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08-02-2011, 03:46 AM   #61
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QuoteOriginally posted by shooz Quote
They already do.
I'm surprised you didn't notice.
Is LEGITIMATE supposed to be trick question?
I think you are over arguing the corporate control case... which ends up weakening the case.

Yes, corporations are able to move money around state restrictions, and jobs, and materials... and corporations are not required to behave morally, only legally. But don't for a minute believe that true PUBLIC companies cannot and will not tolerate the sort of behavior faux-Public corporations give us, or private ones: the Murdochs and Kochs and Long Term Capitals etc.

True public corporations have survival as the core value. They will not go far into illegality or immorality. Now, will they advocate their best interest, sure. Will they lobby for regulation changes? Sure. Are political systems, land locked as they are, adequate to supervise multi nationals? That's got two answers: one = yes, to a point. two = no, could be better.

08-02-2011, 04:33 AM   #62
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QuoteOriginally posted by Nesster Quote
or private ones:
I fear that this ones are the biggest, and the more numerous...You can read about how Coca Cola has been handling sindicalists in Colombia, how Repsol has been getting places to forage in Mapuche lands in Chile, how Shell and total have plundered the Niger Delta resources and how the Nigeria puppet government handled non violent protest movement (you can read how they executed Ken Saro Wiwa). You can read about Bhopal.
We can continue to cite those mischiefs or even turn our eyes to the western world internal corruption: you can read as how banks started this "crisis" and how they were paid off with public money while the directors and high executives of those should have been imprisoned for criminal negligence or even fraud (instead they got their salary paid by us..)...Enron
Greed is not a good motor for economic nor social devellopment...it does not lead to social profit but to externalization of environmental and business related risks, it leads to authoritary organizations and to a complete amoral (when not overtly immoral or even criminal) behaviour from those high placed within those organizations.
08-02-2011, 04:53 AM   #63
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Greed is as anti-economic as anti-social. A certain consumerist and competitive culture encourages greed. Capitalism--or a form of it, since capitalism doesn't exist in a cultural void--catalyzes greed, but it hasn't invented greed. I think it is naive to base the project of a new social (and political) arrangement on the idea that capitalism is the source of greed (and of other kinds of evil). Humans are naturally capable of being trodden by extremely dark, destructive forces. And I suppose any kind of political system has its favorite demons.
Minimizing the impact of such demons is the task of institutional work. (There are ways of doing institutional work as mere citizens.) Nowadays, clearly, (the culture of) greed is one of the prevailing destructive drives in the world.
It might be my bourgeois weakness, but I believe in gradually changing the culture that fosters a system by adjusting institutions (supposing that system has a decent degree of stability) much more than in aiming to cause a direct change of culture. The former doesn't call for 'taking stands' less than the latter. The direction of institutional work may change, depending on the kind of problems existing in a historical setting. (I guess I'm a Machiavellian of some sort.)

Last edited by causey; 08-02-2011 at 05:29 AM.
08-02-2011, 05:30 AM   #64
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Yes, these show the amorality of the profit motive: whatever's legal in whatever country, do it.

We in the West tend to reserve our outrage at companies that break the rules of good conduct here... and ignore what's going on elsewhere.

This article puts some of the basics well:
The NFL’s Recession Parable -- New York Magazine

QuoteQuote:
While the NFL lockout lacked the simple good-versus-evil dynamics of, say, a Jets-Patriots game, it also wasn’t tough to pick a side. After years of record profits, NFL owners proposed that players accept an eighteen-game schedule—the equivalent of two weeks of brain-scrambling unpaid overtime—and take what amounted to an 18 percent pay cut. Unlike the NBA owners, who recently launched their own lockout, the NFL didn’t really try to argue that teams weren’t making money; instead, the argument was that teams weren’t as profitable as they could (and, ergo, should) be. The biggest obstacle being, as usual, those needy employees, a labor force that, in the NFL and the NBA, also happens to be the league’s very popular product.



The perceived right to an ever-fatter bottom line isn’t a new idea, but it’s not an old one, either. Depending on your perspective, the last two decades, and especially the past three years, have either created or justified a view of employees as a disposable component of a bigger *profit-making machine, as something that can be managed “as a variable input,” in the words of a recent *McKinsey Global Institute report. And so, amid a jobless recovery that comes amid record corporate cash stockpiles, the NFL’s genetic-lottery winners and their billionaire bosses somehow became outsize proxies for the strife in the non-jock workplace.
The point here is: of course corporations are going to argue for more profit. But just because some business could be more profitable should not automatically mean it should be.

The idea that corporations perform a social service: provide employment, make stuff, move money piles around, ensure trading, etc etc should not mean that government or other interests don't have a place at the table. If you have kids, just because they grumble about your rules doesn't mean you cave in to their grumbling after all.

