From: Robbie Lindauer (robblin@thetip.org)
Date: Mon Aug 11 2003 - 16:28:35 MDT
On Monday, August 11, 2003, at 12:44 PM, Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
> ##Robbie, it sounds as if you have an agenda that you haven't
> put
> before the house. In addition you are making gratuitous statements
> without
> offering either evidence or basis.
Ever see the "Buy an SUV, ride with Osama" bumper sticker?
If I have an agenda here it is this - that the political issues
involved in creating "better societies" far outweigh the technical
issues. It's possible that these political issues don't need to be
resolved in order to create a better world for a few people. The
question then would be whether or not that was a worthy goal? This
topic is being covered elsewhere.
As for basis, in the sense that it's clear that the American monetary
system commits us to a hawkish foreign policy (and that the hawkish
foreign policy commits us to this monetary system) it equally makes us
all severally and jointly responsible for the war-time and peace-time
atrocities committed in the advancement of that project.
I don't think this should come as a surprise to anyone - it's as nearly
tautological as anything meta-economic could be - the largest financial
institutions have the majority stakes in each of the major
corporations. Nothing new at all.
I am in complete agreement with you that we SHOULDN'T buy products
produced with slave-labor. Where I slightly disagree with you is
whether or not that's possible. Given, for instance, that FMR,
Barclays, Citigroup and a few others are the largest corporate owners
of both GM and Nike, it means that supporting GM is supporting Nike by
extension.
I suggest a brief study of the S & P 500 would give you the data you
need to understand this problem. If you haven't got the time to go
through the corporate ownership pyramid, try:
http://www.thetip.org/snptotals.txt
Gathered from finance.yahoo.com institutional ownership records.
The data is a little out of date, but if you add it up, you'll see what
I mean, it hasn't changed that much. The fields are:
Company
Owner (Institutional Ownership only NOT mutual funds)
Percentage Owned
Value
If you add them up the same way I did, you'll see that the largest
institutions, the usual suspects, own both the BAD companies and the
GOOD companies. If you widen your research, you find that they own
them both in the US and abroad.
The numbers were taken from Yahoo! Finance late last year.
Now given that the FED (you know, the federal reserve system) gives
great competetive advantage to american financial institutions (doubt
me, check
> ###Did I mention magic? I suggested that you have here a
> collection
> of very intelligent and knowledgeable people. These people can spread
> the meme
> of not buying the products of slave labor. They also can keep up with
> who
> the slavemasters are.
Good point. What should we do about FMR, Barclays, Janus, JP Morgan,
etc.?
http://biz.yahoo.com/hd/n/nke.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/hd/g/gm.html
> I am sure a phone call to any
> international union headquarters would get you a list that would be
> astounding for its
> completeness.
Unless you count corporate ownership relationships.
> As to your insinuation that we don't have choice I have never had
> a salesclerk point a firearm at me and dictate what product choices I
> should
> make.
Well, if you MUST take a car to work, then you MUST buy gas. If it
turns out that Gas is only available from a small number of very
dangerous sources, then what choice do you have, you HAVE to go to
work, right? You gotta eat? I mean you could drop out of society all
together, but what good would that do?
If you MUST eat, then you MUST buy wheat-proucts. Who do you think
consistently sets the price of wholesale wheat in the US?
> So the last thing we
> need is another layer of big brother looking out for us.
Agreed, no one is proposing another layer, if I were to make a proposal
it would be the elimination of the corporate ownership system as we
know it today by making liability transparent - if you OWN something
that does something evil, you should be liable for that economically
and criminally. BUT that would assume that I thought that something
could really be done - on that particular issue I am agnostic - the
proof is in the pudding.
> All we have to do is
> remember we are leaders and start being leaders.
Sounds easy. How do you propose to start?
Best,
Robbie
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