Forum Post: A vicious PitBull, on a long leash, chained to the fence inside your kids school yard, is what our relationship with corporations resembles today. Can a Ron Lawl supporter tell me…
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 22, 2011, 9:30 a.m. EST by unarmed
(213)
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…how would cutting that leash, getting rid of laws that regulate/restrict the activity of corporations. How is this a good thing, how would a completely free market protect us from the CEO Pit Bulls that would rip our faces off, if left unrestricted and it was good for their bottom line?
I like your analogy, particularly because it let's us ask "who let the dogs out?" The analogy is flawed, however, because dogs are social animals that can be trained.
Business (not just corporations) seek profit and are relentless in their pursuit of it. They cannot be trained and they don't care all that much about being a member of a social group. In this sense, businesses are more like sharks; they will go where we let them, and they will terrorize wherever they go (not to demonize sharks, by the way, it's just an analogy).
We need laws and regulations to control where the sharks can go. Within the allowed area, they will seek out whatever food they can find without exception. While they can be dangerous, the behavior of the sharks is very predictable.
The sharks will roam wherever they find food. If we want them to roam in certain areas, we need only move the food to that area, and they will follow. Thus, we now have a second control over the sharks; we can not only confine they space they operate in using law, we can can control where they go in that space by moving their food around.
The food for business is sales. Business will move within the space defined by law to the areas having the most tasty and nutritious/profitable sales. The really nifty thing is that America, because of its status as the world's largest consumer society, is the nation that has the greatest control over where the sales/profits are found.
There is much focus on the law, but little focus on how the buying decisions we make attract business toward certain behaviors. Ignoring this aspect is tantamount to simply throwing away one of only two controls we have over business. We need to change this.
My post at http://occupywallst.org/forum/the-power-of-the-people/ discusses how we consumers can change the face of business by simply changing what we buy. This requires long term reeducation of the consuming public, but it can be done. In the meantime we can effect immediate change by following a few simple Christmas shopping guidelines I compiled from a forum post and moved to a separate page at http://bit.ly/vof9WH where they are more widely accessible and can be shared via social media.
Please review the guidelines at http://bit.ly/vof9WH . If you agree with them, spread the http://bit.ly/vof9WH link as far and wide as you can using e-mail, twitter, face-book, etc, so we can get enough people on-board to have an impact. Note the site has no ads, and I benefit in no fashion other than the satisfaction of helping Americans understand how they can change the face of business in America.
In siding with you, I'd point out the obvious that is still somehow being missed by many. We have had about thirty years of increasing bank deregulation from the Reagan days to the present. Every government -- Republican or Democrat -- participated in taking down bank regulations. Now, we have the biggest banking failure due to unregulated greed that we've ever seen.
Conservatives sometimes claim that Wall Street is self-regulating so that it doesn't need government interference because capitalism is self-correcting. They are right that capitalism is self-correcting in the end. It will eventually cause those who make bad decisions to fail. Problem is that capitalism by itself does not impose those corrections until the damage has been done. The reason we create regulations (when they are good ones and don't go overboard) is to keep from ever getting to a point where where we have to experience those painful corrections. We are smart enough to KNOW they will happen in advance, so we try to regulate the kind of behavior that creates them.
Because we took away the regulations, we now are living the pain of a Great Correction, also known as The Great Recession. That's what you get from deregulation.
I've written more about this in the following article:
http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/2011/10/the-great-ponzi-scheme/
--Knave Dave http://TheGreatRecession.info/blog
I totally get the metaphorical analogy. However, corporations are probably more like self programming and maintaining robots with collective intelligence. However you wish to view it, if allowed to continue unchecked, these corporations have one goal in mind, and one goal only…and that is to be the biggest or only robot!
The collective intelligence and voice of OWS has attached a human face to this unfettered capitalistic ideology, and I think that is very important. At some point it has to be about the citizens of the United States of America, and not the machine that is the United States of Corporate America!
There is nothing wrong with Capitalism if it is beneficial to the majority of the people that support it. What we now have is Capitalism run amuck through corrupt corporate lobbying practices that has simply removed the human element from the equation
A close variation on this analogy:
"The Roman arena was technically a level playing field. But on one side were the lions with all the weapons, and on the other the Christians with all the blood. That's not a level playing field. That's a slaughter. And so is putting people into the economy without equipping them with capital, while equipping a tiny handful of people with hundreds and thousands of times more than they can use."
--Louis O. Kelso in Bill Moyers: A World of Ideas, (1990)
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Kelso , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_economics .
