Long morning

[bobquasit]

I woke up dead tired this morning. It was, of course, pitch dark; still night really. Nonetheless it was time to get up and go to work.

I was about ten minutes away from the train station, with a good chance at getting a parking spot, when my cell phone rang. It was Teri. Sebastian had woken up with the dry heaves. Her car had to go in for repairs that morning, so she needed me to come back.

I turned around. It was raining, and still dark, and all the cars were running in the opposite direction with their lights on. The road was narrow, and all in all it was a fairly harrowing drive home. But I got there.

This story is already too long, and I'm too goddamned tired.

So I'll skip ahead several hours. I'm standing in Park Station in Boston, waiting for a "D" train. It's a long wait. I start looking around, and notice something odd: All the billboards are for the same company, the Bank of America. I believe they'd come in and bought up the last big regional banks recently. Which means, of course, less competition. Damn near every bank I know is now part of one of a few massive megabanks.

I looked around some more. Every billboard, on every side of the tracks, was for the Bank of America. I counted: there were exactly 90 of them. "More small businesses do business with us than any other bank". Gee, could that be because they don't have any CHOICE? There AREN'T any other banks, because you've BOUGHT them all!

And that was what was funny; that's why I'm writing this. What Bank of America had done to Park Station was the same thing they had done to the banking community; they'd bought it all up, lock. stock and barrel. Consumer choice? A relic, a thing of the past, outdated.

How ironic.

Comments

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

There are still a few holdouts in the small bank community, but not many.

Consolidation in banking has been going on since the crash of '87, it's not really news. Its just part of the contiuning effort to corporatize every level of American Life.

I still think corporations were are and have always been a bad idea.

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

Oh, one other note... I find it odd that Bank of America thinks it has to advertise itself this way. Since they OWN it all, who do they think they're competing with? Why advertise if you are the only one in town?

[charibdis.livejournal.com]

I agree with unquietsoul5 that corporations are basically a bad idea. the whole concept that individuals can't be held responsible for the actions of a group of people intent on making as much money as they can at any cost is ludicrous, and that is basically where the idea of a corporation came about. On another note, I find it kind of ironic that the pro-corporation people blather abotu the wonders fo competition and the free market and the invisible hand of the market preventing monopolies and the whole thrust of any new business is to make sur e it has a complete lock/monopoly on the market and the hallmark of a succesful business is that it has created sufficiently large barriers to entry for any other business (or has enough funds to do so) so that there is no competition, or choice, or real market.

Both capitalism and communism are great ideas, in theory. The basic idea behind communism is that everyone contributes what they can, everyone gets what they need, and everyone is happy. It's a great idea, but when the government relinquishes it's oversight, in practice, people become selfish and just take everythign they can get and produce absolutely nothing. People need strong personal incentives, not just the good of society.

Capitalism is also a great idea. "We won't fall into the trap of communism. We're not going to assume everyone does thing for the good of society. We assume people do things for selfish reasons." Then pure capitalism goes on to assume prfect knowledge on the part of individuals and corporations, that everyone will only ever work in their long term self-interests, and that those can be perfectly predicted, and that teh only forces at work in the ecomnomy will be market forces and there can be perfect competition." Many modern capitalists (read: libertarians) say that the problem lies in government interference in industry, adn while I will admit that causes problems, I think that the bigger problem is lack of government interference to prevent monopolies, and that corporations can play theri little shell games with countries' taxes and laws.

Anyway, I hope Sebastian was ok.