Private bussiness incompatibility with human development into

greatness
Written by Ernestas Radvila

We have achieved so much with todays advances in every branch of science. Our
productivity is higher than ever. We live in new golden age, never before unknown or experienced
by man. Unfortunately, we created a system which advances only then there is room to expand.
Many of today's advancements in science wasnt done from ideals or vision, but from simple
expansion of capitalists enterprise. Corporate growth retaken much of power from national hands
and placed it into private interest while governments continue to shrink in size with short-sighted
privatization efforts, spineless leaders and loss of purpose, nations shrunk into hedonistic, self-
centered weaklings. Long term investments into our future are few and further expansion of them
are doubtful since self-inflicted problems who are acting as time bombs threaten to completely seal
our chance at greatness.
Lets first start with definition of greatness in order why we today stand in such great
contrast with it. Greatness sometimes is defined by simply being better than the other, but how one
achieves this superiority? Why animals often are not described as great based on their inborn
superiority? One should be great not just by mere superiority of his skills, but by a virtue he needed
to acquire them. Virtue is a defining feature which separates us from animals. We act not because of
our immediate and selfish needs, but from idea and we do so not from impulse backed up with
inborn abilities, but from extensive organization structure of our country and with skills which are
acquired by long days of study. The very same can be applied to nations. One will not be defined as
great just by proving mere superiority in unequal contest. Were coalition victory in Iraq proclaimed
as great even with insignificant looses? Why most notably, Soviet victory against fascism was
celebrated as such even with massive looses in life and financially? The fact is that greatness isnt
achieved just by mere superiority over the other, but by sweat and blood spent trying to accomplish
something which shouldnt have meant to exist. Thats why United States once prided themselves
as being land of riches unknown before to men. Thats why often sentiments were heard about
greatness of their country and their way of life. On the other hand, Soviets were always superior to
allies in military and they never missed an opportunity to remind themselves about it. They
celebrated their martial and economic achievements and even Stalin remains controversial figure
despite being outright denounced. These are mere symptoms of militaristic and expansionist culture
which was celebrated and outright annexation of countries who put even most radical ultra
nationalist to shame was celebrated too and supported by people within system. This is the system
which truly embraced phrase end justifies the means and declared themselves as great despite
massive looses in achieving this greatness.
Why we are afraid? Why we are afraid of giant multinational corporations retaking
power from governments to themselves? Why we like to imagine Russians just rolling through us in
initial stages of war? Why we many of us choose this pessimistic outlook on our future despite ever
continuous advances of humanity. I would argue because its so that deep in our hearths we doubt
ourselves. We doubt that we have virtue required to stay true to something we believing in.
Furthermore, to resist if something has grew out of proportion. In a similar fashion why one doubts
its strength to resist something as corruptible and acceptable in our society as greed. Many people
usually succumbs to it, from oligarchic elite in Russia to corporate elite in United states. We strife
to be rich despite everything. We fail to see that it never had brought us happiness nor it will, its
futile goal by which many nations live today. Due to this, greed as a sin is sometimes even
encouraged or ignored since it will too difficult to confront it. It had grew so deeply into corporate


structure, into our endless struggle to be better than a neighbour that we choose to ignore it despite
seeing as candidates to presidents are being supported heavily by such elites. How the gap between
two social layers are only widening and influence of multinational companies continues to grow,
its not hard to imagine that in the end we all are going to become slaves to private interest,
oppressed and ruled in very similar fashion as a soviet regime propaganda machine done before us.
The failure to address this issue stems not just from any single source, person or social
layer. I see a failure to do that has to be done as a failure of democracy and society. We are blinded
by our short sighted interest. Everyone desires absolute best possible outcome, unwilling to make
sacrifices nor to show initiative by large enough scale to achieve desired results. Only Jesus Christ
himself managed with his death to repay our sins, we dont have a privilege by our martynhood to
change this world and thus, no one can hope to make a difference without support of others. Would
it be financially or in more passive form, no one will achieve anything without continuous efforts of
many, not just few. Thus failure to address something should be considered as a failure of society.
