Wealth & Power 
Assets or Addictions?

Dan Mahony, M.Phil.

Chapter 1

Desperate Enterprises

More and More for ASCO

[Profit = Loss? "HINTS OF WOE AS MICROSOFT POSTS GAINS—The world's largest software publisher, delivered what it said were strong PC software results today combined with weaker corporate sales for its third fiscal quarter in 2002, suggesting that the company is being held back by the stagnant economy. Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Wash., said its revenue reached $7.25 billion for its third quarter ended March 31, up 13 percent from $6.4 billion for the quarter last year. Net income for the quarter was $2.74 billion, or 49 cents a share, a total that included an $847 million after-tax gain on the sale of its Expedia travel Web site and an $806 million after-tax charge related to "investment impairments NYTimes."]

        An Addicted System Corporation (ASCO) is one in which the more addicted percolate to the top. The more one is powerless to stop seeking wealth and power, or is powerless to stop working, the more one "climbs the ladder" and partakes in the highest decisions of the corporation. Through this invisible process, an ASCO, over time and by slow operations, acquires an addictive personality. It becomes an addictive-compulsive group-individual—see Webster's above—an entity distinct from the individuals comprising it.

        The "substances" an ASCO abuses are money & power, work, and fame. Its codependents experience the side-effects of wealth & power addiction, work addiction, compulsive status-seeking. The impairment to society beyond the employee-codependents: compounding inflation.

        As a group-individual an ASCO chronically seeks more and more and more, not because it needs more, but because it is driven by its being an addiction system. It is an economic, social, and political addiction system operating at all levels of system at once (synergy), within itself, and on the outside world. It consists of individuals who spend half their waking lives competing against each other, yet they co-depend on those at the top for their well being. As a result, an ASCO is vulnerable to becoming like a large codependent household; and ASCOs tend toward greater & greater dysfunction. The previous quarter is the yardstick by which an ASCO’s present is measured. And even though great profits may be made, if they are not more than last quarter’s profits, or more than the same quarter the previous year, they will be considered as negative news, as reasons for ‘profit warnings’. A comparison of alcoholism and wealth & power addiction is made in this chart.

        The following cases present symptoms of wealth addiction (inflation), especially the surreal world of impaired thinking caused by addiction.

[Profit = Loss?  News item says, "(Reuters) - DoubleClick Inc. said Tuesday its second-quarter loss widened...The New York-based company posted a second-quarter loss, excluding non-cash and non-recurring items, of $9.5 million, or 7 cents a share, compared with a loss of $3.8 million, or 3 cents a share, a year-earlier." But in the next paragraph we learn, "Revenues for the quarter fell 20 percent to $101.9 million from $128 million a year earlier source." The company had made more than $100 million in just three months!]

[Profit =Loss? "Analysts were stunned by the forecast that revenues would fall to less than $315 million, off from $350 million last year source." Even when a profit is made, if it is less than last year's, then it is a loss ("Profit Warning"). ASCOs often justify unemploying employees, especially those over 50, because the company is 'losing' money. Stock prices then drop: "Investors pummeled shares of communications chip makers on Tuesday for the second day in a row as the market digested a late-day earnings warning...source."]

[Compulsive Inequity. A symptom found in addict-codependent families is also found at ASCO. The earnings of the CEO compared to the entry-level employee is often in a ratio of 160 to 1, even though the chief executive officer (CEO) is usually also an employee and not the owner of the company. In Japan, where corporations have been known for greater concern for employees, the ratio is often 80 to 1.]

[Fortune 500. As time passes, the biggest corporations employ fewer and fewer. This is an easy way to net more and more because salaries+benefits are their largest single expense. Corporate earnings can rise simply by unemploying employees.]

[STUDY FINDS EACH NEW WAVE OF EMIGRANTS TO US WORSE OFF— "The Center for Immigration Studies finds that over the last thirty years each successive wave of immigrants has fared worse than the one that preceded it. As a result, today’s established immigrants (those who have lived in the country between 10 and 20 years), are much poorer, less likely to be homeowners, and less likely to have become citizens than established immigrants in the past source."]

[ASCO's purchases of raw materials to produce its products create jobs in other corporations, i.e., co-dependent families other than those in ASCO. Expenses are the lifeblood of healthy economic system, but at ASCO "spend = lose." The health-care benefits ASCO employees receive create jobs in another ASCO in the health-care industry. Families in 'other' ASCOs are fed by expenses and given health-care benefits. At any ASCO, however, expenses qualify for tax deductions as loses. ]

[XMA$. During a Xmas season, General Motors, a hugely successful automobile manufacturer announced plans to lay off 70,000 employees because of an "off year." Its 'losses', however, were only lower-than-average profits and were due to compulsive acquisition of a number of other ASCOs at high debt. Apparently many auto industrialists had come to fancy themselves as corporate raiders. At the time of the Xmas announcement., GM's assets topped $170 billion. It had just built a new plant in Mexico where it could pay employees even less.]

