Corporate Capitalism Has Not Failed

I'm not biting the hand that feeds me because Corporate Capitalism doesn't feed me, period. I'm also well aware that it is the predominant economic system of our day, but existence isn't necessarily success. As for the Standard of Living argument: African slaves brought to the US probably had a better Standard of Living here than in Africa, but they lost their freedom, or rather it was taken from them. Not a very good trade-off if you ask me. In absolute terms, the standard of living has been more or less improving throughout history for most peoples; in relative terms, not so much. My primary contentions with Corporate Capitalism are: 1) the unarguable gap in the distribution of wealth in even the wealthiest countries, 2) the massive amount of poverty that exists (again in even the wealthiest countries), which "the market" is evidently supposed to fix, 3) the climate of insane consumerism and materialism created by capitalism and its focus on "the bottom line," or profit, 4) the pursuit of material or monetary gain as a means to happiness, even if it means disregarding the well-being of other humans, other species, and the environment in general, once again because it is "profitable" to do so, no matter what other consequences occur, and 5) the ridiculous amount of political power attained by corporations. I don't think Adam Smith had in mind vast companies someday being regarded as persons when he wrote The Wealth of Nations. Some examples: Today, true power is in the hands of multi-national corporations, not governments. If one country imposes a ban on something, be it a product or a part of production or limits on pollution, the corporation will simply seek out a less developed country and more or less bribe that country to be the host of whatever was banned by the former country. The large corporations' interests are always taken care of, though, because it can filter its money equally to politicians on either side of, say, an election, and no matter what party wins, the corporation is taken care of. If someone were to try and threaten to take away that power, the corporation would respond by threatening to move or actually moving its operations from one place to another, resulting in lost jobs and wages. If the minimum wage is too high, the corporation will move to where it is cheaper and there are less labor restrictions (see China.) This is ignoring the fact that even when laborers are paid at least minimum wage, no one person can really live off of that wage decently in your "HIGHEST STANDARD OF LIVING IN HUMAN HISTORY" fantasy land. Ultimately, with Corporate Capitalism, there is no public accountability for actions taken. As much as the government is a mess, at least there is SOME accountability to the citizenry. There is also the lack of drive for innovation: why do we still use, in the VAST majority, gasoline in our cars? We all know about global warming, we all know that other technology is, and HAS BEEN available for some time to replace gas-powered automobiles. The answer: there is too much money to be made by energy companies and automobile companies while the getting is good, or while there is still the natural resource oil to sell. There is basically a conglomerational monopoly over oil between energy companies and auto companies. They're getting their money, right, so to hell with consequences. I won't go into numbers or statistics this round. Cui bono via capitalism? The minority of large players that have enough money in the first place to spend money to make money.