Its time to place blame away from democracy and place blame on yourselves. While its difficult to
admit, but as cogs in the grand machine we all play part in its functioning, but unlike cogs we can
be conscious and take responsibility for our actions. We can and often do see problems way in
advance before they strike us, but we often choose to wait. Why? Because its easiest just to close
your eyes, hide your head in sand rather than to address issues before they get out of hand. This
desire to eliminate every hardship from ones life is an unnatural one. Good mans life is filled with
hardship, with things which are unpleasant to you, but you do them, because you have to strife for
something more than mere existence. It might be high education or self-sacrifice for your friends,
family, but you deal with all unpleasantness with stoic determination. By striving to remove this
element from our lives we make sharp contrast from real life and our wishes. We try to live in
imaginary world without ever actually trying to address problem if that problem is complex and
requires massive investments. Thats why I see Americas debate of budget cutting as ridiculous.
No one understands in that kind situation they are in and they still have dreams of continuous
prosperity then they can ill afford this.
Through history we can see fluctuations of power concentration. From decentralized
model of feudal system to a complete opposite absolutism we saw many forms of governing and
that advantages and disadvantages they provided. Nowadays then a world slowly moves towards
plutocraty, you can see how nations continue to shrink in comparison of massive multinational
corporation who often has little to no loyalties to ones country. They exploit their freedom for
maximising their profits and keeping governments as hostages by forcing them into making
favorable inner conditions. By their continuous efforts to maintain monopoly through patents and
war of attrition in courts rather than justice, multinational companies are often despised aboard and
their sins are many. Even more, suspicious privatization efforts are often pushed and considered
despite having numerous long term damaging effects on employment, prices, but even on financial
benefit of this effort. They are often messy and are more similar to exploitation of weak nation by a
private interest similar to those observed in latest stages of Soviet Union. Most notable, one could
point out at relentless thievery done just after collapse of soviet union. Entire caste of oligarchs
were born in Russia and many other countries due to that. Even more, western influence often had
similar effect. By privatization local companies, many people lost their jobs and nations lost its
influence over itself. Collapse of socialist regime marked a symbolic victory of capitalism and
private interest which is often reminded nowadays then superiority of plutocratic answer is put in
question. From that point onwards we saw further slow withdrawal of national power while on the
other hand, private interest groups only grew in strength. Their interest and constant generous
donations to presidential elections are alarming. Knowing how little was actually done to remove
status quo of inequality and suspicious lack of talks towards it suggests that there might be more
than meets the eye. Knowing how deeply flawed our democratic system is with its high demand of
money rather than virtue for any election makes it very prone to oligarchic corruption.


Why large corporations are unsuited for guiding evolution of humanity? Its simple,
no high-risk solution will ever be taken, especially then your actions must be altruistic or in other
words, costly. Private interest are inherently flawed to first protect their wealth and second to
expand it and due to this, no long-term, high-risk investment is possible. Thats why there would
have been no space program without states direct and continuous efforts. Thats why even such
basic things like public education is impossible since its costly and without any noticeable returns.
In this light you cannot trust private companies to do that must be done, they will always place their
own hide before national interest and so, any grand projects either are impossible or futile. We
cannot hope to see any direction in existing or ever advancing todays plutocraty since this system
is highly interested only in status quo and further accumulation of their wealth. Thats why one can
expect less and less global efforts like space programs, monuments or advances in our society if we
will advocate blind decentralization of power. Today one draws comfort from hollow scientific
advances made or monuments created from accidents like sky scrappers, hydro dams or bridges, but
is this really all that we manage to create? We live in a golden age and instead of showing signs of
our prosperity, we show a distinct lack of them compared to nations before us. Thats why further
advances towards plutocraty has direct and negative correlation with that I define as greatness.
