Corporate Watch, Consumer Responsibility, and Economic Democracy: Forms of political action in the orbit of Basic Income *
The political power of private corporations has grown in the last decades as much as the inability of the States to interfere in their businesses. The control of the public sphere has shifted to the hands of private factions that deprive citizens of their right to control their rulers, a process that mines, even more, their freedom and autonomy to decide on their own lives. This leads to an inexorably extension of the two great threats to individual liberty and autonomy that have been identified by political theory along its history: the dominium and the imperium. The dominium extends because, with a major force every day, the big private powers impose to actors forms of production and of distribution that leave them with a barely audible voice 1 . The imperium extends because, with the advance of those private powers, the States, far in their captivity from devoting themselves to the task of promoting the public good, do nothing but guarantee the statu quo, embracing the action of big corporations and using their coercive apparatus when called to do so.
Better to shop than to vote
This paper begins by reflecting on the current generalised political apathy signalled by low voter turnout and falling party membership. It would appear that people are exercising political choices not at the ballot box but by means of consumer activism. Corporations respond to consumer pressure in a way that governments do not, and are gradually assuming the role of global political actors. But this is a dangerous state of affairs for several reasons. In the first place, social welfare can never be the core activity of corporations. Corporate social motives are commercial, and there is a danger that their social policy decisions will be driven by the logic of the market place rather than social need. Recession, for instance, will curtail their social responsiveness, as will decisions to relocate. It is also the case that partnerships between governments and corporates run the risk of removing checks on the growth and abuse of corporate power. And finally, what price does society have to pay for the growth of corporate benevolence?
Hill country sheep production. I. The influence of age, flock, and year on some components of reproduction rate in Romney and Border Leicester × Romney ewes.
Data from 7,091 straightbred Romney and Border Leicester × Romney ewes grazed at the Whatawhata Hill Country Research Station over the period 1959 to 1967 have been used to obtain estimates of flock and age-of-ewe effects on reproduction rate and its components and of year-to-year variation. The ewes were from six groups: a Romney control (RCR) flock, a Romney flock in which ewes were mated either to Romney (RER) or to Border Leicester rams (REB), and flocks of first-cross (F1), second-cross (F2), and third-cross (F3) Border Leicester × Romney ewes mated to first-cross Border Leicester × Romney rams. The ewes' ages at lambing varied from 2 to 5 years and no selection was practised. The ratio of number of lambs weaned per ewe present at lambing increased from the RCR (0.84) to the F1 (1.07), then declined with interbreeding to the F2 (0.92) and further to the F3 (0.87) ewes. Similar changes were evident for the percentage of ewes lambing, of multiple births, and of lambs surviving to weaning. Over...