I worked as a prison guard for about 6 months and don't let anyone fool you.

once you enter prison you are no longer part of the judicial system

prison guards and correctional officers are not cops, are not parts of the judicial system at all they are all private corporations.

The prison I worked at was in southern Georgia, and here's a little known secret for most. Big corporations like the Pepsico, Coke, Proctor & Gamble and many others own prisons. The one I worked with a subsidiary of Pepsico paid my check.

The reason they get into prisons is it's "insurance" and "free money" The government gives money for each inmate for care and housing/health. The more you can crowd into your prison the more money the government will pay.

So big corporations who primarily do other things, will also own prisons around the country as insurance cause it's guaranteed money, so during economic recessions and when your sales are down you know you are guaranteed xxx amount of money due to the prison income. Now add onto that fact making prisoners work for you making products like license plates for the states and other such products you get even more income from states by using your slave labor force for them.

There is an old documentary on the prison system and who really runs it, in the documentary corporations from Microsoft and Apple to Proctor & Gamble all had stake in private prisons around the country. It's free tax free money.

I know for fact that part of the documentary was true as my check was from pepsico for working for a prison. That was until I finished college and moved to Orlando to work for an ISP.

I would be with you 100% if it was the governments/big corporations/banks who were reaping what they sow. But it's not. It's the locals who are losing their businesses, cars, homes... even lives. That's why I have nothing but despise for these thugs. The protest about Duggan's death was a peaceful march, but when night came the dregs of society (and not only poor society I might add) came out of the woodworks and took over, and it has been nothing but pathetic criminal opportunism since.

http://videosift.com/video/London-looters-don-t-give-a-f-ck-about-people-s-homes-burnin

>> ^peggedbea:

there's even something deeper to the looting. like how all the worlds politicians and public official have been looting the public coffers and living off of bribes from corporations while gutting entitlements and vital social services. i don't doubt the looters are probably douchebags, but you can reap what you sew, governments.
>> ^hpqp:
@Yogi: see the video below, it's the same street the night before. The people who wrecked this street were simply profiting from the situation to steal stuff, nothing more.
edit: embed fail: http://videosift.com/video/News-Reporter-Confronts-London-Looters

"This video contains content from EMI, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."

Well, I guess we all now know that EMI doesn't like free publicity for their content. Sheesh... get with it, big corporations!

@blankfist

Eventually we could all be working for the big corporations, and with less competition they could lessen benefits such as health or vacation pay, they could easily lower wages, and they could then extend the expected work week from 40 hours to something like 100 hours. If that sounds farfetched, I can tell you from first hand experience I've seen this exact thing happen to an industry I know very well. And when I say big corporations, I mean major parent companies that buy large businesses. For instance, let's take the advertising industry. One parent company could own almost all of the major companies in that industry, so if you complain about the 100 hour work week and loss of vacation benefits, your chances of receiving another job in that industry are cut to almost zero. I've seen it. And they do illegal shit like tell women not to get pregnant.

That is exactly what's happening. Wages began stagnating in the 70's. At the time, women were moving into the work force so the impact on families was offset by an extra income. And today, it's out of control. It's been researched and it's been documented. And it's visible if you look at all the personal debt families have. Americans take less vacation time than other industrialized nation. The US is also the only industrialized nation who does not mandate vacation time. I read something the other day (disclaimer: i don't have a good grasp on economics, it was a complicated paper and i'm a bit dyslexic/dyscalculic so I've got to reread it a few times before I'm totally confident I understand it, and then research it for accuracy) and the idea of it just fascinated me. It was something like, wages used to increase as labor's productivity increased.. like it was inherently built into the market. So maybe technology eliminated the need for as many people, but the remaining workers were more productive, so their wages should have been going up. But the mid 70's saw an abandonment of this principle in favor of higher profits and the consequences of that have been devastating for working people ever since. Like, they broke a rule of the market and it's sent tremors through almost 40 years and now everything is fucked up and the worker is more and more screwed everyday.

now, regulation: we've been peeling back regulations for decades. and it seems to have worked antithetically to your hypothesized outcome. why do you think that is? which regulations are you talking about, specifically?
I don't disagree that it should be fairly simple to start your own new business. And I don't like or trust government either, but I want some kind of assurance that this new business is not polluting my air, water, community, that its employees are not being exploited and are paid a living wage and that sanitary practices are being followed. What sort of system do you propose to keep new restaurants from serving rat poo infested soups made by 5 year olds? ..... maybe, eventually, the free market would take care of this sort of violation but after how many people eat there and get sick? And after how many child chefs burn their little fingers on hot stoves?

