There are places in this world no person should ever have to go. One of them is where I've been the last week and a half.
But before we get there, let me ask you a random question. Besides a king, what were the founding fathers fighting to be free of?
Anyone? Alright, you, loud guy on the porch next door.
"The monarchy of the monied corporation", yells Meat.
That's right, Meat. After dealing with the royal chartered monopolies The East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company for decades, the founders wanted no part of monied corporations.
So what was their opinion of the corporation Meat?
"I'm glad you asked, SJ," Meat sucks in a lungful of wind, "They saw corporations as corrupting influences on both the economy at large and on government — that's why they described the East India Company as imperium in imperio, a sort of “state within a state.”
That's impressive Meat. Who needs ChatGPT when you've got a loud guy on the porch next door?
The point is, anyone who'd suggested corporations have the same rights as people at the constitutional convention would have been laughed out of the hall and directly into a pot of tar to be feathered.
So when you look around at what we have today, it's clear something got lost in translation. Corporations in America are monarchies. They assume rights no one gave them and demand favors rarely earned. How many of you knowingly gave Facebook the right to use your private information and buying habits and personal activities as products on a shelf?
Unfortunately, for certain things that are standard in life today, you have to deal with monopolies who know you have no choice. If you're going to have email, if you're going to have e-commerce, if you're going to have a website anyone can find, you're going to have to deal with one big corporation.
If you don't know who that is, Meat says Google it.
Which brings me to where I've been the last ten days. Googlopolis. It is no place you want to be.
You'll know you're getting too close when you have to get help with something that requires an English speaking human. If you're a standard gmail user, like me, you'll probably never get close to Googlopolis.
But if you're the tech person for a small organization who wants to have reliable email using their own domain but google's service, also like me, then watch where you step. One wrong move and before you know it you'll be caught in a maze of one way streets that all lead to dead ends. You'll be in a play of script reading English as a Second Language actors who assure you one more text confirmation is all you need followed by the error that your number has exceeded the confirmation limit.
It's hard to get out of Googlopolis once you get in. Took me 11 days to break free of its clutches. It'll be a while before I know what it really cost or if anything was fixed. That's the way of the modern monopoly, the corporate monarchy.
I just know I don't want to go there again.