“We’ll Coup Who We Want”

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Given all the atrocities currently being committed by government administrations, ‘intelligence’ and ‘security’ forces, and NGOs, there’s not much room in the news cycles for coverage of the outrages being perpetrated by corporations. In fact, only four news sources, Lambert & Yves’ Naked Capitalism, The American Prospect, Yanis Varoufakis’ DiEM25, and Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic, seem to be covering corporate misdeeds much at all these days.

As I’ve reported before, if you look behind many government actions, you’ll quickly discover the machinations of the corporate oligopolies that actually prompted, funded, and propagandized them. As long as all eyes are focused on government follies, these corporations can continue to pursue their agenda of profit and wealth accumulation at any political, economic, and environmental cost, unreported and unopposed. The mentally damaged Elon “We’ll coup who we want” Musk is one of the few corporate czars stupid enough to bring unwanted attention to them.

The chart I developed, shown above, and the article I originally wrote about it, have actually attracted a bit of attention in corporate circles, perhaps because they come a little too close to the truth for comfort. They were censored from a venture capital newsgroup that had reposted them, after members complained it was “socialist nonsense”.

But the article’s thesis is basically simple, and pretty much irrefutable: The managers, directors and controlling shareholders will do pretty much anything, including lying and committing crimes (and helping orchestrate coups), (a) if they are confident they can get away with it, and (b) if it will further their objective of increasing their profits and wealth. As the book and film The Corporation explained, they are designed to behave in ways that we would clearly consider pathological. That design was not deliberately malicious. Rather, it was done to make the workings of corporations simple and unambiguous, and to remove obstructions from the corporation’s success. Just as with the latest applications of AI, of which the corporation was arguably the first iteration, the intention was good, but the unforeseen consequences dire. As John Gray famous wrote in Straw Dogs:

If anything about the present century is certain, it is that the power conferred on ‘humanity’ by new technologies will be used to commit atrocious crimes against it. If it becomes possible to clone human beings, soldiers will be bred in whom normal human emotions are stunted or absent. Genetic engineering may enable centuries-old diseases to be eradicated. At the same time, it is likely to be the technology of choice in future genocides. Those who ignore the destructive potential of new technologies can only do so because they ignore history. Pogroms are as old as Christendom; but without railways, the telegraph and poison gas there could have been no Holocaust. There have always been tyrannies, but without modern means of transport and communication, Stalin and Mao could not have built their gulags. Humanity’s worst crimes were made possible only by modern technology.

Corporations are, arguably, the most prevalent technology of recent centuries, driving almost every aspect of our economy and most of our political decisions and considerations. They are, by their unfortunate design, inherently undemocratic, unresponsive to reform, and ruthlessly corrupt.

The corporate model is ostensibly based on ‘free market competition’, but not for the sake of encouraging innovation and advancement. Rather, a fundamental objective of the corporation is to eliminate competition, because competition potentially inhibits endless profit growth. As the chart above illustrates, first you eliminate your competitors (smash them, buy them, shut them down), then you eliminate regulations, then you get the governments you effectively control to smash foreign competition, then you destabilize and undermine labour markets and legal protections to cow employees and deceive customers to accept whatever conditions the corporation imposes on them, and, finally, you work to dismantle governments (foreign and domestic) you no longer need, whose not-for-profit activities hamper your untrammelled expansion activities. This is just how corporations are designed. This is how they achieve the objectives in their corporate charters, and their legal obligations as set out in corporate law.

We ignore the major role that corporations are playing in the accelerating collapse of all the systems that comprise our civilization, at our peril. Even if theoretically we were somehow able to ‘reform’ our political systems to respond to the polycrisis we are facing, and make these systems genuinely answerable to and responsible and responsive to the informed needs of their electorates, collapse would continue unabated. Political power now resides almost entirely with corporations and their owners, managers and directors, not with anyone in elected office or government administrations.

A few examples of how this corporate control over all aspects of our political and economic lives is producing dysfunctional consequences:

• The internet has become dysfunctional since it devolved largely into an oligopoly of five corporations: Google, Microsoft, X-twitter, Facebook, and Amazon. To these corporations, you are not the customer, you (and your wallet) are the product, being served up to their real customer, the advertisers and ‘sponsors’. These corporations are not interested in informing you or helping you obtain what you want and need. They are only interested in feeding you whatever crap their real customers — other corporate oligopolies and moneyed pressure groups and propaganda agencies — want you to see. They even forbid you to block this paid-for misinformation from your view. So their ‘products’ are now a mess of ads, propaganda, government and corporate misinformation, with much of what you really want to see already pre-censored, demonetized, or moved ‘below the fold’ where you’ll never see it. And their platforms are self-obsolescing, upselling, price-gouging, and cutting once-‘free’ services, so every year you have to pay more and more for less and less. And now, to prevent customers annoyingly complaining about paying for useless ‘upgrades’ and new ‘versions’, they are trying to ‘rent’ you products and services for a monthly, ever-increasing, fee, forever.
• Corporations are using increasing levels of spyware to spy on, terrorize, and micro-manage employees.
• Thanks to deregulation, oligopolies are now free to buy up and close down any potential new competitors, allowing them to collude openly to set prices. The so-called “market” no longer has any role in determining what you pay for anything. Oligopolies, from airlines to banks, can now add, and re-price, junk fees that provide absolutely no value to the customer, at will. Financial institutions and intermediaries can now set interest rates (with added junk fees) at rates that would once be illegal under (now deregulated) usury laws. And now, thanks to AI, it’s getting even worse: New surveillance tools monitoring what you buy, and when, are allowing corporations to use “surge pricing” and “surveillance pricing” to charge you more when you most urgently need something.

When you look for accurate, balanced information online, or when you are looking for unbiased reviews and ratings, or the lowest-price alternatives, or the resolution of a problem caused by a corporation, or a reasonable price for a quality product or service, you will quickly find: Oligopoly corporations are not your friends. 

You don’t like it, then, as Musk says “Deal with it.” And then, shut up and do what they tell you. They are not interested in what you want. They are interested only in what they can sell you, for as much as they can gouge you for it.

Yeah, I know, it’s hard to think about this in a world full of proxy wars, genocides, coups, embargoes, and other political outrages and machinations. But if you can, save a little bit of attention for what corporations, dutifully fulfilling their pathological mandates, are doing to all of us.