We have a slavish and comical dedication to big business. Their shills have told us for countless years they need considerable regulatory space and low taxes to create the kinds of innovations that can make society more efficient, our lives easier, and as an added benefit make the world a better place; whatever that means. And we’ve implicitly agreed, giving them more power than they’ve had since the first gilded age. It’s become so engrained in our understanding of the societal order that we’ve ceased to even question it. Big businesses have been afforded a kind of reverence we don’t offer any other entity. We’ve become nothing more than docile consumers, taking endless lashes from a proverbial whip and asking for another after each painful crack. Though somehow we’ve romanticized these companies, made them part of our stories. A Stockholm Syndrome of commercial interests. We’ve become dependent on the very thing that exercises immense control over us.
We’ve always been heading towards this moment, especially in media and discourse. Not only have we traded away our privacy for glib connectivity, but more importantly, we’ve allowed a select few companies who treat us as their most valuable commodity to dictate the terms of how we live our lives. We’ve been taught by those on the political right to fear a pervasive government that has always been looming just on the horizon. Waiting for us if we cede too much control to public versus individual concerns. While we’ve allowed that argument to become gospel, cloaked in the rhetoric of freedom and liberty, we’ve neglected to see the emergence of a much greater force, growing in power every day, fed by our reliance on it.
If there was any question about the power of big businesses then the events of the last few weeks have taught us otherwise. Almost every large business boycotted our shameless grifter of an ex-President, and we can all rejoice that he’s been silenced. However, the manner in which it was done raises the specter of a public square that only exists insofar as a few hundred influential CEO’s allow it to exist. Instead of handling the abhorrent transgressions by some public means, a collective shunning and legal action, we saw the real centers of power rise to the challenge, shutting down the wheels of commerce that make the grift possible. And we are to blame for ceding immense power to a privileged few. We’ve cheered the consolidated power of the companies involved because it’s easy. We love engaging with our ‘friends’ in inane debates and conversations on one or two central social platforms, buying all of our goods on one major site, and most of all we love being amused to death by the mindless entertainment fed to us by just a few massive companies. We’ve learned to savor monopolies and competitive scarcity.
Where do we go next? What happens when somebody raises their voice to criticize everything that is wrong with us? Who will stop those same businesses and CEO’s from marginalizing that person or group? Late late empire always seemed doomed because of rampant greed and depraved indifference to truth, but now I’m sure it’s much more than that. That greed has a voice, and it’s much louder than all of our voices together. If there are only a few people really talking then we’ve effectively silenced ourselves as a result.
GLAZ 