'Jellyfish, Sea Grasses,
Driftwood, Artifacts
Swept Ashore'
Galveston, Texas
2001.
Governmentalism is not an ideology. It is a method of taking control of money, people, resources, and existing forms of government.
Governmentalists have 'grown' tax-collecting and extended it into the bill-collecting industry. As government defense contractors were bankrupted, their 'state of the art' computer systems were 'confiscated' or 'taken' by government in bankruptcy settlements and re-programmed to tax collect on Americans. TRW, a defense and aeronautics contractor in the race to space, became a building block for Experian, the largest of the Credit Reporting Agencies (CRAs).
The governmental connection somehow gave legitimacy to the credit reporting/bill collecting agencies CRA industry. Like Retail Credit of Atlanta, Georgia, established in 1899, such 'tattletales' and 'snoops' were not uniformly respected in society. Such companies do not buy or sell an independent product. They produce or reproduce someone else's receipts or often questionable records or reports of transactions of buyers and sellers.
Operating in the South, CRAs were not accepted throughout the US, often considered to be parasitic in the business sector. In the North, retailers often sent customers positive 'letters of credit' when a transaction was complete. For example, after the last payment on a installment furniture purchase, the furniture store would send a good 'letter of credit', thanking the customer for their purchase or prompt payment. Such letters could be taken to other retailers to obtain store credit or for other credit purposes.
It is hard to understand how the CRAs were not put out of business. As the CRAs grew, they often were taken to court for libel and defamation of character. CRAs made many settlements in the 1970s for inaccurate and damaging information. As courthouse 'damage control', CRA business practices and structures became more anonymous with unsigned negative credit report letters, automated computerized systems to disseminate their negative reports, using other companies' customers names and information as products to sell to other retailers, banks, and lenders. Now there are multiple 'pseudo-scientific' scales of credit worthiness, or unworthiness, to drive up the cost of credit through higher interest and financial fees.
As CRAs extended into the insurance business with background checks and 'character references', CRAs have driven up the cost of insurance. The concept of higher premiums for 'higher risk' customers became a part of CRA businesses, now known as subsidiaries or affiliates of a diversified business or credit rating companies.
An independent observer looking at such businesses might see 'the big picture'. Insurance-affiliate CRAs often are insurance agents, defaming and libelling customers, to raise the price a customer must pay for government-mandated purchases of insurance.
Auto insurance became an issue for many people in the 1970s and 1980s as state governments began to demand proof of insurance to drive cars. It is true that a drunk driver who has caused accidents and injuries should be held accountable, and 'someone should have to pay' for these expenses other than innocent injured. But this mandate has given insurance agents a form of 'guaranteed income' through government intervention, enforceable for free through government representatives, like traffic police.
It also raises the question of whether politicians and bureaucrats themselves, family, friends, or supporters are insurance agents at some time in their careers or in some other way benefit from insurance mandates. In the late 1990s a major auto insurance company in Ohio subsidized police car computers. This helped the insurance company track insureds for payments or to forcibly sell more auto insurance. Cars not listed on this insurance company's payment files could be stopped and inquiries made, without any driving infraction. This increased the arbitrary nature of police power and possible business and profit to this insurance company. The insurance company stock rose from $10 to $100 per share around this time period.
As governmentalist intervention grows, the cost of products and services rises. As government and business form more interlocking money connections, the risk and the reality of loosing money, property, and true civil liberties also grows.
The 'real economy' has shrunk as government has grown through intervention. The loss of factory jobs in 'big steel', 'big auto', railroad, other major industries which have been by tax-collection or special interest group lawsuit settlement been forced out of business. This has produced profits for governmentalists, seeking to increase their own budgets and salaries.
The problem now is that these profits have now been spent by bankruptcy court personnel, clerks, administrators, attorneys, judges, governmentalist bureaucrats, and others. Many of these now are in financial distress themselves, having 'flipped' too many houses, who ask the government for mortgage assistance and low or no taxation.
Many of the big employers 'have been taken down'. Much business in America now is done in small private franchises of what formerly were large corporations. To stay employed, individuals have started their own small businesses. There is enormous growth of 'cottage industries', home-based businesses, which existed in the much smaller economies in Europe and elsewhere before the industrial revolution 200-300 years ago.
It is ironic that the left, liberal to socialist to communist, philosophies used by the 'black civil rights', 'special needs', alcohol/drug abuse, welfare rights, social welfare, and related special interest groups have used an outmoded philosophy to bankrupt much of the known world. Karl Marx, the political philosopher often referred to, himself believed that the goal of socialism was not a 'central party' soviet form of communism, but a participatory democracy. Socialism was a way of organizing the less politically interested or influential to participate in politics and in business.
Americans of many diverse backgrounds working in large businesses enjoyed higher wages, salaries, and better benefits than many are able to provide for themselves in a home-based business, post-liberal lawsuit agenda.
Home-based financial services companies which bill collect abound. Individuals, more aggressive for money, do not hesitate to try to ruin other individuals who will not agree to send money to them at their bill-collecting companies, by multiple negative credit report computer links. Such individuals can be viciously unfair to others.
One of the meanest examples is negative credit reporting based on current or past employment. Having obtained a 'wage page' from a court bankruptcy file or finance company 'restructuring', such companies pester former employees of now bankrupt companies for bill-collecting money and send these on as 'negative credit reports'.
There is nothing due to a company after the employee performs the work for which he or she was paid. If the company is not satisfied with the work, the employee is asked to leave the company, fired, taken off the schedule, or otherwise no longer paid. Special issues like sales 'charge-backs' for commission-based salespeople are by general agreement in the US to be specified at the time of employment or by employment contract.
It is as unfair to 'trick' a supposed employee into working for free as it is for an employee to not do their work during paid work hours.
As more angry ethnic groups, 3rd World, and foreign people who do not speak English well or understand usual business practices in the US enter business in the US, there are many problems with these basic concepts. The 'business loan' is taken out by the hiring employer not the employee. If an 'Independent Contractor' must take out a loan to become as an 'Independent Distributor, Salesperson' or in some other function, that must be done by that individual, not by a hiring employer signing a prospective employees name or forwarding a job application. These issues must be specified.
What is lost in society in general is the sense of fairness and trust that many or most will be fair. What also is lost is trust in government as a mechanism for righting wrongs. This instability is reflected in a 'boom and bust' economy, not based on supply and demand.
Email mkrause381@gmail.com or mkrause54@yahoo.com to comment or request copies of this or other blogs posted by mary for monthlynotesstaff on http://monthlynotes21.blogspot.com (http://monthlynotes.blogspot.com through '21'). See http://monthlynotes18.blogspot.com or '19' for bloglists of titles and URLs.
Graphic: 'Jellyfish, Sea Grasses, Driftwood, Artifacts Swept Ashore,' Galveston, Texas, 2001, copyright mkrause381@gmail or mkrause54@yahoo.com.
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