CHAPTER 1

The Bigger Ones

As humanity moves toward whatever our destination is to be, wehave constructed essential institutions to aid us with the journey.The oversized ones—church, state, and corporation—are astrong influence on us that we sometimes realize and at other times donot. There are other secondary institutions of considerable importanceas well. Education in its formal garb is a notable one. It weaves throughall the others. I call education secondary only in the sense that we do aremarkable job of ignoring it personally. When we finish our inadequateformal schooling, we can safely disregard any further educational efforts.And most of us do. We cannot ignore the other three. Like it or not,church affects us whether we are believers or atheists.

We have many ways of thinking about, or understanding, ourinstitutions. Much of what we "know" is belief rather than knowledge.Mythology is a great part of what we think about everything, includingourselves. The standard myths about the named institutions are oftenfar off the mark. Here I am going to examine some of the realitiesof these institutions, recognizing that I may only be attempting toestablish another set of myths. I hope not.

What must be understood about any institution, from the sacredto the profane, is that they most often serve the purposes of those incontrol. The people who are in control are not necessarily those whoare formally designated as being in charge. Adding to the mystery ofinstitutions, stated purposes and philosophies are secondary. Theseare masks to legitimize the institution that rapidly get atrophiedas mythology. A common example that has come, once again,dramatically to the fore is the separation of ownership and control inthe corporation. The legal owners are the stockholders, but rarely dothey have any control over the affairs of the corporation. As early as1932 Berle and Means, in The Modern Corporation and Private Property,provided us with the landmark study on this subject—the impotenceof stockholders in affecting decisions made by corporate managers. Isay as early as 1932, because the corporation of that time was neitheras powerful nor as extensive an institution as it has become today. Theearliest ones to resemble today's corporations were founded only in the1890s. The railroads in the United States were the first (Kessner, 96).The railroads molded the early history of corporate America. Indeed,the railroads were the early history of corporate America. Throughoutthat early corporate history, these railroads were virtually the only largecorporations run as private businesses. That is interesting for severalreasons. They were powerful monopolies. They depended on powergrants from government. This a pattern that is so common in corporatehistory that the role of free markets run as businesses in freewheelingcompetition on their own is a basic myth in our economy.

Yet not much has changed as applied to the character of problemsof control in the corporation since Berle and Means. The problemhas gotten worse as corporate powers have expanded and intensified.Other organizations are similarly split between ownership and control,or the ostensible aims and beneficiaries and the actual. There is aneasy explanation of why the divergence is always present. It is themoneypower continuum.

The moneypower continuum is the complete identification ofmoney and power. Even where the mythology suggests otherwise, suchas in religious institutions, this identity is pervasive. Acquiring one isthe same as acquiring the other. This was not always so with mankind.In early societies where there was no money, much less wealth, powerwas something apart. With time, the association became common. Theearlier societies did have the continuum, but it was vested in a verysmall group and usually was a local or regional occurrence. Even inmore recent times, apparently honest political leaders were not given toaccumulations of huge sums of money, or they had no access to them.Winston Churchill's widow had to survive on a very small pension. Wecan look at many political leaders, great and not so great, who neverbecame wealthy. The difference today is attributable to the existence,incredible growth and influence of that huge money machine, thecorporation. Its relationship to, and additional accumulation of,political power has changed everything. It has created the moneypowercontinuum. It is my thesis that it effectually has taken over politics. Itmay soon be the successor form to national governments, in fact. Itis strides beyond national governments. It has a global spread. It doesnot, of course, thereby offer anything of the goals of traditional worldgovernment advocates.

Huge numbers of people do not share in the apparent benefits ofthe continuum. At the same time, the numbers who do are larger thanever. Those who are aware of it in some way also have grown, as havethose who aspire to and lust for its benefits.

As the various institutions to be examined were created and grew,the continuum was also created and was integral to them. It wasembellished and strengthened with growth. Regarding the present andrecent history, the influence and pervasiveness of communications isthe theme running through much of the difficulties that I address. Thiswill be noted more than once. It is a critical distinguishing influence.It is without precedence. While money and power, and their closeassociation, are not altogether a recent phenomenon, their fantasticenlargement is.

