History repeats with a twist

[46zilzal]

A very good book is Matthew Josephson's 1934 work, The Robber Barons wherein the author reviews the destructive practices of the trusts set up by the likes of Jay Gould, Vanderbilt, Astor, Carnegie etc.

Reviewing the decreasing number of corporate entities nowadays reminds one of the same thing happening today but with a twist: there were no laws governing these structures in a young country in the mid to late 1800's.

Now the laws are there, but the lawyer laden corporations do the expedient thing: move off shore away from these laws. From that distanced position, they are again in a position to screw over the consumer big time and get away with it Scott free.

Deja vu, all over again. Y. Berra

[delayjf]

How are these trusts screwing over the American consumer?

[46zilzal]

How are these trusts screwing over the American consumer?
How long have you got?

Taking away jobs and sending them overseas, closing manufacturing centers and send them to cheap labor environments, undercutting the competition of US manufactured products with ultra-cheap foreign labor, keeping corporate affairs off shore and avoiding taxes etc. etc. etc. etc.

[njcurveball]

A very good book is Matthew Josephson's 1934 work

Like Burgess Meredith said when facing too many books to read.

THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH TIME! I have this one on my list for when the world gets nuked and I am the only left due to eating my lunch in the bank vault! :ThmbUp:

[delayjf]

Taking away jobs and sending them overseas, closing manufacturing centers and send them to cheap labor environments, undercutting the competition of US manufactured products with ultra-cheap foreign labor, keeping corporate affairs off shore and avoiding taxes etc. etc. etc. etc.
Corporations moving jobs overseas I understand - but how that accomplished via a trust?

[46zilzal]

I am reading two very good books about this repeat of history , one is by Walter Karp The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic 1890-1920 and the other by his cohort at Harper's Louis Lapham (Pretension to Empire, Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration) both talking about how sneaky politics is brought in during war time.
Part of a conversation with the latter.

I graduated from Yale in the 1950s, and the word “public” was still a good word. Public meant public health, public service, public school, commonwealth. And “private” suggested greed, selfishness, and so on. Those words have been turned around. That was the great triumph of the Reagan Revolution. By the time we hit the end of the Reagan Administration, “public” had become a dirty word, a synonym for slum, poor school, incompetent government, all things destructive. And “private” had become glorious: private club, private trout stream, private airplane.

Q: You say you recognize the particular kind of venality of this Administration because of your background. Can you explain what you mean?

Lapham: I know the ethos of the American oligarchy of which young Bush is a servant. It was a tempting subject for discussion and commentary. He’s an agent of the selfish greed that usually overtakes a fat and stupid oligarchy. Aristotle makes this point in his Politics. He has a circle. At one point you have an oligarchy, and it becomes rancid with its own wealth and stupidity. That in turn gives way to tyranny. Then, after a period of time, tyranny turns into anarchy, and out of that comes some form of democracy, which then deteriorates into oligarchy, and you go around the circle again.
Interesting commentaries.

[46zilzal]

Lapham p.49

"On almost every page of THE POLITICS OF WAR an attentive reader can find the connection and resemblance between time present and time past - the fortuitous sinking of the Maine in Feb 1898 and the Lusitania in May 1915 providing the promoters of the American Empire with the same sort of casus belli as was presented to the Bush Administration by...September 2001; Spain's fifth rate colonial power in Cuba depicted by McKinley as "the most wicked despotism there is today on this earth......Teddy denouncing as "ultra-pacifists," and "mollycoddles" in the manner of Rush Limbaugh excoriating Susan Sontag and Harvard University..the similarities of alarmist propaganda..."

Exactly like the magician's plausible diversion: keep the population worked up while you steal them blind of assets and a way to make a living.
Keep

[delayjf]

That in turn gives way to tyranny. Then, after a period of time, tyranny turns into anarchy,
Please point out the periods of Tranny and anarchy in American History.

[46zilzal]

Please point out the periods of Tyranny and anarchy in American History.
The man was describing cycles from Aristotle's time. Re- read it.

[delayjf]

The man was describing cycles from Aristotle's time. Re- read it.
That's fine, But Lapham is relating Aristotle's political theory to George Bush and I assume to American History as well. If Aristotle's entire cycle doesn't relate or apply to American History, how can he justify defining President Bush in those terms?