Cicero in Pants: Neo-fascist corporate Stooge!!

Happy New Year everyone!

I'm in the midst of the January crunch at work so I'm going to leave any serious ranting for the weekend - a weekend that I will be spending in my house because, like most of you, my head and my wallet need some time to recuperate from the Christmas season.

In lieu of an original post though, I thought I would post this fun tidbit from way back in 1999. Back then I won the "As Prime Minister" essay contest that Magna International runs. Here's an abridged version that still sits on the Guelph website. My thanks go to John the commenter. Apparently, the right wing slant I put in the essay really cheesed off someone named Jennifer Sumner at the time.

I'm a fairly centrist guy who describes himself generally as economically centre-right and socially centre-left so I don't know how much of a corporate stooge I really am. I'm also contrarian enough that I know I'm not "indoctrinated" by anyone about anything, but I think I'll review that old essay soon and see how much of it I still actually believe. Should be an interesting exercise.

In the meantime I hereby give Jennifer Sumner circa 1999 the floor. If you don't much like me, you'll get along famously with Jennifer. Here ya go:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/atguelph/00-03-29/letters.html

ESSAY CONTEST PROMOTES GLOBALCORPORATE AGENDA

Cory MacDonald's "prize-winning essay" printed in the March 15 issue of @Guelph is a disturbing symptom of our times. It is a mere parroting of neo-liberal dogma with, so far as I can see, not a single fresh word in it. It does not represent a "political vision" to improve our living standards, but only the program of a global corporate agenda that the majority of people in Canada are now suffering through.

Cory MacDonald's essay represents the triumph of life-blind ideology. No thought needs to accompany the slogans, just unquestioning acceptance. But a review of the literature on globalization from a range of disciplines reveals its negative impacts in Canada as well as around the world.

First of all, the concept of globalization needs to be labelled for what it is - corporate globalization. According to Herman E. Daly, former senior economist with the World Bank, the ideal of globalization, when closely examined, "turns out to be unfettered individualism for corporations on a global scale."

Those who promote corporate globalization are working to raise the living standards of corporate stockholders and high-level corporate managers, not the living standards of the vast majority of Canadians. (And if anyone still believes in the trickle-down theory of economics, I have some swampland in Florida I'd like to sell them.)

In rejecting the nation-state, Cory MacDonald leaves behind all the human and environmental protections built up over years of negotiation. There are no laws to protect either people or the environment at the global level, only laws to protect the movement of money and transnational corporate commodities. The "supranational bodies" he wants to pass power to have no accountability to life-protective regulations, no democratic process.

While acolyte MacDonald exhorts us with clichés to "compete with the world on equal terms" and "expose business to a number of harsh realities," economist Daly understands what the slogans really mean: "The economic integration of any high-wage country with an overpopulated world is bound to lower wages and raise returns to capital, widening the gap between labour and capital toward the more unequal world distribution."

The victims of that unequal distribution have been described by a recent United Nations Human Development Report as:

- the 1.3 billion people living on a dollar a day or less;
- the 160 million malnourished children;
- the one-fifth of the world's population not expected to live beyond 40; and
- the 100 million people in the West who are living below the poverty line.
- The moderator of the United Church of Canada warns that people are getting chewed up by an uncaring economy: "People are dying in the process. . . . they are being sacrificed, literally, to the god of the market."
- Rural communities in Canada represent a microcosm of the devastation brought on by corporate globalization, eroding the very foundations of the rural way of life that has historically valued community, neighbourliness and co-operation.
- Economically, they have been hammered by the growth of corporate farming, poverty and debt creation, restructuring, deregulation, privatization and changes in employment and unemployment patterns.
- Politically, Canadian rural communities have been made insecure by public-sector slashing, tax and subsidy discriminations, cutbacks to rural services and an assault on shared risk policies.
- Socially, Canadian rural communities have suffered from reduced access to health services, loss of vital social institutions like schools and hospitals, and population migrations.
- Environmentally, Canadian rural communities have endured soil depletion, pesticide persistence, agricultural pollution, exhausted fisheries and reckless clear-cutting.
- Culturally, Canadian rural communities are losing their heritage of mutual help and their distinctiveness in the face of commodification, mass consumption and the invasion of big-box stores.
- In terms of gender impacts, rural women in Canada have experienced greater wage decreases than men have, more off-farm labour (in addition to their on-farm labour) and increased responsibilities as social services are withdrawn.

The impacts of corporate globalization on rural communities are fracturing a quality of life that is Canada's historical identity. So, whose "standard of living" is Cory MacDonald really talking about when he extols the virtues of corporate globalization? Certainly not the majority of Canadians, but the minority of stockholders and corporate managers who stand to benefit from the endless search for increased profits that transnational corporations restlessly seek - at any cost. Canadian standards of life are an "externality" to corporate globalization and constitute a "barrier to trade" whenever they do not advance what Daly describes as "global corporate feudalism." The fact that Magna International awarded $56,000 in cash, prizes and an internship for this essay should be a chilling wake-up call.

The trouble is, indoctrinated students like MacDonald now get to be "prime minister" and win huge corporate prizes for proposing to sell out the country to transnational corporations. They should be educated, not rewarded for their ideological programming.

Jennifer Sumner

Rural Extension Studies