that's pretty cool.
you also have a passing resemblance to Tom Hartman
you should call in to AM radio shows

Nigeria is a great example of what a corporatocracy looks like.

I'd definitely like to see that rant myself. You have an extremely clever way of education.

Yes! Less Monsanto, more Mondragón :D

There's your revolution. Change from dictatorial or monarchical corporations to democratic ones. You don't need to change the US government, you need to change the internal governments of the businesses that are causing the problems!

They're as difficult to start as an ordinary business, maybe more so because you have to get a fairly large group of people who share your view on business practices, but once they're started they tend to perform quite a bit better than their top-down counterparts. And they tend to behave better too.

IMHO it would be as simple as passing election reform that allocates congressional seats to political parties based on the percentage of popular vote they receive. It would free the two party system choke hold that our country is in. As it is there is only one third party representative in the house, and he is quite a curiosity. Everyone else goes through the Republicans or the Democrats, both of whom are beholden to, in many cases, the same as well as a subset of their own unique large corporate masters who underwrite their election fund raising. Even in the most innocent view of such a thing there must be certain quid pro quos that come from sponsoring a political party that way. Were we able to chose from a variety of political parties to affiliate with, however, in a system that doesn't award total victory on a simple majority "winner takes all" modality that political money would gradually spread much thinner, as greens, libertarians, socialists, nazis perhaps, all begin to get the representation they want and deserve. It'd simplify the list of which elected representative is in which corporation's pocket at the very least.

Additionally, Americans watch Britan's "Questions for the Prime Minister" for laughs, but I think seeing the speaker of the house, and the president pro tempore of the senate be subjected to such regular questioning and roasting by the bodies they head up would be healthy for our democracy, and quite possibly take power away from the 24 hour TV news punditocracy who have made politics so vitriolic in America over the last twenty years or so.

You make a point here too though. Why is it that when people run for office, it matters in the least how much money they gather for it? If I'm not one of the people who are donating to this, and it's not the public in general... who cares? I'm not electing a pile of cash into an office, but the person who's actually running for that office.

Money is the means by which one may purchase publicity. It doesn't matter if you have a great platform if you are not able to purchase media through which to explain it to the electorate. If you eschew money your voice won't be heard, and when voters who might be inclined to agree with your ideas or policies get to the polling stations they'll see your name, and not know a thing about you, and won't vote for you. Here in my home state of Arizona we elect state judges. Judges have a certain dignity about them, that they do not campaign. You never hear about who is running for judge. I never vote for a judge because I know literally nothing about the names on this portion of my ballot. If there were a judge who took out a newspaper ad in a publication I read that say, touted his policy of sentencing non-violent drug offenders to house arrest or fines rather than prison time, for instance, I'd say, hey, sounds good to me, you've got my vote, prisons are too overcrowded with people who don't legitimately need to be detained for the good of society. But judges have a sort of professional dignity that prevents them from self promotion this way, leaving the voter with the burden of having to investigate candidates for judge themselves, which people don't do, I guiltily admit I don't do. For instance, photo radar speed traps are numerous in my city, if a judge publicized his opinion that it is unlawful to monitor citizens with these devices and use a mostly automated system to ticket them for speeding, or running red lights he'd be a populist hero in my city (though I'm actually not opposed to photo radar myself, it pisses a lot of people off) but we the people don't know what the judges are for or against. That's pretty much why most other states give their governors the power to appoint judges. Democracy doesn't work when the electorate is not well informed.

Yes, I understand this.

My point is that the amount of money gathered is often FAR more than is needed, and as far as I know, is rarely all used just for campaigning. Often it seems as if the people are more interested in the candidates ability to gather money than in their concepts or ideas.

True enough. Fund raising ability is a better way to judge a man than some other criteria we select presidents on, like the statistical points a candidate wins for, say, being tall.

