The Tyranny Of Predatory Corporations - Peru Declares State Of Emergency To Deal With Anti-Newmont Gold Mining Protests

Capitalism as it has been practiced since the advent of the industrial age has generally been structured in such a way to privatize the gains and socialize the losses.  Another way to look at this is the concept of price and cost.   The price is the tip of the iceberg of the total cost for most every corporate activity in our economy today.  This dynamic has been magnified with the financialization of our economy.  People like Mitt Romney, private equity predators,  banksters and Harvard MBAs infiltrate corporate management and lack the business acumen and knowledge to understand this concept.  And, more importantly, they lack the conscience and empathy to care.  So, this dynamic becomes systemic.  Even in nonfinancial firms.  The short term gains or price are never measured against the long term costs or costs in general.   The reason why this is so is because there are no risk controls within our regulatory system to stop this behavior.   And with the financialization of our economy, we generally have idiots running firms they really are completely unqualified to run.  I'm sorry but finance should not be running nonfinancial firms.   They have never proven they are capable of running financial firms. 

This dynamic was part of the destruction of the American auto industry as I highlighted years ago.  I have seen this in spades where corporations will execute business plans that appear to have a price of X yet when a total cost analysis is done, the cost is literally 5-10X.   Corporations are not incented or regulated to consider the costs to society.  They are simply institutions of control or of the ego used to loot for benefit of the self.

Nothing represents this dynamic more than the endless destruction of the environment by international mining, energy and natural resource corporations.   These corporations often leave disaster in their wake.  There are generally ill-conceived risk controls, disaster recovery plans and proper regulation to pro-actively mitigate destructive practices.   Deep well drilling in the Gulf, natural gas fracking, strip mining natural resources and gold mining are just a few examples of the systemic offenders.  

First off, we don't need gold except for a small number of industrial uses.  Well, and the world's elite who are hoarding gold today.  And, we surely don't need it as a  tyrannical and undemocratic form of money.  While I support oil, gas and coal mining as a pragmatic source of energy, there has never been a proper regulation or proper risk controls to ensure these methods don't lead to endless destruction.   And, as we saw with the BP Gulf disaster, the regulators are essentially owned by the miners and energy companies themselves.  Obama has done nothing to ensure workable disaster recovery plans are now in place to support deep water drilling yet the practice now continues.   The next mess is inevitable.  It's just a matter of when.  More of that change you can believe in. 

Some time ago I highlighted how international gold miners were devastating the environment in South America.  Now, we see a state of emergency declared to deal with the massive destruction associated with gold mining.   Newmont's senior management heads back to  gated communities and their life of privilege in the U.S. at the end of every day.  And the elites buying their gold production benefit from a price not reflective of cost.  The cost associated with Newmont's activities are felt in communities that cannot escape the loss of environment, destruction of water supplies, loss of economic opportunity and the massive environmental messes created by Newmont's privileged management.  There is no accountability or local control in the predatory world of fascist-based or unregulated corporate capitalism. 

We fought a war a few hundred years ago to rid ourselves of the tyranny of concentrated, unaccountable power in a far off land.  Peru and people around the world today fights to rid themselves of the same tyranny in the form of corporations.  Globalization, a code word for corporate looting and predation backed by the force of the state, and unregulated corporate capitalism has created an even greater tyranny and enslavement than the English banksters, corporations and its megalomaniacal king in 1776. 

Capitalism or any merit-based economy must be designed and regulated to serve democracy and not the other way around as is the case today. 

The leaderless society marches on.

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