wenn ich groß bin, werde ich science fiction autor: 2005-01-14

Freitag, 14. Jänner 2005

Approaching The Heart of Darkness - The Honourable East India Company

Yet the East India Company, romantic as it may seem, has more profound and disturbing lessons to teach us. Abuse of market power; corporate greed; judicial impunity; the "irrational exuberance" of the financial markets; and the destruction of traditional economies (in what could not, at one time, be called the poor or developing world): none of these is new. The most common complaints against late 20th- and early 21st-century capitalism were all foreshadowed in the story of the East India Company more than two centuries ago.

In The Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith used the East India Company as a case study to show how monopoly capitalism undermines both liberty and justice, and how the management of shareholder-controlled corporations invariably ends in "negligence, profusion and malversation". Yet nothing of Smith's scepticism of corporations, his criticism of their pursuit of monopoly and of their faulty system of governance, enters the speeches of today's free-market advocates.

[...]

Yet the human tragedy was just beginning. In Bengal, the annual monsoon rains had failed. But what turned a manageable natural disaster into a catastrophe was the manipulation of local grain markets by East India speculators, driving up the price of food beyond the reach of the poor. "As soon as the dryness of the season foretold the approaching dearness of rice," went one eyewitness account, "our Gentlemen in the Company's service were as early as possible in buying up all they could lay hold of." The situation was compounded by the company's decision to increase the rate of tax to ensure that revenue levels remained stable. Estimates vary, but up to ten million people may have died of starvation. When the full story became known in Britain, there was fury at the firm's negligence. As Horace Walpole wrote at the time: "We have murdered, deposed, plundered, usurped - nay, what think you of the famine in Bengal, in which millions perished, being caused by a monopoly of provisions by the servants of the East Indies." - [Nick Robins, "The world's first multinational", New Statesman, 13. Dezember 2004]

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Das bin nicht ich. Das ist Bruno Kreisky. Ich für meinen Teil bin 28 Jahre alt und ein kurzsichtiger, wenig- und langsamlesender, aufmerksamkeits- und noch vielgestalt andersgestörter, ungeschickter, linkshändiger, unausdauernder, übergewichtiger, un-unaufgeregter und unkonzentrierter stummer Schwätzer ohne Führerschein (sowie ohne Ehrgeiz, Ziel im Leben, eigene Wohnung, geregeltes oder sonstwie geartetes Geschlechtsleben, usw …), dafür mit unregelmäßigem Bartwuchs und Stoffwechsel sowie dem starken Wunsch, Drängen und Verlangen, der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft doch noch ein Ende zu bereiten (warum dennoch der Sonnenkönig dort oben hängt, darf jeder für sich selbst ausknobeln). In Ermangelung eines besseren ist mein Lebensmotto ‹wenn schon, denn schon›, was angesichts meiner Defizite im menschlichen, zwischenmenschlichen und übermenschlichen Bereich niemanden wundert, der mich kennt. Ich weiß nicht, was ich mit diesem Blog eigentlich will, aber ich schreibe es mit kleineren und größeren Unterbrechungen doch schon seit 2711 Tagen, und so lange es mich noch freut, wird weitergeschrieben. Das letzte Mal hat es hier am 11.12.2011 um 23:33 irgendetwas neues gegeben.

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