Amerika: Corporation, not a Country

"Now, a question arises with regard to the USA: is it more of a country (like, say, France) or is it more of a corporation (like, say AIG or GM or GS)? Looking at its politics, it is apparent that it is more of a country club than a country. Corporations are clearly the ones in charge, through electoral campaign donations, lobbyists, and the revolving door between corporate and government positions. The periodic electoral monkey-business and fake media frenzy are just there as an ad campaign to keep the brand fresh. It does seem more and more like a corporate entity, with a small and shrinking number of shareholders, whose latest scheme (now that the whole thing is spiraling the drain) is to have the government print lots of money just so that they can pocket huge sums of it...."
Dmitri Orlov

The Death of Neo-Liberalism, Dmitri Orlov

"The failure of weak, neoliberal political régimes around the world will expose the men who have really been pulling the strings. Most countries remain nation-states in name only; their sovereignty has been eroded to the point where they are now mere servants to transnational business and finance. Vestigial nation-states continue to serve one function: controlling their borders. They are, in fact, prisons—keeping some people in, others out. But for transnational business and finance they are now porous entities, allowing them to practice labor arbitrage (finding cheapest labor), and jurisdictional arbitrage (finding least regulation). The US government is now little more than a proxy, with its presidential candidates (1, 2) vetted, appointed and financed by the global investment firm Goldman Sachs. A recent vote in the UN General Assembly accusing Bashar Assad of Syria produced a list of the remaining nation-states. These are the only countries whose governments still possess sufficient independence of will to oppose the US-led drive for régime change in Syria. They are: Syria (naturally), Russia, China, Iran, Belorussia, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia. It remains to be seen how helpful their independence will prove when it comes to them feeding their own people...."
Dmitri Orlov

Amerika

Slide [26] It's important to understand that the Soviet Union achieved collapse-preparedness inadvertently, and not because of the success of some crash program. Economic collapse has a way of turning economic negatives into positives. The last thing we want is a perfectly functioning, growing, prosperous economy that suddenly collapses one day, and leaves everybody in the lurch. It is not necessary for us to embrace the tenets of command economy and central planning to match the Soviet lackluster performance in this area. We have our own methods, that are working almost as well. I call them "boondoggles." They are solutions to problems that cause more problems than they solve.

Just look around you, and you will see boondoggles sprouting up everywhere, in every field of endeavor: we have military boondoggles like Iraq, financial boondoggles like the doomed retirement system, medical boondoggles like private health insurance, legal boondoggles like the intellectual property system. The combined weight of all these boondoggles is slowly but surely pushing us all down. If it pushes us down far enough, then economic collapse, when it arrives, will be like falling out of a ground floor window. We just have to help this process along, or at least not interfere with it. So if somebody comes to you and says "I want to make a boondoggle that runs on hydrogen" – by all means encourage him! It's not as good as a boondoggle that burns money directly, but it's a step in the right direction.

Orlvov