Bigger? A Direct Threat to the United States

Bigger is NOT better. In fact in 1890 there was public outcry against monopolistic activities, those that led to becoming too big, too dominating, and too powerful. As a result Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Clayton Antitrust Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act were both passed in 1914 in follow up. These laws placed things in check for a period of time. During the 1980's, however, the antitrust laws were not rigorously enforced. Since that time there appears to be only hand slaps as not only corporations grow dominate in certain areas , but vital industries such as banking /finance, energy / oil, transportation, pharmaceutical, Internet & social networking, healthcare, communications, and others have fallen into the hands of the giant few.

We now frequently hear the phrase “too big to fail”. Why is it that no one questions how and why these entities, in direct opposition to anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, were allowed to get so big? In fact “too big to fail” is the exact antithesis of the antitrust laws that were felt to be critically important at the time.

Yet the very fact that these entities have been allowed to become “too big to fail” is a direct threat to the democracy and the sovereignty of the United States, and our personal freedoms. It also absolves all responsibility and in most cases the taxpayers of America end up paying to prop up the failing industry.

It gets much, much worse, since it propels itself to not only vital industries, but to government itself. The Founders of our country knew that the best way to preserve our democracy was to keep the power at the local and state levels, closest to the people. Yet today we have the pulling of all power to the federal level, with a great deal of new governing activity at the international level. The further distance the government is from the people, the worse the plight of the people. In this process not only do people have less and less to say in the governing and decisions that affect them, but they begin to incrementally lose personal freedoms.

In the rational and responsible world if you have several entities competing in a particular industry and one through mismanagement, corruption, or whatever the cause, fails…you let it fail. That is reality! You take whatever lumps that occur, learn from it, and go on. Not only is this being responsible and rational…it is actually vital to allow this to happen. Yet what we see is the tying together of entire industries into bigger and bigger super structures. The great danger of the “too big to fail” philosophy is that you allow things to be positioned such that if one fails, it brings down the entire industry…or, the entire country. How have we ever allowed this to happen?

For America, we are allowing ourselves to get dragged into dependency on the international level, as well. You notice recently how the economic failure of Greece is being ALLOWED to bring down the global economy, including that of the United States. We give billions of dollars to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) without the approval of the American people, they then turn around and require us to pay into the IMF and dictate certain directions concerning our economy. This should never, never be. This same scenario is happening with the G-20, the World Bank, the International Court, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and more. They make it appear that we need to think “global”, and tell us that everything is global today, and this lulls us into giving up everything that our nation was founded upon. A big mistake. The American people have little or nothing to say, even our Congress is circumvented, yet these global organizations are being allowed to incrementally control vital aspects of our country, and in turn, the people of America. Through this process our Constitution is being violated, and along with that our democracy, our personal freedoms, and even the sovereignty of the United States is threatened.. Bigger is not better!

Recently we had a power outage in the Northeast where over a million people were without electricity. Local municipalities are now tied into bigger regional and national grids. When the grid goes down millions of people are affected. Is this a good thing? Is bigger better? Or is it better to have local control over power generation and when a storm or an outage happens a larger population is not affected….hundreds, or thousands, vs. millions? Is there also a better, clearer, and faster opportunity to fix the problem at the local level? Bigger may not be better since the responsibility lies close to the people who are affected…just as in the government examples.

We are on a very dangerous path with our country. Vital industries and control are being allowed to fall into the hands of a few. On the international level we are allowing our Constitution, our democracy, our freedoms, and our sovereignty as a nation to slip away into the hands of international organizations where the American people have no say.

Bigger IS NOT better. Our Founders were genius in forming our great country so that control would be at the local level, not the federal, and certainly not the international level. Yet the current trend is just the opposite, and dangerously so. This trend is a direct threat to our country. It is time for all good Americans to speak up and act.