Mr Kime Drewls:

[Quoting me:]

Don't you guys always jabber on about how the Shareholder and His Prophet, the CEO, are the Highest Authority, unlike God only in that probably more people believe in them than in him nowadays? At least that's what *I* get from DrooK and BeeP and Idunnowhoall, when sometimes I dare suggest that maybe American society has got the power structure tilted a bit too far in favour of the Holy Corporation...

Slow down a second. I'll let Bill defend himself, but I can't imagine how anyone would think I don't believe the power structure is tilted too far.

Oh, all right, so you might not be all that wild about the Holy Corporation, per se... But wasn't it you who lectured me, a while back, about how the Godly Shareholder is the basic fundament of any civilized society? Hey, no, hang on -- now that I think about it, that may have been Critter Rathman! Sorry, I just got the two of you confused for a while there.

Anyway, my point (to him, then, and to you only if you hadn't considered this already) was this: If you want to cut the Holy Corporation down to size, you'll have to touch the privileges of the Godly Shareholder too; the two are inexorably intertwined.

Where you and I seem to differ is that you seem to think the government can and should fix this. (Is this an accurate description of your views?)

In a sense, yes: Namely, in the wider sense of "government", as "system of governance". I mean, WTF would you *call* the fundamental way of "how to run a country", if not "government"? And in that sense, a change in "how you run the country" -- specifically, adjusting the Holy Corporations' share of the power, of how much of the country's affairs they actually get to run -- is obviously a change in government.

OK, that may have been a bit too facile... (albeit correct in and of itself). You obviously meant "government" in the narrower, classical, sense of "political machinery of representative democracy".

And in that sense, you're at least half right: I'm far from sure that government in this sense *can* fix the problem (though I certainly *hope* so!), but I sure am convinced that it *should*. I mean, the problem is that the Fat Cats are riding roug-shod over the Little Guy, right? So, what's needed is precisely "democracy", or *some* kind of better representation for the Little Guy -- a seat at the table where the *real* decisions that affect *his* life are made.

And where the heck ELSE would he -- or you -- have even the *faintest chance* of finding (or creating) representative democracy, than in the "political machinery"?!?

Whereas I think that it's primarily the government that has caused the power to become so concentrated.

In the wider sense (cf above), that's of course a truism: The problem IS "government", in that sense.

In the narrower sense (also as per the above)... Yeah, that may be (not that I think it necessarily *is*, but it *may be*) -- but so what? There is NO OTHER alternative, that I can see, for where to transfer the bit "too much" of power over society that the "Godly Shareholder / Holy Corporation / Prophet CEO" triumvirate holds at present, than to the "political" sector.

I mean, where would *you* transfer it to -- the judiciary? Religious institutions? The Meeja?

I don't know which of those alternatives makes one's laugh feel the most sickly...