AIG

First off, while I am not a fan of the corporate models that permeate this country this will not be a piece about what went wrong and what is and what isn’t AIG’s fault. I believe that the aspect of government intervention is the more important issue.

To me AIG’s actions or inactions that led up to this are not relevant at this time. Over a long enough time line mankind will always commit one of two treasons against all that we allegedly stand for causing some sort of catastrophe; commit crimes and do stupid things. That’s not even counting outside forces that a person has no control over.

The issue is government. This is a problem for a free market economy, a government can in no way back or sponsor a private company. It goes against the entire notion of a free market.

A government should construct and keep stable to the best of its ability a system for an economy to exist in. But it should never have vested interests in the success or failure of any company or it compromises the system. That is too much potential power for a private business and a government to obtain together and would thus kill the notion of a free and fair market.

That being said I actually think the government stepping in to bail out AIG was a good thing. The global implications of its failure are high as it extends its empire into many markets worldwide.

Greed is the biggest staple of the free market economy, without it the economy itself would cease to exist. The only reason to succeed in the free market is because you get more of the things you want.

That greed founders companies like AIG whose vast necessity to the very countries and livelihoods of so many makes its existence necessary. Companies like AIG have become so large that the government has to kneel to it. AIG is bulletproof; they can pretty much do what they want because the government needs them. This fosters, in very large corporations, the possibility of rampant corruption and greed.

No one should have that kind of power, but more importantly we shouldn’t be that dependent on them. We shouldn’t even allow ourselves to have the temptation.

Corporations have become the absolute powers in this country. Lobbyists are a blight on this society, advertisements inundate us and money is our god. We the people allowed this to happen, we’ve locked the cat in the cage with the canary.

This power has allowed CEOs and other high ranking executives to become richer and richer while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet because we can’t afford all the crap that these corporations have fooled us into “needing.”

It’s clichéd at this point but still true, the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer.

Big corporations have become far too powerful and we have allowed this to happen, we must fix it. The wealth of this land, of this earth is too vast not to share more readily. We need to demand legislation that limits the power of corporations before they devalue, over process, and destroy our entire civilization.