PCR: That's just one of the causes. I mean Chomsky gave you a number of things. And it's the total lack of any sort of foresight that would come from some ability to plan or lay out possible scenarios that are developing and then how to minimize the worst ones. Any of that type of thing would help, even though people don't always see the future very clearly. But I just have the feeling if they made some effort it'd be better than just marching ahead with nothing but next quarter's profits in front of their nose.
NC: No, that's devastating.
PCR: Yeah, that is a devastating result.
NC: But we have to remember throughout that what corporations are and what they do and can do is not just up to them. Corporations, after all, are state-created legal fictions basically. They're created, supported, sustained by state action, and the rights that they have and the options available to them have changed dramatically over the years. So if you go back to the, say, founding fathers -- the early days of the republic, corporations had none of the right that they have today. A corporation meant basically, say, that people of the town in getting together and deciding to incorporate with a specific purpose to build a bridge over the nearby river, and when they did it that was the end of the corporation. Now that's basically what a corporation was -- it changed...began to change through the nineteenth century. By about a century ago, corporations were gaining personal rights even though they are incomparable to persons. I mean for one thing they're basically immortal. For another thing, they have limited liability. They're sustained by state power in all sorts of ways. And by now they have rights well beyond persons.
So for example, the so-called Free Trade Agreements, which aren't free trade agreements, grant corporations rights far beyond that persons have. For example, if the state...if Mexico carries out an action, which might reduce my future profits from some investment, I can't sue Mexico -- but a corporation can under the trade agreements, and they do and many other things like that. And these are all...it even goes down to CEO compensation, which is based on government regulations mostly in the last 30 years that have created highly perverse incentives to maximize very short term profit which yields very high pay, and particularly bonuses, and other techniques for the deferred stock options and so on for the CEOs themselves. These are government decisions, which means in principle, popular decisions -- but only in principle, because unfortunately the public has very little impact on government policy decisions. Actually there's interesting work on this in mainstream academic political science, which shows very convincingly that the bottom 70% of the population, roughly, in terms of income, is essentially disenfranchised. They're opinions and attitudes have no effect on policy choices. Influence increases slowly as you move up the scale. And when you get to the top, which means really a fraction of 1%, as Paul mentioned earlier, they're basically making policy. Well that's not a democracy, that's a plutocracy. And until that's changed, we're going to find that this devastating institutional logic will persist.
PCR: Yes, I agree with that. I'm not sure that it will change other than a catastrophe, collapse that discredits the entire elite structure. Rob, can I change the...
Rob: Sure, go ahead.
PCR: I want...there's something that I'd really like to know from Professor Chomsky and that is what is his take on what seems to me to be the risk that the United States is taking with its European vassal states by pushing them into conflict with Russia that is not in the interest of Europe? And it seems to me that this is a risky thing for Washington, that it could lose control over its vassals if it pushes them into too much conflict that's just clearly against European interests. And, for example, what if the Russian government announced that they don't sell energy to NATO members? That would bust up NATO, I think. I don't think the Europeans could do without supplies for 3 or 4 years, or however long it would take for a different infrastructure, assuming there are supplies somewhere. And I just wonder what Chomsky makes of what looks to me like reckless risk-taking on the part of Washington with its own empire by pushing it into conflict with Russia and perhaps, that means also with China, because it seems to be a strategic alliance developing between these two massive countries.
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