[POLLUTO'S BIG EGO BAD ECOLOGY— As another ice sheet breaks off the Antarctic coast, US official says: "We need more refineries. We need more power plants. We need more natural gas pipelines. It’s as simple as that. We have a choice in this country of having the lights on or, at least, in the short run, having more carbon dioxide source." Says another: "The president has been unequivocal. He does not support the Kyoto treaty source." (2) The US is responsible for nearly half of the worldwide increase in emissions since 1990, according to the World Watch Inst. (3) "Human actions are causing declines in plant biodiversity, increases in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations...plant diversity enhances ecosystem responses to elevated CO₂...source, source."]

[WATCHDOG FINDS GLOBAL-CORP AVOIDANCE OF $257 BILLION IN US TAXES —Many corporations are once again paying little or nothing in US taxes. General Electric, perhaps the world's richest corporation, tops list with $7 billion in tax breaks. "Almost half of those tax-break dollars went to just 25 companies, each getting more than a billion dollars in tax breaks. Had all 250 companies paid the full 35% corporate tax rate on their $735 billion in pretax U.S. profits from 1996 to 1998, their federal income taxes would have totaled $257 billion  list   source." 

[TEN WORST CORPORATIONS—First five: Aventis, BAT, BP/AMOCO, DoubleClick, Glaxo/Welcome source.]

[Word Abuse. ASCOs often employ the word 'earnings' to equate the effortless collection of interest payments and other easy ASCO profits from the earnings from the hard work of their codependents. 'Earning' a College Degree. No one earns more from your college degree than your employer. (See Chap. 4.) 'Wage Inflation'. The very idea that paying workers more as profits rise is 'inflation' is yet another sign of cognitive impairment.]

The Primary Side Effect: Inflation

                Inflation is dysfunction. It is economic cancer because it compounds like interest, causing the decline in the quality of life to accelerate. Inflation is so chronic that it appears to be part of the very structure of our economic system. The following graph shows how serious the problem is.

The following cases further illustrate.

[Hidden Inflation. This type occurs without raising the price. Over time and by slow operations, candy bars and pizzas get smaller. TVs and toasters must be replaced not repaired. Clothes go out of style sooner. The cereal box gets larger and the amount of cereal remains the same but with more appetite enhancers.]

[Overworked Americans. "Conventional capitalist welfare systems, including those of the USA, have required their ever decreasing percentile of workers/population to pay the ever-growing tax requirements for servicing their ever increasing welfare bills. This translates into a growing problem, imposing on the shrinking working class a demand for more work at less real income (http://home.flash.net/~rcollier/utopia-l.htm)."]

[Seven Cent Dollar. Since 1913 its spending power has declined 93 per cent. In 1992, a $10 bag of groceries contained only one tenth of the items in a 1932 Great Depression bag (Economist, 02/22/92, p. 68). In most households these days, two persons must work full time just to get by. At the same time. there is growing child neglect and domestic violence. Says Time, "Children who go unheeded are children who are going to turn on the world that neglected them (10/08/90, p. 42)." See also Nation's Business, May 1988. p, 78.)

[Real 1992. Economist Albert Sindlinger is one of very few who see The Problem. His research company calls 5,000 American households every month to monitor household money supply and current household income. He warns that they are very near Great Depression levels. (Sindlinger Newsletter, Aug., 1992.)

[The Day the Dow Jones Really Peaked (Appendix 2). The Dow Jones Industrial Average, peaked at 306.18 on January 1, 1966 In terms of spending power, its true value. Since then, even though the surreal Dow rose above 10,000, inflation ate away the dollar's spending power so fast that the real DJIA reached only 225. (See also Forbes, 06/24/91, p.136.)]

                What has caused The Problem? We offer the following hypothesis.

Compulsive Wealth Concentration

[538 MEN CONTROL $1.7 TRILLION—"In the 15 years that Forbes has calculated the net worth of the world's richest people, William Henry Gates III has occupied the top spot for the last seven years. In that time, his wealth has grown by a factor of almost five to $58 billion. But he's just one of 538 billionaires on this year's list, worth a collective $1.7 trillion source."]

