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The author is an intellectual, which is good, however, he is so caught up in his own world view (which is distorted) that he arrives at many false conclusions. 1) all of American progress is due to capitalism and freedom to do what you want. False, Thomas Jefferson said “If men were angels, we wouldn’t need government.” We need a big government to have enough power to control giant corporations. That should be obvious now, as we are about to fail & fall into another depression because of the greedy SOB’s who screwed us all, and stole money right and left, because Bush destroyed most of the oversight and watchdogs who were trying to keep unbridled greed from running rampant! Capitalism without morality and a stronger structure to keep oversight is the same as totalitarianism, as it will inevitably lead to one successful corporation destroying another until there is only one left. As an example, look at the excesses of Microsoft when it was in its heyday. There were dozens of excellent computer programs written/invented in the late 1980′s and early to mid-1990′s which were brought about by small businesses, and which their survival depended on selling. In most cases like this, and I am aware of close to 10 personally I was interested in, Microsoft announced they were going to add that feature either to their operating system, or to Internet Explorer in the next year. In every case I know of like this, the sales of these small start-up companies (the kind that create the 5000 year leap) dropped so drastically, that the companies went bankrupt and died out. In the vast majority of these cases, Microsoft never did bring out the feature they had said they would. It is not clear to me if they were just plain evil, or if they were intending to produce something like the products they killed off, but in either case, no one else would dare step in and try to produce it, after seeing how the originators of the idea were crushed by the larger corporation, Microsoft. 2) Perhaps this man’s ideals could be met by a modified form of capitalism wherein there was some society or government defined limit to how big a company could be allowed to grow. It should be obvious to everyone today that when some companies grow too big they suffer from the dictator at the top. (In case you never thought about it, the government that everyone seems to like to vilify and hate, is elected by us, but the CEO of your company is the dictator that can fire you any time he wants, and thus he has life and death control over whether or not you can pay for your house and feed your family.) The corporate CEO does not answer to you, and you cannot vote for or against him unless you own stock, and in a large corporation that means very little, because the amount of stock you can afford is a paltry percentage of the total amount unless you are a billionaire. One of the major problems in the world now is the growth to humongous size of corporations, so that they are able to control governments. A few examples: a) look at the horror and devastation that Shell Oil has brought on several small South American nations, where they are so powerful that they can afford to give millions of dollars (or hundreds of millions) to support corrupt politicians, and they are (or at the very minimum were up until a few years ago) polluting the environment to the point they should have senior executives being tried for mass murder! (Watch some of the environmentally oriented documentaries on educational or science channels for more details) There are multiple whole villages where massive increases in cancer are seen from all the organic toxins just being dumped on the ground, or where oil pipelines are leaking, but it’s cheaper to let them leak, then to repair them. This is great for the efficiency of capitalism, but morally reprehensible to the average human. Similarly, towns in Nigeria are now uninhabitable due to oil company callousness (I think this may also be from Shell Oil actually). Another example of a company grown too large, too big in the ego of the CEO, and creating disaster for others, including almost ALL of its employees is Enron. Enron purposely re-designed the way its accounting practices were carried out so it could deceive the investors and its own employees. It is a perfect example of what happens when capitalism is allowed to run free with no laws, morals or oversight from a more powerful government that has enough power to control it. It was not controlled in the end, it simply imploded, and maybe less than a dozen of the exploiters who screwed grandmothers in California out of their life savings (making them pay higher electric bills due to purposely staging brownout when there was plenty of power available), as opposed to hundreds or thousands of immoral SOB’s who should have gone to jail for the equivalent of economic war crimes against the American public. 