Random Musings and Organizations Rant

Have you ever noticed how often politicians and other pundits will frame things as "war on" something. Like "war on terror" "war on poverty" "war on the middle class"... even that crazy "war on christmas" that was in the news a few years back. I wish we could frame struggling to do something in other terms than war.

I must say I miss new Daily Shows and Colbert Reports. I wish the media companies would concede that they make money off of internet showings of their tv shows, and give the writers their fair share of the ad revenue. It is the writers that create this media, so I see no reason why they should not get the benefits of their hard work.

I have been thinking more about Republics and Democracies. It is interesting how a Republic will willingly and overtly recognize the power of the people they govern, yet ignore what polls say is the overall belief of the society. They tend to listen to people who make the effort to contact and pressure them (like lobbyists). This power to influence is an inherent human power, and can be exercised by anyone... but it is possible to amplify this power. Organization is the primary method to achieve this. If you have a bunch of people working to push an opinion on any other group, their collective ability to do so is far greater than the sum of their uncoordinated individual abilities.
This means that the policy decisions of a representative in a Republic will always be slanted toward those who have the organizational abilities to amplify their power. This is true now, as it was back in the Roman Republic. Only now, we have large corporations that can mobilize tens of thousands of people... the people under employment in that organization. There is one hitch, however, the decision-making of the organization is what directs the amplified power toward a specific goal. So, if there are a bunch of people working for an organization, who have no ability to affect the general direction of the organization, they have no ability to direct where their power is being aimed.
I think this is why corporations have become so powerful, they are very large organizations with no accountability to those who compose the organization. They invest the power of all those people in a group of stock holders, a governing board, and/or CEO. These small groups are able to wield the power of the thousands working in the organization. However, they cannot wield it just as they please, they MUST, by law, wield it to make money. This means that the leaders in our most powerful organizations are bound, by the government, to make decisions that will only increase profits.
Such a weird system, if you ask me. But this is why lobbying has become such a problem. The government requires the most powerful organizations in our society to lobby it to increase their markets and profits, and for not to lobby it for any other purpose... no matter what the people in those organizations wish. The only solution to this, that I can see, would be to change corporate law to return the corporation back to what it was before the late 1800s... when corporations were only allowed to exist for the public good, as opposed to the profit of stockholders.

I think this is an important connection... and it also makes me wish that there was a large national organization that was supposed to act in the public good. Cause while the government is supposed to fulfill this role, it clearly doesnt, and it needs to be pressured to fulfill its role.
So we need to create a large organization to act for the public good.