[BIG FOUR NOW CONTROL HALF OF ALL US ONLINE TIME—"AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Napster now control half of all minutes spent online by US users according to Jupiter Media Metrix source." Since US sites constitute about 75% of the Internet, the Big Four controls more than one third of the entire Internet.]

        Compulsive wealth hoarders have trouble with expenditure of their stash. They are addicts who must continually seek and hoard. Their self-control is impaired. Their cognition is impaired. There is never enough in the bank.

        In addition, compulsive wealth enjoys solid national super-denial. Serene in the certainty of the rightness of such extreme behaviors as compulsive acquisition and hoarding, and blind to to their role in causing family dysfunction—in their own families and many others, and to unemployment generated by their corporations' need for more and more, the compulsive wealthy harm an entire nation that would prosper from jobs created by as little as fifteen per cent of the wealth hoarded. There would still be huge amounts left over for themselves, yet they continue their avarice to the point where, as a co-addiction alliance consisting of about one per cent of the American population they control more than forty per cent of America's total wealth. This level of concentration has caused widespread dysfunction in the past.

[The US National Debt. To whom do Americans owe the $1 billion-a-day interest on the $trillion national debt? Answer: 10% is held by foreign investors, and 25% by the federal government itself. The bulk of it—two thirds—is owed to already-wealthy American individuals and corporations. They are the very group that caused the government to borrow the money in the first place due to their compulsive concentration of wealth.]

[During the1980s, the compulsive wealthy tripled their income. When the tax laws were changed in l986 to trend toward a flat tax rate for all, many longstanding incentives to job-producing investment were removed. Just one year later, from 1987 to 1988, the number of Americans living below the poverty line doubled.]

    (b): Looking at family wealth instead of income, "the richest families saw their average wealth grow 26% while the majority of families saw their wealth stagnate or drop during the same period (Economic Policy Institute, 1992)."

    (c): "A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surp1us in banks (Vice President John C. Calhoun, l836)."

    (d): "Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing. This concentration is seriously impairing the economic effectiveness of private enterprise as a way of providing employment for labor and capital and as a way of assuring a more equitable distribution of income and earnings among the people of the nation as a whole (President Frank Delano Roosevelt, 1938)."

                We make no argument against capitalism itself, but we want to warn that, apparently, corporate systems are vulnerable to addiction. Further, when we refer to persons with money addictions, we do not mean that all persons with wealth are addicted. 

["When Having Everything Isn't Enough" Cover story of April 1989 Psychology Today examines why some rich and powerful people feel compelled to push the bounds of ethically (and possibly legal) conduct. They continue in pursuit of monetary gains that, by any rational calculation, are quite superfluous.]

[SHOCKING DEFORESTATION MAP SHOWS 22 TRILLION ACRES OF FOREST WERE LOST IN THE 1990s ALONE source. ]

Unfortunately super-denial is widespread.

[Forbes magazine sums it up. "There is nothing sinister in all this. Economic growth requires large-scale undertakings, and the people who must successfully organize these undertakings inevitably accumulate wealth (cited in Boston Herald, 07/07/92, p.28)."

[New Latino Billionaires. The article also touches on the fact that the total number of billionaires in South America tripled In 1992. Didn't the U.S. forgive $billions in loans to South America?]

[Alongside is a smaller article with the big news that the world's largest real-estate corporation has lost $9 billion in just one year and is filing for bankruptcy.]

The Great Compulsion Era 1915 - 1945

              We offer here a provisional hypothesis as to the causes of compound inflation.

            I) lmpaired Vigor Since 1950. Throughout nearly all of American history, business activity showed robustness. After the Great Peak of 1941-1945, however, the curve resembles a dying heartbeat.

            2) Severe Chronic lnflation After Wars. Healthy inflation is normally below zero. It rose above zero after major wars: the War of 1812, the Civil War,  and the so-called World Wars. After the first three of these, it returned to normal levels. But after World War II, it surged to abnormal levels and has not fallen back.

           What changed the dynamics of 125 years of American business history? Our provisional hypothesis is the following.

          The period 1915 - 1945 with its two great wars and Great Depression, thus combining three great traumatic stresses in just 30 years, affected the US severely. The result was a compulsive period, a Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, from which the US has not recovered . The country is in a state of societal addiction. Its symptoms include:—

        (1) Since l9l5, the value of the dollar has declined at a precipitous rate. This is the result of inflation which compounds like interest. (2) The American business community has proven powerless to stop its compulsive production and waste. (3) American consumers have not been able to stop the steady increase in debt-enabled shopping addiction. (4) The US as a nation has been unable to clearly perceive the chronic decline of its quality of daily life.

