(This is a post I actually wrote a while ago, but never got around to publishing. I was given an Amazon gift card for Christmas. Unfortunately, I lost it somewhere. However, if I do find it, it will be the first time I have used Amazon in years.)
Adam Smith, the Scottish philosopher who was an early proponent of capitalism, said that the core functions of government are “maintaining defence, keeping order, building infrastructure and promoting education.” However, he also believed that one of the jobs of government was to break up monopolies. Over time, in a cut throat capitalist world, one company was likely to outperform the others and even buy up the competition. The resulting one or a very few companies would be able to gouge the consumer, but also to bribe the government to keep it operating.
As an example of this, if you look at World War II and fighter aircraft, Lockheed made the P-38 Lightning, Republic made the P-47 Thunderbolt, North American Aviation the P-51 Mustang, Grumman the F4 Wildcat and F6 Hellcat, Vought the F4U Corsair, Curtiss the P-40 Warhawk, Bell the P-39 Airacobra. There were other airplane manufacturers too like Boeing. Today, because of mergers and aircraft companies being bought, sold, or just plain going out of business, two of the biggest remaining aircraft manufacturers are Lockheed Martin (a merger of Lockheed with Martin Marietta), and Northrop Grumman (a consolidation of Northrop Corp and Grumman Corp). These companies are huge in the defense industry and, if not a monopoly, they do represent that only a few remaining companies are able to build such high tech aircraft.
Smith likened the monopolies operating in Scotland to , “….an overgrown standing army . . . they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature. The member of parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly, is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance. If he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest public services, can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger, arising from insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists.” Does that sound familiar to where we are today? Our politicians are often bought by large corporations who want more cheap labor (both legal-like H1Bs- and illegal). So, even while the majority of the electorate has consistently been polled wanting reduced immigration numbers, each year, we seem to get more.
I think of that when we look at companies like Google and Amazon who seem to work hand in glove to steer people towards Amazon’s products. Not to mention, Amazon is replacing UPS, Fedex and the US Postal Service in delivering products. I’ve talked to conservatives who rave about how great Amazon is. Do they not realize that they are directly funding Jeff Bezos who in turn funds so many liberal causes and runs the far leftist Washington Post, (they put their mission statement, “Democracy dies in Darkness”, at the top of their paper)? Si se puede, yes you can shop without using Amazon. Amazon is a middleman and there are alternatives. I’ve used Amazon as a search engine to identify products, and then found the manufacturer’s website so I could order directly from them. It takes more effort, but it is doable.
So, the question became, should we participate in the boycotting of woke corporations? For me, it’s a no brainer- HELL YEAH, we should. There should be no such thing as a company, a bank, a Wall Street firm, etc… that is too big to fail. Don’t get me wrong, if they do fail, it is entirely possible that the economy goes into a recession. However, things will rebound. The larger and more powerful the companies become, the more they are likely to hurt us when they fail.
Will this hurt the middle class? In the short term, yes. However, if you believe in capitalism, eventually, other competitors will enter the market and replace the dying carcasses of those who went before. The government should play a role in regulating and preventing monopolies from forming in the first place. Unfortunately, our politicians may not be able to do so since so many of them have sold out to Big Donors.
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Separately, but relatedly, is the question of why so many corporations are woke. We’ve seen this before with charities. There’s one of those principles that any charity, unless it is explicitly set up to be conservative, turns liberal over time. Henry Ford II quit the Ford Foundation in disgust back in 1977; “In effect,” he wrote in his resignation letter, “the foundation is a creature of capitalism, a statement that, I’m sure, would be shocking to many professional staff people in the field of philanthropy. It is hard to discern recognition of this fact in anything the foundation does. It is even more difficult to find an understanding of this in many of the institutions, particularly the universities, that are the beneficiaries of the foundation’s grant programs.”
So, why do so many corporations support things like BLM, even despite the corruption at BLM? A lot of it is flat out fear. Once one corporation and then another caves, they don’t want to be seen as the only corporation not supporting the rioters. It amounts to a form of blackmail. Forget Rules for Radicals, the left wing is taking its lead straight from the Nazis.
Big businesses are more afraid of Antifa and BLM then they are of a totally peaceful boycott of their products. Look at Target who pledges to give $2 billion to black owned businesses by 2025 despite what the George Floyd protests did to their stores.
Above, May 27, 2020 Minneapolis Target getting the treatment from a “mostly peaceful” protest.
It’s about the same as a bullied kid promising to give up lunch money if only they will stop. Of course, any corporation refusing to bend the knee will inevitably be called racist. The racism charge moves moderates away from conservatives in droves. So, everything is racist that Democrats and leftists disagree with. Law enforcement? Racist! Education? Racist! Income inequality? Racist! Personal responsibility? Racist!
Red State had a recent good article on what is causing the deluge of woke companies. California has one of the biggest pension funds in the country. Thanks to liberal politicians like Gavin Newsom, the pension funds are demanding that companies do some sort of woke agenda.
20 year veteran of the U.S. Border Patrol. Author of "What Bridge Do You Work At? Or, Kids Are Cute; Therefore, Open Borders" & "East into the Sunset: Memories of patrolling in the Rio Grande Valley at the turn of the century". Books are available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, as well as Thrift Books.
Master's Degree in Justice, Law and Society from American University.
Grew up partly in Europe.
