Monday, April 4, 2016

A Peek Behind the Power Curtain that Shouldn't Surprlse Anyone

Those who collect large accumulations of money almost always inevitably seek to hide it. They do this precisely because great power ought to also have great responsibility associated with it. If us ordinary people don't know exactly just how powerful you are then we can't hold you nearly as responsible as you should be held. And in this context "responsibility" can have a great deal more than just the taxes you might be avoiding connected to it. After all, the very fact of large financial holdings automatically implies your vested interest in all aspects of protecting, as well as increasing, that accumulation. You cannot, therefor, say you make economic decisions based entirely on supposed objective facts of what is good for everyone.

There is also the quite interesting contrast to be seen here concerning the whole area of information protection, and not only who gets to keep what secret, but who continues to hold the power to make such decisions in the first place. If ordinary folks want to keep their private lives secret the powers that be get quite agitated. If we want to expose more about the powerful, however, they take great umbrage to the idea.

The problem here is just one aspect as to why Capitalism, now that it has been electrified, no longer makes any sense at all; at least if you also want to maintain the idea that democracy should be the ultimate arbiter of what will or won't happen in a society. In that context information flow is made to be a great contradiction. This must be so because information is both essential to an informed electorate, but it is also the very gold that makes both commercial, and political power, possible. Thus you are left with a situation where it must flow freely but it can't because that's the whole point of net gain and profit, as well as having the competitive edge to allow you to keep gaining more than the other guy. It's what business people really mean when they talk of limiting their exposure to risks.