Friday, January 19, 2007

I read an article last night that sort of pissed me off. It was an article about large corporations taking control of government power in Canada. I read it out of a Canadian Hustler magazine that was in my bathroom. I don’t know how a Canadian Hustler ended up in my bathroom, but I was very pleased by its presence. I’m not gay or anything. I definately cranked one out on the shitbox before I decided to actually read the articles in the magazine. Anyway, the article really pissed me off in the way that it was written. It was just another bitchy article about how corporations have some sly and super secret plan to now take over Canada, there’s nothing that the people can do about it, the government is to blame because the corporations pay them, yaddah yaddah yaddah…

Corporations don’t have any super secret plans to take over. If you really want to know who gives these corporations (ie. Visa, Exxon, Philip Morris, etc.) power, then just take a look in the mirror. None of these corporations have any actual power without our daily support. Every time you think, “Gee, I think I’ll go relax and have a cigarette and a beer.”, you’re about to support Philip Morris, Visa, Coca-Cola/Anhueser-Busch, oil companies, and many more. At any given time there are tens of thousands of other people thinking they need a cigarette and a beer too. Then you’ll go to a BP gas station or Wal-Mart, use your Visa debit card, and then buy a Coke and some Winston Menthols. Then you’ll bitch about corporate power while you’re driving home in your hatchback Mercury Tracer made by GM that is fueled with oil, gasoline, ethanol, has imported leather, the finest stereo equipment, etc. The reason these corporations have all of this power is because we support them and are not willing to sacrifice some daily comfort in order to make them weaker.

I truly believe that there are no genuinely evil people in this world, and if there are then they are still a very small minority. So with that said, I really can’t picture some rich cocksucker in a suit, sitting in his gold office that’s decorated with human skulls, and is chuckling about how he is going to take control of the entire world by selling cigarettes. People just like you and me own these companies and huge corporations, and they are simply trying to make a profit because that is the purpose of every business.

The biggest problem is peoples’ expectation that our government must take care of us. I have a considerable amount of money invested in the stock market right now, and after seeing how the U.S. economy really works I have decided to never rely on my government to take care of my financial situations. Everyone knows that our country is in trillions of dollars of debt, but people still seem to think that there is this giant stash of money hidden away for everyone’s retirement. Right now the estimated low-end cost of the baby-boomer generation’s retirement is about $75,000,000,000 per month. The estimated cost of that generation’s retirement from start to finish is a little over 70 trillion dollars. That money is not going to magically come out of nowhere; it will come out of the U.S. economy (corporations).  The funny thing is that there isn’t even 70 trillion dollars invested in the entire world economy. So if America was going to pay the expected social security to this one generation, the U.S. would actually have to rob the entire world and then have some extra cash on top of that. I think W. Bush is probably one of the worst presidents in history but I do have a shred of respect for his half ass attempt at telling people that they must invest in their own retirement plan. It would not solve the problem but at least there would be a few more greenbacks in the economy to soften the blow when the baby-boomers retire. Nobody wanted to listen to his advice though. Everybody just said, “Oh he’s just trying to take our money!…That way he’ll have more money for war!…He’s just wants corporations to make more money!…” When all he was really doing is letting us all know that in terms of our government taking care of us, we’re fucked.

The United States has become a loud-mouthed leech to the rest of the world. Nearly our entire economy is based on imports from other nations, and yet we try to see ourselves as being a productive country.

We have also created such a high standard of living that we could not possibly sustain it without making enormous amounts of money. Think about it. Now days you are expected to have a car, a house/apartment, at least one television, cable or satellite, a computer with internet, fashionable clothes, health insurance, car insurance, home insurance, credit cards, a gym membership, a college degree, and the most enjoyable foods. This is how rich people live and yet it has become the expected way of living in America. This is “the land of opportunity” not “the land of eat hamburgers and flip off the rest of the world while you live like an undeserving king”.

It is very easy to just go about your daily routine and bitch while you’re doing it. I’m definitely guilty of doing that. However, it is going to take some sacrifice in order to take the power from corporations and governments and give it back to the people. Nobody ever says that they want to invent a revolutionary and renewable fuel source that can easily be created while causing little if any danger to the environment. No, most people will say that they just want to be rich and/or famous. I’m guilty of saying that too. Maybe instead of saying, “Well THEY don’t provide cheap fuel.” or “THEY don’t have affordable insurance”, or “THEY don’t make a condom that’s big enough to cover the bottom 8 inches of my fuckin’ hot pulsating cock”, we should start looking to ourselves to create these things. If you don’t want to give your money back to the very corporations that you probably work for, then try to create a solution so you’re spending your money elsewhere. People have become way to apathetic in our readiness to rely on everyone else to take care of our own problems. If you have enough money to go to college, then don’t just take your parents advice and get a degree to find a job. Maybe find a degree that will help you in your ability to cause positive change. I don’t blame people for just wanting to find a job so they can live a normal and comfortable life. But if you do choose to live that way then you really don’t have much room to bitch about the rest of the world, because you have chosen to not do anything to change it.

Okay, my hour is about up. I’ve decided to dedicate one hour a day, at least five days a week, to writing. I really like to write and I think that this will help me hone my skills and sharpen my creativity a little more. Hone and sharpen basically mean the same thing so I’m giving myself creativity points on the previous sentence. I was just going to type it on my computer or write it in a notebook, but my roommate suggested that I do it on my Myspace thingy. So I’ll have a lot of blogs on here. I think this was a very boring blog that I just typed, so my lips to yours if you have read all the way down to this point. Most of my blogs won’t be anywhere near the length of this one, but I felt like typing a long one today.