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Nowadays, Americans are largely obedient toward corporations. They permit corporations to run enormous lobbying operations which dictate the terms of our legislation. They willingly hand over their personal information in exchange for discounts or coupons. And perhaps more fundamentally, there is an attitude the corporations are "good," and that they are exemplars of "the free market," and that as such, they are also "efficient" and perhaps worthy of steep tax breaks to secure their placement in people's cities.
This is quite different from how politicians AND people used to view corporations in the past.
Back then, they were known as "trusts," and they were met with a great deal of suspicion and alarm. Hence, legislation like the Sherman Antitrust Act (from 1890) wasn't that difficult to pass. Corporate leaders were often seen as bloodsucking "barons," admired for their success, but also feared and regarded with mistrust.
Nowadays, corporate barons seem to have legions of folks making 150 times less money nonetheless standing up and fiercely defending the economic interests of corporate barons, something that seems quite interesting given the ability of those barons to fend for themselves economically and politically.
How and why and when did this shift take place? Why did Americans lost their mistrust of the trusts? When did trusts come to epitomize "capitalism" in general, despite their overlooked anti-free-market characteristics?
I disagree. People did not have mistrust for large corporations in the past. In other gererations, it was common for a person to work 40+ years for a corporation and then retire with a pension. The company won and the employee won.
Now, we mistrust them since they regularly pull the rug out from under their employees with no loyalty and no accountability.
I disagree. People did not have mistrust for large corporations in the past. In other gererations, it was common for a person to work 40+ years for a corporation and then retire with a pension. The company won and the employee won.
Now, we mistrust them since they regularly pull the rug out from under their employees with no loyalty and no accountability.
That's true. But I think the scenario you painted was a temporary thing - basically from the early-mid 40s to the late 70s. Maybe the 80s.
Before that you had corporations literally using and abusing employees. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, was not a documentary. But it did give insight into what early "corporations" were like before unions existed.
Bascially I thnik its tyhat americans think that corporation are responsible for their failure many times;when they need to look in the mirror. Its like they think that there their parents and will take casre of teh for life. Just as farmers i the old agriculture economy thought it would never end.Certainly true of the auto mahers which many thought of as the cow that would never stop giving more and more milk but there was a end to the milk.
I think it came with the advent of real investigative journalism. It was mostly in the 60's. During WWII, the corporations behaved themselves unselfishly, in order to patriotically contribute to the war effort. When the war was over, the wartime mentality contineud to buoy up the post[war boom, and nobody could do anything wrong. In those days, reporters mostly wrote puff pieces. Nothing negative was ever written about sports figures or entertainment stars, unless they could be painted as unpatriotic, as we shifted into the McCarthy and HUAC years.
A turning point might have been Vance Packard, who wrote several books in the 60's criticizing corporate empires. His "Hidden Persuaders" dared to tell people what they already suspected---that the media was manpulating them. At about the same time, the Vietnam war was being seen for what it was, and the media stopped whitewashing the deeds of the powerful. Those two might have been the first exposure most Americans had to a sense that all was not completely honest. Magazines and TV documentaries then got over their timidity, and the gloves were off. Corporations were seen as the the manipulators who were paying the media to fool people.
That was also about the time that the rest of the world began to compete with our homegrown producers, and sell us cars and electronics and clothing that were cheaper and somtimes better than what we had been making ourselves. Corporations had to tighten their belts to keep the profits flowing profusely, and that meant putting the squeeze on both the workers and the customers. Hard to keep up your PR and goodwill in such times.
When anti trust laws were first enacted, they were infused with economic and civic purposes.
The goals were to protect consumers from monopoly prices and to foster an economy that was compatible with a democracy. For many decades that was the environment. Around the mid-30's
The Robinson Patman Act was enacted, a different antitrust law that allowed for plaintiffs to question antitrust violations without evidence of the anticompetitive market diminished the market as a whole. Plaintiffs only needed to show that a particular business was injured, not the market as a whole.
This act was a huge bone of contention with many of the major corporations crying fouls of protectionism and it's "anti free market competition" ways...not the original goals of efficiency and a fostering of lower prices...
The FTC and the DOJ basically ignored the RP Act and stopped enforcing it in the 70's or so.
The Feds essentially ceded the field of persuing RP Act violations to private litigation....
In 2002 congress established the Antitrust Modernization Commission, which is supposed to defend the RPAct and others, but it in fact dominated by people who have spent quite some time defending corporations against antitrust legislation...the old wolf guarding the hen house...
I have the Memoirs of Chief Justice Earl Warren. As a kid he delivered ice and held various jobs. One of those jobs was a call boy for a train. He worked for the South Pacific. That was the only thing that he was old enough to do and he needed his fathers permission to do so. This has a huge impact on him and sets him on this course. This is in highschool.
Quote:
My experience with music and musicians was pleasurable, but that which I had in my railroad jobs was more meaninglful because I was dealing with people as they worked for a gigantic corporation that dominated the economic and political life of the community. I saw that power exercised and the hardship that followed in its wake. I saw every man on the railroad not essential for the operation of the trains laid off without pay and without warning for weeks before the end of a fiscal year in order that the corporate stock might pay a higher divedend. I saw minority groups brought into the company for cheap labor paid a dollar a day for 10 hours of work only to be fleeced out of much at the company store they were obliged to trade. I helped carry men to the little room called the emergency hospital for amputation of an arm or leg that had been crushed because there were no safety appliances in the shops or yards to prevent such injuries. I knewof men who were fired for even considering a suit against the railroad for injuries they had sustained. There was no compensation for them and they went through life as cripples.
Page 30 (1977, Doubleday & Co.:New York)
I think these laws began to shift, from the corporate status quo to compensation for employees, and when it couldn't be done over here they moved to other countries. They do the same things over there, like Maquilas (sp?).The mantra becomes "activist judges" and when that fails personal responsibility or do you deny that a man that makes 150 billion did not earn it? He is the CEO of blah, blah and blah....it must be jealousy.
The consolidation of the media then made it to where people just are not aware and do not care because they have no memory of it. Unless of course, you are oil field trash or your family has worked in the mines, or you have any experience in sweat shops. Then your still seeing it on a daily basis (in the US). I'm sure that there are some other ones I've forgotten but thats all I'm good for right now. Thats my story and I'm sticken to it.
-The schools got dumbied down (by a factor of many times) from the days of trusts and robber barons to today.
Back in the old days, schools produced people that could think and function (at least to some degree). It's more drone like now. No resistance is taught. There's not one iota of critical thought being taught about any subject, much less capitalism or the role of corporations.
-Media compliance.
Idiots on CNBC that worship just about any CEO, because he or she is a CEO. Look at the journalists on that channel going ga-ga over Warren Buffett. When you have a slick cable channel, its more exciting to ride around in Buffetts private jet and breathlessly report on his every move, than it is to ask real hard hitting questions about capitalism or the role or corporations in America.
Would they have done that with Rockefeller or Morgan? Probably not.
-There's more mind control now.
50 or 100 years ago, people told stories. People passed information to each other. Now its 24/7 controlled media passing information to you. Peoples attention span and memories have been messed up. I think in part from pharma/big drug companies. People could think clearer a 100 years ago.
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