3) American giant corporations are NOT American. Look at Haliburton, who screwed the American taxpayer out of billions of dollars by having no bid contracts in Iraq, thanks to having Vice President Cheney as a friend in the White House. They have now moved their corporate headquarters to Dubai, an Arab country! All these SOB’s care about is earning more money, and damn whomever gets in their way. 4) There are good things that have been done by large corporations, but that does not mean we should roll over as this author seems to think, and just let everyone have at it, doing whatever they want to, to try and invent or build whatever they can get away with. 5) Look at China today, that’s the closest thing we have to pure capitalism on the planet today. The government lets them run wild, only pulling them in when they threaten to destroy their trade advantages by causing bad headlines such as those with the poisoning of our dogs, or the lead based paint on children’s toys sent to America. (Then they finally did what maybe we should do with some of our evil CEO’s, they executed some of them.) That serves as a good reminder to the next guy that maybe he should not just do what he can get away with all the time.) 6) One of the most obvious Errors in this book is possibly closest to me. As a physician, with real knowledge of how drugs are tested, OK’ed by the FDA, and recalled, I am aware of the huge influence that multibillion dollar companies have on drug regulation. The FDA in the last 10 to 20 years has started allowing many more drugs to be put on the market, based on studies funded by the drug industry! (Has anyone here heard of conflict of interest?) Obviously, if your University or you as a professor of Medicine obtain a multi-million dollar grant to research a drug for a company that is paying you the millions of dollars, you are going to be influenced (even if it’s subconsciously) to not want to “bite the hand that feeds you.” A specific example is the drug Vioxx, an anti-inflammatory drug. Soon after it was released onto the market, there began to be reports that there were a significant number of people having kidney failure due to use of this drug. It was still not pulled off the market for almost 2 more years, as the FDA (which is highly compromised) kept putting off pulling it, based on arguments from the drug company, and listening to arguments like: “What will those people using it do, there’s no good substitute for it?” [Yeah, well, there’s no good substitute for having your own functioning kidneys either!)
I think you guys get the point. Capitalism unbridled is a horror of manipulation and domination by the most efficient company, which does not mean the most compassionate and caring company. Corporate bottom lines are based on profit, not on not killing people or polluting the environment, and basically, we should not let capitalism run rampant without large powerful government oversight, or we will eventually be in a dictatorship run by one company with executives that we do not get to vote in or out of office. Thanks for reading.
Rating: 1 / 5
fans of W.C.S. will, no doubt, eat up Everything he had to say, this approach leaves little room for literary or factual criticism.
-Where did the title use of ‘Five Thousand’ years come from? from the fundamental view (sans Facts) that the world was ‘created’ in six thousand years, that we’re now in the “Last Days” before Christ’s return, etc.
(image of man on the Moon seen on the cover)-Did WCS ‘conveniently’ forget to mention that J.F. Smith told the LDS people that earthlings would ‘Never’ reach the moon as it wasn’t/isn’t in (our) man’s domain?
-As far as the Constitution: (which fans believe was inspired) Does it tell to whom citizenship benefits apply?
-At what age does an individual become a citizen with Constitutional Rights available?
-”Inspired”, but didn’t forbid SLAVERY??? I ask: Inspired by-from WHOM?
-What about the Military DRAFT, wherein 100′s of thousands (millions?)of individuals (mostly Males, of course) have been conscripted into involuntary service-labor, at sometimes the pain of death/severe disablements?
Preaching to the Choir, plain & simple
Rating: 1 / 5
All cultures have a mythology that supports them. This book gives the reader a good dose of the American mythology: greatest nation the world has ever known and all that. Mythology is important – don’t get me wrong. I love Joesph Campbell as much as the next guy. The trouble starts when a culture’s mythology starts to crumble. Or taken literally … and a little too seriously. Our trouble isn’t the former as is commonly believed, but the later. America is really, really good at a lot of things, but mostly we are as mediocre as the rest of the world but we just don’t want to see it.
Rating: 3 / 5
Glenn Beck and I went to high school together and I can tell you from personal experience that he has never had an original idea in his life. He pleaded with me to read this book and I’m rather dissapointed. It’s totally predictable right wing trash – similar to those intellectually draining political dissertations by the mighty drug addicted self-proclaimed genuius known as Rush Limberger! How can this silly book explain what the founders wanted for my family, for this country and for the world? The world was a different place then and slavery was acceptable. Our beloved forty-third president and his gang of waterboarding enthusiasts violated the principles on which this country was founded, which has resulted in most of the problems that we are now going through. This book makes great sense if you are totally naive and one can short of a six-pack if you get my meaning… which I sincerely doubt.
Rating: 4 / 5
If the founding fathers were so smart, how there are still 40+M Americans without health insurance? And also why does US have the highest poverty-, and infancy death rate of the developed world?
Rating: 5 / 5