corporate power

I’m out of control.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 6 Comments

I’m working on a post about capitalism and democracy, a topic suggested to me by Jack Minard. It’s a great topic, but my post is growing beyond all bounds of reasonableness. I must be thinking  I’m writing a book or something. I’m up to +5000 words and I’m not done. Nowhere near done. So I’m not sure what to do now. I may just carry on with the post and finish it up as best I can. Problem is, for virtually every sentence I write, I’m left with the unsatisfying feeling that I’ve only scratched the surface of what needs to be said. So I may have to follow up this post with a number of others that deal with related issues such as nationalism (conservative and liberal versions), the ideology of internationalism, corporate supply chains and export processing zones, etc., always keeping in mind contemporary global events as they relate to the topics I just listed. 

What do you really know about corporate supply chains? Do you really believe that Canada trades with other countries? What does globalization mean to you? What do you think is the relationship between government and business? What do you think it should be? Why? 

Nestlé has 447 factories, operates in 189 countries, and employs around 339,000 people. It is one of the main shareholders of L’Oreal, the world’s largest cosmetics company. Nestlé is the largest food company in the world and is headquartered in Switzerland. Less than 5% of its labour force is in Switzerland. Is it a Swiss company? Of course it has to be headquartered somewhere, but what do you think about that? 

Oh, the questions! I have lots of them. I also have answers. Stay tuned for my epic blog post coming soon to a computer near you! 

Trump and protectionism

~ Roger JG Albert

This is just a short blog that is a reaction to a CBC radio interview this morning with a representative of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters Association (CMEA). The interviewer asked the rep from the CMEA how Trump’s presidency would affect Canadian manufacturers. His reply was that Canadian manufacturers are worried, but that Trump’s rhetoric is just that, rhetoric designed to appeal to particular gullible and self-interested audiences, and fact is something else. He said that if the US imposes tariffs on Canadian goods, then Canada should do the same with regard to American goods.

Problem is, there is a basic flaw in this perspective. Canada produces nothing. The US produces nothing. Corporations, sometimes registered in one country or another, produce things and services for sale. People produce things, not countries so why do economists and journalists still insist on using the country as their primary unit of analysis? When are they going to stop saying that Canada’s trade with the US is this and that, rather than focusing on the real situation which is that corporations are dominant and manipulate governments for their own interests? Ironically, many ‘Canadian’ manufacturers have their products produced in China or in other countries that provide them with tax breaks, lax labour and environmental laws, and cheap labour in export processing zones. And just because a corporation has a head office in Toronto and is technically a Canadian corporation that doesn’t mean that its prime motivator is to serve Canada as a country. No, its prime motivator is profit and as long as a Canadian head office serves its interests that’s fine, the moment it doesn’t do that anymore, its ‘loyalty’ will dissolve as quickly as salt in water and it will move its head office elsewhere. More to the point, of course, is that much of ‘Canadian’ manufacturing is controlled from abroad. That led Harold Innis (Google him) to note in the late 1940s that Canada is a country with its brains spread all over the globe.

Economists and journalists need to give their head a shake and stop letting corporate capital and its governmental lackeys lead them around by the nose.

 

The “Canadian Economy?”

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

Following my last post where I look at Statistic Canada’s analysis of intergenerational income in Canada without coming to any conclusions, today, I intend to make one specific point. That point also relates to a Statistics Canada post today on labour productivity in Canada.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/161202/dq161202b-eng.htm

The point I want to make has already been make frequently enough. Harold Innis, the pre-eminent political economist who worked at the University of Toronto and who died in 1952 and his mentor and predecessor, Thorstein Veblen, the even more pre-eminent economic historian who taught in various American universities and who died in 1929 both in their own ways decried the use of statistics on a purely national basis. The transnational nature of corporate power and control has been studied carefully by scores of scholars over the decades. See in particular the work of William Carroll at UVic and the network of scholars with whom he is associated worldwide. In my own dissertation (1981) I argued following Innis that the weather doesn’t stop at national borders, nor should statistical analysis.

In an age where corporations are spread all over the globe and where a head office may be in one country, research and development in a couple of others and commodity production in several others, how does it make sense to talk about the ‘Canadian’ economy? If StatsCan wants to get with the times it needs to begin to follow corporations in the various parts of their businesses wherever they happen to be. It’s telling that the former Canadian Manufacturers’ Association is now the Canadian Manufacturers’ and Exporters Association. With the massive reductions in value-added production in Canada over the past half century, the concept of ‘Canadian’ manufacturing is losing its relevance. This is even more true when we consider that the extractive industries in Canada, especially in the petroleum industries are 95% under foreign control.

There is no such thing as the Canadian economy. The sooner we accept that and change our patterns of gathering data the sooner we will get an accurate picture of the global reality of ‘the economy.’ Of course Statistics Canada is there to serve the Canadian government so it’s by it’s very nature political. Harold Innis warned decades ago that scholars should not let politicians lead them around by the nose. It seems like that’s exactly what has happened for a long time now and is still the driving force of data collection in StatsCan.

I deal with this topic in several posts. Check my archives for more.

How Higher Education in the US Was Destroyed in 5 Basic Steps | Alternet

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 4 Comments

How Higher Education in the US Was Destroyed in 5 Basic Steps | Alternet.

Predicable.  The author Debra Leigh Scott doesn’t mention Thorstein Veblen’s essay The Higher Learning in America published some 100 years ago but he noted then how business was taking over higher education.

Pure science is under attack everywhere, a consequence of the decline of the importance of the national state and the rise of global corporate power.  It’s anarchy out there.  Corporations don’t want to spend a dime more than they need to in order to make megaprofits so they want ‘science’ that is strictly geared to their needs.  Countries (meaning you and I) are left with supporting pure science with the uncertain knowledge that it will benefit them in any practical way.  States still do support pure science in many forms, but the pressure is on the increased importance of ‘applied’ science…which is really engineering.