[$uperdenial. In 1993, 17 million Americans were laid off at a rate of nearly 50,000 per week. But a TV-news reporter said, "The million new jobs created are a sign of improvement in the economy." At the same time, Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank and widely regarded as an economic genius, said of a previous prediction of his, "Where we have been off badly is on the unemployment rate, and that is a labor force problem and not an economic growth problem (C-Span, 07/21/92)." Greenspan has to testify to Congress on a regular basis because of the Full Employment and Balanced Trade Act of 1978. This law actually requires the President to set specific goals and to use whatever policies and programs he deems necessary to bring about 3% unemployment.]

[$uperdenial 2. The American household is in super-denial as well. Even though their personal economic strength is continually weakened by the declining spending power of the dollar, surveys by economist Albert Sindlinger consistently find that their confidence in the economic future is fairly stable (Sindlinger Newsletter).]

[$uperdenial 3. 1992. MacNeil-Lerher Newshour interviews five Nobel Economists, one each day for a week. The Problem is only mentioned but not discussed. A month or so later. one of them, John Kenneth Galbraith is interviewed--no mention again. The next day two more economists are interviewed. One says he fears for America's economic future, the other presents a rosy picture.] 

[$uperdenial 4. Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot shows two dozen economic charts to the American public. One shows the decline in dollar spending power 1951-1992. placing the present dollar at 18 cents. This would be true if the 1951 dollar were worth a dollar, but by then it had declined to 45 cents. The sheer number of Perot's other charts simply dazed the viewers and buried The Problem.]

[$uperdenial 5. Inflation compounds like interest. We presently bear the burden of 80 years of compounding inflation. So even though it might increase only 3 percent a or so per year at present, its burden is already tremendous. Nevertheless an article in the April 1,1991 Business Week says inflation "is now low again and is unlikely to ever become so terrifying." They seem to think that the problem has gone away. The article goes on to say that wages are not keeping up with inflation.]

[$uperdenial 6. Denial of the compounding nature of inflation has synergetic linkage to the already widespread denial around the health effects of tobacco. alcohol, and prescription-drug addiction. The strongest addictor substances create the greatest demand. Thus. they are the most widespread and have the longest history of use. Some of the oldest 'grandfathered-in' addictions are money & power, sex, alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. The huge size of the demand group for these substances earns it widespread compulsive support ("national enablement") in spite of the fact that these addictors cause the most death and harm by far.]

[While we applaud the arrests of dealers of illegal drugs, we die from legal drugs at the epidemic rate of one per minute. The number of deaths caused by illegal drugs is but 5% of the number of deaths caused by cigarettes and alcohol.]

[Alcohol is a so-called 'controlled substance', indicating awareness of its harm. In most states you must be 21 years old to buy it. And not in liquor stores on Sunday. You must not be intoxicated while driving or walking in the street. Alcohol advertising on TV is controlled: no mention is allowed of its euphoric effects, and its consumption must not be shown. It is sold only in approved units in approved dispensaries: liquor stores and bars. Most of its retail price is tax. You are not allowed to make your own except in very small amounts.]

        Yet, with all this public awareness, alcohol isn't even called a drug.

[Guess Which One. It is the drug-delivery system which causes the most fatalities year after year, but the US government does not recognize it as a drug. You must be 18 years old to buy it, and only in government-approved packaging. Its consumption is not permitted in many public places. Its advertising is highly controlled: no TV or radio ads, no appeal to minors. It comes with printed warnings about its fatal effects The government approves of it as a big source of taxes, gives subsidies to producers and dealers, and most of its retail price is taxes.]

[Boston Tea Party. Caffeine has enjoyed considerable immunity from recognition and control as a drug.  It is a lifelong addictive drug that harm: those who drink six or more cups of coffee a day (or the equivalent in soft drinks, tea or pills). Consumption of more than six cups of coffee a day is linked by many studies to heart disease and cancer of the pancreas. Caffeine is a drug that is very widely available, even to children. and Its advertising horizon is unlimited. When Coca Cola and others were ordered to remove the cocaine from their drinks, caffeine was substituted. It is synergetically linked to other addictions: it is most often sold with sugar and high-fat foods. e.g., doughnuts. One cannot imagine a home or workplace without a caffeine dispensary. Perhaps the great outdoors is one place, but most campers carry coffee or tea.]

Compulsive Loyalty

"Order, Discipline, Hierarchy (motto proposed by Mussolini)."