Another aspect of the continuum is its threading through theinstitutions themselves. I roughly consider their relationships asbeginning with church, with academy following close on, then state,and, finally, corporation. They each operate in the moneypowercontinuum. Consequently, church, state, and academy become morelike corporations and corporations take on the methods of these threeas suits their purposes. In all cases, much is traceable to the basicmoneypower continuum.

The academy, mainly in higher education, has become nakedbusiness. The lofty goals of education once known and believed aresubmerged deeply into profit and loss statements, usually couched inother language, but not always. I looked at the website of a universityand saw something called an Integrated Marketing Task Force. Itsmission was to develop "a unifying theme that will serve as a referencepoint for our mission and values." That says a lot about what educationis all about. Points for naked honesty should be awarded here, but Inaively still think that university missions and values should be definedby something other than marketing. There should be at least a pretenseto loftier foundations for values. Have they no shame? Of course not.

Today you don't see many powerful politicians who are poor.Neither are powerful religious leaders or university presidents. Thereare few wealthy heads of corporations who disdain power. Their powerlust is not simply that which would be exercised within the corporation.It is much like government power in character. It often goes to otherplaces as well. The corporation is the apex of the evolution of thecontinuum. It is also the tentacled course of the continuum throughthe other institutions, such as universities, churches, operas, orchestras,and so on.

The associated money and power of the continuum are thecombined quest and objective of practically all institutions. The fewwhere it is not found are rarities, and they become rarer as time and ourworldviews become more entrenched in the continuum. Many groupsand organizations that formerly carried at least a facade of being abovethe muck and mire of power and money are clearly open about it today.I have noted the nature of the university. Many professions, such as themedical and legal, are examples. Professional sports are pure businessmonopolies. Sports are a good example of newly created institutionsmoving into the continuum. They are immensely involved with moneyand power. They are fed with talent from the universities and have beeninstrumental in creating universities as businesses. At the college level of"sportsmanship," their educational values are dishonesty and violence.The goal of athletics exclusively is to win. The intensity of the objectiveleads to moral compromise, and many students who participate inathletics use any means they can get away with. Sometimes this resultsin public scandal. The day-to-day minor cheating and rough play donot attract much attention. In fact, these are all considered part of thegame. These values carry forward into the places where the "amateur"athletes and their old and young fans find themselves in pursuit ofmoneypower. It is the core of professional athletics. Professional sportsderive most of their huge incomes from television and governmentsubsidies as well as special legal exemptions granted by government.They are the perfect model of a new thing incorporating the worst ofthe new things. Sports have been around for centuries. Their intenseinvolvement in money and power is relatively recent. Consider onlythe international Olympic Games as an example. Others abound.

Note that I use money as the meld with power. Not wealth,economics, or the more rational bases that money measures. The graspis for money. It reaches obscene levels of pursuit having little to dodirectly with wealth or ordinary economic objectives. Whether wespeak of university endowments or patent ownerships; insane salariesof corporate executives (a fantastic kind of super misers), the regaland financial trappings of churchmen, the temporarily devoted publicservants who then recycle their devotion to the corporations they aidedin their devoted public service, it is integral to pure power pursuit.There is no difference between the drive for power or control andthe drive for money. Numerous examples illustrate this point, and allinstitutions, however noble or ignoble their goals, show how it works.They may be distinguished by whether they approach the continuumfrom the money or the power perspective. This is not a really importantdistinction. The myth coloration is different depending on which endis at the front. Politicians are supposed to seek power for our good.Business executives are supposed to seek money. Realistically, there isno difference between them. Their aims come to the same target. Itis, as I posit, a continuum. Results of the game are the same. Those incontrol enhance their monetary and power assets in some way as thefirst order of church, academy, government, or corporation. There arealways wonderful reasons why they do this, from saving our souls tocausing the marvels of economic growth for our good. As they progress,the high ideals become more flimsy. Few of us are really fooled. But weaccept.

