Marc's Journal

Corporate Machines

Thoughts on companies, bills, and overpopulation
I was chatting with a friend today about power bills, which led to my phobia of opening official looking envelopes, which developed into a rant about how I hate most of the western world.

Big leap? Perhaps. Good rant? Sure was.

The first time this really struck me was when I was living in Melbourne, working for IBM. I was waiting for a friend who worked for Telstra, in the foyer of his building in the CBD. Huge building, wasn't their main one, but still enormous.

It struck me then, as I watched literally hundreds and hundreds of people pour in and out of that buildling, all clones, all in suits, carrying briefcases, laptops, mobile phones, all carrying on their jobs. And it made me wonder, just how difficult is it to run a telephone company? But then again, Telstra is no longer just a telco, it's huge. But why? Mostly so upper managers can justify their jobs. They have to expand, always with the expanding. And more people are employed to push paper, shake hands, write memos, have meetings, give presentations, and walk in and out of their building past a now doleful looking me as I wonder just how the hell we got ourselves into this mess.

We create jobs to give ourselves something to do. We're so grossly overpopulated, and people need things to do, mostly so we don't get bored and start killing ourselves, but secondly because today's society has self-worth all tied up with your job. If you've got a good job, you have high self-worth. So we create these monster companies like Telstra to give all these poor sods a job to make themselves feel important, like they've got something to do.

And that's just the phone company.

Look at our tax returns? Why are there so many companies now that will do your tax return? Cos we've been so stupid as to make something that basically everyone *has* to do, too difficult to be done by everyone. Look at lawyers - we've made the law so complex that we have to hire people at $500 an hour just to make sense of it. We've become entangled in our own mechanisms to create self-worth.

'Scuse my French, but that's fucked.

We've made our lives so bloody difficult to live. Now Australia is getting into the "I'll sue!" mentality, just like we perceive America has. We're all very aware of our rights, and dammit we'll sue if we don't get them. I'm sure it's the first thing in people's minds even before they skin their knee, as they trip over a bump in the footpath. "I'll sue the bloody council!".

Fancy raising a suit against McDonalds 'cos the coffee was too fucking hot. I mean, really. Well, what I should say is, fancy him bloody winning? Where the hell have we taken ourselves?

Is it any wonder that people like me pop up from time to time? I joke about an inability to cope with the real world, and I truly think that's what it is. I have an abnormal fear of opening letters that come from official looking places. I'm constantly dreading bad news. I hate receiving bills. It's not that I don't like paying for them - heck, I use the service, I'm more than happy to pay for it, and I have a good job so I certainly have the money for it. It's just a feeling of dread that comes over me when I go to the mailbox.

Tax eludes me - I can see the logic (or the lack thereof) in the system, and appreciate it as a system, because I'm a programmer and analyst, but when it comes to inserting my personal life into the equation, I simply freeze up. I don't declare any deductions simply because I have a block. I can't even collate bills to give to my accountant, for *them* to work out deductions. It goes on my "to do" list, and stays there, haunting me.

So yeah, I suck. Well, a friend announced the other day she was doing her first tax return in about 5 years. I'm proud of her. If I didn't have my mother constantly nagging me, or a company nagging me whilst I was working overseas, I'd be in the same position. I'm proud of her for facing her demons and doing it. All the more proud because I know how it feels, and I'm not sure I'd be able to do it.

But enough about me, back to my rant. About the state of things. Is it really only to give ourselves something to do? I think it's just because we're overpopulated. Lets go back to the stone ages. Once a community got too big, I mean you didn't really need any more than 3 blacksmiths in a village, then people would branch off and start their own village. But still, we ended up with big towns, and I don't think we were "corporate" then. There would have been a few jobs in those towns simply to organise the town, but that's a council, that's fair enough.

So when did we get this "expand and make millions" mentality? I can understand why a local corner store decides to start selling alcohol - it's meeting the needs of the people nearby, it's adding value by making their lives easier, stopping them having to travel further. I can understand why malls exist - so you can get all your shopping done in one place.

But these big global companies that just suck up other companies, and merge, make money, create jobs, sack people, have takeovers.. it's all beyond me. AOL Time-Warner. Now there's a big company. 3M. Don't they own Kodak? Don't they also make post-it notes? Don't they also make pharmaceuticals?

I think we're all deluded. I think most people who go to their corporate jobs don't even know if they add value to anyone's lives or not. Just their own - they make money for their family. That's fair enough, but I think socially their job is a waste of time. Oh, I'm not pulling some holier-than-thou stunt, half of my jobs have been a complete waste of time. But I'm certainly drawn towards adding value where at all possible. Currently I'm working on online learning - I make it easier for people to study online, I make their experience more pleasant, and easier to use. I think I'm adding value. But I certainly don't fool myself why my boss does it - he does it to make money.

I don't have any solutions for this situation we've gotten ourselves into. I'd have to have more of a think about it. We're overpopulated, we've got to this point, we should seriously think about the way the world might turn in the next ten years. More population = more jobs = more bullshit. I think we're on a downward spiral, and I pity my unborn children.

Maybe that's it.. Maybe we should seriously think about why we have children. And how many we have! My brother has four. He and his wife are two. Once they're dead, that's two extra bodies on the planet. I don't think that's particularly responsible.

Although they say Australia is an aging population, and I remember someone saying we actually should be having more children.

Who knows, eh?