                The Chairman of the Hoard of ASCO. the owner of the corporation, likely did not work his way up the hierarchy to the top. Nevertheless. most who work for him—the people he 'employs' (uses)—compulsively strive to rise through hard work. An ASCO is a perfect situation for workaholics, money & power addicts, and compulsive notoriety (fame) seekers.

                But there are considerable emotional costs to codependent US employees down the ladder who, while daily feeling the effects of managerial incompetence and resenting it, continue to be the most productive work force in the world. But their average pay is now tenth in the world. They are compulsively loyal, so productivity levels increase as fear of unemployment in creases. Yet theft from their employers is widespread.

[Fall, 2000. Survey finds 83% stayed in touch with office while on vacation.]

[Fall, 2000. British Citizens Advice Bureau receives tide of complaints about employers not providing paid vacations even though required by law. At the same time, some British execs visiting homes of employees taking sick days even though they admit that sick days cause 'losses' of only 2 - 4%. Study suggests many sick days are due to stress and family pressures—job related? Poll in US finds 86% of employees say husband & wife's jobs seriously affect family life.]

[Still another source of inflation is white-collar crime. Employees steal small things such as office supplies, telephone or Internet time, or take extended break time. They don't really need the things. They are acting in an irrational manner typical of codependents. ASCO merely passes the costs along to the codependent consumers, i.e., the employees.]

Healthy Loyalty

                Healthy loyalty is reversible, it works both ways. The owner of the company feels loyal to his employees, and treats them well. In return, the employees are loyal to the owner. There are many companies where this is indeed the case.

[Anderson Window Co. shares its profits with its employees. They get holiday bonuses equal to a year's pay in some cases. Average employee makes $60 ,000 per year (Business Month, Sept. 1988).]

[See also INC. (Jan.. 1992) on Southwest Airlines. Other cases of healthy corporate structures from In Search of Excellence.

[Four-day workweek in Germany.]

                In contrast to healthy loyalty, compulsive loyalty is dysfunctional. It is not reciprocal. The CAP has little or no loyalty to employees. His leadership rests on their powerlessness, blind-spot denial,, and their fear of loss of stasis.

                Denial is the glue of the codependent-household (CDH) system in which nearly anything negative is denied. Abused children compulsively avoid complaining about their parents, wives their battering husbands, employees their bosses, and American families their overworked condition.

                ASCO employees have no choice but to put up with their CAP, the boss. Over time and by slow operations, the constant repetition of putting-up-with-the-boss develops into compulsive loyalty. Fear also plays a part. ASCO's corporate heads know that salaries and benefits are their largest single expense, so they "do what they have to do" to make the corporation "leaner and meaner"—a jungle metaphor meaning more profits for the CAPS. They begin a subtle process of not replacing those who leave. As the situation deteriorates in the CDH, the children begin to run the household; at ASCO, the employees gradually take on the responsibilities of former employees and CAPS. This means more and more money for ASCO.

                The CDH members also begin a subtle merge with the CAP's personality and belief system. At ASCO, "think like a boss. act like a boss" is their on-the-job training in compulsive loyalty.

                Another side effect of compulsive loyalty is the willingness of ASCO employees to settle for so little from the company owners and bosses. As compulsively-loyal codependents, they will take a mere smile, a small acknowledgement, a small raise in pay, a temporary easing of stress, any small sign from the boss that things are still okay. CAPS always hold out the promise that things will get better provided their codependent employees accept their leadership.

[Canned. The American Can Company used a computer to quietly and systematically can employees according to how close they were to their retirement. In one case it was 16 days (CBS 60 Minutes, 1992). Addendum. "It is true that American business, which has generated wealth and prosperity for so many for so long is in terrible trouble (William F. May, CEO, American Can Co.)"]

[Employees sue Burlington Industries for eliminating their stock ownership plan thus ending their stake in the company (Business Week, 03/02/92).]

[Ad Hoc Addiction Treatment Systems. Labor unions confront ASCOs. As such, they are ad hoc addiction treatment systems. But because of the synergetic tendency, addiction tends to spread no matter what the system. Thus unions are also vulnerable to the very wealth and power addictions they confront. The film Blue Collar starring Richard Pryor shows how some unions become bureaucratic hierarchies that differ little from ASCOs.

