Howard Schultz, the founder and current major shareholder of the ubiquitous coffee chain, Starbuck’s, wants to be president of the United States. When asked why he wants to run as an independent candidate, Schultz replied with a “glittering generality” common among new age mercantilists who run for political office: “I want to bring the country together.”
Schultz and those like him who have or are harboring political ambitions want governments to serve the neo-mercantilist elites, not the common folk. The historical precedent for this behavior is the British East India Company, also known as the “Honorable East India Company.” This London-based company controlled a vast monopoly on trade, extending from India and Southeast Asia, China, and Japan to the wharves of Boston in the British colony of Massachusetts Bay in North America.
The famous “Boston Tea Party” of 1773 was a rebellion by American colonial merchants over the imposition of the Stamp Tax on tea and other goods imported to North America from India by the British East India Company. However, the rebels of Boston were more interested in their bottom line than in political fervor to break from the British Crown. In fact, the thirteen red and white stripes on the flag of the British East India Company, with the British Union Jack in the canton, became the basis for the design of the American flag, with a field of white stars replacing the Union Jack. When Americans fight over respect for “the flag,” few realize that what they are being forced to respect is a modified form of the standard for one of the largest mercantilist contrivances in history. In effect, the British East India Company, which had its own army and navy, ruled over India and British colonies in Malaya, China, Burma, Mauritius, and Reunion.
The same mercantilist notions of trade expansion and control of commodities exists today with companies like Starbuck’s. (more...)
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