Nations will be more prone of fixing such trivial and chronic matters of over-consumption than
actually trying to advance further as a race. Our milestones and achievements will become scarcer
and scarcer as cost and profit from new technologies becomes more and more unfavorable and
fundamental factor, constant growth our economies will be removed, we will face very similar
tyranny of noble classes as seen before then they had superior status in society via inherence and
monopoly of posts. Nowadays, elitism in corporate world can be seen easily and rich yet again have
an escalated status from rest of us via private education, resources to engage in justice system and
contacts needed to get a head start in live or business. This difference is more emphasized in nations
who surrendered themselves more to capitalism and its concept of private ownership. While Europe
largely enjoys free university education in one form or another, USA controversial has a biggest
inequality for poor compared to Europe. Its just a one sharp difference that reckless privatization
can create. With slow encroach of private property we might get caught off guard then we become
prisoners in our own nation with new noble caste to support. History tends to repeat itself and if we
will not be aware of mistakes of our ancestors, we are doomed to repeat very same class struggle
which were seen from French revolution.
Our political system not only discourages good candidates from participating in
political system, but it encourages oligarchic practices due elections being extremely expensive. In
addition, democracy is a rule of fools. Masses cannot judge well and could be easily manipulated
nor they can judge well rulers themselves. One of most notable examples is Vladimir Putin. Mid-
range KGB agent chosen by Russian oligarchic elite to push their interests misfired dramatically.
Putin has proven himself as a very competent ruler and yet, he is unique candidate to eastern world.
Its so simply because people will not understand that basic concepts such as that a good man can
make mistakes in life or be in places where he can gain experience in order to be a great leader. As
an agent, while his background was perfect for presidency, people would not support him since
they need perfect candidate without any flaws or controversy. Further, open donations for
presidency campaign should be a matter of great concern, not only large sums are generously
donated by private groups, but even anonymous donators begin to donate for their candidates
campaigns. How can society elect happily someone who is forced to make promises to his donators
even before elections? While one might argue that lack of proof disapproves doubts about
legitimacy, I write off such talks as optimistic and wishful.
Democracy suffers from having insufficiently mature population and by that our
leaders are often to change policies towards ineffective methods and inappropriate decisions. One of
notable examples is green energy policies and reactionary movement towards atomic reactors after
incidents in Japan. People fail to to see increased burden of this alternative energy source, glorify it


pointlessly and push nation into such trivial direction. Another great example is opposition in inner
nations politics. We can see clearly are trend of strong retoric towards Russians during Ukraine
crisis, but every nation is very hesitant towards any action. This is a symptom of very same
problem- uneducated people. They fail to grasp geopolitics sufficiently in order to judge well. They
often lack perspective and knowledge required to understand why nation had failed in this. Even if
this isnt true for significant portion of populace, this still does not diminish a simple fact that they
are fewer in number and thus uneducated individuals are left to elect our leaders. In addition, these
uneducated masses are keeping us from making right decisions like cutting public spending in order
to balance our budgets. Many nations had fallen into this, Greece collapse is just an early warning
of that over-consumption and lack of discipline can do. All nations should be deeply concerned
about their debt, not only just United States and Great Britain.
In the end, there are not only these, but many other problems who plague our
leadership. Not only they are handicapped from the start with damning promises, but with
responsibilities to his supporters. Leaders today have their hands tied with ever counter productive
political opposition and having a distinct lack of direction. Every smallest group will use anything
they have to sabotage good of many in order to have their own interests addressed. Such impotent
system is often wrongly hailed as democracy at work. Today leader or a party often has to do and
stand for not thats right, but that necessary promises they had made and that other political parties
are expecting from them. Selling votes and support is sadly a problem which is rarely spoken about,
but no one wants to address this fundamental problem of democracy. In truth, there was a very little
fundamental change in our governing despite its obvious shortcomings and vectors of corruption.
