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ExxonMobil rakes in record profit
Oil profits defy recession, earth’s welfare
By Nathan Johnson
Where are those antitrust laws when you need them?
ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company and the second largest corporation in the world behind Wal-Mart, has set the record for the largest quarterly profit this country has ever seen, taking in $14.83 billion hand over fist this last financial quarter. This figure surpasses the company’s previous record of $11.68 billion in the second quarter of this year.
ExxonMobil’s profits account for essentially one third of the $45 billion of net profit hauled in by the top five Western oil corporations over the third quarter of this year. Meanwhile, America’s gross domestic product as a whole fell 0.3 percent in the same amount of time, as the recession digs in deeper, courtesy of the capitalist business cycle.
Oil record profits were made possible by the soaring gas prices that had many college students and working class families across the country wondering how they were going to pay the bills. Clearly, Exxon’s super-profits contributed substantially to the inflated price of gasoline. While ExxonMobil technically isn’t a monopoly, it clearly isn’t facing any significant price competition. Where are those antitrust laws when you need them?
ExxonMobil derives its name from the two giant oil companies that merged in 1999. When Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly was broken up by the government in 1911, it was split into 34 companies. Two of these, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and Socony, would later become Exxon and Mobil respectively. Funny, isn’t it, how the concentration and accumulation of capital can’t be stopped even by decisions reached by the government?
It only goes to show who has the real power to make decisions in our society. The only force in our society capable of challenging the power of such wealthy corporations is the working class itself. Our future and the very health of the planet depend on it.
Considering that we will reach peak oil (if we haven’t already) in the upcoming decades, it is crucial that the industrialized countries develop alternative energy sources that are environmentally sound. However, the large established oil companies will do everything in their power to prevent and delay the development of alternative fuels, which threaten not only their profitability, but their very existence.
Think about it. How can any entrepreneur who isn’t a filthy rich multi-millionaire ever found a startup renewable energy company, when it would have to compete against corporate giants such as ExxonMobil, which appropriates some $372.8 million in revenue annually? Nobody can really compete with that. Since free enterprise can’t fix the situation, the government will eventually have to take an active part in directing investments toward alternative fuels.
Too bad Exxon’s economic power can buy political power as well, as the corporation contributes to both Republican and Democratic campaigns. Since 1990, Exxon has given nearly $10 million in contributions, 86 percent of which went to the Republicans. Maybe, just maybe, this has something to do with the fact that our bureaucratic two-party system is dragging its feet in its effort to reduce our dependence on oil and address global climate change, as America is causing catastrophic ecological destruction on a worldwide scale.
In fact, we are currently living in a manmade mass extinction which scientists call the Holocene extinction event. Evidence indicates that “we are in [the] midst of [the] fastest mass extinction in earth’s history,” according to a press release by the American Museum of Natural History. ExxonMobil is known for its funding of junk science, giving $23 million in the last 10 years to organizations and scientists who manipulate scientific data to suggest global climate change isn’t occurring, according to ExxposeExxon. As Rep. Brad Miller from North Carolina stated in 2007, “The support of climate skeptics, many of whom have no real grounding in climate science, appears to be an effort to distort public discussion about global warming.”
A short term solution to the problems ExxonMobil presents would be to demand the government break up the beast into a few smaller companies. However, this “solution” is only short term since the more successful corporations would end up buying out the smaller ones once again, and history would just repeat itself. The only lasting solution is to create a society where people would come before profit, wherein the working class would be in control of industry, instead of being controlled by industry.
> Comments
Adam on Nov 11, 2008 at 01:08 PM:
....Breaking News....ExxonMobil Pays Record Taxes.....
Erik on Nov 15, 2008 at 01:05 PM:
Think about it. How can any entrepreneur who isn’t a filthy rich multi-millionaire ever found a startup renewable energy company, when it would have to compete against corporate giants such as ExxonMobil, which appropriates some $372.8 million in revenue annually?
Many individuals investing small sums of money for a proportional share of ownership in the new technology. Perhaps these individuals could include the working class. We could even give these people a say in how their collective investment would be employed and how the rewards are used. This could be done by democratically electing a board of leaders that would manage the invested funds. With this collaborative effort the working class could gain control of industry and eliminate the corporations that control us all.