One of the best things we can do as Americans is get outside our own country and see the differences in how other people live. I learned a lot about our culture 25 years ago when I spent a semester abroad in Japan. I traveled across the country and several cities and never once ran into a problem. On one occasion, I went into a bank to exchange dollars for yen and accidentally left some of the money behind. I was three blocks away when an employee ran me down and presented me with the rest. Twice I left an umbrella hanging on a rail at a busy train station, only to return in the evening to find the umbrella exactly where I left it. I remain awed at the level of public trust I experienced there.
A quick check of the daily booking reports in any American city will find that stealing such as shoplifting, writing bad checks, and breaking into cars remains a chronic problem. I don’t think these small theft crimes disrupt us. They are a pain, but we handle it. I’ve had clothes, a backpack and credit cards stolen on three separate occasions. It is the bigger crimes of theft that concern me; the ones where large entities steal the public trust for short term profit, greed, or worse.
The recent decision of GM to close American plants and cut thousands of jobs is a form of theft. The company just completed taking a massive tax break, supposedly aimed at retooling and investing in the American worker, before making their announcement. Walt Disney Corporation, a company known for its quality management Disney Institute and touting a corporate social responsibility platform, was made to back down when it came to light that hundreds of its data system operators were given notice that they were being replaced by foreign workers. To add insult, these long timer workers were being told to train their replacements. Disney reversed course only when reporters got a hold of this hypocritical decision and challenged them for an explanation.
Facebook has claimed it was protecting user data and not selling it to the private market, while evidence obtained in England appears to show the exact opposite. To make matters worse, a series of confidential emails show that Facebook purposely made it difficult for all of us users to know what was considered private and what wasn’t. We have not heard the last of this one, but if companies say one thing in public, and do the exact opposite in private, that is another theft of the public trust that has much worse ramifications than an incident of shoplifting.
Just as we have to have security in sending our kids out into the world not to be shot or robbed, we must operate under the belief that large establishments will honor their commitments to the greater good. A culture that expects to be treated unfairly, robbed, or betrayed simply will not survive.
We can reverse this by supporting real journalism and using the power of where and how we spend our money. Each time we see a singular crime in the paper, remember there are other crimes more hidden and dangerous. We can be pretty hard on our local officials when they don’t uphold a certain integrity, partly because we see them and know them. We need to do the same when it comes to large organizations that have the power to act outside of the public eye and do much broader damage than the stealing of a car. We can do better.
Daniel Parker is an author, educator, and public servant. He may be reached at 13scribes@gmail.com
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Regarding Facebook. If the “Social Network” is to be believed it started out as an application that rated the attractiveness of women at an Ivy Leavue college. Zuckerberv then stole it from the people who hired him to code it and it spread as a vanity platform to the rest of the Ivy League before becoming a giant AI system that sells you stuff.
As bad as it is. It’s far from the worst. According to Paul Joseph Watson he is now receiving notifications from Twitter that his posts may be in violation of laws in various countries like Pakistan and Indonesia so they are probably reporting violations of sharia law or criticism of Islam to the authorities in those countries.
Either Apple or Google provisions an app that lets you report those offenses in Indonesia.
In the information we are defined not by what we know but by the questions we as.So Google of course is the worst. If you haven’t done so already you should switch to DuckDuckGo which at least doesn’t track your personal information.
Infowars has an interesting take on Google:
https://www.infowars.com/watch/?video=5c11d5713503986c84a312b1
Hi Daniel, Thanks for again bringing up some timely topics.
Let me give my summary of the Infowars take. Take it with a grain of salt, do your own research, and come to your own conclusions.
Regarding GM, I think this all has to do with the effort to establish a one world government through the creation of carbon taxes which allows the UN to fund itself by using global warming as a justification to tax not only every manufactured product but also the very air we breath.
Obama passed Cafe standards that require the entire fleet of vehicle manufactured by a car maker to average 35 miles per gallon by 2020 and an absolutely impossible standard of 52 miles per gallon by 2035
https://web.mit.edu/sloan-auto-lab/research/beforeh2/files/Meeting%20CAFE%20by%202020%20-%20Cheah%20and%20Heywood%202008.pdf
So GM and Ford have dropped out of the car business altogether focusing on creating autonomous electric vehicles that will be operated in an Uber like fashion where it’s a kind of golf cart like public transportation where you lease the vehicle for a trip. This also a major impetus for 5G cell service to support the Internet of (autonomous) things.
This is all fine and dandy except that it allows the government to track your movement and control tand limit that movement based on a social credit score as well as giving you the opportunity to Beta Test the latest microwave radiation technology. Hence the impetus for Obama care.
Not only will the government give you cancer you will then pay them whatever they ask for it and be dependent on them for treatment. By shortening your lifespan they won’t have to cope with an aging population that has the wisdom to think for itself or inconvenient peasant revolts like we’re seeing in France.
Hence GM moving its corporate headquarters to China where it doesn’t have to pay taxes it just has to turn over all the military, information, manufacturing, and transportation technology that your hard earned tax dollars paid for..
The goal of the UN is to move everyone into cities where you can be controlled by eliminating your ability to shoot, move, or communicate.
As David Knight points out at Infowars:
One mistake that we make is to assume that we are granted rights by the constitution. In fact the constitution is set of prohibitions on placing limitations on God given rights.
There’s a lot of discussion in the forbidden information on Infowars regarding the UN agenda 21 and it’s role in pretty much everything that is boiling over at present.
But don’t worry, limiting our mobility, irradiating us, taxing the air we breath and eliminating the green house gases required to have a planetary atmosphere and support photosynthesis are only one of several lines of attack on humanity intended to reduce population to an easily manageable level.
Can you imagine the lifestyle that the vast wealth of the planet could support for the top tenth of one percent if you reduced the population of the earth by 90 percent and used the remaining population as organ donors, sex slaves, and other forms of chatttle.
I’m sure the European nobility, technocrats, Clintons and the commies would never dream of such a thing
What you experienced in Japan some 25 years ago was cultural. A culture that valued honor and honesty itself.
Not the value exhibited much in our elected officials and bureaucrats.
How about a shout out to Scott Maddox, anybody you know?
To be fair on Maddox, the community returned him to office several times. He is going to be held accountable now, but it is up to we the people to elect real public servants. Our culture is what we make it to be. If we continue to value the making of money, but not how that money is made, then I will agree with your pessimistic outlook. This is a sad but avoidable day for the community.
While we may not like it, GM laying off workers is not a crime. Let’s also look at government theft. Let’s look at it’s insatiable appetite for our tax dollars and it’s never ending greed for additional tax dollars. As it gets more of our money, let’s look at how it squanders our money and how it feeds corruption in this environment. The only way to do this is by supporting real journalism, maybe like this site you’re posting to?