When Enterprise is Predator
Insane forces erode jungles, stifle atmosphere, sterilize oceans, and greedily combat the species-potpourris nurturing them.
Worming through neo-classical economics, seducing state and nation to plunder in consumptive frenzy the entire estate of this evanid ecosphere, lunacy of economic growth overwhelms reason of science, austerity of religion, welfare of state, and free will of God’s children – each spellbound by corporate ethos espoused by whores of spin.
The elite who direct the course of human history ensure each choice benefits dynasty but never the welfare of others, the common good.
Laughably garbed by invisible threads of trickle-down theory they strut, parading [on an imagined leash] that deformed abomination and famous oxymoron, free markets: obsessive plaything of insatiable social imbeciles with no concept of empathy, of sharing… of enough.
Alpha beings, yet creatures bereft of forethought, living only for the moment and what they might selfishly squeeze from it.
Financial policies of nations resemble mission statements of global enterprise as mindset moves from social to banal. Elected statesmen – mere mob-rousing hacks of lobbyist puppeteers – proclaim government, having sold itself off to the most rewarding if not threatening interest, too small for national plans beyond their next career jump.
Government so small that infrastructure – paid for by society, slaved for by the people, their parents and grandparents, fought for and died for in war – now profits exclusively private ownership, whose idea of social responsibility extends no further than each thieving transient CEO’s golden handshake.
Modern government is a brochure-wielding corporate lackey, a debilitating circus of revolving door politics, determined to give itself away till nothing remains but publicly-financed sloganised advertorials directed against the people once served.
National leaders hang upon the words of neo-economists who, witless amnesic to even the most recent lessons of their craft, debase an already dismal science. Allured from the path of truth by gravy, science for hire in any other discipline, they propound only what markets want to hear, media should say, and politicians must do.
Silver tongues with base hearts, elitists in populist rags, cynically deride socialism against centuries of universal aspiration.
Since the rise of trade and industry, wealthy powerful families and their kingdoms changed the course of nations. In their wake each ravaging behemoth fell slowly to dust, leaving yet another still-born society to suffer insufferable warlords and eternal economic ruin.
The day of such quaint empires is gone.
Modern enterprise is a beast no longer reluctantly obeying human reigns, but now seeks nothing less than its own survival.
At any cost.
Changed forever, the corporate universe grows inscrutable, enigmatic, ubiquitous, on complex technologies that brook no human vagary. Increasingly intolerant of intervention or even the concept, it bites the hand of owner, manager, or shareholder, a precursor to lethal defence.
This mindless, selfish, relentless automaton exhibits the beauty of a mudslide, inevitability of sunrise, efficiency of a shark, and mindless whimsy of blind evolution.
It rides the turbulence of free market chaos growing in strength, resilience, intelligence. Financial warriors of Wall Street and Warshington minions, merely its foot soldiers, imagine they own the game, oblivious to the genocidal endgame of a master yet unrealized, whose Omega point is fated to our times.
We sense breathless a sinister scenario inchoate. As evolution sees itself through the eyes of its crowning incarnation humankind, this fledgling god relinquishes his future with childish naiveté to a Brobdingnagian lusus whose single purpose is viral-growth, the plunder of the life-giving spheres that sustain it.
And though it has no plan, any more than tsunami or plague, its final phase, its destiny, will rid erratic impediments – employees, staff, management, owners, us. The larva might need consumers to gestate but the adult will deem them superfluous.
In relentless quest of efficiency, red ink will flow upon humanity.
A Trojan stands revealed, its cusp upon us.
Modern enterprise unleashed will destroy the habitat of its client base, the people, the customers, humans … you.
The initial foray, globalization, is now.
Beguiling villages, towns, cities and nations to abandon self-sufficiency, discard survival infrastructure and prostrate themselves before the whims of unknowable uncaring market forces.
Declaring biodiversity a competitive threat, patented mutants spread monoculture imperialism. Redefining human foibles as pathologies grow pharmaceutical revenue. Terrorist catch-all-cries enable avalanches of security technology into every quite corner of once private dignified lives.
Enforcing entropy upon delicate trade winds – literally flattening market systems and social fabric centuries in the making – in futilely accelerating and ultimately epidemically-destructive self-consuming growth.
For no sake but a fable of free markets.
The business of business is grow and dominate. Enterprise and commerce control even the world’s most powerful government, which they systematically and ruthlessly dismantle. Freeing the wild beast of lassiez-faire to determine the path of civilization without human oversight is a folly too far. A dangerous ploy by greedy people who seek profit in the wake of uncertainty. Deluded that they have the game rigged, it will have them.
All citizens will obey the laws of commerce. They will truly and finally become cogs in a machine.
Big Brother will not be a fascist paranoid kleptocracy, but a sociopathic AI-driven corporate panopticon, having wrested the reins from our grubby hands to impose the cold logic of coded imperatives upon our free will – eventually to discard us.
Whatever the outcome, it seems each day more likely humans will play no part.
We still have choices.
I see none being made.