You know... that image of the dog with the pope hat and a nuke in his paw IS scary! O_O

In my opinion, the only real way to stop the corporations from continuing what they're doing without destroying everything is in part undermining the corporations themselves. This means to me to put a stranglehold on those things they are doing that make them money in the first place, weakening them little by little. There also needs to be those people who go around and find the things corporations are doing that people would seriously object to, and expose it to the world on a constant basis, until there's no way to cover things up anymore. Perhaps even working to make it a requirement that they expose EVERYTHING they're doing in a way they can't prevent... though how to do that is a big question. Half... or more than half... of what gives these groups the power to do as they please involves the simple fact that most people have no idea it's happening, and that those who do can be easily paid off or otherwise silenced.

After enough concern, anger and dissension is brought to life, I think the next step would be to not *destroy* everything, but rebuild it. The original plan of the US was a good one, and I like to think it was working at first. It only became distorted over time, as the lure of control and wealth twisted people into doing seriously f'ed up things just to pull more of each. The corporations themselves need to be broken down into smaller entities; ones with strict observation over their practices. And laws or other control should be instituted to stop them from growing so large ever again... no one group or single person should have that much power. Even the president has people to counterbalance his actions.

As for the government, I think one of your earlier comics said it fine. 'Get rid of all the dumbasses'. Right now in NY the senate is a complete mess due to a bunch of people doing what I can only liken to having a gang war. The Democrats and Republicans are fighting over who is in control of the Senate... both sides have chosen 'leaders' and after holding a few hearings where one side would show up, and the other side refuse by saying it 'didn't count' (like children yelling 'do over!' during a kick ball game) they all just decided to not work. The best part though? They had apparently long ago covered their asses. There is a LAW in place. How this law ever got passed I'll never know. It says they can't NOT be paid while in office. Pay can be withheld for a bit, but no matter what they do, they HAVE to be paid. So right now, none of the senators are doing what they were elected to do, and yet are complaining when people say 'You're not getting paid then.' or 'We're going to replace you!' citing various laws that prevent anyone from doing anything to them. As of this post, some of them have even taken state money and LEFT THE STATE, going to other places to take it easy while they get paid.

If the people in the government are sat down one by one, stared at really hard and considered from every angle, then made to sign documents that state if they willingly mess up they will have all their pay revoked, earned assets reclaimed and perhaps serve jail time, then the problem is settled right there. The greedy ones will refuse to sign, as they don't want to lose, but gain; the stupid ones WILL sign... and get kicked the hell out of office soon after; and the scheming ones will sign, but last a much shorter time than the present, as they'll be under constant scrutiny. This will leave the majority of them being people who are actually interested in doing their job, not just getting paid to sleep in a official chair and talk nonsense at people. I mean, look at the government in some places now. Actors are getting elected as on some subliminal level, the people realize that all a politician really is is a good actor.

If the corporations power is decreased, and they're exposed for the destructive forces they are, that will be one step. If they get broken down into smaller, less overwhelmingly powerful entities, that would be another. Laws and restrictions would need to be then placed to KEEP them visible and under a certain size, to prevent it from happening again.

Next, the political system would need to be scoured of all the fakes, the actors, the liars, and the greedy, self important bastards who are flooding it, and all of those people carefully replaced with those who are simply willing to do their job and take what they're given... which is usually a pretty decent amount. Once again, laws, contracts, oaths, etc. would need to be used to bind these people to do as they are supposed to do... which is work for the betterment of the PEOPLE and COUNTRY, not for themselves. If they break these things, punishment should be swift, strict and excessive. These positions aren't just running a corner store or managing five people in a supermarket, it's millions and millions of people depending on you to get your ass in gear and do what you have to.

I think these things would help to stop things from getting worse, without causing something unpredictable to take the place of what's there now. The system isn't completely imperfect... it's just in need of a long overdue cleaning and repair, and the first step is letting people see just how dirty and broken things have become.

This is why I believe in anarchy. No government, no bullshit.

How is anarchy, in your words "no government" any different than total rule by corporation? What would be done about crime? Would you have to hire private police contractors to investigate, say, a home robbery? Wouldn't it be in the interest of mercenary police, beholden to money rather than a public charter to "serve and protect" the community with the consent of the governed, to finger whoever they can as fast as they can and call it problem solved. And what sort of retribution would they exact in a land with no codified law? Anarchy, bah.

