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April 23, 2005

You Can’t Buy Influence if There is No One to Sell It

The principal retort of those who cannot fathom the idea of life without a state goes like this: “It is impossible to completely eliminate powerful and therefore oppressive hierarchies. Therefore, unless we have a minimal state to countervail them, then corporate entities will oppress us unchecked and unmitigated. Therefore, we have to have a state to counterbalance them. Sad but true Ali.” My retort: “I doubt it.”

This argument is non-sense of course. Corporations are legal constructs that can only survive if there is a state to protect their “rights” and privileges in a mutually reinforcing form of corruption with each other. Without the state to protect them with violence and/or the threat of it, wither the corporation’s power?

I was reminded of all this today when I read in the NY Post that the MPAA paid off two NYPD detectives to go around to flea markets, computer shows, non-corporate video and DVD rental stores to bust “illegal” copies of MPAA members products. Without government cops, courts, and more importantly laws (all of which they can buy influence with, if not control outright) the corporations would have to make products that are uncopiable or else expect a much shorter shelf life for their products.

Without the ability to gain subsidies, protections, “free trade” arrangements, inflate or deflate currencies, oppress workers, seize real-estate by eminent domain, impose taxes, zoning, building codes, “historical districts”, tax loopholes, and all the rest of the privileges gained from bribing the state, where does their power go? The corp's power to skew the market to their advantage goes away.

Posted by Ali Massoud at April 23, 2005 12:16 PM

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