From the Paradise Papers to Charlie Rose—forget regulating behaviour
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“The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return,” Gore Vidal famously wrote 40 years ago.
But hang on for a bit. I just got this whole thought laid out in my head about how we’re doing in New Brunswick these days—when my son called. He’s taking a philosophy course and his best friend is doing a history course, and they ended up arguing about religion. The friend argued that religion was a significant driver of progress. Unsurprisingly, my son took the opposite approach, and I guess tried to show his friend that religion was actually the executioner of the very things it was set up to advance: spirituality and humanity.
So my son and I tossed that around for a while before the brilliance of organized religion dawned on me. The very foundation of religion is based on ambiguity and paradox. Religion deals in the ethereal, vaporous spirit essence that’s unseeable, unprovable and intangible. Around that organized religion wraps the most rigid structures possible—commandments, rules, gated entry into paradise, priests, confessors, examples of martyrs and saints, as they crush other competing belief systems for control. Heretics are literally excommunicated and executed even today.
He and I quickly connected the dots between historical religious belief and today’s political belief. Both function in similar ways, both are designed to control thinking and behaviour. The question becomes, who are the priests and who are the controllers? Media, as the arbiters of behaviour, are the new priesthood. And their owners are the controllers. You can get a more direct line on the connection between media and owners from Chris Hedges or Noam Chomsky. But the tiny epiphany here is the reliance on gauzy, ephemeral belief and the need for control to back it up. The paradox.
For example, why in a modern ‘free’ society are we militarizing our police? Or erasing civil rights, regulations and environmental protections? Or creating a highly invasive surveillance state that monitors our every communication? We’re taught to believe we’re free, but in truth we are becoming ever-more enslaved. Mostly by debt, so far.
So now we’re back to Gore Vidal’s observation. Why are we paying heavy taxes for which we get much less in return? The easiest and truest answer: because the system is rigged. Money flows to power. Power grows. And power controls distribution. In short, the rich get richer. The Panama Papers and Paradise Papers show how it’s done. The billionaire class helps write the tax laws, which provide loopholes, which provide enormous tax savings. To them.
I’m thinking about the Irvings now. How does one company get to own an estimated 250+ businesses in a province of 750,000 people? How do they get a virtual monopoly to own every newspaper of note in New Brunswick (excluding the one I write for)? How do they get those lucrative government contracts—like the $26 billion Coast Guard shipbuilding deal?
It helps to have friends in high places. Although there’s no conflict of interest we’re assured, Fisheries and Coast Guard Minister Dominic Leblanc is a close friend of both Jim and Jamie Irving. Leblanc’s senior advisor, Kevin Fram, also has ‘a close relationship’ with the Irvings. Of course there’s no impropriety, I’m not saying there is.
Which brings us to human nature. What was Charlie Rose thinking when he invited young female employees to his home, and strode around naked in front of them? Or all those other high-powered guys allegedly groping women and children? What were they thinking? Just that they had enough power to get away with it. That’s what power does.
The primary reason we have government, and I’ve said this before, is protection. Our forebears created governments to protect us collectively from danger. We have police to protect us from crime. And fire fighters. And soldiers. And regulators, yes, especially them. People we elect and hire to regulate things like fair business practices, food and work safety, collection of taxes, distribution of government services. But what happens to these regulatory services when our politicians are bought—often just for the price of reelection? I’ll hand it back to Gore Vidal, who saw the future in 1978…
“Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state.” And here we are.
Additional reading:
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/06/06/news/what-have-irvings-done-new-brunswick
https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/about/
https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/justin-trudeaus-chief-fundraiser-linked-offshore-tax-maneuvers/
“The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return,” Gore Vidal famously wrote 40 years ago.
But hang on for a bit. I just got this whole thought laid out in my head about how we’re doing in New Brunswick these days—when my son called. He’s taking a philosophy course and his best friend is doing a history course, and they ended up arguing about religion. The friend argued that religion was a significant driver of progress. Unsurprisingly, my son took the opposite approach, and I guess tried to show his friend that religion was actually the executioner of the very things it was set up to advance: spirituality and humanity.
So my son and I tossed that around for a while before the brilliance of organized religion dawned on me. The very foundation of religion is based on ambiguity and paradox. Religion deals in the ethereal, vaporous spirit essence that’s unseeable, unprovable and intangible. Around that organized religion wraps the most rigid structures possible—commandments, rules, gated entry into paradise, priests, confessors, examples of martyrs and saints, as they crush other competing belief systems for control. Heretics are literally excommunicated and executed even today.
He and I quickly connected the dots between historical religious belief and today’s political belief. Both function in similar ways, both are designed to control thinking and behaviour. The question becomes, who are the priests and who are the controllers? Media, as the arbiters of behaviour, are the new priesthood. And their owners are the controllers. You can get a more direct line on the connection between media and owners from Chris Hedges or Noam Chomsky. But the tiny epiphany here is the reliance on gauzy, ephemeral belief and the need for control to back it up. The paradox.
For example, why in a modern ‘free’ society are we militarizing our police? Or erasing civil rights, regulations and environmental protections? Or creating a highly invasive surveillance state that monitors our every communication? We’re taught to believe we’re free, but in truth we are becoming ever-more enslaved. Mostly by debt, so far.
 |
| Gore Vidal, traitor to his class, libertine, socialite, snob and insightful political observer |
So now we’re back to Gore Vidal’s observation. Why are we paying heavy taxes for which we get much less in return? The easiest and truest answer: because the system is rigged. Money flows to power. Power grows. And power controls distribution. In short, the rich get richer. The Panama Papers and Paradise Papers show how it’s done. The billionaire class helps write the tax laws, which provide loopholes, which provide enormous tax savings. To them.
I’m thinking about the Irvings now. How does one company get to own an estimated 250+ businesses in a province of 750,000 people? How do they get a virtual monopoly to own every newspaper of note in New Brunswick (excluding the one I write for)? How do they get those lucrative government contracts—like the $26 billion Coast Guard shipbuilding deal?
It helps to have friends in high places. Although there’s no conflict of interest we’re assured, Fisheries and Coast Guard Minister Dominic Leblanc is a close friend of both Jim and Jamie Irving. Leblanc’s senior advisor, Kevin Fram, also has ‘a close relationship’ with the Irvings. Of course there’s no impropriety, I’m not saying there is.
Which brings us to human nature. What was Charlie Rose thinking when he invited young female employees to his home, and strode around naked in front of them? Or all those other high-powered guys allegedly groping women and children? What were they thinking? Just that they had enough power to get away with it. That’s what power does.
The primary reason we have government, and I’ve said this before, is protection. Our forebears created governments to protect us collectively from danger. We have police to protect us from crime. And fire fighters. And soldiers. And regulators, yes, especially them. People we elect and hire to regulate things like fair business practices, food and work safety, collection of taxes, distribution of government services. But what happens to these regulatory services when our politicians are bought—often just for the price of reelection? I’ll hand it back to Gore Vidal, who saw the future in 1978…
“Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state.” And here we are.
Additional reading:
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/06/06/news/what-have-irvings-done-new-brunswick
https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/about/
https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/justin-trudeaus-chief-fundraiser-linked-offshore-tax-maneuvers/
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