It's Just Good Business

So, remember the third, terrible Pirates of the Caribbean movie? The big villain is Lord Cutler Beckett, a bigwig at the fictional East India Trading Company (any similarity to the East India Company purely coincidental).

His catch phrase, which he says whenever he is screwing someone over or doing something unethical, is "It's just good business." - J. Wilkins

I finally got around to reading a book I've always intended to for years,  The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. What I find most interesting was reading his critiques of the British Empire's Mercantilist system and extrapolating it to our current global economic paradigm.

Let's entitle this exercise in abstraction:

 The Wealth of Corporations at the Expense of the Health of Nations: A Treatise on the Extrapolation of 16th century Mercantilism to 21st century Globalization.

Of course, with the current state of Idiocracy amongst the general populace in today's Brave New World Order, that title may be a bit too comprehensively challenging to the average bleating sheeple, so we can just simplify the concept here: The More Things Change, The More They Stay They Same

Consider Smith's conclusions regarding the Mercantilist system:

Though the encouragement of exportation and the discouragement of importation are the two great engines by which the mercantile system proposes to enrich every country, yet with regard to some particular commodities it seems to follow an opposite plan: to discourage exportation and to encourage importation. Its ultimate object, however, it pretends, is always the same, to enrich the country by an advantageous balance of trade.

There currently exists only one real advantageous balance of trade in the 21st century, and it serves to enrich the international Banking establishment. This is done with the collusion of multi-national corporate cartels to provide goods and services procured from the corporation's sweat shops production facilities and natural resource mining operations in third world nations, and then sold to various first world nation-states.

In nearly all cases, these purchases are made on a macro level through debt-financing of the Government spending by the globalized central banking system. On the micro level, the same is accomplished via credit cards, signature and equity loans and other means of debt financing available to the individual consumer at the company store.

In both the macro and micro perspectives, the same end goals are achieved: enslavement of the global populace via the tyranny of usury.


The following indictment by Smith of Mercantilism also applies to our current paradigm of corporate collusion to benefit the cartel's profit margins at the expense of consumer health and well being:

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce.

In the 21st century version of Mercantilism - Globalized Corporate Collusion -  this particular facet of Mercantilism has been taken to a whole new level. Big Government, Big Science, and Big Media promulgate lies and propaganda to brainwash the masses to the effect of making the average person believe that up is down, right is left, evil is good and good is evil. 

The mis-informed and dis-informed consumers then engages in commerce (People spending money they don't have on things they don't need, ) that essentially is harmful to their own health and well being, while the producers -- our multi-national corporate overlords and the financing Banksters 2Big2Fail -- continue to rake in the profits.

Another interesting aspect of Smith's critique of Mercantilism has been inverted to benefit the now Globally-based "producers."

In the restraints upon the importation of all foreign commodities which can come into competition with those of our own growth or manufacture, the interest of the home-consumer is evidently sacrificed to that of the producer. It is altogether for the benefit of the latter that the former is obliged to pay that enhancement of price which this monopoly almost always occasions.

Protectionism for home-grown products and services was the antiquated practice tied to patriotic notions of loyalty to your nation-state. But the multi-national corporations have no loyalty to any nation-state, only the state of their bottom line; their stock valuations and profit margins.

Now most everything consumers buy is foreign produced and the consumers of the first world nations pay a different price that is not measured in mere currency valuation....instead, the price we now pay is one of dependency and loss of self-sufficiency.

People used to know how to produce and manufacture a wide variety of goods, as well as repair and extend the useful life of various products. It was more economical to do so. People used to be able to sew, mend, and repair clothing and other textile products. Now, it's simply much easier and more economical to throw it away and go buy a new product manufactured cheaply in China or Mexico, available at your nearest Big Box Corporate Retailer.

Same goes for big ticket items like appliances and modern automotive vehicles. In many cases, parts break, and the replacement part and labor service fees may cost half or more of the price of a new product.

And even if you can't afford to just buy a new item to replace your old, broken and/or worn out product, why you can just go and get a loan from your local branch of the Usury Cartel and "buy" a new one.

As time progresses, knowledge to manufacture, maintain, repair and reuse many items of commerce becomes lost amongst the masses, increasing dependency on the Global Corporate Cartels and antiquating any formerly held notions of self-sufficiency and thrift. This is the very essence of our waste-driven, consumerist culture of materialistic consumption.

And that's exactly how our Corporate Overlords want it. In pursuit of improving their bottom line and overarching goals of global economic and political domination, it's just good business.