I still have trouble with the MMT idea that only government spending creates any money, i.e. value. So what does private business do? Is there truly no alternative to ever expanding 'deficits' under this system?

08-02-2011, 06:05 AM   #65
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I'm really not over arguing the corporate control case. If anything, it's being under argued.
Most folks have no idea what goes on in Nigeria OR Columbia or the US protectorate of Saipan, for that matter.
Coeurdechene does. I guess the Spanish press is a bit more free than ours.
As far as here in the US?
Think tanks, front groups, astro turfing, are done under the aegis corporate interests.
No one has yet commented on my questions of understanding about what multi-pronged marketing/PR is, let alone what it is capable of accomplishing.
Wouldn't you consider it at least a bit conspiratorial, when it is used to affect public perceptions of political ideas?
I do.
At that point they have TAXED me. It is no longer about selling a product.
It truly is taxation without representation.
Anyone here know what the result was of the case of conspiracy held against GM, Firestone and I believe it was Phillips petroleum?
$1

They have been doing this kind of thing with impunity for DECADES!
I am NOT overstating the case.
08-02-2011, 06:18 AM - 1 Like   #66
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QuoteOriginally posted by Jeff_H Quote
In the absence of government, would you believe that (insert corporation of your choice here) could LEGITIMATELY lay claim to the future production and wealth of anyone based on the location of those particular anyone's birth(s)?
What that question fails to recognize is that in the absence of government, there is no property. Property is a bundle of rights defined by government and enforced by government. The discussion about government taking away property at the vote of a majority omits recognition of the fact that property rights are created and defined by that same majority. It was a system of laws enacted by government that allows anyone to LEGITIMATELY lay claim to any wealth to begin with, and the location of birth that determines which of those laws apply.

Those characters from Monty Python and the Holy Grail could not own real property. Government changed, and now anyone can--at least in this country. By the same token, for most of human existence, humans could claim a property right in other humans. Government LEGITIMATELY took that property right away, though no vote was deemed sufficient by those who owned people. Government has always been the source and has defined the limits of what its citizens can keep as property.

Last edited by GeneV; 08-03-2011 at 05:18 AM.
08-02-2011, 06:32 AM   #67
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QuoteOriginally posted by shooz Quote
I'm really not over arguing the corporate control case. If anything, it's being under argued.
I would suggest 'control' is a bit strong, 'overly and improperly influential' is better, and lament that in the US the idea that government - and labor unions - are required to balance this influence has been eroded (by that multi pronged corporate/conservative program) to nearly where it was pre TR. Corporate ownership of the media isn't exactly helping us.

08-02-2011, 08:02 AM   #68
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To this I will have to respond.
See the citizens united ruling, repeal of the fairness act, etc.
It will get worse, much worse.

I do not feel that the purchase of ANY product should = a vote in my political system.
Yet it does.
EVERY lobbyist that is paid by our dollars, is taxation without representation.
If any of that money I spent on that product is used for that purpose, it IS a form of TAXATION!
It's also a most insidious form of inflation. It adds no value to any product.

HEAR THAT TEABAGGERS?
08-03-2011, 05:04 AM   #69
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"Political power grows from the barrel of a gun" (Mao Tse-Tung), at face value: even an autocratic government is preferable to rule by warlords, a democratically elected government is surely a further improvement.
08-03-2011, 07:23 AM   #70
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QuoteOriginally posted by jolepp Quote
"Political power grows from the barrel of a gun"
What this says, is that second amendment solution players actually have their hearts with a commie.
A Chinese one at that.
08-03-2011, 08:05 PM   #71
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QuoteOriginally posted by causey Quote
I think it is naive to base the project of a new social (and political) arrangement on the idea that capitalism is the source of greed (and of other kinds of evil).
It is indeed naive... When i've wrote about greed and capitalism i haven't tied the one as the source as the other. A new social and economical organization can be geared to deal with defects like greed in a positive manner (which capitalism has failed doing, which has brought us to impersonal corporations where it's executives can be brought to immoral and outrageous decisions because it's cheaper than other much more reasonable solutions). Capitalism may not be the source of greed, and it's ending or radical reform may not "eradicate" it but i'm sure it can bring us to deal with it in another manner.

QuoteOriginally posted by shooz Quote
I guess the Spanish press is a bit more free than ours
It ain't...and when it comes to Spanish enterprises like Repsol contaminating Mapuche lands it's just deaf, dumb, and ill willed (just for example).
I know all that because i think critical mind, and knowing the things we as society condone if it happens far far away is a very important part of social transformation and advancement.
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