The Brave Pedestrian

Like I said in an earlier post, a crucial thing that they don’t teach you at school is that being a winner in life isn’t about winning in all that you do, but about building a good relationship of give-and-take with the world around you. How do you do that? Well, mostly by trusting and being trustworthy. You set out every morning trusting that the world and its creatures will treat you right, and play fair by you. You make a habit of casting a generally benign eye at everything and everyone. Without necessarily setting out to be a do-gooder, you must generally cultivate the feeling that if the call to serve comes (whatever that may mean in that particular context), you will serve honestly without holding back for any reason. That’s the sort of vague but firm belief that we have in our key relationships — with our parents, siblings, spouses, children and close friends. In the absence of this promise to the world, your relationship with the world and all that lives in it,  including...

Every schoolchild is taught that there are three organs of state, namely Legislature, Executive & Judiciary. What they don't teach is that there is a fourth organ -- a secret one: CORPORATES. Companies. Also known as Big Business. They are the ruling classes. We The People are the masses. Unknown to us, the corporate sector is closely involved with every legislature that is elected, and every government that is formed. It funds every political party in mostly secret ways, and  it extracts its price in ways that you and I will never realize. Companies get a huge advantage from being a "legal person", from having huge budgets for giving bribes to political parties, individual legislators and government officials. The sort of white-collar criminality that companies routinely get away with is so large and so widespread, that it is invisible. For instance, telecom, power, insurance and building construction companies have made cheating customers into such a rout...