Reminds me of these pamphlets people were passing out in my hometown. They spoke of anarchy being the best possible state of society, and the cover had a forager wearing an outfit that looked like something out of the renaissance hunting escaped zoo animals with a bow and arrow, and his back pack was filled with canned goods.

Lawl.

lawl indeed. Come Anarchy everyone worth anything is going to be wearing outfits made out of football safety equipment, radial tires and chains. Ren-faire indeed. I'll travel the land challenging all comers for the title of "Ayatollah of Rock'n'rolla"

I would agree with this post except... look at what we have as government now. It pretty much IS anarchy.

Oh, so you believe that only the strong survive?

How did they get this way? Simple. Money.

I want an Inflatable A-Bomb!

Corporations are not malicious and out to destroy the planet. At least not consciously, like a Captain Planet Villain.

People like to bag on the CEOs of corporations, but forget about the corporation's shareholders. I am not an expert on corporate law, but I understand that for most corporations their leadership, the board of directors, is voted in by the shareholders. And the shareholders, by and large, are only checking the going price and dividends on their shares of stock. If the company's stock price goes up, the shareholders figure the leadership is doing great and vote to keep them. If the stock price goes down, the current leadership gets voted out, and Michael Moore's "Roger and Me" gets named something else.

Individual leaders get way more credit than they really have. Remember, under a hypothetically unified Congress the President's signature would just be a time-saving formality. (For you folks who didn't study the US Constitution, Congress can override a presidential veto with 2/3 majority.) Yet people still will blame/credit the President solely for any national misfortune/success. Why? He's just one guy. Congress is 535 people. And with corporations it's easier to bag on the single CEO than it is to bag on the hundreds, sometimes thousands, of voting shareholders.

This is only partly true. Let me give you my take on things.

Yes, the president can be overridden on his decisions. But in the end, people made him president with the idea that he is making good decisions to begin with, and he also has the power to veto bills that the Congress or House are trying to put through.

In a corporation, as you say, the shareholders see more money coming to them through their stocks going up, and keep the leaders they've appointed. The trouble there is that those stockholders don't really care HOW they're making more money, as long as they ARE making more money. As for the CEOs and other board members, it's not really in their interests to divulge things that will make them lose their jobs, is it? So, unlike the president, they're not really expected to make good decisions overall, so much as make decisions that profit the shareholders.

Look at Obama's attempts to make reforms to things. A lot of people are arguing against it because it's not 'results right NOW!' but a 'give it time to settle' thing... and no one wants to wait or lose any money fixing things. Yet if he DID suddenly 'fix' everything, people would be all kinds of suspicious.

Turn the same situation to a corporate view. If the CEO of a huge company that was having trouble suddenly 'fixed' everything, no one would say a word. There's even a chance they would all work with said CEO to hide the details of said 'fix' if it was illicit or illegal, and then not say a word about it. On that same note, if that CEO were to take steps that lost people money or took time, he would be getting replaced in a matter of days unless he had a golden tongue for explaining things.

*Nods.*

A basic paradox of power: People who want to have and use power over others generally are the last people that you should award such power to. The problem is that no one else wants to be an authority, because if you don't like having and using power over others, being an authority figure is a tremendous pain in the ass.

Having worked in four different administrations, there was little change from one to the next in the US. But still, the US has the exact gov't it's asked for every time. Our elected officials have the perfect greedy values of their constituencies. Everyone has their hand out for more, more, more. But no one wants to pay for anything. They want someone else to pay and do the work. And people sell their votes for whomever promises them the most. What's funny is people believe the promises. That's why democracies will always fail. The greedy always have so many greedy and gullible people that they can rely on to vote for them.

Amen. I have been enjoying this series quite thoroughly. Thanks for deciding to post them.

So why don'tcha draw the next rant? I, for one, would like to see it..

excellent rant and a good set of perspectives.

thing is, too many people are more concerned for their own well being than they are about the well being of the community they are in. too much selfishness.

besides, if you give someone a choice... stand up for their freedom but risk dying or just sit on the couch eating cheetos and doing drugs to forget their terrible quality of life, most people would choose the latter afaik.

personally, i think this credit crisis could have been the opportune moment for change... not throwing money at the corporations that fucked everything up but letting them fall, dealing with the subsequent chaos and rebuilding a society that would benefeit the people.

