Another Whiskey, Barkeep!
Barlish - The Language of The Bar
Voltaire said, "The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination." When the founders set about designing our democracy, they chose to avoid using an assassination in favor of citizens voting to rid ourselves of an overbearing, under-performing, and totally incompetent idiot with orange skin, but then who could I possibly be referring to. As we learned in 2016, even our democratic approach does not guarantee that the victor will in fact govern benevolently or even competently once in office. Voltaire's point, I believe, is that with a dictator of any stripe, be they royalty or simply the guy with the most guns, is that if they care about the people they are to govern, if their focus is always on the 'customer' chances are they will make a good leader and governor. Which brings me to the point of this piece, Amazon. Amazon, the nation builder. Amazon, the slayer of businesses small and large. Amazon, the tyrannical behemoth of commerce. Is it good, bad, or something else? I am an unabashed Amazon customer. I think what Jeff Bezos, as much as I might distrust him has built is a better mousetrap. He has created a towering and overpowering online business model that (a) caught most people by surprise and (b) has ballooned into only the fourth company in history to have a wealth in excess of $1 trillion - I believe that is twelve zeros as in, $1,000,000,000,000. And, they have done that in just twenty-five years. The other three are Apple, Google's parent company, Alphabet, and Microsoft. That's some pretty heady company. People don't seem to be as concerned with Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft as they are with Amazon - have you noticed that three of the four names all start with an 'A'? I'm not sure that that has any bearing on anything - it's just an interesting observation or bit of trivia. I've heard people railing on the radio about how Amazon is too big and somehow that makes them evil. I'm not convinced of that. Concerned? Perhaps a little, but not panicked, yet. When I look at what Amazon has put together, they are to be admired. First of all, they employ some 800,000 people, give or take a couple. Do they have some labor issues? You bet they do. And while they have put enormous pressure on companies like Nordstrom and Penney's, they have also opened up worldwide markets for small business whose previous customer base was limited to Des Moines, Iowa. I have no idea what the vetting process might be to get on Amazon, but it appears to me that if you have a food chopper unlike anything else on the market, instead of trying to sell it at the state fair, if you can get it on Amazon, your customer base can now include places like Novosibirsk, Siberia. That alone opens you up to almost 1.5 million customers that you would never have reached in a thousand years. I'm not naive. I know that companies like Amazon can lose the focus that made them what they are. They can become so obsessed with profits and stockholder dividends that they start screwing everyone in sight. That is why there must be regulations and consequences for bad corporate behavior. This applies to companies like Boeing, Facebook, Ford, and Cartier and many others.
Any company, large or small that engages in dishonesty and deceit needs to be taken to the woodshed. That, notwithstanding the conservative cries of "big government" and socialism and communism is why we have regulatory committees and laws. A few companies or products that went astray are; Takata: Forced to recall millions of automobile airbags from 19 automakers because some of the airbags could inflate explosively Wells Fargo: 2 million phony accounts to meet company sales quotas Monsanto: Has taken a lot of heat in recent years related to its genetically modified seeds and the environmental impact of several of its products Volkswagen: Automaker’s diesel emissions cheating scandal Those are just a few examples of corporations behaving badly and without government oversight, regulations, and investigations, who knows how much more harm they might have done. Back to my point. Just being big like Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft is not a bad thing. Being big and misbehaving by lying, cheating, and intentionally doing harm is a bad thing. The bigger the country and economy, the bigger the government. Just try to run a university with 30,000 students with a staff for a university with 5,000 students; it just can work. So far, Amazon has more or less behaved like a benevolent tyrant. As long as they continue to balance their efforts between success, profits, and serving the public good, they'll be okay. So, for now, I'd say the balance is in favor of Amazon for all they have contributed to the world, but we can't go to sleep at the switch and look the other way. When you are the owner and guardian of over $1 trillion dollars of value, you may be tempted to pull some shit and we will have to take you down a notch. The theme song of democracy is: "We will, we will regulate you!"
