Sometimes we liberals make things more complicated than they need to be, just for the sake of reflecting our own thinking. At times we have to stand back and say, "No, it really is not that complicated - it's just like this and that, and the best way to deal with it is with a sledgehammer." This occurs to me when we talk about "the system" or about the vast network of sociopolitical and business connections that interact to corrupt our politics and burden our lives, and the truth is that it really isn't that complicated - we're making it complicated as an excuse not to succeed against it. There are a handful of businesses and business leaders whose power drives most of what is wrong in this country today, and institutions should be created specifically to target and disrupt their revenues and political activities: Call these institutions Terminator corporations.
People pursue business degrees to learn how to run businesses, and people who want to fight what business does for political reasons focus on communications, political science, and public education - something is missing here. The fact that past approaches have failed more than proves it. It's obvious that, nothwithstanding the self-important rhetoric among us, no one takes the threat posed by corporate power and the influence of wealthy conservative individuals very seriously. Very few people, and in any prominent terms none, seem to be learning business in order to destroy it, or going beyond public education and the occasional lawsuit to fight companies that are threatening the fabric of American civilization.
There should be an entire field of counterinsurgency focused on the surveillance, "disprofiting", disruption, and political annihilation of a business entity. The fact is, while "the system" is adaptable, any given corporation is extremely vulnerable - they depend on so many levels of obedience and cooperation that they're little more than skin parasites when the body politic is healthy. Unfortunately, when it's not, they start to have increasingly pernicious influences - especially when they're wielded by right-wing activist individuals.
In these cases, it's not enough to have a handful of politically-oriented nonprofits focused on pursuit of "issues" that only spend part of their time looking at that problem corporation, even if it occasionally involves a lawsuit here or there. It's not enough to make the public aware of what this business is doing and what the intentions of owners are, especially since the political machinery that could hold them accountable is what they're destroying. Efforts need to be more direct, and more comprehensive than mere consumer boycotts - especially in the case of a conglomerate with large numbers of diverse products and services involved. A shadow corporation must be formed whose purpose is to mirror and disrupt the entire business involved.
Now, obviously you can't immaculately conceive an entire multibillion-dollar conglomerate from scratch, anymore than the business you're attacking was created from scratch fully-formed. But it has to be conceived and shaped from the beginning to grow into something that does ultimately destroy the organization you're looking at, and the best way to ensure that is to define a parasitic growth pattern: I.e., rather than trying to grow in the way that normal businesses do, it's constructed almost entirely to seek out and steal business from this one company, and to sabotage what it can't steal. This sounds diabolical, but try to realize that companies like Koch Industries are already like that - only the institution they're targeting for destruction is the United States of America.
There are obviously legal and regulatory ramifications to such a business plan, which is why I say we need more people going into business and financial majors specifically for the purposes of destroying treasonous businesses and attacking the financial behemoths that enable them. These are the people who could navigate the laws and regulations to avoid running afoul of FTC and SEC rules, and to protect themselves against litigation while seeing potential vulnerabilities in the enemy. Additionally, a Terminator corporation focused on one specific business could develop de facto alliances (without engaging in illegal collaborations) with its competitors, who may be less politically repugnant even if they are part of the same "system."
Between five CEOs, one of whom is an activist right-wing nutjob seeking the overthrow of the United States and the other four are just typical money-grubbing douchebags, you want to make the wingnut someone who poisons any money he touches. You want him to be someone who companies don't even want to talk to. No matter what name changes his businesses undergo, where they relocate to, what rotating cadre of logos they use, or how many different beards they bring in to operate for him, the same results should follow. As a person, he could remain rich by distributing his assets into the general market where he has no personal power, but he cannot remain in control of anything, because the moment he takes control - even through numerous intermediaries - things go bad.
Where do you get the money to grow this Terminator corporation? It's already there in the form of the company it's targeting. A Terminator corporation is parasitic, and grows by preying on the weaknesses of its target. If the target is a public company, it learns to sow investor dissension and plays all the classic counterinsurgency mind games while leveraging the nth-degree consequences to snap up lost business.
