Where it has worked in America: women’s suffrage, civil rights of African Americans, unions (though these are almost gone now), child labor.

Where it hasn’t worked in America: Native American rights, consumer safety labeling, energy sources, corporate/government corruption.

In the first category, demands were met, in the second, they’ve been almost totally ignored. Where we’re at with the second category of items is the popular-to-talk-about stage, I believe.

Recently, I was reading a newspaper article from around the time of the California gold rush in which the editor announced that it was time to exterminate all California Indians. American newspapers don’t normally endorse genocide 150 years later, and a growing number of Americans of European descent now feel qualms about what happened to the country’s earlier inhabitants. Some have even taken an interest in modern reservation life and the exploitation of such lands by major energy companies who prey upon the extreme poverty of residents. But, who is really going to give back the stolen land or make truly public the extreme loss of life? It’s a popular-to-talk-about subject amongst the general public (TV shows, articles, movies, etc.) but, it’s not a let’s-do-something-about-it subject.

The behavior of today’s monopolies and corporations is in this same category of talking-about-it, I believe. Your blog, Mike, is a fine example of agitation for better standards. My blog sometimes features the same message, as do many blogs in our industry. I think what you are doing, what I am doing, is trying to be one of the pebbles in an avalanche we’d like to see happen. But there is a sense of watchfulness regarding whether it will actually happen. Whether the general public will actually demand change with such a loud voice that change will happen.

A messed up LBC record has literally no relationship to genocide in terms of importance, but there is a semblance of arrogance and lack of care for society’s health that is present in the actions of corporations that make profits their gods. There’s something repellent about it, when you view it from the individual human level…the level of the little guy who just lost 60% of his business because of Google’s policies. We don’t like the indifference, and we’d like to see it transformed, but I think we know it will take many, many voices to see that happen.

I aggree that the a foolproof system of corrections would go a long way to dissipating the angst and anger that seems to exist amongst small business people.