There are shadowy corporate interests behind every government and social structure in the United States. They want every dollar you have and then they want your labor to generate more. They want your every thought to be one of consumption, buying their products and enriching them further. They want your children to grow up being even more malleable to their campaigns, and are willing to subvert every system in order to do this.
It's not a concentrated effort. It's not conspiracy where people meet in dark rooms and discuss global takeover. It's a more insidious approach. We have created an entity called a "corporation" and with it, an endless desire for money. Each year a corporation must return the highest level of growth possible, regardless of market saturation or the economic situation. A corporation exists only to extract money from the populace and it will do so without regard for society, religion, morality, environmental concerns, or public welfare.
In this environment, even good men will turn to bad. No good thing, done solely for love of money, will ever turn out well. Greed may be one of the seven deadly sins, but it is deadliest when practiced as a group.
Recently I saw a commercial where a man was stating that his company works hard to make sure his products are "the safest possible" for the environment. Smiling children playing on green lawns, the wind in trees, and puppies accompanied this advertisement. Yet this company makes some of the most toxic substances known to man, destroying lives, tainting home environments, and poisoning the world. It's in every squirt of cleaning supplies you use or spray out of a can. It makes me wonder what he meant by "the safest possible". Like a murderer explaining that he kills people in the "most humane matter possible".
Greed ruins lives. For many people, owning a small coffee shop or bookstore is a life's ambition. A small corner grocery or restaurant may be all someone else desires from this world. For the giant chains of bookstores, coffee shops, and "friendly neighborhood restaurants", it's not enough to simply make money and exist. They must also drive these small independents out of business. I've seen large chain restaurants that pull down more in a lunch hour than a small independent restaurant does in a week lower their prices in order to attract more people simply for the purpose of driving the independents out of an area. I've seen big box bookstores come in and take an entire corner of a thriving downtown district where independent bookstores already saturate the shopping area, for the sole purpose of driving out competition. Any local coffee shop that's thriving will suddenly find itself facing off against a new Starbucks. When you spend money at these places, you are feeding the corporate beast and helping to ruin people's dreams.
Corporate interests are selling off our land, our infrastructure, our government to outsourced agencies overseas. This corporate engine will not be content until the only jobs left here in the United States are in the service and entertainment industry. We'll need a few doctors, cashiers, waitresses, and people to unload the trucks, but for the most part cheap immigrant labor can do all that. The long view is never considered. What happens when nobody here has a job and there's no money to be spent in chain bookstores, Walmart, and Starbucks? What happens when there's no income left to tax and our bankrupt government can't sustain itself?
If governments and corporations won't take the long view, then it's up to you and me to do so. Consider the long view
every single time you plunk down a dollar. Know where your money is going and what it's being used for. Starve out the corporate beast. It's the only way we can survive.
