Private Businesses ARE Governments

You've heard the argument before: "All problems in society are the result of government. Getting too big. Intruding. Messing with stuff. And the SOLUTION to every problem is *less government.* Let the market fix things. The "invisible hand" will swoop in and restore balance. Private business will self-correct, if simply left alone. Get the government out of our business!" So in other words, all problems are the result of government- not private business. Whatever the problem is, private business and its activities are not what's causing it. It's only ever the government.

But there's a flaw in this logic. The flaw is:

Private business IS government.

Business governs. It does things. It performs actions. It sets rules. It decides how resources are allocated and used. It controls supplies. It controls people's ability to feed themselves. Some businesses even have paramilitaries. Businesses set the terms of our dialogue, the values and priorities of our culture, and the structure of our society.

Private business governs us with just as much influence as government. It IS government.

So the terminology isn't even accurate.

It's not: Government vs. private business.

Rather, it's: Public Government vs. Private Government.

Those are the *actual* choices.

And the Public kind is the only one We the People have any hope of controlling. It has elections. We vote on it. Yes, the electoral processes have been infiltrated and corrupted. But at least it HAS them. At least we GET to vote.

But in Private Government, there is NO voting. It's a complete dictatorship - with the "owner" as dictator. There is NO constitution. NO checks and balances. NO RIGHTS - only privileges.

Meaningful change will never, ever come from Private Government - i.e. business. It can ONLY come from Public Government, because that's the only one in which We the People have any say.

In Public Government, we have the power - if only we'd use it. All we need is a bit of unity. If enough people vote for something, the Public Government has to respond to our will. The only reason they're not doing it now - not responding to our will - is simply because we're not united in our will. We're still fighting with each other. The largest voting bloc is still Non-voters. But if all of us came out to vote, and truly understood where our true interests are, we could vote every bum out of office, and vote in true representatives.

Public Government has a duty towards us. It's right there in the Constitutions of the various countries and states. But Private Governments have no such obligation. They have no duty to us, nor to the world. They're not even bothering to pretend otherwise. They are entities of pure selfishness. And zero democracy. And they openly admit it. They have no elections. They have no constitutions. None of us get to vote. They are dictatorships.

The Public Government is the main tool we have, for keeping the Private ones in check. Left to their own devices, they would run roughshod over everyone. The Public Government is the only entity big enough to counter their power directly.

So naturally, there has been a massive campaign in recent years to turn us against the Public Government - the one that we have control over - and to make us fear and distrust the use of it. The reason is obvious: Our oppressors don't want us using the one weapon powerful enough to defeat them. So they've brainwashed a lot of us into thinking our weapon is our enemy. So that we won't use it. That's all there is to it.

When the defenders of capitalism say the word "government", what they actually mean is "democracy." They mean "the People having the means to decide our own destiny, and govern the usage of our society's resources by VOTE." And they hate that idea. And when they say "the free market", or "respect for private property", what they're really saying is "one person making all the decisions about how vast amounts of resources are allocated and utilized, without any input from anyone else... without any input from ME or YOU (unless, of course, you're a wealthy capitalist who owns a ton of "property").

Even the phrase "individual rights" has been taken over and weaponized, and turned into a code word that really means "dictatorship." The dictatorship of economics, by one person, bossing around a whole bunch of us, and making us follow their dictates - or else.

Don't misunderstand: Individual rights are very important. We believe in them! Far more so than even the capitalist propagandists who claim to believe in them! But the thing you've got to see, is that when they use it, it's a code word. Code words have nothing to do with the actual words they're made of, and in most cases mean the complete opposite. It's useful for propagandists, because if we disagree with the concept it's pointing to, someone can just say, "you're against individual rights, wow." But the real meaning of this code phrase has nothing to do with what it looks like on the surface. Its real meaning is "oligarchs being able to monopolize huge swaths of resources, and dictate how they're used, without any of We the People having a say." Let's imagine the world, 30 years into the future, when mergers and acquisitions, coupled with the total bankruptcy and defaulting of the entire non-oligarch population, has resulted in one corporation "owning" the entire planet. Amazon is a pretty good candidate. Google is another. (And they WILL merge, one of these days, unless we start utilizing the Public government, to stop them and break their power). As long as we keep "trusting the market", and shunning the use of our one effective weapon, this scenario WILL happen - the only question is when.

In this scenario, the phrase "individual rights" will apply to the CEO of that corporation, and if We the People revolt to take our planet back, this will be framed by the propaganda media as "communism", and we will be accused of violating the corporate emperor's "individual rights" when we try to liberate the planet and take back our land.

See how it works? It's their "individual right" to deny you yours.

If you like this - if you think this kind of monarchical control is good - then you've been brainwashed by the oligarchs.

And if you don't like monarchy - if you think kings and emperors and dictators are bad, and the revolutions that overthrew them were good - then why the fudge are we still tolerating them in our economic sphere? It's a great thing to vote every 4 years, or 2 years, or whatever it is - but our workplaces are where we go every day - where we spend the majority of our waking hours. If democracy is important, isn't it most important in the places where we spend the most time? The places that have the strongest direct effect over our actual, day-to-day lives? Why are we still tolerating monarchy and dictatorship in these places? Wouldn't it be better to have democracy in our economy? If this piques your interest, then visit our page on Economic Democracy. It's part of the Blueprint for a Mature Civilization.