Greedy giants versus national governments

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

A good friend told me:

National governments and private corporations are basically the same. They exist in parallel and feed each other. None of them should get too much responsibility, none of them deserves our ultimate trust. The greediness of private corporations warrants a harmonic free market where everybody can feel well. Big corporations are useful in that they protect us from governments trying to gain a monopole.

I agree that none of them deserves our ultimate trust. But besides this I fundamentally disagree. National governments deserve trust in certain areas where private corporations deserve the opposite: our deepest distrust. And we must protect ourselves from their influence.

What our children learn at school, how to handle a pandemic or whether to start a war, these are topics where it would be foolish to decide under the advice of those whose profit or loss is going to depend on our choice. Education, health care, security, legislation… are areas where national governments and not private corporations must rule the visible world. Letting private corporations decide in these areas is a one-way ticket to hell on earth.

Saying that national governments and private corporations are basically the same is as if we were in Brussels airport and you tell me that the flight to London is the same as the flight to Berlin. Yes, both flights are of same nature, but their outcome is very different, at least when I know where I want to go. National governments are of same nature as private corporations, but their goals are fundamentally different and intersect only partly. Too many people still believe in the obsolete dogma of the invisible hand. Capitalism works only as long as private corporations have less power than national governments. Subdue the greedy giants!.

Evil and good coexist and are mixed up in this world, but this doesn’t mean they are the same. Their difference is not always visible, but it clearly exists. The information revolution leads us to choose who governs our lives on earth: it will be either a few greedy giants or our national governments. You cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and the Mammon.

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” Matthew 6:24

Read also the Parable of the Weeds, Matthew 13:24-30

Papst Franziskus: „Es gibt nur zwei Herren in der Welt… “

Francis says that the world “can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market” and calls for action “beyond a simple welfare mentality” that “attack[s] the structural causes of inequality.” Evangelii gaudium