18-03-2014, 03:44 PM
I don't disagree at all Peter.
I continue to see nation states - in the west anyway - as the willing tools of transnational corporations, big business and wealth. This is not something at all new, as you know.
The US state is useful to these powerful business groups in that it has the largest military in the world - financed by the taxes of the masses (thus very cheap for business and wealth) - that can be tasked to work on their behalf to achieve their long term goals.
But every now and again though, nation states do take the wrong steps that cause the elite serious problems. Think WWII and the financing and arming of Hitler's resurgent Germany to attack Russia - and the way many British, French and especially US major businesses traded with the enemy during that war. They too had no care for borders which they saw as a hindrance to business. Roosevelt was powerless to charge any of them with treason as he wanted to do, because he knew they would just shut down industry and curtail the "war effort" on him.
Even during the height of the cold war, big European multinationals were trading heavily with Russia.
The whole thing about western democracy and freedom is a complete blind to keep taxpayers bleeding without rioting and ruining the show.
Arguments between nations usually translate as arguments between differently domiciled business interests wrangling over who gets the biggest share of a given pie.
That's how I see things anyway.
Yours in cynicism ::bowtie::
I continue to see nation states - in the west anyway - as the willing tools of transnational corporations, big business and wealth. This is not something at all new, as you know.
The US state is useful to these powerful business groups in that it has the largest military in the world - financed by the taxes of the masses (thus very cheap for business and wealth) - that can be tasked to work on their behalf to achieve their long term goals.
But every now and again though, nation states do take the wrong steps that cause the elite serious problems. Think WWII and the financing and arming of Hitler's resurgent Germany to attack Russia - and the way many British, French and especially US major businesses traded with the enemy during that war. They too had no care for borders which they saw as a hindrance to business. Roosevelt was powerless to charge any of them with treason as he wanted to do, because he knew they would just shut down industry and curtail the "war effort" on him.
Even during the height of the cold war, big European multinationals were trading heavily with Russia.
The whole thing about western democracy and freedom is a complete blind to keep taxpayers bleeding without rioting and ruining the show.
Arguments between nations usually translate as arguments between differently domiciled business interests wrangling over who gets the biggest share of a given pie.
That's how I see things anyway.
Yours in cynicism ::bowtie::
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14