Someone came from Mars to analyze our mass communication system. They would be more likely to see. and conclude that the most important issues are either not conveyed over our mass communication system television. Or are relegated to a tiny slot in the evening news or an occasion occasional. documentary Who's time allocations early dwarfed by cops and robbers soap operas? and entertainment and yeah, this is the greatest communication system is ever been devised. It is going to increase in terms of its ability to facilitate communication is it links up with satellites? It's going to give people the opportunity unless the media Monopoly to prevent it like AT&T or the networks, give people the opportunity to have direct telephonic and television communication with one another student groups can have their own part of a channel via satellite to communicate with student groups all over the country in the world labor groups Farm groups. teacher groups There is just that amount of technological abundance in the whole Satellite Communication Revolution. What it does, is it dramatically opens up more access and dramatically cut the price? Now this is a threat to the established communication interest. Which obviously can maximize their profits on their investment. If they can continue operating a system of technological scarcity a few channels for example, instead of hundreds. And they are obviously not very enthrall either by cable TV, which they managed to suppress and. For over two decades and was ready at the end of the 40s. And of course now they're moving into Washington to try to make sure that federal policy restricts and conditions all kinds of access to the satellite world. I'm sure is that it would be an easy case to make that this should be one of our top issues in our public dialogue because underneath all those communication you may think health insurance is important you may think of pollution control is important. You may think cutting out government waste is important. You may think of civilizing the toilet training are giant corporations is important but underneath all is the ability for you to communicate with one another Back in the late 19th century when the farmer's Revolt was underway. Something which many farmers today don't know anything about unfortunately. How it started in Texas, Oklahoma spread North and throughout the southeast. They could only communicate to one another by lecturing they literally had people going around the hustings lecturing they were the organizers. And they have no telephone no Telegraph Telegraph and television obviously. In the middle middle 1880s. They signed up over 200,000 farmers in Texas alone. the form the farmers Alliance enough movement was probably the last fundamentally. A democratic drive to challenge the power of the banks in the power of the railroads power of the large corporations. What came on later in the Progressive. Was relatively modest in concept compared to what these Farmers had mine? What's all this amounts to is for us to keep asking ourselves? Why is it that we don't spend our time as students or citizens using students generically students are citizens. On these important issues. Why aren't we exposed to the opportunities to the facts to our role to our rights? When we are living a. Of our society. What is Grace by good deal Leisure Time? And by good deal of communication technology. But one of the reasons of course is what might be called a limited frame of reference. This is a another way of describing a limited perspective. Let me give you an illustration with a limited perspective can be like So if you go to law school and you will really find out what a limited perspective can be like. When I was a law school in the 50s. I went to Harvard Law School. The first few weeks were involved in a culture rating us to accept the assumptions and the curtailments of that limited education. It was done quite consciously. terms of social activities the pantheon of Heroes the Harvard Law School I presume these bright young people were being in effect old how to be sharp by being Arrow. And they thought of nothing but studying in a very narrow context the law so they get good grades so I can make large used they could get a good job in a corporate law firm. That's where the the the railroad was going to Wall Street. That was the apex of the vision. Well one day I was walking them. About 3 in the morning through the campus such as it is. And I saw a Pages for a book on the lawn underneath one of the dorms. I looked up and all the rooms were dark except one. I had a light on it was a kind of a flapping of the of the shade ever picked up for the pages in at the pages came from from a book on contracts by a famous law professor. And I'm apparently what happened was one of the law students went berserk couldn't figure out the case just went berserk open the window and ripped a page out from the from the casebook fluttered. But my reaction my initial reaction to this. was why did he pick that book? Can you pick some other book? That's limited perspective. and so you have to watch your own perspective because one of the assets Of being in school full time is it you can focus but one of the liabilities is if you focus too narrowly, you deprive yourself of a much Fuller education. No experience. Don't let me illustrate that in the discussion that we're going to have this evening. I'm going to talk largely about corporations. And I'm going to talk about something what students are doing around the country and a preliminary way. It turns a citizen action research. the first corporations whenever somebody asks you where is power in our society. It's useful to make some distinctions. There are different kinds of Power big Power little power. We all know that no power. But there is another important