I was simultaneously outraged and amused by a tweet from Dale Vince, the British owner of Ecotricity Group, a large collection of wind and solar farms. He was complaining about the alleged influence of fossil fuel related money on Reform UK and provided a link to a DeSmog “report”.
If I and a group of confederates obtain firearms and munitions and hold the population and government to ransom we are considered to be traitors and criminals. If I and a group of confederates have access to billions of pounds and use this to hold The population and government to ransom By promoting skullduggerous policies that are actively damaging To Society we are considered to be within our rights to peddle influence. It is time that influence peddling and corrupt practices such as described in this article are outlawed in the same way that a cohort of revolutionaries armed to the teeth are outlawed.
Back in the Gilded Age, the old-time counterparts of today's billionaires used their wealth to lift up their less fortunate fellow citizens. Parks, hospitals, universities, scholarships and the like. Today's crowd has more grandiose ambitions - they want to be superheroes and save the world. The problem is that they are heavily influencing policy in domains for which their business exploits provide no useful background whatever. Climate policy, a good example, will likely be the greatest peacetime waste of resources ever seen.
Corporate power is the fundamental threat to individual liberty. If I am a corporation and you are my employee, then you have surrendered - or been forcibly deprived of - at least some of the liberties you enjoyed when you made your own way in life. The result of this process is that you begin to see the corporation as your Provider, Protector, and Governor. You live by its rules, you gratefully accept a portion of its bounty, and you expect that it will preserve you from harm. Whether it is Amazon, or MacDonalds, or Walmart makes no difference. The corporation takes on the role of God in your life. Furthermore, the permanent government, politely referred to as the Public Service, more recently as the Deep State, in view of its legal power and vast wealth, takes on a similar role. These two Masters, the Corporation and the Deep State, are the source of your imagined prosperity and your security. You dare not step out of line. Your are, as Rousseau remarked, "everywhere in chains". The chains are not less real for being invisible. So-called "inalienable rights" will not assist you in this situation. However Rousseau proposed a false solution. The correct solution is to become, if possible, a self-reliant member of a community of Christian people whose only acknowledged sovereign is God Almighty. Anything else will be a tyranny in some form. A free people is one whose inalienable rights are those conferred by unwavering loyalty to Jesus Christ. Then "you will be free indeed".
If I and a group of confederates obtain firearms and munitions and hold the population and government to ransom we are considered to be traitors and criminals. If I and a group of confederates have access to billions of pounds and use this to hold The population and government to ransom By promoting skullduggerous policies that are actively damaging To Society we are considered to be within our rights to peddle influence. It is time that influence peddling and corrupt practices such as described in this article are outlawed in the same way that a cohort of revolutionaries armed to the teeth are outlawed.
Back in the Gilded Age, the old-time counterparts of today's billionaires used their wealth to lift up their less fortunate fellow citizens. Parks, hospitals, universities, scholarships and the like. Today's crowd has more grandiose ambitions - they want to be superheroes and save the world. The problem is that they are heavily influencing policy in domains for which their business exploits provide no useful background whatever. Climate policy, a good example, will likely be the greatest peacetime waste of resources ever seen.
Corporate power is the fundamental threat to individual liberty. If I am a corporation and you are my employee, then you have surrendered - or been forcibly deprived of - at least some of the liberties you enjoyed when you made your own way in life. The result of this process is that you begin to see the corporation as your Provider, Protector, and Governor. You live by its rules, you gratefully accept a portion of its bounty, and you expect that it will preserve you from harm. Whether it is Amazon, or MacDonalds, or Walmart makes no difference. The corporation takes on the role of God in your life. Furthermore, the permanent government, politely referred to as the Public Service, more recently as the Deep State, in view of its legal power and vast wealth, takes on a similar role. These two Masters, the Corporation and the Deep State, are the source of your imagined prosperity and your security. You dare not step out of line. Your are, as Rousseau remarked, "everywhere in chains". The chains are not less real for being invisible. So-called "inalienable rights" will not assist you in this situation. However Rousseau proposed a false solution. The correct solution is to become, if possible, a self-reliant member of a community of Christian people whose only acknowledged sovereign is God Almighty. Anything else will be a tyranny in some form. A free people is one whose inalienable rights are those conferred by unwavering loyalty to Jesus Christ. Then "you will be free indeed".