Mikey's Anti Greedy Bastard blog

Corporations are inherently evil, and are, I believe, the only entities capable of true evil. The reason? They have no conscience. They have the rights of a human under law, and in many cases they have rights humans don't enjoy, but they have no mind, and therefore no concept of right and wrong. They are driven and controlled by only one single desire; the desire - nay, the need - to make MORE profit than they did last year or last quarter. And let's be clear...the need is not to make a profit, it's not to make a large profit, it's to make MORE profit than they did last year, in total defiance of Newton's first law, and with utter disregard of little things like honour, decency, morality, or human rights. These things are not guidelines for corporations, they are impediments to be overcome. Individuals working for these companies have little or no control over the actions and activities of the corporation because failure to produce these increased profits means unemployment. Officers of corporations who are dismissed for failing to produce increased profit are replaced by others who will.

At the very base of the evil is the common shareholder. The ones who really have any power are corporations themselves of course, but there are many, many people who "play the stockmarket" for fun and profit who have no idea of the things being done in their name. There are enough of them however to make a difference. And it is they who need to be educated, along with every other human on earth.

It is in the interests of the corporations to fight for control of the most powerful weapon of the twenty-first century; the internet. Yes the net was originally designed as a military tool, but that tool has now become the most efficient means of communication known to man - far more powerful than the telephone or fax, and probably more powerful than even TV and radio. Of course the corporations and their ad agencies know that, and like our mate Rupert (thank GOD he changed nationality and we no longer have to accept him as an Australian, despite his accent) they are trying to buy up the most popular chunks of it, and reshape it to deliver their messages and silence their foes.

This is where things like blogging come in. Here peope are free to say whatever they want to say until Rupert and his buddies step in, buy the offending piece, ban free speech, and use it to deliver yet more advertising. This very space will follow suit if it gains enough notoriety, and gaining notoriety on the internet is incredibly simple-you merely have to be mentioned on a TV show or one of the more popular websites and instantly millions of people know your name. Take this blog. It is a tiny little nothing which took me a couple of hours, no technical knowledge  and absolutely no money to construct,. It has been going two days and has been seen by probably three people, in six months it will probably have been seen by about five people. Yet if it was mentioned on or linked to by Slashdot, Kottke, Boing Boing, or Digg to name but a few, it would be instantly famous, would recieve millions of visitors and become a famous net destination in its own right. I could put ads on it and make a decent amount of money, and my message would reach millions.

Rupert can't afford to have that, which is why he will buy all of the sites mentioned above and control who they link to, and more importantly, who they dont.

So what can you do? Easy, go to the homepage mentioned above, and start your own blog. My sitxy something year old mum can do it, as can my eight year old nephew. It takes ten minutes to set up, and if, unlike me, you have an interesting message, a great writing style, and a clever sense of humour you can actually do it for a living. Take Jason Kottke,  http://www.kottke.org/ every day milions read his blog, and it is now his full time job, and he doesnt even have a single ad on his site, he survives purely on the small donations provided by people who appreciate his work. For another great example of the good which can be done by this phenomenon we call the net, have a look at sites like Give Meaning: http://www.givemeaning.com/default.aspx a site which relies on small donations, made incredibly easy by PayPal www.paypal.com  and which can achieve incredible things. Just watch out that paypal, which is owned by ebay, doesn't get bought out by Newscorp or Bayer Pharmeceutical.