distinction and that is the distinction between generic power and derivative power. The message being perpetrated this country from the business world is that the power is in government? That's where it is. But anybody who studied government? Clinically as well as in terms of operations knows that a great deal of government power is derived from the generic power of wealth. Which is heavily controlled by corporations. I'm not simply speaking of wealth. I'm speaking of wealth that is control. workers in this country have two to three hundred billion dollars in Savings and Loans deposits. But they don't control the use of that money. In terms of where it's going to be invested. There's a big difference between owning property or money and controlling it. and the nature of the evolution of our property sister in our country has been 2 Make very clear. The difference between owning it and controlling it or controlling it. Not onia. If you have a house heavily mortgage you control the house, but it's really not yours. The credit economy is giving people control over property. What is mortgage? On the other hand even more significantly people are given ownership rights or earn ownership rights to hundreds of billions of dollars Pension funds now 220 billion dollars right there. But who controls it who decides where it's going to be invested how it's going to be used in terms of shareholder rights? a few giant Banks and insurance companies Citibank Chase Manhattan Bank of America, Continental, Illinois Prudential Metropolitan song that many so we have to be very careful not to succumb to the myth that this is economy of Diversified property ownership. Because unless this property is also control it doesn't have the Democratic political effect that a diversified ownership of property should have you can still have a lot of people owning property. But basically their serfs in terms of not being able to control light properly. We all know that there is some 20 25 million people own stocks in our country, but they don't have any control over these corporations. For two reasons one is the large blocks of stock are held by other corporations. They own each other. The banks on the Airlines and the insurance companies are into the computer industry and railroads the song. And those of the shares which if you're going to have a stockholders fight, those are the shares that really count. That's where the Leverage is. And circulate the electoral system in a corporation is rigged. As a matter of fact, the only clothes analogy to the way corporate Executives and corporate directors self-perpetuating and elect themselves is the Kremlin the Kremlin got the idea from from the way these companies to do it. Imagine how rig the system is. You have to go to extraordinary lengths as a shareholder voter to find out who the other voters are. Have to show good cause you better have a lawyer. You better be ready for a fight to get the shareholder list. And then of course, you have to finance your challenge, even if you win whereas the incumbents can fight you with the company's money not their money to elect themselves to the board. Or perpetuate their executive roles. But that's only the beginning. It raises the question of how corporations are governed. Why is that important? Let's backtrack a bit. The role of corporate power has never been more immense in this country. You read some of the historical tracks about the power of corporations in the past and their idea of concentrated power. All right was much simpler and much less concentrated than it is today cuz you not only now have 200 giant corporations controlling about 70% of the manufacturing assets of our country. But you have enormously intricate interlocks where if they don't actually control the assets they condition the use of those eyes. You have enormous concentration on the communications industry. The newspaper chains are gobbling newspapers up at such a rate. You can hardly keep track of it. And now the newspaper chains are beginning to gobble each other pretty soon. We'll have five or six giant newspaper chain controlling 90% of the 1800 daily newspapers in the United States then one day they'll get into a little trouble mismanaged some cells and some big conglomerate or some big oil company will come up and say why won't buy you we get Monopoly prices for our products. We got plenty of money will buy it and will save you save these failing newspapers and do the community a service and so pretty soon. You not only have conglomerate media you'll have industrial corporations do with they've never done own outright. more and more of our media after all RCA now owns NBC AT&T wanted to buy ABC in the late 1960s. We managed to block that fortunately when I talk to the president of ABC in 1974. I said to him at the height of the ITT Scandal eyes, aren't you? Glad you're not you're not owned by ITT? And he said You Bet Your Life we are never when you went before Congress. You said that you couldn't survive as a network unless you have the cash resources. That ittt could bring you and how come now, you're not number one and you're making money. He said well when the ITT deal fell through we rolled up our sleeves and I told our Executives we have to go to work and become more Innovative and efficient. Zach exactly what the point is all about. That it's not just that the concentration of corporate power deteriorates. If not destroys our democracy politically cuz he can on with power invariably translates into political party specially with our Congress and our legislators up for sale. It was a private campaign Finance system the way it is. But it also reduces Innovation increases and efficiency the idea that these giant corporations are giant because their most efficient is nonsense. You take Prudential Metropolitan