And when people feel they pay into a nanny system, they feel less generous to help those in front of them. I know, I see it every damn day in LA.

this statement is a motherfucking cop-out. i'm not saying that you dont "see" it.. i'm just saying people should know better. The "nanny-system" obviously, isn't taking take care of those in front of them. This is where i see a major downfall in individualism. "I would help, but something else is already helping you. I'm looking out for #1!! I already gave to charity this week.. see where my pay stub says 'FICA'?"... And "someone else is already doing it" has become the operative ethic of the gen-x yuppie class. It is an excuse for petulance and cold heartedness and snobbery. If we lived in nomadic, tribal hunter/gatherer communities, they would be the first kicked out of the clan. ... and John Winthrop would have thrown them off the arabella. Shame on them.

I spend a great deal of time with the "nanny-system"... personally, professionally and academically. There are atrocious disparities. My most functionally impaired clients also happen to my poorest clients. At first, I thought this was a coincidence. It isn't. Not at all. Diagnosis doesn't have as much to do with prognosis as the financial and social status of the person living with the disability. (e.g. parents can't afford to make the home handicap accessible, so the wheelchair can't make it through the front door, so person with the disability spends 30 years crawling around on the floor, which solves the problem of moving from room to room, but creates 100 other problems in its place. the body is so malformed at this point, employment placement for the disabled adult is impossible, i could give you 500 other examples) This is a sin.

In a lot of ways, I agree... government is too bulky and convoluted here to be as effective as it needs to be. The apparatus is too cumbersome and the funding and political/community support for such services is far too small. It doesn't have to be this way. Nationally, we've tabled charity and efficiency as a virtue, in favor of strength and might and greed and pride. Social Services could be reworked, in a vastly more effective and efficient way if only we had the political and social will to do it. We could do it for a lot cheaper as well, I think. I won't go on my diatribe about how disability services needs to function, mostly because its full of jargon and boring.

But, I think we mostly agree on a lot of things, namely, corporations are fucking us all and the government is providing the reach around. every 4 years half of us orgasm when our candidate is elected by popular vote. only for the pounding to commence again the following January.

I haven't read anything on individualism being a root cause of poverty. I did a quick google search and found a couple things. One is the idea of "survival of the fittest", that those in poverty do it to themselves, and it's the individualist ideology that tells everyone "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and as a result those who cannot receive no help. Is that the complaint against individualism?

If so, I completely understand that a self-centric position on society would most likely create an environment where poverty could easily manifest and consume the less-to-do of society. I do think some will allow it to happen to them, while others will resist but their current station in life (specifically class) won't allow them to escape poverty. A couple bad financial decisions and the banks won't make it easier on you. The poor are usually in the financial position where they receive higher interest rates they cannot afford, while the well off with good credit receive lower intrest rates. It seems unfair.

I do believe charitable actions would be higher in an individualist society. We already live in a nanny state which is counter to the individualist society. Sure, the majority of spending tends to go to defense spending, but that doesn't mean we don't currently have excessive social programs already in place to catch the fringe of society. And still we have poverty. Lots of it.

What happened? The government has its hands deeply embedded in the private economy, and restrictions and regulations are steep for startup entrepreneurs, while the larger corporations enjoy crony-capitalism. Translation: regulations and restrictions create a tilted playing field where larger corporations can easily succeed with less competition, thus less jobs are created by budding entrepreneurs. So the number of workers goes up while the number of job creators goes down. Eventually we could all be working for the big corporations, and with less competition they could lessen benefits such as health or vacation pay, they could easily lower wages, and they could then extend the expected work week from 40 hours to something like 100 hours. If that sounds farfetched, I can tell you from first hand experience I've seen this exact thing happen to an industry I know very well. And when I say big corporations, I mean major parent companies that buy large businesses. For instance, let's take the advertising industry. One parent company could own almost all of the major companies in that industry, so if you complain about the 100 hour work week and loss of vacation benefits, your chances of receiving another job in that industry are cut to almost zero. I've seen it. And they do illegal shit like tell women not to get pregnant.

