Asheville City Council has adopted a measure denouncing corporate personhood and unlimited political campaign expenditures. Good for them. Despite being wholly symbolic, this adds Asheville to the growing list of cities and municipalities that have come to recognize the obvious. I support what Move to Amend is doing and participate in the Occupy movement.
In the spirit of polite difference of opinion with fellow aware citizens, I will unambiguously state that corporations have got to go, not just get out of policy. The dubious enterprise of capitalism is foreclosing on the future of an entire generation.
Our economy's structure enshrines waste. All the platitudes about “efficiency” hide the paradoxical effect of creating more widespread consumption of a dwindling resource base. Titans of industry have no incentive to protect the environment or the health and safety of our communities. They are mandated by both law and structure to value short-term shareholder profit over other considerations. Economic growth is not synonymous with an abundant and developing society.
What are we growing toward? Corporate totalitarianism? A suburban housing bubble, again? More oil drilling and consumption? Doubling down on our disastrous, monstrous military empire? Plunging millions of young and old people into debt servitude? Major corporations make up the vast majority of employers in our nation and supply the products that “local” businesses rely on. Newer jobs being created in the USA are overwhelmingly low wage and provide no benefits. This traps people in subsistence jobs and in turn the money needed to buy things isn't there, resulting in a drop in aggregate demand.
Circling the drain is the best we'll accomplish without digging out the root. This economic arrangement, anti-democratic, backed by violence, and perpetually destructive, has no future and deep down, we all know it.
— Martin Ramsey
Asheville
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