Apparently, I scared the shit out of Glenn Beck on Thursday.

[JDPriestly]

30. Great post. May I elaborate on it.

1. "What balances wealth out?"
Time changes the playing field. The great railroad fortunes of the Vanderbilts declined somewhat when the car became popular. Airlines will disappear when gas is unaffordable unless business decides to find some new fuel.

2. "Giving people a chance to start their own business" and
3. "Giving the entrepreneur a chance to start their own business"
Sorry, Mr. Beck, but read the history of the 19th century magnates and how they made their fortunes. The one thing J.D. Rockefeller, to cite one example, did not want or encourage was giving others in the oil business the chance to start their own enterprises. Rockefeller did everything he could to consolidate the oil industry, to organize it neatly, to rid it of competition. Same for AT&T for a long time. And now big business colludes. We have a smattering of different brand names but the companies are not really in competition when it comes to the important things like setting product standards. In some cases, products sold under different brands are made by the same people in the same factories. And the buy-outs and immense capital of most of our multinational companies exclude small competitors as soon as they start their businesses.
The business of Walmart is not to allow other businesses to start or succeed. The business of Walmart is to undercut any small whippersnapper who decides to try to compete. Walmart is in there -- bigger parking lot, stock focused to cut out worthy competition, underpricing. And so it has been since Vanderbilt squeezed out his competitors from the ferry and railroad markets.

4. "but because of this government standing in the way--through regulation and everything else"
This government -- bought by the multinational corporations. Makes no difference which party is in control, the multinational corporations write or at least edit and approve legislation and regulations. The regulations help stifle competition, but that is the way big business wants it to be. Think of the regulations that define "organic" products. They are unreasonably strict, thus preventing organic farmers from labeling and selling their products for what they are: organic. Big agriculture at work making sure that you can't tell which products are just a mass of chemicals and which are real food. You have to tell from the taste.

5. "only the rich can play in that territory, and so you are destined to be a serf"
True. And its big business that makes certain that is the case.

It's a shame that Glenn Beck does not see a little further to the men pulling the strings of the puppets in government. Labor used to have a voice, but the export of our manufacturing jobs to China by big business insures that labor's power to at least balance out the multinationals is weak, nearly non-existent.

Glenn Beck needs to wake up. And if he did, he would recognize that the real threat to the US is the fact that any morning now we could wake up and discover that we ordinary folks including his viewers can no longer afford the imports from China and elsewhere and are left with no industry, no jobs and a lot of destitute and hungry people.

By the way, have you seen what is happening in the gold markets recently?

http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html

The trend over the past year has been downward. Poor Glenn Beck. I wonder how many of his viewers still believe what he says.