“What do you expect from corporate work?”

We have all grown-up hearing and repeating one of the corporatocracy’s best ad slogans: “It’s good enough for government work”.  This or similar slogans like, “What do you expect from government work” were handed down from generation to generation powered by the idea that private corporations can do the work, any work, better than government. I doubt that this was ever truly the case given that we the people are the workers in either case and we are all hard workers.  However, the corporations got us all to believe that our money was better off in their hands than in our government’s hands.  They made us forget that our government’s hands are actually our own hands. And so, one by one all business moved from the public sector under our control to the private sector under the control of the rich corporate elite.  Any profits or surplus funds went into private corporate pockets instead of back into programs for the public good.

For a long, long time it seemed like we made the right decision, the corporations did indeed do a better job than the government.  How did we know this? The corporations doing the work told us so. “Corporations are doing the job faster, better and with less money than the government” we were told by the corporations. We all applauded and “lived happily ever after” until one day we woke up and realized a few things.  Corporations were doing jobs “faster and more cheaply” but at a high cost. Corporations, we learned, don’t care about doing a job right; they only care about making a profit. Anything and everything can be sacrificed to shave a dollar here and there to make the rich elite at the top of the corporation even richer. The air that we need to breathe can be sacrificed, the water we drink can be compromised, the price we pay for goods and services can go up to cruel levels, sweatshops can be run to keep costs down, people can be laid-off without a say in the matter, soldiers can be sent to war to create new markets for business!  And where do all these savings go? That’s right, into the pockets of the rich corporate elite.  

Corporations try to run their operations with as little people-power as possible to keep profits up. This means that often times one person has to do a job that once took 5 to 10 people to do. Mistakes naturally occur and the quality of the work declines to levels never seen before in the US.

Thus now, the truth of the matter has been exposed! It is corporate work that is crap!

We the people, in order to get jobs back into the public sector, back into our hands, into our control, should begin a new ad campaign and pass it from generation to generation: “What do you expect from corporate work?” and when you are forced to do a half-assed job because the corporation doesn’t give you enough time to do it right just shrug and say, “It’s good enough for corporate work”.

If these jobs were in the government’s hands (our hands) a budget would be set and funds appropriated for the job voted for by the people. Profits, if there are any, would swing back to us the people and not the pockets of the rich. A corporation is legally bound to make a profit above all other concerns; the government, we the people, are not legally bound in this manner that sacrifices people for profit.  Therefore, there would be no job cuts just for the sake of profits.  All decisions would be based upon whether or not it is good for the people rather than whether or not a profit would be made. Thus no matter what the economy is like, all decisions can be made by and for the people.  Can you imagine that?  That’s the way our democracy is supposed to work, but corporations stole our spot by getting the courts to rule that they are “people”.  Thus, politicians who are backed by big corporate dollars are not technically lying when they say that they are “for the people”.  It’s just that “the people” they are referring to are corporations, not you and me.           

Corporations also teach us to hate whining: no one likes a whiner. They teach us to grin and bear their decisions.  “It’s just business.”  It’s just business that we have to cut your job.  It’s just business that we have to cut your benefits, your healthcare, pollute your city, on and on it goes. You have no rights, no voice and no representation. We are like Private Melish in Saving Private Ryan when he is killed in a hand-to-hand knife fight with a German soldier. As the German slowly forces the knife into Melish’s heart the German keeps saying “Shush” in soothing tones to Melish, as if to say, “It’s nothing personal, it’s just war”. As corporations slowly but surely force their will upon us, slowly taking away all of our rights and polluting us with chemicals, they sooth us with their mantra that “it’s nothing personal, it’s just business”. To hell with corporations!

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