0 Comments
I know this is a difficult topic for some people to discuss or listen to with an open mind. I keep trying to explain why I am not a believer. My purpose is not to convince believers to abandon their beliefs but to try to help them understand why I believe what I do just as I try to understand their views. And, obviously, those who think the way I do know where I'm coming from. I think I do understand why those who embrace one religion or another do so. Humans over history have shown a need to believe in a higher power to get them through the tough times and to explain the inexplicable. Something happened when we grew this big brain we have, and part of that was a need to hold someone else responsible for events we seem unable to control. As we have learned to control certain circumstances in life, such as some diseases, we no longer thank God for a cure; we thank modern medicine. ![]() For me, I would pose this question to others, "Why should I believe in this God, the modern God of many religions, any more than all the gods who proceeded him or her?" The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, and people all over the planet back then all had a belief in multiple gods whose existence was as provable as the modern-day God of the major monotheistic religions. I think the Egyptians had eleven gods, the Greeks had twelve gods and goddesses, and the Romans had twelve though it seems they may have added a few others later. It seems to me that all the gods throughout history were written about and explained to a frightened populace, typically by the elders. The elders were viewed as wise and all-knowing. Their explanations went a long way to explaining the many events, both natural and phenomenal, that affected the lives of the average human. Many elders claimed a kinship with one god or another or, at a minimum, clamimed a direct line to the god. We were, in no small part, a frightened species that, with a tendency to cower in fear when threatened. Being able to talk to someone closely connected to a god gave us confidence that everything would be alright. Today's God, and his or her predecessors required a couple of things from their adherents. One was the suspending of logic or critical thinking, and to exercise their imaginations so that they might believe in the proclaimed miracles and powers of the gods that ruled their lives. There was no proof of any of this. There were legends about the gods told by those privileged individuals who claimed to have a direct line to the gods. They served as the interpreters of the god's wishes and desires and thus became the religious leaders. The second requirement of the followers was an unquestioning devotion to the gods, often under the threat of expulsion, or in earlier times, denouncement and physical torture or death for questioning the teachings of the leaders of the dominating religion. Religion requires that you accept as fact whatever tales are in the religious texts. Regardless of the degree of improbability or incredulity such events may give rise to in the human mind, they are doctrine. In their time, many of the people of Rome, Greece, and Egypt were just as devout and certain of their beliefs as any modern Jew, Catholic, Muslim, or Hindu. I see absolutely no difference in the rantings of Pat Roberts today and his claims of speaking with Jesus than those of a Roman Emperor or Egyptian Pharaoh who claimed to be in touch with the gods. At any point in history, with any religious or spiritual cult, you might find, they have several things in common. They were all based on mythology about the deities and the founders of the religion. They have or had their sacred texts as "proof" that all of this had indeed happened. That same holds with modern-day faiths like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They all have their tales that have been duly recorded by various authors down through the ages in the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran, and since it is written down, it must be true, right? Would that also be true of everything written down in the Inquirer? Or at Breitbart? The Drudge Report? Or the New York Post? The fact that something was written down and sworn to be accurate, and supposedly witnessed means little these days. Until you have hard evidence and all the facts, along with both numerous witnesses, you are going out on a limb by declaring something to be unquestionably true. The fact that most religious texts were written down a thousand or two thousand years ago by people who believed in witches calls the credibility of such accounts into question, in my opinion. I believe in what I can see and what can be demonstrated to be true. I deal in fact-based proposals, not dream interpretations or other types of mysticism. I can accept a well-formed theory that is backed by several fact-based deductions. The definition of the word theory is: "a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena." The keyword in that definition is "plausible," meaning that it is likely to be true or believed, as opposed to implausible, which can mean far-fetched, fanciful, or to stretch the imagination. For instance, the theory of evolution first proposed by Darwin 150 years ago was plausible. His theory was based on direct observations and logical deduction. Darwin stated, "Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed." (On the Origin of Species, ch. 14) Darwin's theory of evolution stated that:
The notion of gods or God remains unproven by any scientific proof. There is no evidence that God exists. But, that doesn't mean that religion isn't real, or that individual beliefs in a God are not both actual in their minds and a significant part of their lives. Faith is a belief, and that belief relies on the existence of God. To be devout, one has to believe that God exists, and if you think it to be true, then in your mind, it is true. That is not proof of a God, merely evidence that your beliefs are real.
As for me, as I think I've stated before, I believe that I will live on in the lives that come after me. It won't be anything I'm aware of, and I won't see my grandmother or my first pet dog or any of the rest of that. At this point, I intend to be cremated. My wife will decide what to do with my ashes, and whatever that choice, it will release those elements of my existence back into our world to be absorbed in some manner by other living things. The gasses from my pyre will be absorbed into the atmosphere. Blending with the surrounding air, all will be breathed in by living organisms. I will, in a sense, live on but without any knowledge of an afterlife. For now, that is the best explanation I can offer of my beliefs. If I find another, more 'plausible' explanation, I'll either revisit this post or write a new one. Corrupted big government is the problem, a huge fucking problem. |
Let's get something straight from the beginning. We are a nation of 330 million people and growing. You cannot run a country that big with a government the size of Waterloo Nebraska, home of the Weiner & Kraut Festival. I don't care how fucking smart you think you might be. Waterloo has about 900 people, probably one cop, several bars, and a dozen churches. Try running the United States of America with that crew. |
Discussing life, politics, and philosophy in the language of the bar.
January 2021
November 2020
July 2020
June 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
August 2019
July 2019
All
Business
Philosophy
Politics
Race
Social Interaction
Society