MmmooOOO...corrupts absolutely.

When the sufferer has passed-on it is very difficult to determine if they died from Alzheimer's or Mad Cow Disease without performing an autopsy. This is NOT a screed aimed at the Beef Industry (hallowed be thy name)- I remember what happened to that Winfrey woman. But desperate for an analogy, I happened on hamburger. (And only the most peculiar habitues of maladies bizarre have the proper respect for Kuru.)
Hamburger, that staple of the American board-of fare, ain't what it used to be. Time was (and I'm really NOT that old) when "ground beef" was purchased from a local butcher. You knew this butcher, he knew you, and he may have had a relationship with the bovine he butchered. (Certain areas of the country...) What I'm trying to say is that A cow- singular- was converted from ruminant to omnivore biomass. I saw blood as a kid- not just that watery "meat juice" in it's little pinkish pool in it's little pinkish styrofoam tray under the pinkish flourescent lights. The butcher was just this guy, you know? Some guys went to work and got grease on their clothes. Others got flour or coal dust or soot or just plain dirt. The butcher wore a white apron with blood stains. Not human, but you had a better understanding just what it took, beyond family finances, to put food on the table. Whoa...bit of a tangent there. Apple Polly Loggies.
Todays hamburger didn't come from Elsie- harvested after her milking days were over. It didn't come from Big Red- some surplus bull too mean to let live. Todays ground red meat came from Elsie, Big Red, Laverne, Tornado, Bessie, #1754, #42C, #181358, and #47G10032 thru #47G10908 inclusive. A single family portion could, and often does, contain bits and pieces of hundreds if not thousands of individual animals.
Aha! exclaims our pragmatist. Not everyone wants a slaughter house in their backyard! It only makes sense to centralise, to consolidate- to place those massive feedlots and slaughter houses in a convenient locale. Not only should factories be where folks don't feel the effects, it's just more efficient.
Granted. And I won't even belabor that whole source-point pollution thing.
The point I've taken so long to arrive at is how consolidation=anonymity. Not that cows neccesarily require or would request non-recognition (this, of course, does not apply to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe) but rather that their flesh, after "processing", becomes quite indistinguishable from their corral mates'. Even this, on a good day, is not a bad thing. But then bad days befall us, as when a cow suffering from Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (sp?) is culled into the mix. We've all witnessed what happens next. I'll spare you a replaying of all the rigmarole, the media circus and the frantic moms. My heart is torn asunder by ONE frantic mom, so I couldn't do it anyway.
I keep promising to make a point, so here it is- Consolidation ain't always good.

Now for the analogy bit. More melancholic musings about our downward spiral- caught in the vortex of the Two Minute Warning at the end of a Zero Sum Game.
Capitalism is in deep doo-doo. The Houses of Finance, like the Houses of Slaughter are becoming fewer and fewer (This may be a better analogy than I thought!) as our masters and our betters give them money to buy each other to share their names. (Yes, I DO KNOW how simplistic that sounds, but now I also know the sound of my bile duct draining.)
Banks, businesses, brokerage houses, insurance companies, pleaders and distressed gamblers, oracles and their temple priests are all hanging from our tit. We suckle and succor them in fear for they have promised us and they have warned us in the same breath and with the same words "We will grow up and get bigger." And the cure is also the disease? We have met the enemy...? Further consolidation of money/power as a curative? Considering the Surveillance Society we are now in will anonymity be part of the newest CEO perquisite package?
How can they tell us (with straight faces!) that we are still a Capitalist society?
If the recent chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America confesses to that country's top elected officials that his "worldview was wrong" on the very eve of our descent, what "indicator" remains? What needs to be said or done-and by whom or what- in order for us to realise that the upward limitations on the growth and power of corporations must again be addressed? Or, are we buying our way in to what amounts to nuevo-socialism with stock dividends to replace a ration of rice and new bootlaces? I'm gettin' that good ole "taxation without representation" feeling again, and if it sounds like a blues tune to you too, goodonya.
So welcome all to the New America. This is the land of the fee. If I am beginning to sound like a tax protester or a commie, well, I profess that I am neither. Perhaps an affliction eight years in the making. Eight long years of being subjected to the most inept and incompetent and secretive "rule" in this nations history. I do share in that Audacity of Hope, and yet our Ministry of Love holds that reservation in my name still. Room service to 101...room service to 101...
(It starts when you're always afraid.)