We can see this in a obvious lack of any decisive action from our leaders. In fact, many of them
choose to play this spineless political game where our leaders talk a lot, but do very little to alter
status quo. Personally, I see such leaders as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as an example of
how country should be run despite disagreements to their policies. A good leader shouldnt be taken
hostage by threats and if needed, he should be willing not even to fire thousands of insurbonative
workers, but to escalate cold war if there is a reason for it. Reagan played significant role in
collapse of Soviet Union, pushing it to compete then it scarcely could afford to. His aggressive
politics, his bold visions and courage to do then nobody thought it possible to challenge Soviet
Union at end 70 and start of 80 played a piviol role in putting very much needed pressure of regime
who begun to crack itself. Unfortunately, such leaders are rarity. Today we live in a world there we
cannot trust them, they live in their own imaginary world, filled with constrains and lack of
commitment. Most notable example is of course Crimea. By Budapesth treaty western powers
agreed to defend Ukraine territorial integrity. Ukraine willingly disarmed its nuclear arsenal and
surrendered it to Russia. Now, Putin masterfully backstabed everyone and continues to have
complete control over crysis in this region. There was a lot of angry rhetoric directed towards him,
most notably Angel Merkel said that Putin is delusional or John Kerry highlighted western typical
hypocrisy at deeming Russias actions as of states from 19th century. Western response to honor
bound treaty was very underwhelming, until it introduced formal sanctions which practically hurted
nobody, Russia officially annexed Crimea. This spineless and honerless behavior can be seen
abundantly especially in Europe then it failed spectacularly to give unquestionable military support
in war against Afghanistan, endless talks begun for things that shouldnt be even up to debate.
Similar failure of its miliatries was observed and in Yugoslavia where Europe failed to deliver
decisive action to halt atrocities. Europe today represents same decayed and deluded state which
was observed prior WW2. Europe has failed in its leadership to make hard decisions on many
occasions. They had failed to address issue of Natos solidarity, many nations, especially near
Russia is openly doubting its ability and willingness to keep their promises, most notably,
Lithuanians doesnt even expect to resist invasion at all and put their hopes for eventual liberation
of their country. Sadly, this issue goes deeper than security aspect of EU, leaders of the Union today
suffers problems caused by wasteful lives, their problems are very similar to USA and they like it or


not, but their time is over. They had to focus on inner problems instead of having dreams of further
world dominance in this increasingly unstable world.
Nowadays world lost its purpose. Its living solely for its own existence without either
purpose or direction. We consume and strive to pointlessly to improve our well being without
realisation that this goal is futile. Once goal was to contain communism. A noble goal which
prevented free world from falling into it. Once nations competed with each other, striving to
achieve superiority over other, today we live seemingly without a purpose in our lives other than
selfish wealth accumulation. It doesnt matter if there are plenty of exceptions, all that matter is
ideologic of a nation and ideology of the masses. First fails to have any long term goal and
continuesly strives to improve its economical status from seemingly never ending economical crisis,
spending comparisonaly very little to matters which does not directly include our well being.
Masses often fail to show self-determination and force of will to do thats right and to resist
dangerous and on surface attracitve ideas. This can be seen with with increased risk of rebellions or
wide spread protests during wars and thus endangering countless lives with their own short-sighted
and selfish goals. Such society and leadership does not define their future for themselves. They
stumble upon it. All research done was done largely just for financial gain and thus we are helpless
to evolve into directions which does not give quick reward or if we want to push our evolution to
a particular road. Of course there are projects and government agencies as NASA, but they are
insignificant compared to overall technological progress and quantity. Even more, to put salt onto
wound, private companies are slowly retaking space into their own hands, negating decades of
achievements and expertise gained by NASA. Due to this, we will be slowly imprisoned by
corporations and once all capital will be in their hands, our future and advancements will be
dictated by them and thats just one small aspect of grim possible future. Then did rich and
powerful entities didnt dreamed of influencing states affairs? Then private organisations stood for
benefit of the many instead of their own benefit?
In the end, this article is not against the west or the east. Problems that I had described
can be found in any nation. This problem is widespread and my intention was purely to point it out
and not to bash one side or another. By ever increasing influence and power of corporations and
their inherent inability to move from status quo and plutocracy one must also take into account
short-sighted masses and their futile goals. This combination is perfect to retain status quo and to
never fully evolve and to reach true greatness. We will continue to live selfish lives and to waste
resources, falling into very same pitfall as so many before us did. We will waste everything and we
will squander our superior position allowing ourselves to be pushed away from place of
dominance. West today suffers very same phenomena as can be seen in history. Dominant and
more advanced empires or nations are being pushed away by more eager and harder working
powers and thus I say that our time of dominance is over unless we are willing to make hard choices
and to pay the price for our pasts mistakes.