[The present writer worked for a few years as a temporary employee in laborious and spirit-draining entry-level jobs. I recall a case of inequity and unkindness caused by blind-spot denial. The setting was a computer equipment company that tended to make most of its sales during the last month of the year. In that particular year Christmas fell on a Thursday, so the employees could have had an extended holiday weekend if Friday were a holiday. At a lunch-hour pizza party for the employees, the owner made a little speech in which he joked about the fact that he would be in the Caribbean while they had to work that Friday and Saturday. He seemed to enjoy his little joke. Some employees laughed uncomfortably. The majority were silent.]

[Business Week article describes how multinational corporations have no loyalty to any one country. They are learning to be local companies in other countries creating complex questions of national loyalty (05/14/90).]

The Mahony Principle

                In response to the loss of money caused by cognition-impaired management, ASCO trims its staff to be leaner and meaner. Those laid off, however, will not be the work and wealth & power addicts or the compulsively loyal.

                Through this invisible process, ASCO over time and by slow operations acquires an addictive-compulsive personality as the less addicted are let go and the more addicted percolate upwards to greater decision-making levels. The process is synergetic: the system experiences accelerated dysfunction as the non-addicted are eliminated.

                A related synergetic effect is that compulsive loyalty deepens as fear of job loss increases. As a rule, ASCOs lend toward greater & greater dysfunction.

Corporate Secrecy

                Secrecy is at the heart of compulsive loyalty. As in the CDH, secrecy and lack of trust prevail at ASCO.

[Invisibility. "corporation, n.,  a group of people who get a charter granting them as a body certain of the legal powers, rights, privileges, and liabilities of an individual, distinct from those individuals making up the group...(Webster's Dictionary)." "A corporation is an artificial thing, invisible, intangible, existing only in the contemplation of the law (US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, 1819)." Part and parcel of the legal concept of a corporation is that it is designed to protect its owners from personal responsibility. If a product does harm, the corporation is liable, not its constituent owners. The corporation is like role in a play, not the actor who plays it.]

[Salaries at ASCO are kept private. True to codependent form, employees often compulsively adhere to a veil of secrecy as to how much each earns—divide and conquer. Often the secretaries know the salaries.]

[Business Week article uncovers secret discount deal between airlines and a growing number of business (03/04/91). New York Times article describes veil of secrecy in Japanese companies (12138/90).]

[Watchdog Sues US Vice President. "Judicial Watch is concerned that energy policy is being made in secret by individuals and interests with a financial and political stake in particular policies...the law requires that the American people be kept informed about these deliberations source."]

[But employees have no privacy.—(1) AltaVista offers new software designed to help businesses conduct quick searches through employee e-mail, laptops and personal digital assistants source. See also (2) "Fourteen million employees — just over one-third of the online workforce in the United States — have their Internet or e-mail use under continuous surveillance at work. Websense is the most frequently used Internet- monitoring product, and MIMEsweeper is the most frequently used e-mail- monitoring product. Don't do anything on the Web or in e-mail at work that you wouldn't do with someone looking over your shoulder source." Better still, surf and email at home. (3) "At-work use of the Internet closely matches home use. Secret monitoring by the U.S. Treasury Department of Internet use among Internal Revenue Service employees found that activities such as personal e-mail, online chats, shopping and checking personal finances and stocks accounted for 51 percent of employees' time spent online. The top non-work Web activity favored by IRS employees was going to financial sites. Chat and email ran a close second, followed by miscellaneous activities (which included visiting adult sites), search requests, and looking at or downloading streaming media (reported in the Chicago Tribune and Business 2.0) source."]

The Family As Work Gang

                In trying to deal with the ever weaker dollar, both parents must work, and sometimes a second job becomes necessary.

[Real 1992. Arguing and worrying about the bills is the biggest stress on the American household. Personal debt has risen sevenfold since 1966, and not coincidentally the dollar has declined to one seventh in value. In the nineties, 17% of those working lived below the poverty level.]

[More cases from The Overworked American.]

[Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978, Sec. 2a requires the President to create 3% unemployment, or provide specific plans to bring it about within five years. The law is unenforceable.

[Funblock. Another big side effect of ASCO-caused inflation is the decline in the amount of for family play and fun, even though play is one of the central reasons to work. The loss of free time since the l960s has been variously estimated to be between 50% and 80%. Respondents to a 1992 L.A. Times survey reported an average 2.5 hours a day of free time. This is not enough time to be free in the land of the free. Considerable stress results from the lack of free time.]

["The Center for Immigration Studies finds that over the last thirty years each successive wave of immigrants has fared worse than the one that preceded it. As a result, today’s established immigrants (those who have lived in the country between 10 and 20 years), are much poorer, less likely to be homeowners, and less likely to have become citizens than established immigrants in the past source."]

