No it is not ridiculous at all. What is ridiculous is the denial of the effects of the slow-violence of the ascendency of the rentier elite, and the subsequent plunder of the commons. [1] These rentiers pay very little taxes (if any) and park their illicit gains in offshore foreign tax havens. We are also in denial about the scary situation of the Precariat class, both in terms of the extreme inequality and class divide in global North (the USA, Europe, etc.) [2], as well as the divide that exists between the global North and the global South. [3]
The biggest factor of the ongoing plundering is the way the US empire enforces the corporatocracy's parasitic intellectual property rights claims:
"A globalised intellectual property rights system was immensely strengthened by TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) passed through the World Trade Organisation in 1994, shaped by a few US multinationals, backed by the US and UK governments. This has facilitated the commercialisation, privatisation and colonisation of ideas. Since 1994, the annual filing of patents has more than tripled, with the global stock of patents close to 12 million, each giving monopolistic control of some idea for 20 years or more.
Many patents result from publicly-funded research, diminishing the risk. But TRIPS allows corporations to receive monopolistic income for two decades, or use the patent to block others from producing something. Those claiming to believe in free markets should have opposed the trend, but reveal their class-based ideology by keeping quiet. There is evidence that the patent system hinders economic growth and innovation. It merely increases inequality and rentier capitalism. George Osborne, as Chancellor, made it even more blatant with his Patent Box tax break that in practice benefits multinationals coming to Britain if they have patented products, particularly Big Tech and Big Pharma. That tax break merely accentuated the plunder of the intellectual commons." [3]
I absolutely see the systemic inequality (and precarity) caused by the artificial scarcity mechanisms, lobbied for by the corporatocracy, as slow-violence and murder.
I say all this with the hope that we shift towards social production/Commons-based peer production, with a revolution of the parasitic rentier business models on digital assets, which make no sense anymore in a digital society where information now has a (near)-zero marginal cost of reproduction and transmission: Protocol Cooperativism.
No it is not ridiculous at all. What is ridiculous is the denial of the effects of the slow-violence of the ascendency of the rentier elite, and the subsequent plunder of the commons. [1] These rentiers pay very little taxes (if any) and park their illicit gains in offshore foreign tax havens. We are also in denial about the scary situation of the Precariat class, both in terms of the extreme inequality and class divide in global North (the USA, Europe, etc.) [2], as well as the divide that exists between the global North and the global South. [3]
The biggest factor of the ongoing plundering is the way the US empire enforces the corporatocracy's parasitic intellectual property rights claims:
"A globalised intellectual property rights system was immensely strengthened by TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) passed through the World Trade Organisation in 1994, shaped by a few US multinationals, backed by the US and UK governments. This has facilitated the commercialisation, privatisation and colonisation of ideas. Since 1994, the annual filing of patents has more than tripled, with the global stock of patents close to 12 million, each giving monopolistic control of some idea for 20 years or more.
Many patents result from publicly-funded research, diminishing the risk. But TRIPS allows corporations to receive monopolistic income for two decades, or use the patent to block others from producing something. Those claiming to believe in free markets should have opposed the trend, but reveal their class-based ideology by keeping quiet. There is evidence that the patent system hinders economic growth and innovation. It merely increases inequality and rentier capitalism. George Osborne, as Chancellor, made it even more blatant with his Patent Box tax break that in practice benefits multinationals coming to Britain if they have patented products, particularly Big Tech and Big Pharma. That tax break merely accentuated the plunder of the intellectual commons." [3]
I absolutely see the systemic inequality (and precarity) caused by the artificial scarcity mechanisms, lobbied for by the corporatocracy, as slow-violence and murder.
I say all this with the hope that we shift towards social production/Commons-based peer production, with a revolution of the parasitic rentier business models on digital assets, which make no sense anymore in a digital society where information now has a (near)-zero marginal cost of reproduction and transmission: Protocol Cooperativism.
[1] and [3] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/plunder-commons-...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnYhZCUYOxs
[4] https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/01/flipping-c...