Civil Liberties

Ideas on Iraq and civil rights at home
Last night at dinner with the in-laws (my boyfriend's mother's 50th birthday dinner, actually) we all got onto the debate of Iraq, and America's actions and attitudes. Great conversation ensured. As a family, we never talked like that. No one ever really had an opinion at the dinner table; we sat, we ate, we got up, we went our separate ways. Dinner was just a functional thing, not an intellectual thing.

Which is why I love dinner with the in-laws.

So last night it was his dad saying (about his brother and myself) that we're just America haters, we'd hate anything America chooses to do, we could find fault with anything they'd do. It's not that, although America does give us plenty of material to whinge about.

I believe the crux of what we were arguing about, was civil liberties. I'm a great believer in the analogy that countries are people, with all the associated issues. We, as individuals, have a right to privacy. We have a right to access to a lawyer when accused of a crime. And the police can't come into our house (at least in Australia) without first obtaining a search warrant from a magistrate. And there has to be a good explanation given by the police to the magistrate to get that warrant.

Lets take my countries = people analogy. US = police. Iraq = citizen. UN = magistrate. In this instance, the UN did give the warrant, infact they helped look. But they didn't find anything. The police, without any evidence, ignored the advice of the magistrate, and barged into the house, not only violating the civil liberties of the residents, but also trying to assasinate the head of the house, and then change the way the house runs.

Obviously there are differences, but it's basically the same thing. Iraq was judged guilty by the people who don't have the right to judge them guilty. We have the UN for that. But now with the US doing what they damn well please, it's much the same as a crime syndicate doing what it wants because the police are powerless to stop them. And who wants to piss off crime sydicates? No one.

Now, I'm mostly being a devil's advocate here. I believe that yes, there probably were WMD in Iraq, and that Saddam Hussein is a bad person, used murder to get his own way, maltreated his people, etc etc. And yes, I think Iraq probably would be a nicer place with a democracy.

But we have international laws for a reason. For the same reason it's illegal for the police to enter your house without a warrant. Sometimes the criminals will get away with the crime. Sometimes they'll get away with murder. But the second we take away the common person's right to privacy, and security within their own home, and give that right to the police to enter their home, then we're living in a police state.

Heck, I'd much rather a magistrate made the decision to ransack my house looking for evidence, rather than the average policeman. The average policeman isn't interested in justice, he's interested in answers for the mysteries he's trying to solve. We have magistrates who are appointed to keep our civil liberties.

Here's another analogy, which we also discussed last night.

A common storyline on cop shows and legal shows is the plot where the cops have obtained evidence illegally. We the viewer know the accused is guilty, the cops know it, the judge knows it, even the jury knows it. But because the evidence was obtained illegally, it's inadmissable, and the accused gets away with murder. The average person screams "injust!" and I don't blame them. It pisses me off, too. But as my bf's brother said last night, he'd rather 12 criminals go unpunished, than 1 innocent person incarcerated. Or even executed, in some states of America. And I agree. We have to maintain our civil liberties.

My bf's father lives in a reasonably affluent suburb, and has a good job, two educated healthy sons, and a loving wife. He doesn't do anything wrong. He'll never break the law, and chances are, he'll never be accused of something he hasn't done. He can't *know* what it's like to be falsely accused of something. He'll never live in a country where his way of life is threatened. Iraqi's have a way of life too, and we're threatening it. I asked him "so if Iraq moved into Australia, forced you to worship Allah, pray 5 times a day, cover your wife from head to toe, not eat meat, how would you feel?" He said "if I lived under a government that has been guilty of genocide, and the new regime promised to do things fairly, I'd be standing at the wharves, waving them in, welcoming their way of life." Besides thinking that's bullshit, I then pointed out that the Australian government *had* been guilty of genocide with the Australian Aboriginals, and he went rather quiet at that point. Still, I think it's remarkably easy for him to make those kind of value calls from the safety of his dining table, knowing that Australia is "friends" with the biggest bully in the school yard with the biggest fists.

The US judged Iraq without due process, and found them guilty, having ignored the independant arbiter in the process. To me, that's illegal. And we lose a culture along with it. The middle east has supported life (whether or not we personally agree with that way of life) for thousands of years. America is a baby, compared to them, what gives the US the right to march in and shove a democracy down their throat? Japan had functioned for over 500 years without a civil war, before America decided it needed to industrialise them. America started with a religious argument, then commited genocide with the American Indians, had a civil war to get it's own independance, and now is taking away the independance of a different country, under the guise of "giving them their independance".

Is anyone else worried that America has troops in many many MANY countries throughout the world now? If you think "no", ask yourself would you be worried if they were all German troops stationed all throughout the world, and Germany had access to so many weapons of mass destruction. I think you'd sleep a little less easy.

I see the US like a tv evangelist. They think they're right. They think they have the only solution. They think everyone would benefit from seeing things their way. People who think differently are going to hell. Their life's mission is to convert everyone to their way of thinking, and they can't fathom how someone might like to live a little differently.

Personally, I don't agree with Saddam Hussein's politics, and murder doesn't sit right with me. Neither do nuclear weapons of any sort. But what sits even less right with me, is blindly treating everyone that doesn't think the same as you, as a criminal that needs to be "fixed".

Australia is one of the most diverse countries in the world, we are made up of so many different cultures. Unfortunately my bf's father doesn't see that as a good thing. I think we should embrace diversity, and enjoy our differences, and see everyone as equal. And admitting that even if you don't understand someone, a culture, a race, a country, you accept them anyway. We're all equal!