It makes employees feel unhappy, and makes management aware of better opportunities at other companies while encouraging discontent and anger among the middle and lower ranks. It (legally) feeds information to activist groups, uncorrupted news organizations, regulatory bodies on every level of government, competitors, etc. Wherever the target business wants the least scrutiny, that's where the most should occur. A cloud of doubt and suspicion should surround every deliberate PR effort.
And whereas the target business, like any normal business, preys on consumers, to the extent the Terminator corporation does business with consumers in order to deny market share to the target, it can low-ball because it's leeching off the investments of the target. Not low-ball enough to incur FTC or antitrust wrath - i.e., not below cost - but enough to eviscerate the target's bottom line. For the same reason, it can afford to pay employees well, which is another way that it attacks the target - by poaching talent.
A Terminator corporation can't be publicly traded: The difficulties of submitting to the intense scrutiny involved while still being an effective counterinsurgency corporation would be too extreme, and probably impractical - all the target would have to do is buy a few shares and have a legal right to know all sorts of things about the business. So under founder control, it can remain fully focused on the mission.
One important psychological aspect of a Terminator corporation in this context is that rich right-wing business owners are generally megalomaniacs, and the knowledge of a Terminator corporation going after them would enrage them no end. It would distract them and make them make all sorts of mistakes as they go off the deep end trying to fight back rather than just ignoring it and focusing on their business. So a lot of the damage that could be done would be self-inflicted by the target owner themselves, well beyond anything that could be directly done by the attacker.
They're typically WATBs, so they would likely commit all sorts of legally actionable misconduct in retaliation that would resolve against them in the courts, even taking corruption into account, and that would make them even more radioactive in the general business community. It might also draw press attention, which is BAD in their position. Taking it personally is a no-no in business. Even while sucking the blood of their businesses, the Terminator corporation learns how to personally gaslight the individual right-wing leaders, developing psychological profiles so that they can be irritated, angered, goaded into inadvisable behavior that endangers their businesses.
Competitor corporations generally avoid these kind of tactics in dealing with each other because of Mutually Assured Destruction, but a Terminator corporation doesn't have to worry about that: It's not in business to be in business - it's in business to stop someone else from being in business.
If a company is bad enough to warrant this kind of treatment, there will be no shortage of people who've been hurt by it willing to be part of taking it down. I don't mean "hurt" in the normal way of being screwed out of a few bucks, being fired for no good reason, etc. - I mean seriously, like your kid died of leukemia because they hid an environmental report, or the roof of a building turned your wife into a paraplegic because they used Grade F cement from Botswana because it's cheaper than the real stuff, that kind of thing. The more repugnant the people running them, the more likely they are to do business like that, so you're not going to lack for people with the kind of motivation and staying power to take part in it.
People like us aren't comfortable with secrecy, but too bad - you don't advertise your intentions a mile away if you're actually going to do it. Not unless you enjoy being buried in frivolous litigation before you have a single dime to fight it. You build it quietly, and you shut the fuck up while you're doing it. You quietly look for the right people and build a team, build a plan, and move forward with minimal ripples. The first your target corporation should know about you is some innocuous sounding LLC cutting into some subsidiary's revenues, and things proceed from there.
Like a lot of things I discuss, this is just a concept on my part. I don't have the personal motivation to run such a project. Hopefully I never will, but I can offer this idea to those who are already in that space: You can weaponize a business and turn it against those who have tried to turn you and your country into their property. If waving around signs, writing letters, or just not buying things from offending corporations no longer seems to be doing the trick, maybe it's time to up the ante and get in the game. They're in it for the money, so make them poor. They're in it for the power, so show them they have none. Corporations are not powerful: They are smoke blown by a handful of arrogant, megalomaniacal human beings, and they have everything to lose. Bring them an education, COD.