This kind of corporatist entitlement is bad. And we got here through regulations, through a regimented government nanny system that is counterintuitive to free markets. And this makes it very hard on people to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", which is what all individualists claim to want of people around them. How can you pull yourself up when you're essentially a slave to corporations? I don't know. But it's not getting better. The nanny system, in my opinion, is making it worse. The more we ask for, the less we get. And I say this because I see a very real connection between system created to help us (welfare) and regulations that help big business. I see it as being connected. Poverty perpetuated by big business and bankers.

If we could peel back the regulations and restrictions on industry, we would see a growth of jobs. We'd see a decline in corporate dominance. Most restrictions or regulations are created to stifle competition, not help the consumer, mind you. From there, I'd like to think people would generally do better, have better lives, and contribute charitably to others. Poverty will never be stricken from the planet, but we certainly could do more to help those in our community. That's where it starts. And when people feel they pay into a nanny system, they feel less generous to help those in front of them. I know, I see it every damn day in LA.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

Your confusing the meaning of big. Big here is referring to scope. Like the thought experiment, the scope of the police force went from local to national...that is the size difference he was talking about.
How do you address the claim that large central government misrepresent larger portions of the populations due to their non-regional considerations?
US airports are not government facilities.
It is foolish to assume that local governments are more corrupt than distant ones. If the people right under your nose are muxing things up, how about the people 1400 miles away...how much more corrupt can they be without your constant eye? And when they are corrupt, they do it with a larger portion of pie. Granted, that pie might add up to the same pie that would be lost to local corruption of the whole system...but like the video suggests, you are more likely to catch and correct it on the local level.
Also, can you name one super large corporation that isn't also highly regulated, I can't. Microsoft is protected by intellectual property laws, the news giants all started as legal monopoly telco and cable providers, Energy has been quazi-government/private for decades, Rail roads where publicly sponsored then privately owned. Can you name one truly organic natural monopoly that arose from someones good business practices and not its status with government and regulations?

>> ^vaporlock:
I haven't finished watching this yet but hasn't everything been "getting bigger"? Our population, corporations, number of consumer products, number of food items in a supermarket, number of schools, number of airline flights, number of roads, etc, etc. Has government really grown at a rate greater than everything else? Can I really believe that my local town can regulate or even protect itself from big corporations? For example if a BP gas station leaks fuel into the water-table. Mind you my hometown has a problem even cutting the grass on the side of the highway.
I'm all for controlling how the government exploits the rest of the earth, but the airports, national parks, national laboratories, and roadways in the US are some of the best in the world. These were done partially by our "big government". You just have to look at the small governments in the South and local communities across the US to see real corruption.
OK... rant over... start video
After watching. I can say that I agree with the analysis but not the conclusion. Government is not the problem, it's corporate control over government. When you consider the growth of the military alone, his point about the growth of the government is mute. How big was the military in 1907, how big in 2007. The military is a huge percentage of the government, even bigger when you consider government contractors and corporations with contracts, etc. I'm guessing that the growth of the "military industrial complex" alone accounts for much of the 30% difference between 1907 and 2007.
Cut the military, stop f'cking with the rest of the world, guarantee civil rights for everybody, protect the environment, make sure the food and other consumer products are safe, maintain the roadways, support science and education, and I'm all for a big atheist government of the people.




I'm guessing he meant without federal funding of infrastructure our airports, for instance, wouldn't be as good as they are. example Yes, there are private options to this, but when you want to take a global edge in something at a large scale, the only option is the federal option.

