The GOP is quietly racking up win after win all of which seem to have one goal in mind: Set loose the power of the corporations. Recently the GOP began the process of repealing the internet privacy laws widely panned by broadband services. These are the laws that prevent companies such as Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T from selling your internet history without your permission. Yeah, do everything in privacy mode–though an IP scan can show where you connected to regardless of browser privacy.
The issue here is that these massive rollbacks meant to help corporations ‘create more jobs’ are in fact probably going to do the opposite. Here is why: Corps don’t want to hire people unless they have to. Hiring someone is an investment. You invest salary, taxes, often healthcare, and retirement (coincidentally, the senate is also working to delete the rule that says retirement funds have to work in the customer’s best interest). Why make such a large investment when you don’t have to? PR? There are cheaper ways to get good PR. If I am company X and I can spend 10K to build a home for a homeless guy–preferably a vet (disabled if you got em), I am going to get more PR buzz on that guy than the 40K a year minimum investment on a front line employee. I can make my existing employees work harder or I can shift some of those roles to the internet or offshore where possible.
Corporations are smart and inherently against the interests of anyone who wants to share wealth amongst Americans. Corps want it all. They want consolidation of power and resources, which is why it is not going to be long before anti-monopoly rules are abolished in this country and we discover how quickly everything gels into a handful of Megacorporations.
Shadowrun had it right all along.
Some Thoughts:
- Crazy excited for the upcoming games this weekend!
- Mildly excited to do great stuff in class next week.