[CS-FSLUG] Corporate Rule

[Josiah Ritchie]

Ed, have you ever thought about preaching revivals? Just a thought, you
have a way of clearly stating the fallenness of our world.

Another thought, this seemed to me a story much like that behind the
Matrix. Machines are created for the good of mankind, eventually
surpassing us and turning on us. This assumes that machines take on the
ability to act as humans.

JSR/

On Mon, 2004-07-12 at 11:33, Ed Hurst wrote:
> Corporate Rule
> 
> 
> As early as the 1970s, academic writers recognized that a new modern
> culture had arisen in the world: the culture of international business.
> They recognized it had become the single most dominant culture in the
> world. Like any culture, there is no specific point of origin in time
> to which we can point. Indeed, it is deeply rooted in some other
> culture. That birthplace, if you will, was the rise of the middle class
> merchant in the Middle Ages.
> 
> Medieval Europe was fraught with numerous tiny fiefdoms and borders
> based on titular ownership of the land by some lord or other. While the
> lord of the local manor was usually beholden to another lord above him,
> and perhaps several ranks extended even farther above, each lord at the
> lowest level had a tremendous freedom and sovereignty within his own
> domain. Most of these lords had a view of wealth that was tied to land
> and its various products. The wealth of the world, however great, was
> static and limited, a view we now call "mercantilism." The goal of
> trade was to extend one's power and influence by amassing gold from
> trading always to one's own advantage. For trading partners to prosper
> too much was a bad sign, unless they clearly did so at someone else's
> expense farther away. It never occurred to them that wealth could be
> created.
> 
> Late in the Middle Ages, certain town merchants discovered that
> principle, even if they didn't clearly enunciate it. Wealth was not a
> globally static quantity, but could grow everywhere at once with
> increased economic exchange. Wealth was property, but income arose from
> activity, not property. For them, the trick was to get the lord to back
> off his taxes and regulations as much as possible so that free exchange
> could enrich everyone involved. They learned early to make the lords
> dependent on their gold, and eventually bought their political freedom
> by offering more than the lord could gain any other way. Wealthy towns
> gained relative independence by means of charters, and built their own
> domains. These domains were not tied so much to any one place, but were
> domains of trade and commerce, domains of more or less exclusive rights
> to produce and sell a given range of products.
> 
> In reality, most of the negotiations were made by cities and towns,
> because the lords ruled by territory. A particular trading company or
> trade guild might grow to dominance, alone or shared with others, and
> become de facto governments of a city. In some few cases, individual
> trade organizations might gain concessions covering their entire trade
> territory. These domains made their own "treaties" -- business
> arrangements, contracts. They normally were willing to seek terms of
> co-existence that enriched all. You may have heard the term "Hanseatic
> League" -- a group of German merchants that arose from the Middle Ages
> to assert de facto political power based on their economic power. Their
> power was great enough to give any king pause before infringing their
> freedom. While individual merchants possessed a middle class distaste
> for violence, in congregation they would be willing to hire mercenaries
> to fight for their commercial advantage. The Hanseatic League at one
> time went to war with a Scandinavian king over fishing rights.
> 
> Over the past few centuries, the business culture has taken a life of
> its own, and does not precisely overlap any other culture. It serves
> the one god, profit. All other activities and efforts are in service to
> that one goal of greater wealth. The brutal lust of greed has long been
> largely replaced with a thrill in negotiating deals and negotiating
> barriers to those deals. Actual money in hand means almost nothing, as
> the existence of virtual money -- numbers in an official account
> register -- is very much to their advantage. As such, financial
> institutions are very much a part of this culture. Currency itself has
> become a commodity for trade, no less human lives indirectly. For those
> taken by this culture, it represents the epitome of human existence.
> 
> With political geographic borders becoming ever more meaningless,
> business and trade have gained an unprecedented power over human
> activity. It's not that political theory no longer has meaning. Rather,
> political philosophies are strongly countered by the presence of power
> with what amounts to no philosophy at all. This service to the god of
> profit sees governments as merely a factor in calculating costs. The
> act of trading for mutual benefit is so built into human interaction
> that no government could hope to completely own and control all
> business within its borders. If business is a crime, then major
> business concerns will simply be labeled "criminal," but they will not
> go away. If any particular trade is criminal, such a designation has
> little effect on it. Tax and regulate a given trade and the costs are
> simply passed on to the end user, the consumer. It is the consumer's
> desire that empowers business, regardless of how harmful it may be to
> the consumer. Democracy, monarchy, communism, theocracy -- all flavors
> of government are merely a business climate, for which adjustments can
> always be made.
> 
> Business culture is built on this very thing. More than just selling to
> the market that may exist, there is now an adjunct marketing
> sub-culture that helps to create the demand, or inflate the existing
> demand, artificially. The individual consumer ceases to exist as
> anything more than an economic source -- the buyer. Whether the buyer
> has a genuine need for the merchandise is seldom a factor in
> consideration. Do they want it; can they be made to want it? This
> dehumanization is the tragedy of what began as an attempt to make life
> for humans better. If any particular individual businessman gains
> control over any part of the market, he becomes again like a lord in
> the Middle Ages, holding serfs in his fiefdom. This market power turns
> into very real political power. That power is asserted in a mixture of
> money to buy a politician's fame (we call them "campaign
> contributions") and direct voter influence by manipulating the
> consumers. "If you want to protect your right to have this great
> product, you need to tell your representative..." Unions are simply
> monopoly suppliers of labor, and they have played this game from the
> start. In each case, it is still a matter that no one cares in the
> least what the individual consumer needs, they are simply another
> market to be manipulated.
> 
> The merchant entities struggle for political power only as a means to
> controlling their market. They seek to rule all. Their god is not our
> God. Individuals in business occupations may well have surrendered to
> Jesus Christ, but their activities contribute inevitably to denying
> Him. It is the paradox of living in a fallen world: you cannot prevent
> Satan gaining in some way from what you say and do. In a sense, the
> merchant god *is* Satan. We see him well described in Ezekiel 28. Tyre
> was the archetypical merchant of Ezekiel's day, and in this chapter
> many scholars find the true ruler of Tyre was Satan himself.
> 
> It is most certainly possible for the individual businessman to deny
> Satan's rule and engage in commerce with complete purity and holiness.
> Doing business is not inherently evil. Indeed, the call of the
> Christian businessman is to redeem trade from the hands of our Enemy,
> by seeking the best benefit of his customer. His true customer is God,
> and he makes his deals with God, and the customers and partners are
> those to be blessed in turn.
> 
> We as Believers are commanded to watch the world around us with His
> wisdom and insight, not ignorant of Satan's schemes. Know and
> understand that any vector of power in the earth will be Satan's
> playground, insofar as he can make it so. The greatest threat to human
> life, safety, and sanity today is the business culture. This is the
> power behind every throne, and it is on that culture's behalf that all
> rule and regulation is made. Even when good laws are made, look for
> them to be perverted for the sake of corporate entities. Your
> government is but a pawn in the greater battle to destroy humanity, not
> by simple death of the body, but by dehumanizing and controlling.