there of the top 50 life insurance companies in this country at least 30 of them give you a better deal then Prudential and Metropolitan. Take me to General Motors General Motors group big by buying it bought up companies in the early part of the century running right through the twenties I T & T big by buying 235 companies in the last 15 years. The Inn efficiencies of these corporate bureaucracies is apparent to anybody who's worked in them. Some of you may know people worked in a report in them yourself. Take care of for example of companies that Define efficiency in the following way. They are efficient in terms of their own p&l sheet. But they are grossly inefficient in the costs that they inflict on other people and other people's property like pollution. Like not paying their fair share property taxes at one Factory site after another. What about Reserve mining up in Silver Bay is that company paid its fair share of taxes over the years of course not is taken out enormous Wells from that area. That's an enormously profitable joint venture by Armco Steel in Republic Steel. Not only that but part of their efficiency apparently is at a cost of contaminating Lake Superior. with microscopic particles of asbestos Which will be around for several hundred years and contaminating the air with us. That's part of the cost of their so-called efficiency. So we should ask ourselves who's paying the bill for some of this so-called efficiency. It doesn't come in on their annual report. It doesn't come in on their balance sheet, you know, you look at General Motors annual report. They'll tell you that they sold so many cars this year compared to last year, but they don't say that they caused so many cases of emphysema this year compared to last year. They don't tell you how many rivers or lakes they have poison or how much they dumped into these rivers or lakes. They don't tell you with great pride in their annual report there that there's a leading source of air pollution in the United States their number one. Don't tell you that. Those are costs that cannot be swept under the carpet. I'll look at the way words are defined take the word regulation. Somebody says you regulation. What do you think of government? Why don't you think of Corporations? Because that's not the way the language has been cultured. That's not the meaning. It's giving you that when you go down the street in the city, you are being forced to consume polluted are compliments of the utilities and Industrial Corporation. They are regulating the air that you are consuming. And you can't escape it. You can't go to the polls and throw the Rascals out. You can't refuse to inhale when your breathing. You go down to the gasoline pump. And you end the oil company may tell you we got to get rid of this government regulation of oil prices o and substitute what for cartel regulation of oil prices Exxon Monopoly regulation of oil prices. That's what's been going on. the Exxon Texaco mobile shell companies plus a few others work hand-in-hand with the government oil cartel abroad If OPEC didn't exist, the oil companies would have to create it. Is the greatest thing ever happened to the oil companies? Imagine if you were Exxon with several billion barrels of oil underground the United States, are you owned? And if selling for 350 a barrel 1973 OPEC Jack's the price up worldwide to $12. Your oil is worth a lot more what an incredible in them. except continue to prop up the OPEC cartel Because that's what keeps the price of oil up and if you keep the world price of oil up you can drive the price of gas up natural gas. You can drive the price of cola and uranium. Do all companies never more gluttonous with prophets are telling Washington with their lobbyists everyday. They have to have higher prices why so they have more money to explore and produce oil? Well, what are they using your existing money for? Well, let's make a list Atlantic Richfield bought Anaconda. Copper Mobile Oil is bought Montgomery Ward. Gulf oil wanted to buy the Ringling Barnum Bailey Circus that deal fell through next song Exxon is is is buying a major copper firm in Chile. Mobiloil leaving was thinking of buying the Washington Star newspaper in Washington. Everything's for sale when you got that kind of Slush, Puppie. In other words, what do all companies are doing with these profits are spreading their control and ownership in areas far removed from oil and gas. For instance just a few weeks ago. It was announced that sun Oil Company wanted to pay a billion dollars to buy one of the largest hospital supply equipment firms in the United States becton Dickinson in New Jersey. So where is their credibility? So fortunately stopped very high was the American people no matter how many ads they put on Meet the Press in the evening news energy for a strong America. People still think they're ripping the public off and they have too much power. Which is a good Testament the common sense. No matter how much they spend. What is a more serious problem? That is the oil industry Now controls 65% of the uranium. About 35% of the call 40% of the copper and it just getting underway. They are tying up geothermal leases throughout the West controlling the bulk of that form of energy is only one form of energy that they can't yet figure out how to control the song. And they're trying. They're buying up some small solar firms trying to maneuver control the technology, but nevertheless the sun will be very elusive. How is how is Exxon going to control the wind. Of North Dakota? It's going to be very hard. Even the Congress can't do that. We're dealing here with one of the one of History's major corporate merger movements in our country and it's a much cleverer than the one in the 1890s, which was considered the Big E the real big one. That's it. The