Capitalistic+tyranny+needs+reining,+Letter,+BRep




 * Letter to The Editor**

=**Capitalistic tyranny needs to be reined in**=


 * Business Report, Johannesburg, January 19, 2006**

In her column on Wednesday ("West founders on tyranny of choice"), Ann Crotty came close to grasping the thorny nettle of modern industrial capitalism, but then shied away from it...from Hugh Tyrrell, via e-mail

She argues cogently that the profligate choices facing wealthy westerners induce confusion and unhappiness, whereas in the rest of the world people are starving in their quest for basic necessities.

Part of the blame she puts on the advertising and marketing industry, which propagandises the "buy more - it's new" ideology, but she fails to point to the piper who is paying to have the right tune played.

Companies who have access to capital can employ it in hiring advertising agencies, buy the advertising space and leverage the retail distribution space to sell it, to the exclusion of competitors. Capital locks up these channels into pyramids of wealth creation - and that's the name of the game.

She rightly says "wealth is like manure" and more effective when spread around but wealth is rarely spread around to where it is most needed in an environment of unfettered capitalism, which is a system designed to concentrate wealth in ever-smaller circles. It cannot be left to its own devices without very negative social and environmental consequences.

The rise of left wing parties in South America and their far less compromising attitude to western corporations is an interesting sign of changing relations between state and large corporations.

The West's "tyranny of choice" as Crotty puts it, is the end result of a tyrannical tendency of a much larger order - the prevailing economic one. And like tyrannies throughout history, they must be reined in to avoid their worst excesses.


 * Hugh Tyrrell, via e-mail**


 * From: http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3072167&fSectionId=562&fSetId=662**