The video is ostensibly true in that smaller governments are more efficient, with greater accountability in their daily minutia. However, there is a certain efficiency in extending 'good' programs to the entire country at once rather than requiring every small subsection to enact it independently. It's also pointless at this point(I'll do it anyway) to even mention that many inefficient programs are as a result of undue influence of special interest groups. Public campaign funding, greater transparency and more effective dissemination of information from watchdog groups are all ways of making the federal government more efficient. In this age, it should be possible to catch more of the bullshit happening, which the political media coverage consistently fails to do for various reasons.

Of course, there are many watchdog groups that examine the inner workings of the federal government, because it's large, centralized and presents a larger impact on the country. They often detect corruption but don't have the platform to spread their findings to the larger public unless a larger media conglomerate picks up on it. The geographic distance from a centralized government is not a significant factor in detecting corruption as it is balanced by the large number of eyes focusing on it. If you mean local populaces remaining unaware of how terrible their national representatives are, then you have a point. But this factor will hopefully be alleviated in the future through continuing improvement in getting information to the public.

Don't pretend oversight at the local level isn't without it's problems, though they tend to take a different form from the federal level.

Yes, I'm deeply concerned with the government handing out monopolies like candy. I favor copyright/patent reform.

tl;dr Government requires constant supervision and representatives should be treated like children and changed when they crap themselves. But we love them anyway because they're essential for society to continue.

Your confusing the meaning of big. Big here is referring to scope. Like the thought experiment, the scope of the police force went from local to national...that is the size difference he was talking about.

How do you address the claim that large central government misrepresent larger portions of the populations do to their non-regional considerations?

US airports are not government facilities.

It is foolish to assume that local governments are more corrupt than distant ones. If the people right under your nose are muxing things up, how about the people 1400 miles away...how much more corrupt can they be without your constant eye? And when they are corrupt, they do it with a larger portion of pie. Granted, that pie might add up to the same pie that would be lost to local corruption of the whole system...but like the video suggests, you are more likely to catch and correct it on the local level.

Also, can you name one super large corporation that isn't also highly regulated, I can't. Microsoft is protected by intellectual property laws, the news giants all started as legal monopoly telco and cable providers, Energy has been quazi-government/private for decades, Rail roads where publicly sponsored then privately owned. Can you name one truly organic natural monopoly that arose from someones good business practices and not its status with government and regulations?


>> ^vaporlock:

I haven't finished watching this yet but hasn't everything been "getting bigger"? Our population, corporations, number of consumer products, number of food items in a supermarket, number of schools, number of airline flights, number of roads, etc, etc. Has government really grown at a rate greater than everything else? Can I really believe that my local town can regulate or even protect itself from big corporations? For example if a BP gas station leaks fuel into the water-table. Mind you my hometown has a problem even cutting the grass on the side of the highway.
I'm all for controlling how the government exploits the rest of the earth, but the airports, national parks, national laboratories, and roadways in the US are some of the best in the world. These were done partially by our "big government". You just have to look at the small governments in the South and local communities across the US to see real corruption.
OK... rant over... start video
After watching. I can say that I agree with the analysis but not the conclusion. Government is not the problem, it's corporate control over government. When you consider the growth of the military alone, his point about the growth of the government is mute. How big was the military in 1907, how big in 2007. The military is a huge percentage of the government, even bigger when you consider government contractors and corporations with contracts, etc. I'm guessing that the growth of the "military industrial complex" alone accounts for much of the 30% difference between 1907 and 2007.
Cut the military, stop f'cking with the rest of the world, guarantee civil rights for everybody, protect the environment, make sure the food and other consumer products are safe, maintain the roadways, support science and education, and I'm all for a big atheist government of the people.

I haven't finished watching this yet but hasn't everything been "getting bigger"? Our population, corporations, number of consumer products, number of food items in a supermarket, number of schools, number of airline flights, number of roads, etc, etc. Has government really grown at a rate greater than everything else? Can I really believe that my local town can regulate or even protect itself from big corporations? For example if a BP gas station leaks fuel into the water-table. Mind you my hometown has a problem even cutting the grass on the side of the highway.

I'm all for controlling how the government exploits the rest of the earth, but the airports, national parks, national laboratories, and roadways in the US are some of the best in the world. These were done partially by our "big government". You just have to look at the small governments in the South and local communities across the US to see real corruption.