fundamental corporate power bases for the for the twentieth century. This one is is not just taking over companies. This one is controlling technology. This one is using government corporations using government to block competition to destroy a competitive Enterprise to fix prices for these companies to limit International Trade. I mean, what is Washington these days it's a bustling Bazaar of accounts receivables for big business. Most of what it does involve shoveling out contracts and privileges and licenses and subsidies and grants. The actual regulatory part of Washington like Food and Drug regulation Auto Safety regulation takes up a fraction of 1% of the federal budget. The real expenditure is in the area of Grants Social Security of course, which is a recycling transfer and the other big one is government business. Pentagon government free research and development the big gay And we never recover a big company gets in trouble because it's corrupt or mismanaged and are they ever corrupt or mismanaged? Tell me it's so simple to show it now, for example, / 450 companies have admitted a bribing foreign domestic politicians regularly with knowledge at the top for the most part. It's no little salesman out there in in Brazil trying to get an order. This is Gulf oil Phillips petroleum. the chemical companies they admitted this isn't charged an indictment flat-out official admission to the Securities Exchange Commission and get the information by writing. the violation of laws by corporations principal lawbreakers When students work with us and Washington studying government agencies, they are more astonished when they discover compliance with the law and when they discover violation. When the real thing is to find where the laws being observed. You want to have some fun go to any industry United States any Factory and see if they're paying their proper property taxes shocking how they make the hollow homeowners pay more than their fair share in Gary Indiana, Senator Muskie investigation showed. The u.s. Steel was under assessed by 123 million dollars that one plant to Big want to be sure they are under assessed because U S Steel will not divulge to the property assessor and Gary its books u.s. Steel decides what it's going to pay and I talked to the mayor of Gary a couple years ago. I said, how does it feel? How does it feel to be a mayor of a city dominated by u.s. Steel which pollutes the air in the water threatens to close down? Anytime the city wants to make it a law-abiding company? Have you ever thought of challenging the underpayment of property taxes? You need all the money you can get Gary and he said it would be impossible if we took you a u.s. Steel the car the existing payments would be impounded we wouldn't get enough money to keep our schools going to drag on for years and we just couldn't do it. So we take what we can get law unto itself u.s. Steel. Say the word regulation needs to be given broader interpretation. Our lives are regulated in many ways. He legitimately without consent. by these corporations there is one company Equifax. That has some files on 60 million Americans to credit bureau. How do you know what's in the file? How do you know this is lies or gossip people can lose their job not get a job not get insurance because of the transfer of scurrilous or false information in these files and computer is making very easily done these days. They're very few regulations on that. indeed I'll take another illustration. You probably eat some of the traditional foods the country. hot dogs What's in a hot dog? You know, what's in a hot dog. You care. What's in a hot dog. Maybe you don't want to know what's in a hot dog. The food industry the food industry has learned the selling formula very well with the ingenious misuse of modern chemistry, as long as it can make food palatable easy to chew and colorful or Pleasant to look at it can sell it. That doesn't mean it's nutritious. It's clean. It's safe. But it gets sold the hot dog is a prime example most hot dogs in this country. If you saw how they could be made you would never have another hot dog ever unless you were a self confirm masochist. the average hot dog The average hot dog has about half the meat protein the hot dog had the 1930s when we had a depression has about 30% fat 10 or 12% water added miscellaneous percentages of seasoning preservatives coloring agents debris. And the rest is substandard me. If you want to call at me now. We're not just being squeamish. There's some parts of the animal that really are not aesthetic Lee looking but they maybe they may have good protein. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the junk parts the low meat protein the parts and they have high contaminants in them us Depart of Agriculture is now under pressure from the meat industry to permit the use of what they call Ground Bone & Rope strands in processed Meats. Like, you know of bologna and Vienna's hot dogs sausages. well I once had a nice discussion with a meat company lobbyists. I said, how are you not so good this meat scandal. This is his late sixties when we're getting a wholesome medic through Congress be Sensational all by itself. All right, you said well, you can't prove anybody's died because of dirty me. What's the what's an interesting way of looking at me? I said is the burden of proof on the consumer to prove that no consumers have died or is the burden of proof on you to prove that all the junk and contamination you put in your hot dog is either neutral or nutritious. Otherwise, you get rid of them. You've got the Laboratories consumers don't have you've got the burden of meeting that standard cuz you're trying to profit from it. voice of luck He said let's be specific. I said Well, if you really want to but you said yes I said do you know the consumer