Some general examples will be explained and then expanded, butfirst I will offer some detail on the moneypower continuum. The poweringredient is shown in the many ways that money loses its functionsas viewed by its pursuers. Textbook descriptions of the functions formoney are that it is a medium of exchange, a means of stored value,and a standard of value. (Bush's Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snow,when questioned about his views on how the dollar should be managedwhen its value was declining in international markets, responded withthis textbook list. I thought he was evading the question by sarcasm,but the press did not treat his answer that way. Where do we find thesemen?) Considering the huge sums of money about which this bookis concerned, there is no way it can be seriously regarded as bearing arelationship to economic goods and services. That is secondary. Theuse of money for purchasing necessities or even luxuries in the extremeare far surpassed by the accumulations by those manipulating thecontinuum from whatever base. It fades into its own existence, totallyunrelated to economics. Ultimately, it creates a series of economies,to be described later, and thereby demolishes anything that can beunderstood as "the economy." This creates many large, ugly problemsfor humanity.

A good example of money losing its functions as we usually seethem is the regular casino gambler, especially addicts. They see moneyas something quite apart from its usual functions. It is exclusively atoken of power. Little wonder that governments, the usual site of power,eagerly establish various gambling establishments to rob the poor. Thusit is with many others throughout the "respectable" world.

Other brief examples make the point:

• Religious organizations are continually engaged in politicalactivities internally and externally, accompanied by theaccumulation of financial resources as very much a part of thepackage.

• Universities are run blatantly as businesses, with theiradministrations dedicated to expanding their markets andacquiring power just as a business corporation does.

• Politics, which is supposed to be the study and practice ofbargaining and power, is impossible to consider without itsimmersion in huge sums of money.

Corporations have ascended into power and money—accumulationnever seen before.

Certainly, religious organizations, universities, and politicalinstitutions must be economically viable. The point here is that theygo well beyond basics, and are pursuing money profits, though usuallythey call them something else. Moreover, in this pursuit, they becomemore like corporations in form, methods, and goals, taking on theshortcomings of corporations and debasing their own characters. It'snot a matter of appropriate criticism to imply that any institutionother than business institutions should ignore economic realities. Thatwould be foolish. The problem has become that they are in pursuit ofeconomic goals to the detriment of their real purposes, and this resultsin tremendous deterioration of values. They all become rivals.

Is there anything new about all this? Not on its face. Here is a quotefrom Thomas Kessner's Capital City (183):

He had assembled a portfolio that included the telegraph monopoly,the coveted central link of the transcontinental railroad, New York'srapid transit monopoly, and a number of important Western railroads,as well as a newspaper. In his hands he held a substantial part ofAmerica's new economy. There was no end to (Jay) Gould's greed andpower plays.

The time was 1881. Imagine. They had a "new economy" way backthen. And we all thought that the new economy did not arrive untilslightly more than one hundred years thereafter and that it has alreadyexpired. The late nineteenth century was a time when the corporationhad just begun to assume the form into which it has evolved, or, if youprefer, been intelligently designed.

Is there anything wrong about it? There is much wrong about it.Probably not much is new about it, but it is such a different worldtoday that the effects now are worth reconsidering. Granted that everyage sees itself as different from others, with little firm evidence tosupport that view, but there are some dramatic differences about life aswe live it today. It is almost cliché to note the world's differences overrelatively few years of recent history, but it is in fact a sharply differentplace. Television and the Internet show us an entirely new world.Everybody knows everything, which really means everybody knowsnothing. Surfeits of information available are not really digested by theirrecipients. News has become just another form of entertainment. It isthe world village of gossip, but there are no other village characteristics,such as neighborliness, that go along with it. Missing in this array iswidespread serious thought—an outcome of our strange world as wellas reinforcing its character.

The immense scale and reach of major organizations is deeper andwider than ever before. This in itself adds an environment to humanitythat is entirely new also. I cover our instruments of the moneypowercontinuum in the rough sequence of their emergence in human affairs.In some respects they were all simultaneously in existence for mostof human history. Their separate existence, or creation, traces theirplace in the continuum and the simultaneous enlargement of theirmoneypower. The exception is the academy, which has never hadgreat moneypower standing compared with the other three. Still, theacademy follows in the mold and is not without either the trappings ofmoneypower or the influence that it accords in society.