I borrowed Jason's copy of Jennifer Government, a new novel by Max Barry. it's a pretty unsublte moral tale, seemingly a rebuttal to Orwell's 1984 in which government is on its last legs and mega corporations have taken over the world. In Barry's words:
Welcome to paradise! The world is run by American corporations (except for a few deluded holdouts like the French); taxes are illegal; employees take the last names of the companies they work for; the Police and the NRA are publicly-traded security firms; and the U.S. government only investigates crimes it can bill for.
In other words, corporations bad, government good. It's actaully a pretty interesting read, at least between eyeball rolls. Barry has a good pace and an interesting ear for dialogue and plot. But as a social commentator, Barry fails. His idea of the current social regime is that taxes lend a sense of "community" (p. 230) to the citizenry, and that, govenrment is the "biggest impediment" to the interests of megacorporations like Nike, I.B.M., and General Motors.
Hogwash.
First off, anyone that feels a sense of community from having their earnings confiscated by the government needs their heads examined. Since World War II, the U.S. government has raked in an average of 18% of the entire American economy per year in taxes, compared to around 5% before - almost all of that increase coming out of the pockets of individual Americans in form of payroll and income taxes. (Prior to the war, most government revenues came from excise taxes on imported goods and certain goods like liquor and tobacco). Has there been a corresponding increase in the sense of "community" in America? That question is left as an exercise to the reader.
As to the second point, government is a drag on big business, yes, but big busines has become very adept at co-opting government power to its own benefit. Big business has the resource to comply with government mandates; small business often don't. The loss of small neighborhood businesses decried by anti-globalist ideologues can be seen as a fairly close correltor with the rise of big government and big corporations in tandem. Government, more than anything, is a partner of big business in keeping the little guy down. Barry, whose anti-coporate screed on was published by Doubleday, and probably written on a corporate-produced computer, seems willfully ignorant in his desire to trash business and idealize government and anti-corporate vandals.
If someone lends you the book, it's worthwhile reading, if only to see inside Max Barry's mind and those who sympathize. I can't predict whether the upcoming movie will be any better.
Posted by wasylik at February 8, 2003 06:13 PM | TrackBack