Thread by @AlvinTanYOLO

Republicans: "Let Trump finish his term."

Corporations: "We will not be donating money to your party."

Republicans: "Trump must be impeached."

Noam Choamsky was right.

There's only 1 party in the US, with 2 factions (Republican and Democrat).

And that party is the Corporatist Party.

Every government entity has tremendous checks and balances.

The White House, federal agencies, the Supreme Court, Congress, state governments, local governments, etc.

Power is distributed and under tremendous scrutiny.

And all of them are bound by oath to the Constitution.

Corporations, however, wield tremendous power and also influence in our society without corresponding oversight or regulation.

We can't even do a simple thing as taxing them properly.

For some reason, there's this weird culture of corporate worship in America.

Many think that corporations should be untouchable by the law and given carte blanche to do anything.

In fact, the most powerful entities in any civil society should be the least untouchable.

There must be 1,001 avenues for redress the moment they step out of line.

It's manifestly immoral to allow such concentrations of power in one/few entities, political or economic, in any free and fair society.

Especially when these corporations are simultaneously in bed with our elected officials and are privy to state powers.

If you disagree, I'm not saying you're wrong...

But let's just say you'd be sharing the opinion of, say, Sandy, the $14/hr Starbucks barista.

I'd be sharing the opinion of Naval Ravikant, the most successful angel investor on the planet.

PS What powers do corporations have?

To collude and simultaneously deny you an essential service, for one.

Is social media an essential service?

In the age of the smartphone, where the primary means of disseminating speech is social media, I don't know...

What do you think?

I think giving the unlimited power to regulate the airwaves to 1 or 2 tech CEOs is quite immoral; maybe that's just me.

Social media provides a voice to the voiceless, a platform for the disenfranchised.

Trump can still have his voice heard because he's the President.

Me? You?

If we can regulate housing, education, healthcare, roads, utilities, jobs, etc., I don't see why we can't regulate one of the most fundamental human rights: the right to express an opinion and speak up.

If you still believe corporations should be able to deny service to anyone based on any arbitrary reason, then by principle you also think that the 1964 Civil Rights Act is bollocks.

They should be able to wantonly discriminate against Muslims or lepers or women or whomever.

I don't want to live in a society where you can't find a job, can't find housing, can't find schools for your kids, can't find a hospital willing to treat you when you're sick, can't board a plane, can't enter buildings, can't eat at restaurants, can't open a bank account, etc.

...just because you have a different political opinion.

As a political asylee, I was granted permanent asylum by the US Department of Justice in 2018, because I have a well-founded fear of persecution in my home country based on my political opinion.

I basically said that Islam sucks (it does), and the DoJ agreed that it ought to have been protected speech.

In other words, I shouldn't have been ill-treated just because I had some dissenting thoughts and expressed them openly.

I don't see why the 1964 Civil Rights Act should not extend to political opinion.

As it stands, it extends to race, color, religion, and national origin.

Either asylum law is wrong, the Civil Rights Act is also wrong, or I'm just losing my grip on reality. 🤷‍♂️

PPS If you're interested to know, the protected grounds under the 1951 UNHCR Refugee Convention are:

-Race
-Religion
-Nationality
-Political opinion
-Membership of a social group (e.g. being gay, being trans, being Goth, being a men's rights activist, etc.)

That's what 145 countries in the world have agreed on 70 years ago as immoral and unacceptable grounds on which to discriminate people, and that they won't stand for it.

PPPS To give you an idea of how powerful some of these corporations are, Apple's revenue in 2020 was $231b, more than the GDP of 147 countries.

Walmart employs 3m people with a 2020 revenue of $482b.

They employ more people than the populations of 99 independent countries.

All that's missing is for these mega-corporations to have a "security branch" a.k.a. paramilitary arm, and they're instantly more powerful than most sovereign nations of the world.

And these mega-corporations are helmed by 1 or 2 founder-CEOs who wield absolute authority.

When critical functions of society are delegated to private corporations, e.g. the prison system, bad things happen.

There's a reason why we don't delegate things like policing and armies to private corporations.

Some things are too important to be monopolized by corporations.

You give these powers to them, they instantly become a quasi-governmental empire.

In such an environment, these private minority elites would rule without any challenge or democratic input from anyone else.

At that point, the "free market" wouldn't matter anymore.

Any contest to their domination can be squashed either by intimidation, unlimited legal resources, unlimited social capital to ruin your life, etc.

It's basically feudalism.

Except that this time, for some reason the oppressed peasants defend the feudal lords with their lives.

The turkeys do love to vote for Christmas in America.