reports that tested Illinois pork sausage and a 12% of the federally inspected sausage and 25% of the state inspector sausage test it out with let that magazine delicately called rodent remains. How do you say come on everybody? Eddie says stuff. I mean is no problem. I mean, it's not one of the big problems in the world are power. I think is more serious a problem. But each problem has its own do level of recognition. Why do you put so much fat in your hot dogs? You're all beef frankfurters, and he said consumer demand. I said you said I was our surveys show it you said hold find your servant. Let me see your cervix. Why don't you promote that I mean, why don't you say folks come and get her hot dogs with the highest fat content in America is consumer demand. Well, it is really a lot of fun talking to company Representatives. It's a lot of fun sometime. What you are to do is invite for 5 company president to sit here and have a discussion with them. One time. I lost the Harvard Road 200 letters to the Presidents of 200 corporations inviting them to come and speak at the Harvard Law School at any time at their convenience. Not one, except it. They don't want to meet with you. They they want to meet with audiences like shareholder audiences. That's bad enough being with them once a year. It's basically these Executives with all their power have don't don't have to answer up a fraction of what your local representative or your local Senator. That's the mean answer questions and getting the baby so forth they don't have to. Tom Hayden that recently was President Carter in the White House Tom Hayden. Some of you may recall was a very strong activists against the war and more recently ran a campaign against Senator, Tony and California he lost but he got a lot more votes and then he people thought he would Play sitting there was President Carter a few weeks ago. And he says to President Carter. How do you feel being elected president of the most powerful country in the world only to find out if you have less power than the unelected president of the major corporations in this country. And mr. Carter was said to reply, you know in the last year. I've come to learn that there's some truth in your statement. indeed there is It's almost pitiful to see how powerless the White House is once industry decides to really weigh in. What are the techniques a use? They say there may be a reception will have to lay off 40,000 workers are balance of payments Don't Force us to meet these pollution control laws will lay off workers Don't Force us to meet these consumers standard will lay off work is how they wrap the workers around themselves. They're unemployed millions of workers when they shipped their plants overseas or automate their plants or move from one state to another to get an easier legal atmosphere for pollution control. They don't mind that they don't cry about the workers there, but they certainly use that that excuse and that protects to powerful weight in Washington, but that's only one then they said what we don't have enough investment Capital. You've got to give us more tax breaks. Do you know any tax breaks corporations have especially large ones that can take advantage of them. Will a 1944 33 cents out of every dollar connected collected by the federal government tax system came from corporations today. It's down to $0.13 and it's sinking cuz there's so many what what are called colloquially loopholes. So how much more subsidy which is why the tax preference is how much more subsidy is going to be given to these companies as they keep driving harder and harder Bargains on their way to corporate socialism, which is what they're trying to attract quite clearly a large corporation today by a large does not go bankrupt. If it's Miss matters, it goes to Washington instead for Bella from Uncle sugar. What it is this instead of relying on the market they are basically the only one a guaranteed guaranteed backdrop by Washington. They want to have Washington be the lender of Last Resort. The guarantor of Last Resort hundreds of billions of dollars alone guarantees out the subsidized ER the block he gets into trouble Washington gives it a four five hundred million dollars you defense contract even though it doesn't deserve it. When they get in trouble because they don't invest in adequate equipment. They want to have protections from Imports like the steel industry you imagine no reason why the US steel industry shouldn't be competitive. They have enormous tax write-off benefit. They've got access to the best technology in the world and yet they can't come close to meeting. The steel is imported from Europe in Japan where the wage differentials are rapidly disappearing if not disappear particularly in a time with a declining value in the dollar when the price of imported steel should obviously be going up compared to exports How much are your own and you're wrong educational experience? Have you learned about corporate institutions in corporate power Elementary School High School College you have courses on government here in St. John's. I'm sure you have courses on corporations that are of equal level. You have courses on corporations. why you mad members have business courses for people specializing in business, but it certainly isn't a a kind of curriculum that that studying government is And yet what is government government reflects, the array of private power out there in the non-governmental sector companies rap on Washington store on the state legislature government moves one way or doesn't move another way. If you're going to study political power economic part, you should start with the carpet institution. It's understanding that you cannot have a system in a democracy of equality under the law when corporations with all their extraordinary powers