THE RECORD
July 31, 2002

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

A veiled propaganda letter in favour of deregulating and selling BC Hydro appeared in our local paper signed by John Winter, President of the BC Chamber of Commerce. It was the usual string of rosy promises for economic benefits, lower costs, job creation we heard so many times before in praise of so called free trade that brought us nothing but industries destroyed, food banks, chronic unemployment, and loss of democratic rights. Meanwhile, GDP figures are showing growth from exported resources without any benefits to the Canadian public.

The stated purpose of economics is the distribution of scarce resources, not turning people into pigs to nose each other from the trough in the sacred name of so called competitive equilibrium, where less than 400 people around the world own and control over half of the wealth and resources, with the other half is unequally divided by over 6 billion. Just about all past and present economic theories have become tools of extortion and colonization in the hands of self appointed ruling classes and the present reigning one is among the worst.

The economic system now taught in our universities is called "neo classical theory", based on harebrained leaps of faith and fraudulent accounting. It destitutes and kills more people around the world in the long term than both World Wars and the death camps of Hitler, Stalin and Mao put together. It is an updated mixture of the laissez faire economics of Dickensian Britain and the Soviet politburo system.

If there is one lesson I've learned in my years under every known ideological system, it is that the same predator class will come out on top no matter what ideology, or religion they are using for weapons.

While the ruling corporations spend huge amounts on anti-government, anti-public ownership and anti-taxation propaganda, they cover up the fact that their profits are also forms of unilateral taxation, without any accountability to the public. No matter what, all taxes and profits must come out of the same pockets and it makes no difference who spends them. The only difference is for what they are spent and whether the public has any control and say in the way they are spent. We can question the spending habits of elected officials, but we have no say on how billions are spent by corporations on wasteful luxuries, yachts, private jets, jewelry , etc.

Costs can not be cut, only transferred on others. Deregulation and privatization always increases costs. We have enough examples of this by now such as natural gas, phones, medicines, etc. When hospitals are closed, or workers fired as "efficiency" measures, costs are immediately increase and are carried by the victims and the public in general.

Premier Gordon Campbell hasn't cut anything in reality, instead he has increased and transferred costs on other sectors and the environment. This is the real time honoured purpose of economic competition and colonization.

The now negotiated General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) will remove public control from 160 services, including health, education, water, government procurements, etc. right down to municipal bylaws on zoning and business hours. It will force the selling out of public services to multinationals. This has already happened in a number of countries, such as Argentina, leaving the public without any rights, or control. The result, as we have seen, is poverty, destitution and riots.

The purpose of the US lumber tariffs is not protectionism, but the planned wrecking of the Canadian economy so it can be picked up by multinationals for a song under NAFTA rules.

Gordon Campbell's job is to remove all public control, dismantle, privatize and hand over the BC economy to multinational corporate rule. The main reason for selling BC Hydro's services to US companies is that under NAFTA and WTO rules they can never again be re-regulated.

Because the purpose of economic competition and globalization is not to lower costs, but to increase them and divert the benefits to multinationals, our living costs have at least doubled and in many cases tripled since the first US-Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1989. While our economists are shedding crocodile tears about so called government subsidies and high wages, they ignore that these free trade agreements are the biggest subsidies to a special interest group in history.

If Hydro, or its delivery services are sold and our energy costs increase there won't be a major mill working in BC within a year. The removal of the appurtenance laws and the now entrenched export of raw logs will permit corporations to force their employees to either decertify their unions and work for minimum wages, or face the removal of both logs and the machinery out of the country. This is called the "discipline of the marketplace."

The rumoured rebuilding of the new BC ferries offshore instead of in our own shipyards will increase and transfer costs on the public through the destruction of our shipbuilding industry, loss of revenues in BC, unemployment, illness, crimes, and so on. Yet, these pathetic fools still call it "cost savings to the taxpayer."

Copyright (c) 2002, West's International