Preaching to your Choir, eh, Natoma?
Oh gawd, that's the most fuzzy headed article I've ever read. He never gives a rigorous definition of this nefarious "corporate feudalism" and then procedes over and over again to use the phrase in strawman arguments. Like Nader, "Corporation" is a buzz word like "Big Government". Nader thinks if he repeats "We live in a Corporate Republic" enough, we'll be scared of, what? So workers in a corporation must deal with a hierarchy, and how is that different from any other large grouping of people? Hierarchy is fundamental to organizing large amounts of people or data. The only negative thing about a hierarchy is if it is static, but Western capitalism shows remarkable social mobility, and the hierarchy keeps changing.
This article throws around the word "corporation" like right-wingers throw around the word "government" The author is guilty of exactly the fundamentalism that he criticizes right wingers of.
Moreover, the whole idea of a "cheap labor conservative" is hilarious, especially when mentioning Pat Buchanan in the next breadth -- one of the biggest protectionists in the Republican party. Right wingers were accusing Japan of "economist conquest" or an "economic pearl harbor" in the 80s, as they staged rallies to bulldoze over Japanese electronics.
He speaks of outsourcing to overseas labor as if the *end goal* is to subjugate people, rather than to increase profits. He talks as if CEOs *destroy the middle class* of America by *exporting their jobs on purpose*, e.g. their intent is not to make money, but something more nefarious. And then the priceless claim: "privatized tyranny" represents a "seizure of government to serve a new purpose" Excuse me, but by default, things are private. A government not doing anything to invade someone's use of their property is not a "seizure". A seizure is when you *take something away from someone*, which is what most left policies boil down to.
Finally, we come to the idea of "cultural imperialism", that exporting our art, music, books, movie, fashion, and philosophy constitute an "attack" on other cultures. That Western culture is "displacing" other people's pristine cultures. The first problem with this, is it treats people like they are zoo animals on a cultural Galapagos island, and it treats Western culture as homogenous. It's a stupid voyeuristic "cultural prime directive", where backpacking granola wannabees hike through rainforests and "delight" in encounter poor, unducated, bushmen "left untouched" by western culture. Aww, how cute, look at their rare dance rituals and living style. How awful if they had a satellite dish and had access to StarBucks.
The second problem is, historically, cultures that had a "closed door" policy stagnated and withered. Cross fertilization is good. The Chinese thought the outside world had nothing to offer, so their kingdom, which was far more advanced than many others, got bypassed by others that did trade. Arabs had no problem adopting Chinese gunpowered used in fireworks to make weapons. The Romans adopted culture from the Greeks and Estrucans, the Spanish, the Arabs, and on and on.
Western culture is an amalgamation of hundreds of cultures from the around the world and it is not monolithic. Western culture in Japan is different from Western culture in China, and in Europe. If you walk down the streets of London today, you can find more Indian food than British. Who got culturally invaded, Bollywood, or Britain? If you drive through Silicon Valley, there are 2000+ chinese restaurants, and 200+ Italian.
Today, American kids are wearing chinese Ideographs on their t-shirts, playing with Pokemon and YuGiOh, and wearing Hello Kitty. None are indigienosu. We take in Anime, Jackie Chan, Jet Li. We listen to reggae and latin music.
The Japanese have thoroughly latched onto Western culture, but they have made it their own. It is a different Western culture, one blended into Japanese culture. They have kept their religious, their holidays, their festivities, their heavy patriarchalism, their appreciation for school girls
, and added in Harley Davidsons, Britney Spears, and Ahnold Movies, to complement their own Anime.
Ditto for China, where I spend alot of time. Sure, they love wearing the latest Italian fashion. But Chinese people have not lost their identity, and you can tell this easily if you happen to know both an immigrant Chinese person and an ABC (American Born Chinese). Oceans of difference.
America and Europe are not turning the developing world into Americans and Europeans. For sure, they are turning into something different, but that is a mixture of their native and foreign culture. Likewise, in the process, we are slowly being transformed as well, adding new words, new music, new aesthetics to our own.
A 1000 years ago, you could have said much of the same thing about Europe. But now in any given European city, you can enjoy a piece of culture from Italy, France, Germany, or Spain. This is also referred monolithically as "Western culture", but it is now an amalgamation of what used to be very separate.
