In the Toronto Star the other day were two news items, both about business in Canada and how things are progressing.

((As often happens, an ordinary observer might wonder if the writers in this publication ever read each other. (I have the same problem with Nature: the issue with the article on Bill Gates and artemisenin (possible cure for malaria) synthesis in yeast, was in the same issue as an article detailing the biosynthetic pathways of Plasmodium falciparum (key malaria parasite species in Africa) which pointed out that it has several weaknesses / dependencies unlike anything in mammals.))

In this case, the two articles were in contrast as follows:

• Business has in Ontario been given tax breaks on the promise of job creation, and has instead either sat on that cash, or increased dividends. Dividend payouts have gone, in some cases, from 30% to 50% of net income.
• Companies in Ontario are noticing the impact of “activist shareholders”. These “individuals” are causing changes in the boards of directors, executives, and policies of these publicly held companies.

It is not too hard to put these two together. Here’s my cynical synthesis.

Activist shareholders are generally corporations controlled by rich individuals. These individuals alter the policies of corporations to make themselves richer individuals. They also lobby the provincial (and federal) government to lower their corporations’ taxes. They promise to create jobs, but instead find cheaper ways to source their inputs.

I quiver every time I read that we are not “productive” enough. Productivity is a synonym for unneeded labour. It means, jobs get lost.

Eventually all our wealth will be in the hands of activist shareholders. All our jobs will be done by robots or labourers in distant countries.

I think perhaps businesses should get some form of incentive based on salaries paid. And this should exclude all executive salaries, bonuses, and car allowances.

Before there is no society for them to live in, these rich activists should get a life. And they should allow their community’s citizens to live one. A decent life, that is.

“We are as gods, and might as well get good at it.” Amazingly, that quote is from the Whole Earth Catalogue of decades ago – before the personal computer. The Catalogue was sub-titled, “access to tools”, and did indeed suggest ways and means of doing things that were advanced, seeming almost radical at the time: a screw that drills its own pilot hole, for example. Stuff that made enormous sense once you knew it was possible.

Today, almost any piece of information can be accessed online at will. Websites enable collaboration, communication, and exchange of goods and services. We seem to live in the information age. The key is to ask the question, to seek the information. It is there, and essentially free.

Yet we live in an age of increasing inequality, at risk of global warming, global pollution, global overfishing, global famine – with world leadership interested only in austerity – for the 99%, not for themselves. We have the absurdity (imho) of a nomination for Presidential candidate, in our neighbour to the south, in which it would be fun to grab a few people off the street and ask them which of the eight original candidates they would trust to park their car, or drive a bus in traffic, or make a difficult legal decision. Yet one of these will end up trying for the job of leading the United States.

The absurdity of superPACs has been exposed by Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, and there is a CRS (Congressional Research Service) report on the superPAC. This report can still be found by going to www.fas.org and searching through the archives of Secrecy News blog. So all of congress knows, or should know, that a couple of legal decisions has made it possible for elections to be swayed by large, unlimited contributions whose reporting requirements aren’t that timely. I know this, and anyone signed up for Secrecy News eMails should also know it.

But nothing is going to be done about it. A mediocracy has captured the means of gathering and spending money, and it does not care about the other 99% or the 99.9%. It is in charge, intends to stay in charge, and doesn’t care about non-members.

We are as gods, and darn well should try to get good at it. Sadly, I will end with a quote from Shakespeare, Julius Caesar:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

The meek shall inherit the earth? Not at this rate.

Fair warning: this is a political rant.

I watch the Republican primaries with dismay. Who are these people, and how were they selected? This is the cream of the contenders for one of the most visible, powerful, elected posts in the word?

I watch the executives of ORNGE and Sino-Forest with dismay. Who are these people, and how did they get these jobs? These salaries? The articles make them look like crooks, or fools.

Now for all those debating the Euro Crisis. None of these wonderful politicians, central bankers, captains of finance, not one of them will feel much of the pain the ordinary citizens are going to feel. The link (which see) makes a case that this is another continuation of an attack on the middle class by the .1 or .01 percent.

How did these individuals get selected? There are some clues: the estate tax changes in the US were part of a maneuver to make wealth more completely inherited. Company boards of directors mostly consist of members of other company boards. We seem to have a self-selecting, self-defending elite.

There are notable, and noble exceptions. Warren Buffett asking to be taxed at the same (higher) rate as his secretary. Bill Gates actually funding malaria research, among many worthy efforts. These are noteworthy but relatively rare exceptions.

For the majority of the rich and powerful minority, “greed for more than one’s share” seems to dominate.

I submit that any economic arena is a bit like monopoly. After awhile, one player has most of the assets and the others pass go to pay rent.

The Euro zone is a group of monopolies that have been linked together. The larger winners will now monopolize the lesser ones.

Free Trade is a linking of all the lesser players so they can have their jobs moved across or off the board at a moment’s notice.

Patent and copyright are tools to (legally) divide markets. See the book Information Feudalism for more on that. A licenses B, B licenses A. Prices get set.

This leads to a sad set of conclusions. The winners will economically oppress the losers until somebody breaks the entire set of rules. The disaster of the middle class will become the disaster of no-middle-class, merely a poor anti-elite with nothing to lose.

In the French Revolution, there were, er, reversals of fortune of many, including during the reign of terror. If it comes to revolution, how will the victims be selected?