I think we need to get a national dialogue going about corporate profits.

[Initech]

The big companies are making money hand over fist. They're not hiring new workers. Instead they're cutting costs, cutting every corner they can, outsourcing jobs, and exploiting the American people. In the last year, actually in the last 10 years starting under George W. Bush, but in the last year especially, we've seen big business at its' absolute worst - with the Gulf Spill, with the Citizen's United decision, with the Tea Party Express, with Goldman Sachs and their obscene "bonuses", you name it. But this question needs to be asked - how much profit is too much? What are they going to do with all that money? Start their own space program?

[tabatha]

1. Control everything.

Force everyone to become a Christian.

[Hannah Bell]

2. kr. hire their own armies & spies. whoops, they already do.

[snappyturtle]

3. They're probably going to buy another home.....on foreign soil. nt

[Initech]

4. Blackwater/Xe already did.

And I'm sure it's so Erik Prince could escape prosecution for treason and war crimes.

[Newest Reality]

5. They will use their profits and technology to

hatch an elaborate plan to cull a large part of the world's population. That's my speculation on why we see the living situation for the masses becoming increasingly dismal, dire and irreproachable without a sign of remedy. The wealthy families behind the corporations don't give a damn and are probably more aware of the perfect storm that the anti-life of massive, industrial civilization has helped to produce.

It's just a speculation, but feasible. Ethnic,(and other kinds) cleansing is a fact of history, so this would be a form of cleansing based on enviro-survivalism. Get rid of the "worthless eaters" in a covert way and regroup and create new dynasties while the biosphere recuperates. If you can manage to stockpile or continue some of the current technology, you only need so many Serfs to run it.

One of the reasons I relate this hypothetical that we are clearly at the extreme tipping point when it comes to the impact on the environment that has ensued from the industrialized way of life. Then, there are the water, energy and resource issues to boot. If I were wealthy, in power and without any compassion or humanity, I could consider that it is now down to survival and could evoke the false, survival of the fittest, social Darwinism as the reason.

A grand conspiracy theory! I just wanted to air it for the heck of it, not to convince anyone of its feasibility or validity.

[Starry Messenger]

6. Elon Musk already started his own space program.

[Initech]

7. So did the guy who owns Virgin Airlines.

Wait, they really are, aren't they?

[Starry Messenger]

11. Yup.

It's for real.

[ThomCat]

8. What national corporate media outlet is going to host that dialog

and provide talking heads to promote it and facilitate it? Then, do you really expect any national corporate media outlet to promote and advertise that dialogue so that people hear about it?

That just isn't going to happen.

The people and organizations that created and profit from a situation are not going to be the ones who call it a problem or rally people to organize to change it. And they aren't going to let you do it either.

[Initech]

9. True.

One of two things needs to happen unless an economic revolt does. The first is that we could get this dialogue going. The second is we could find a way to devalue their currency.

[ThomCat]

10. But their currency is our currency too.

So how do we devalue their currency without cutting our own throats? What we would need to do is eliminate their control of the currency somehow. But how do you possibly make banks non-essential? How do you possibly chance the monetary system so that it isn't entirely based on debt and wide-scale poverty?

[WinkyDink]

12. Mother Jones/The Nation/The New Republic----nothing "gets through" to Mr./Mrs. Average Joe.