly and sometimes in secret or by public demands been co-opted,infiltrated,instigated,marketed,engineered, controlled,denied,and destroyed..

Done by the unaccountable people running the markets,running the drugs and guns,and wars,Making the secrets and rationalizing keeping them away from us,the faceless people who hide among us pretending to be like us,the people on the political stage who cannot be reached by us,and do not care and those uber rich fascists who hide far away from us in fortified fortresses and other places who manage our lives by proxy with a billion little Eichmann's doing their bidding, as they sit atop the world's wealth and resources untouched by any suffering or accountability to anyone themselves.

We have been so controlled by the state,so beholden to the corporation,so tolerant of corrupt industry, To profit uncontrolled, to excessive unneeded militarization, and to a reactionary hypocrite corporate multi faced, multi faithed but ever so subtle and controlling "church" that carries the same old programs,lies and propaganda as all the others but each presents the same old games in different dresses to better engineer the perceptions of reality for different kinds of people coercing us to all think about certain issues a certain way.

Problem,reaction solution. Reaction and reacting to the reaction..On and On we play pretend.We never get around to admit we are not free with all these faceless masters and TV screens defining what freedom is for us.
We never get around to see we are letting the powerful destroy the world and us. W e never get around to finding the CAUSES of our condition.

America is so un free and so stuck on make believe that the people do not even remember what freedom or reality IS anymore.

For Many of us our life itself has been engineered..to accept the game of make believe as truth and to call reality before us a "conspirasy".