Immediately before, during, and after the Iraq War you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting someone loudly braying about the conflict of interest between Haliburton getting contracts to re-build Iraq after the war and Cheney's connections to that company.

Almost Nobody is saying anything about how Obama's pick for head of the Federal Reserve used to be a senior executive at Goldman Sachs.. one of the companies getting the biggest share of the credit-crisis bailout.

I enjoyed reading this little comic - we share a lot of the same opinions... and here I thought you were just a gun toting crazy. Keep up the counter-subversion my friend.

Sounds like you definately would be worried about something akin to the end result of the story in ShadowRun.

The megacorps are fucking everybody, not just Americans. There's no other planet to flee to if they're not muzzled, capeesh?

Big Corporations actually have very little power, what power they seem to have comes from their ability to manipulate Big Government... see my previous post about the Rednecks and just how little power corporate interests have when forced to face 'the little people' on equal terms.

I'd suggest reading The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek.

The problem is that you're considering the government entirely in terms of WHAT things it does rather than HOW it does thing. Suppose we have two people, one of which is principled and moral and one of whom is ruthless. If we only rate them on what they accomplish, the ruthless person is going to win, simply because they're willing to do more things to get results. When you apply this to a powerful government, this means the people on top will end up being the most ruthless bastards society can produce.

So even if you start with noble intentions, the powerful government will always be pulling toward dictatorship.

The problem is not so much how Powerful the government is, but how much Authority it has. 'Weak' government and 'Limited' government are not one in the same. A government that does not have the power to enforce it's laws is worse than useless, what is needed to curtail government excess is to put rigid limits on just What government actually has authority over and limit it's ability to expand it's authority onto other things beyond that pervue.

The central argument of the book mentioned was Hayek's argument that any powerful government will over time become unlimited because it will attract people who want that power.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, the Constitution was originally intended to keep the federal government from overgrowing it's boundaries.. but people got lazy and the government started offering 'free' stuff.

How to seriously rein-in the megacorps? Buy their stock, buy Lots of their stock, encourage all your friends to buy their stock and then vote your shares with conscience. The Corporations are legally mandated to do two things to the exclusion of all else, 1) to make you as much money as possible and 2) to do whatever you say and 2) trumps 1).

Also, read this...

http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/a......php?comic=243

And this...

http://www.cracked.com/article_1499.....keysphere.html

...and this..

http://www.atomicnerds.com/?p=501

..to get an idea of why modern society seems so dysfunctional and psychotic.

A hah! Thanks for these links - brain candy fer sure!

Bon Apetite.. oh and one more.

http://www.cracked.com/article_1665.....right-now.html

The problem is that, no matter who fights whom, the eventual winner WILL take over everything and rule with an iron fist, because human beings are violent, territorial primates (MONKEYS) which will do those things regardless of initial benevolent sociopolitical aims.

Things seem rather complicated. I wonder if the first governments ever imagined what would become of them in the future.

"Nothing else can be worse" are right up there in the Hall of Famous Last Words, yeah.
Some of the world's biggest social / human catastrophies seem to have started out with the best of intentions. Then the revolutions, as the saying goes, ate their own children. And people are people. Even those that have a good cause can get lost on the way.
Also... If you want to change what you think is a bad direction of things, a bad situation... You have to consider what kind of situation your methods will create, and what kind of people they will gather. And that's bound to be a high wire walk.
Heh, I don't seem to have any answer for that question about what to do. First thing to do is remember no matter how clear you think you see things, you should still accept the possibility that you're wrong. Keep questioning yourself as well as your environment. If more people did, some things would likely change. But it's a 1984 situation; most people just don't do that.

Have you read Raine Dog? http://www.rainedog.com Just take a look for fun if nothing else - because your Bookstore Dawg and Raine could be from the same litter! They're so similar in appearance I can't help but smile at it. Raine obviously being politically active in the comic, it's just funny to me. (The comic's premise might seem a reality-detached one at a brief glance, but she brings up very real issues.)