ASCO's Compulsive Waste

                Except for inflation, no symptom of the synergetic effects of addiction is more destructive than that of compulsive waste by ASCO industrialists. They are the biggest polluters of the environment. Compulsively driven to produce more and more. They are unable to stop production long enough to take care of environmental side effects of their compulsive industry.

[Environmental Emergency 2000? See Earth Dept. (1) UN Climate Change forum attempts to get countries to agree to a mere 5% reduction in their emission of greenhouse gases by the year 2010, but is unable to do even that. (2)Some of the world's rivers are mixed drinks of chemical combinations never even tried in a laboratory. The air, water, and ground quality of advanced industrialized countries is in advanced decline. (3) Ozone hole largest ever. (Blue area is the ozone hole.) It is now three times size of US. As expected, the Antarctic hole, which follows a yearly cycle of expansion and contraction, maxes this month. "What's unexpected," NASA says, "is how big it is this year source." UN experts say it is growing earlier in the year than usual. The hole is large enough now to be above the Chilean town of Punta Arenas whose 120,000 residents are forced to don sombreros, sunglasses, sunblock lotions and extra clothing. (4) Torrential Texas rains end drought which exceeded famous Dustbowl of 1934 summer in Texas. (5) NASA says 30 cubic miles of ice melt off Greenland yearly. (6) Researchers say historical documents show increasingly shorter winters since 1840 source. (7) The Russian sub sinking in Sept. revealed the surprising depth of the erosion-caused radiation leakage problem. Kursk joined eight other sunken nuclear subs on the North Atlantic floor. A US h-bomb has been lying on ocean floor off Newfoundland since a 1968 bomber crash. Concern with the bomb lies not with explosion but erosion-caused radiation leakage. (8) Study finds, "population growth alone accounts for 43% of the rise in flood damages from 1932 to 1997, with a much smaller effect from increased precipitation. Most of the other 57% increase is due to burgeoning national wealth source." (9) See excerpt from Al Gore's book Earth in the Balance.]

[$urreal LI b. Only when ASCOs are taken to court by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) do they respond due to ASCOs' compulsive avoidance or spending the money for environmental cleanup.]

[$urreal LII. Synergy. "America needs a waste czar," says J. Peter Grace of W.R. Grace Co. He was referring to Congressional addiction to wasteful deficit spending, not natural resources (Vital Speeches, 11/01/89).]

Compulsive Waste

[Landfill Statistics. Each Sunday newspaper corp. uses up 50,000 trees each week. In Al Gore's book, Earth in the Balance, we read: "Various forms of paper, mostly newspapers and packaging, take up approximately half the space. Another 20 percent or so is made up of yard waste, construction wood, and assorted organic waste, especially food. (Rathje found that 15 percent of all the solid food purchased by Americans ends up in landfills.) An unbelievable conglomeration of odds and ends accounts for the rest, with almost 10 percent made up of plastic, including the so-called biodegradable plastic. (Starch is added to the plastic compound as an appetizer for microorganisms, who will theoretically dissemble the plastic as they consume the starch.) Rathje dryly noted that he was skeptical of such claims: 'In our landfill refuse from decades past we have uncovered corncobs with all their kernels still intact. If microorganisms won't eat corn-on-the-cob, I doubt whether they will dig cornstarch out of plastics.'"]

["The Price of Addiction: A Hundred Oil Spills, A Thousand Excuses (Wilderness, Summer, 1990, p.3).]

Mahony Curve

                We notice something about compulsive wealth. The accumulation of money in its early stages increases the quality of life. But there comes a point in time when the accumulation is so compulsive that it begins to produce the very opposite result. This is true for individuals, and for corporations and nations. Let's represent this with a conceptual diagram.

Mahony Curve

                The cycles of business activity can be construed as Mahony Curves. At first, accumulation of wealth rises as business activity rises, but then levels off and declines as ASCO compulsive acquisition and hoarding grow to dysfunctional levels.

                Throughout the first 150 years of American business activity, inflation was nearly always below zero, meaning that goods grew less and less expensive, but corporations made more money through increased volume.

[$urreal LVI. Perhaps worst of all, the offspring of the 'baby boomers' are the first generation of Americans less educated than than its parents.]

[ARTHUR D. LITTLE, INC. REPORT FOR PHILIP MORRIS SAYS SMOKERS DIE YOUNGER AND THEREFORE REDUCE GOVT. SPENDING— "Public finance saved between 943 mil. CZK and 1,193 mil. CZK (realistic estimate: 1,193 mil. CZK) from reduced health-care costs, savings on pensions and housing costs for the elderly—all related to the early mortality of smokers source." Besides selling the drugs alcohol (Miller Beer) and nicotine on a huge scale, Philip Morris ALSO sells Kraft processed foods which may have a role in triggering the US overweight epidemic. (See Trigger Diet.)]

