A Rich Man and the Camel

There was a particularly vicious op-ed in yesterday's NY Times.  The author is an economics professor at Duke.  Of course he is.  I needed a day to cool off.

Here's his thesis:

"Strikingly, Shariah lacks the concept of the corporation, a perpetual and self-governing organization that can be used either for profit-making purposes or to provide social services."


Now, the notion that corporations are the source of all good is not even embedded in the US Constitution.  It wasn't until a right wingnut Supreme Court annointed the corporation as a "person" (see:  here.) that corporations gained the right to trample over real people.  Moreover, the Citizens United case made it worse.  Then there is the decision this last week which allows corporations to really buy elections.

And, of course, North Carolina is where the legislature and governor allowed big internet companies to stifle social competition.  So, yes Virginia, there really is fascism in the USofA.  Where's Robo Cop when you need him?

He conveniently ignores some salient facts about the Arab/Islamic world (I infer that he is ethnically Turkish, but can't confirm that from any published biography):  they gave us the number system, and a fulsome society while Europeans were clubbing each other in caves.  Moreover, what makes capitalism work (to any extent) is resource squandering.  One may note that the middle east, where he seems to solely focus, is resource poor; except for oil, naturally.  Further, the autocratic nature of its governments has been in furtherance of Western desires (keep all those poor people from demanding a slice of the petroleum pie) rather than some innate failing of Arabs or Islam.  It's not a coincidence that other single extractive resource, post colonial, countries are autocratic.  It's not a coincidence that US corporations continue to move facilities from the US (titularly a democracy) to autocratic regimes, such as China.  One of the more troubling is Pfizer's R&D move.

Democracy is driven by having a middle class that is most of the society.  How much of production is "social" and how much "private" is not important.  Capitalism requires excess resources to function, and the reason is because real world efficiency is subsumed to financial manipulation.  We have the Great Recession (and the Great Depression, and a multitude of Panics in the 19th century) just because corporations value currency over physical production.  This last is also why Right Wingnuts are always Gold Bugs and Inflation Zealots; they're in thrall to currency rather than real production.  If they can "make money" by doing nothing rather than "making something" they have, they do, and they will.