Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Get Thee Out, John Galt

In which California suggests that Atlas should shrug:

California filed a global warming lawsuit on Wednesday against Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and three other automakers, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have cost the state millions of dollars.

State Attorney General Bill Lockyer said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California was the first of its kind to seek to hold manufacturers liable for the damages caused by their vehicles' emissions.

The lawsuit also names Chrysler Motors Corp., the U.S. arm of Germany's DaimlerChrysler, and the North American units of Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd..

When you combine the excessive regulation, the incessant illegal immigration, the egregious tax burden and a court system that is to the left of loony, I cannot fathom why anyone would live in California. John Galt has already fled, and it won't take long for Dagny Taggert to follow. Within twenty years, the state of California will resemble a third world country, as it already does in some parts.

And they're worried about global warming?

4 comments:

troutsky said...

I might have thought someone with your "libertarian" leanings would approve of the people, working through the democratic process of representation, standing up against the wholly dictatorial corporations? Or do you find corporations give the people more voice than legislatures? Many zenophobic and racist Californians are moving here to Montana in the mistaken belief we have some non-regulated utopia where they can exploit and pillage at will.Their God is money though they pretend to worship some higher power.Lot of them call themselves libertarians.

A Wiser Man Than I said...

Sometimes, I hardly know what to think anymore. I do know, however, that you can't simply milk the corporations forever. Don't act surprised when all of our jobs move to India; not only are corporations amoral by nature, but we're prodding them right out the door.

I don't particularily believe in the democratic process, and if it's a choice between being governed in an autocracy or a corporate state, I'll probably take the latter. Corporation are more honest about their soullessness.

troutsky said...

You point out the huge contradiction of the so-called "free market".Capital is free to travel the globe in search of new markets and cheap labor but labor is not free to move to developed economies,it must stay and compete to drive down wages.Mexico is the most obvious example, hence your "invasion" by illegals.

of course I am not advocating markets, even if there could be such a thing as a "free" one (which there couldn't) but simply pointing out how the issue is "framed".Our so called freedom is merely formal,it is within the coordinates of the existing power relations.Ill qoute Adorno again: "freedom to choose an ideology,since ideology always reflects economic coercion- everywhere proves to be freedom to choose what is always the same."
Of course he can't explain where radicals come from but the exception does not disprove the rule.
Democracy isn't perfect but im going to keep my faith in the ability of the people to reject the coercion at some point , to "lose their chains". You see why WE want all the workers of the world to unite, then it will do the corporations no good to move to India.

A Wiser Man Than I said...

But the people have no will because they have no power. It's not as if the republicans or democrats are going to stand up to the corporations.

We live in a plutocracy, steadily growing worse. Hilaire Belloc and Chesterton's brother wrote about this almost a century ago in their book the Servile State.

Socialism, I am sorry to say, gives autocracy. The "free market", so long as corporations are able to run amok, gives us a corporate state.

But the Servile State is the worst. The representatives, our supposed protectors, allow the corporations to enslave us, and use their power to aid them in the process.

I wish to know how the people will help on this one. I think the people prefer slavery, so long as it is yet a relatively comfortable one.