Near Term Ultra Costs

"A serious public emergency affecting and threatening the welfare, comfort and safety of the State, and resulting from the abnormal disruption in economic and financial processes, the abnormal credit situation in the State and nation, the abnormal currency situation in the State and nation, the abnormal deflation of real property values and the curtailment of incomes by unemployment and other adverse conditions, exists (New York State Legislature. Fri.. Aug., 18, 1933)."

"Depressions are caused by extreme concentration of wealth (Dr. Ravi Batra, 1985)."

[Ivied Towers of Silent Denial. Economic experts in academia have offered little advice about The Problem and its side effects. An exception was Dr. Ravi Batra, an economist at Southern Methodist University. His best-seller The Great Depression of 1990 has fallen back into the national subconscious. He was later called a fraud by the Boston Globe Magazine, and was literally laughed at by Pat Buchanan on CNN's Crossfire.]

                The national codependent household suffered greatly in the White-Collar Depression of the nineties. There was considerable national anger at government, but not at the Ultra-rich. Abuse and stress at ASCO trickles deeper down. Those who have jobs work in fear of losing them, giving compulsive power and status seekers even more of their substance.

[Big Brother. ASCO wants control of every moment of consciousness of its employees while they are being paid to work. In the 1990s ASCOs began increasing their use of electronic work monitoring devices. It is now possible to monitor employees at levels never known. The slightest change in minute-by-minute work output will sound a computer alarm. As ASCO continues to addictively require more and more employee productivity, the spread of these devices will cause much stress among its employees. Not surprisingly the biggest users of these devices are among the richest corporations.]

                Finally the codependent national family strained to its limits, won't take it any more. If things get bad enough, there could be some form of revolution. This would not be the first time. The revolution could be peaceful. It will likely be on TV.

[Big-Big Brother. Hitler rose to power during a collapse of the German economic system in which the Ultras lost much of their wealth to ultra-inflation. Images of wheelbarrows full of nearly worthless currency fueled a Fascist rise to power.]

[The great psychiatrist and political-psychologist Wilhelm Reich, who daily witnessed Hitler's rise, showed how the dictator used the German family as a metaphor. Knowing that a sizable portion of the population consisted of families dominated by authoritarian fathers, Hitler called Germany the Fatherland, and himself the Father. This enabled a huge alliance of codependent households. "Any alliance whose purpose is not to wage war is senseless and useless (Hitler, 1926)."]

[Freud. During Hitler's reign there may have been a rise in CAP abuse of CDH members. Freud knew of child abuse in a number of his case families but he chose not to record them for fear readers would buy his books for the wrong reasons.]

Long Term Ultra-costs

"Where there is no vision the people will perish."

                Perhaps the most harmful effect of addiction is the loss of goals and compulsive avoidance of utopian visions. If history is any indication, such loss could bring down the greatest nation.

[The richest get richer and the rest get poorer according to Kevin Phillips, a conservative Republican, in his book The Politics of Rich and Poor (1990).]

[Fortune reports that America's million and a half millionaires saw their incomes multiply sumptuously (12/11/90). 

[Meanwhile the wealth is concentrating on fewer and fewer charities as well (Newsweek 05/26/86). The Salvation Army and Lutheran Ministries, e.g., are $billion-a-year charities while others struggle.]

Addiction and Government

"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes (US President Andrew Jackson, 1832)."

" There is no question in my mind that the dependence by our elected representatives in Washington upon the flow of special-interest influence is corrupting our democratic process. This dependence is blocking government from helping to solve our country's most pressing problems (Archibald Cox, 1992)."

                We are naturally led from compulsive economics to the question of dysfunction in our political system. Besides wealth and power, most government officials are under the influence of alcohol and tobacco money from the dealers of these substances. Laws regulating addiction are made by persons themselves addicted, codependent, or both; so they declare illegal those addictions other than their own. We will take up the subject of addiction and government in Chapter 3.

[Dy$ynergy 1932. The US government began a massive effort to recover from the Great Depression. But at the same time it legalized and taxed the use of alcohol. During the preceding years when alcohol was illegal, there had been a steady decline in deaths due to cirrhosis of the liver. But when the prohibitions were lifted in 1932 the death rate began to rise.]

[Working Poor.  17% of all US employees live below the poverty line.]

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