OK... rant over... start video

After watching. I can say that I agree with the analysis but not the conclusion. Government is not the problem, it's corporate control over government. When you consider the growth of the military alone, his point about the growth of the government is mute. How big was the military in 1907, how big in 2007. The military is a huge percentage of the government, even bigger when you consider government contractors and corporations with contracts, etc. I'm guessing that the growth of the "military industrial complex" alone accounts for much of the 30% difference between 1907 and 2007.

Cut the military, stop f'cking with the rest of the world, guarantee civil rights for everybody, protect the environment, make sure the food and other consumer products are safe, maintain the roadways, support science and education, and I'm all for a big atheist government of the people.

Lieberman is the single biggest ass in the Senate. Supporter of war, Israel, tight copyright, spying, big corporations, and most especially himself. Not to mention, losing Kerry the election in 2004. Ass!

Yes, it's expected but not okay.

~~
1. It's... to be expected because our two party political system is structured so that whomever has more money in a better drawn district gets re-elected.

Re-election = Power
Power = Money
Money = Re-election

The Citizens United ruling allows for multi-million dollar contributions from anonymous donors which means Big Corporation has only further entrenched itself within the Branches of Government.


2. There's... no accountability [*Mark Stevens notes at 16:20] because Congressmen don't actually represent their so-called "constituents".

No Politician or Government Official has an obligation to answer for the laws they enact or the policy actions they take.

They don't have to respond to your angry phone calls or letters.
They don't have to fear being replaced for years.
They simply pass the problem on and "step down" to become lobbyists.


3. If... you disagree, that's fine. However..

Refuse to pay, you'll be met with violence.
Resist that violence, you'll be imprisoned or murdered.
~~

The Power Elite: Politicians, Bankers, Administrators, Military run the show.

You can't expect them to provide We the People with what we want..
..because it's in direct conflict with what they need to do to retain their power.


* http://www.videosift.com/video/Incredible-Talk-with-Marc-Stevens-on-the-Legal-System

>> ^Tymbrwulf:

>> ^Yogi:
That's how elections work in this country.
You say this like it's expected and OK. That kind of complacency and expectancy is what's wrong here.
Why is it that I always read about people saying "oh this is just how it works" even though the people I end up talking with about it don't agree with it at all? Who the hell does the actual voting, then?
Granted this is all purely anecdotal evidence and obviously people from other parts of the country that I'm never going to meet are going to have these views but, I mean, is there NO accountability/responsibility anymore?

Either it was because of the murdered fly.

Or... a big corporation threatened someone, effectively quashing their right to free speech.

McCain used to fight Big Corporate Interests; Now they just Own him.

This also works for the average CEO of a big corporation. Hell, the whole executive team all the way down to the VP level even.

@vaporlock. Yes, big corporations are exactly what people mean when they say "small business". I seriously sighed out loud reading that.

Look, I'm not saying this politician has the right idea or even knows enough about history and governmental policy to make a positive effect for small businesses, but it certainly doesn't take a genius to spot the shrinking middle class and how most jobs in the US are corporate jobs which is a fairly new phenomenon.

@dystopianfuturetoday, first, the reason big corporations thrive in a "wallet democracy" is because of a couple different factors, but mainly A) a lack of consumer knowledge or understanding where their money goes and B) the market has a lot less competition thanks to regulations that stifle small business.

Secondly, you can't stop people from buying sweatshop goods in a free market except by persuasion. This is part where you say "so we have to leave it up to human nature? Then we're all screwed! The sky is falling!" Not true. The majority of people want to coexist and do the right thing. Cynics like yourself may think otherwise, but I'd ask to give it some more thought.

Think of it this way: America has the most people jailed in the entire world with 1% of the population! At least half of them are locked up for victimless crimes, so that means roughly 1 in every 200 people don't want to coexist. That's not bad. Everyone else seems to know that hurting other people and stealing from other people and generally breaking the law is a bad thing. This is a good sign.

Then factor in how we're biologically communal creatures who instinctually have a tribal desire to coexist with one another. Then factor in the altruistic gene that gives people physiological pleasure for doing good while depressing them when they do something bad. I say the majority of people are capable of doing the right thing.