also have all the immunities all the defenses all the constitutional rights that you as an individual have. It's an unfair contest. And that caught this is being lost time and time again, whenever individuals come up against corporate institutions. Look at the difference. Corporation is basically a transfer institution. It could spend money to fight you and charge others for it. You can't do that. You you get money together to fight your local utility over utility rate. It's got to come out of your pocket. You can't even deduct it. But the utility company, can you use your money to hire a publicist to take out ads on TV and to retain lawyers to cover you and you pay for the more they spend the more you pay. How can you ever possibly win a contest like that example number one example number to the corporate welfare system suppose, you're an individual business person and you're not a big Corporation and you got in a little trouble your little shop is not doing very well. You think you can go to Washington and get bailed out, of course not but a giant conglomerate does it all the time in a hundred thousand different ways. Was it through the tax system or subsidy system or protection from competition or what happened? example number three civil rights you have civil rights? The corporation has civil rights. They have all the rights you have under the under the Constitution. Can you imagine anything more nonsensical than that an artificial entity called the corporation which you can never sent the jail has all the civil rights that you have as an individual. This is not to say that people incorporation should be deprived of any right we're talking about individuals wherever they may be in corporations are out compared to corporate institutions artificial people. As a result they can use these kinds of defenses for the most unconscionable kinds of behavior. For instance Dow Chemical pollutant Area Michigan Works Midland plant is it is going to court to prevent the Environmental Protection registration from flying a plane over the plant in order to take pictures of the pollution. It says it's rights are being violated. It's rights what its rights to destroy the health safety and property of innocent human beings. How can a corporation have rights? From surveillance by a government agency empowered to determine whether Dow Chemical is in force is isn't a complying with the pollution control laws or shall we say with the health and life laws, which is what they really should be called. We get down to Basics. The chief instrument of institutional violence in the country is the corporation pollution is a major Destroyer private property. Who are the major destroyers of private property Corporation? Stone some people think about it think about the pollution destruction water and are over 35 billion dollars a year. Think about the commercial fishing industry in the Great Lakes. How much is left because of the water pollution think about the corrosion on property by pollution going to the company towns where these people live in pollution cocoons like Nitro, West Virginia or at anmoore, West, Virginia. or alloy West Virginia Union Carbide plant is what about the depreciated property the homeowners who owns health safety and property? On the justification that if you want to keep your jobs folks you got to take it. Who says who says they can't have jobs and control their external destruction, they say so and until recently they've gotten away with it. And now they're having to face some environmental laws may be vaguely you've heard about Delaware as a corporate Reno, you know, it was easy laws and attracting all these corporations to charge your in, Delaware. But what does it really mean beyond that pressure it means that one state one little State called Delaware at the turn of the 20th century. Decided it was going to raise money by becoming a corporate Reno and so it weakened its laws and attracted corporations to Charter and a charter. They have chartered ever since. GM Chrysler Chase Manhattan holding company Citibank AT&T in Delaware multinational corporations as a result the other 49 states. Cannot strengthen their corporate chartering laws, which after all is the constitution of a corporation which determines the obligations and responsibilities and power of a corporation to its shareholders officers directors and outside the corporation. And so Delaware brings it all downloads coming out it. We don't even have Federal Charter in this country your we have, but companies like Exxon grossing $5000000 an hour on the average 24 hours a day in 90 countries. And it's chartered by state not our government. And Delaware course has no interest even in enforcing its weak law. I mean Delaware's a tiny little State bgm could buy Delaware in the weekend. If if Tupac was willing to sell it. So you can write it off as and enforcing jurisdiction. No one may say well are all these corporate Executives evil people. Well, some of them are. There's no doubt about some of them that are in jail even. But it's more than that. You can take it. You can take Gabriel make Gabriel head of GM. And GM will reshape Gabriel. When you got that much power. Nobody should have that kind of power that power corrupts. It distorts. Also, the corporate institution tends to diffuse responsibility. You'll see that if you work for a corporation. that is it's very easy in a company to say. Oh I had nothing to do with that. That was someone else who you are. I just work here. I just follow orders or at the top they say we didn't know what went on below. And you know the buck buck is passed. It is not an institution which requires people to face their conscience. It's an institution which is been rationalized on a Milton Friedman typefaces that all I have to look out for is there profit and the Invisible Hand of the market collectively will come out for the good. There's got to be an external surveillance an external Vigilant can come from several areas one informed consumers. That'll take you a little way. That'll require companies to disclose so you can compare life insurance policies by Price instead of by the smile of the agent. second consumer organization whether through consumer coops or consumer Association, they can bring lawsuits or you know, bring some muscle to the to the bargaining process. Third is the vigilance of government standings safety standards house dinners advertising standards Etc. What you see unless we develop a different concept to our economy. Will be piecemeal. It's a greater and greater Injustice has as he's companies gain more power. Ask yourself. What kind of standard of living do you want after you graduate? You make a lips. You want these products Home Services song. After you make a list ask yourself how many of these services are products can you produce yourself? How many can be produced by local businesses and how many come from large corporations or are at the favor of large corporations? You'll see the compared to decades ago. There is a dramatic shift so that the consumer no longer produces anything hardly, maybe a little vegetable garden. And the local community doesn't produce very much. on the basis of specialization Certain areas of the country produce for all other areas 90% of the lettuce from that New England consumes comes from, California. Now we are grown in our economic understanding on the thesis the specialization by virtue of it being specialized. It has to be more efficient. It's time to re-examine that notion just as it is time to re-examine the notion that bigger is better and that you're big in business because you're more efficient. This is one of the lessons of shumaker's book small is beautiful the growing movement of appropriate technology and other similar currents that are flowering around the country. But people are beginning to realize that we've turned the corner. The bigness has reached the point where a monopoly prevails or oligopoly where technological stagnation prevails because new new innovation threatens vested Capital One existing technology. So what happens when you see one day you're on the job, Tuesday Morning 1992? You go to a flea go to your plant your insurance company bank or factory. Most of you will have nice white collar jobs. You go up to Executive Suite and you see something that's illegal being done or something that's corrupt you here in order to dump that stuff at night dump that cyanide at night into the river. Or you see an insurance policy that sell got a fraudulent provision in it. What are you going to do? One thing you can do is you can look the other way you can say Another thing you can do is to say well what if I speak out? It's not going to make any difference and I'm going to jeopardize my career advancement. A certain thing you can do is stand tall. That is to know your rights know what rights you don't have and know what strategy you can pursue to apply your conscience to your job. So you don't surrender your individual conscience and return for employment many of the corrupt disclosures in recent years have been known before they were disclosed 5000 to people. Or hundreds of people in the company or in the government agency when the FBI and CIA were disclosed to be burglarized in people's homes opening their mail harassing them disrupting their meat. You think only one person who did that knew it hundreds Noah and hundreds kept quiet and hundreds forfeited their constitutional rights. for shorter-term measures and it proliferated and grew till we had massive lawlessness right in our own country by our own government spying on its own people and to some extent still doing it. Nobody has stopped how many of them have gone to jail by way of deterrence you want to count. You don't have to be very good at arithmetic. The question is how do you act any employment situation? Well in 1971, we invited people who are whistleblowers in Industry government to a conference in Washington one man blew the whistle on the Department of Transportation dealing with Auto Safety a woman blew the whistle in the FDA for covering up on a dangerous product a welding engineer blew the whistle on a nuclear power plant that was being built in Virginia and adequately welded which can be very devastating. A quality control inspector for GM in St. Louis Blues the whistle on several million Chevrolet cars were leaking carbon monoxide and the passenger compartment who brought them all to discuss their experiences. We asked them. Why did you do it? What happened to you and what you do it again? Why they did it? Because it had nothing the game. They had everything to lose their real heroes the Patriots their people put their careers on the line for their fellow human beings. And that's all I could say. They were kind of didn't want to discuss it cuz it was kind of corny. But all they're really saying to us was it was the right thing to do public citizen helps others joins Community efforts tries to build a better Society. So do I do treasure these years here at school? Look at them in terms of your own self-assertive role as a citizen in terms of how you want your own educational time to be used. You should know that there aren't many countries in the world. Were you can exercise your Democratic rights that ought to make you appreciate not only the range of these rights, but the special nature of them given the direction of so many other political systems in the world's countries. There are some people there are students in some countries in the world who before they could form their own student group would have to overthrow the government. Thank you. Did you hear?