Corporations are not evil. Corporatism is evil because it uses the force of government to protect and/or favor companies or industries from the beneficial effects of competition. The result is collusion and corruption. In the case of China, you have unfair competition right off the bat because most Chinese companies are co-owned by their goverment, their currency is "pegged", or held, at a fraction of the dollar, and their labor pool is extremely wide and full, keeping costs incredibly low.
How do you suppose competition is beneficial? It is at best beneficial to the consumer by bringing down prices.
If I were to open a store and pay my workers a decent wage, but then WalMart opens up nearby and pays their workers much less. If I were to compete, then I would have to pay my workers a much lower wage. That is the price of competition. It benefits the consumer, but not the worker.
The negative aspect of competition, therefore, is one of the reasons why the government strives to institute a minimum wage. Market fundamentalists know that competition brings down prices. But isn't a wage a price for labor? It, too, must then bring down wages. Market fundamantalists tend to believe in a theory that can not operate in the real world, a theory that appears to remove all notion of corruption and collusion as well as an apparent belief that everyone's needs ought to be the same. Say I had a wife, and that my wife had cancer. Is her needs relative to everyone else's? I seriously doubt it, and my expenses would be much higher due to her care. If I was paid very low, then I would need my pay to be higher to pay for her care and my own survival. A drive for me to corrupt the system would thus be higher, especially if we lived in a market fundamentalist state.
Where in the Costitution are you guaranteed a job? Where in the Constitution are you guaranteed a minimum wage? These notions are part of the reason why corporatism exists, as a counter-balance to public demands that should never have been granted. And look a little closer...it's politicians who have circumvented the Constitution to "guarantee" these things to both sides while they play the part of the teeter-totter... it keeps THEM in charge. Well, isn't that a mind-blower.
So, tell me how is unrestricted Corporativism a good thing?
Never said that... It's not good. Unrestricted competition is good. Corporatism is not competition.
Corporatism is the system in total a corporation is an element of that system.
Comparative Example:
Communist, Commune, Communism / Corporatist, Corporation, Corporatism
You might want to look up the following in a dictionary: corporation, corporatism, competition, free market.
I don't think you understand your definition of "corporatism". I'll help you out.
cor·po·rat·ism
: the organization of a society into industrial and professional CORPORATIONS serving as organs of political representation and exercising control over persons and activities within their jurisdiction — cor·po·rat·ist adjective
Let us defer to Merriam-Webster: the organization of a society into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and exercising control over persons and activities within their jurisdiction.
You see, this is not a good thing. There is no actual competition.
Let's take it slow, and start from the beginning. You state, "Corporations are not evil. Corporatism is evil". By using "Corporatism", you mean that Government regulation of Corporations is the bad thing AND NOT the corporations themselves are bad, correct?
Do you mean to imply that the ACTIONS of corporations are not evil and the ACTIONS of corporations are better left up to themselves without the oversight of government regulation?
I'm saying the actions of corporations that are not intertwined with government and facing the leavening effects of true competition in a free market (again, free from the distorting and corrupting influence of government) ... all of this is not evil, because there is no favoritism, no undue influence, no lining of pockets, no self-dealing, no conflict of interest. In this example, businesses must be responsive to consumers or go out of business.
BP ruined the entire gulf WITH regulation, how do you think that would have turned out with NO regulation? Better?
Consider this. If the Gulf waters were privately owned, then their exploitation for oil production could have been more tightly controlled because a company doesn't make money if their facility is shoddily run. Competition ensures that poor performers are shut down or bought out and the most effecient survive.
The BP incident happened BECAUSE of slipshod quality control by regulators. Don't you remember the findings? Federal regulations were not followed, nor enforced.
"The BP incident happened BECAUSE of slipshod quality control by regulators. Don't you remember the findings? Federal regulations were not followed, nor enforced."
What makes you think BP would follow guide lines that are Non Existent, if they choose NOT adhere to the regulations that did? What would be their motivation?
Profit. They are a business, businesses must do one thing: Make a profit.
If they have an oil accident they are losing money, first because they get sued for environmental damages to the coast, second because their moneymaker is seeping out of a pipe. The free market scenario dictates they do everything in their power to ensure a well maintained oil extraction system free of potentially expensive accidents, to maintain a high-quality product for sale.
The market forces that enable you to buy a cheap smartphone (basically a tiny computer) are the same that should operate in the oil business, free from the compromised protections of government.
How many wars have we gotten involved in over cell phones?
Short-term profit is always the goal, and lawsuits can be dragged out for decades and remunerations whittled to near nothing - see Exxon Valdez. Oil spills are just another externalized cost.
Market forces fail to provide superior outcomes and benefit the common good every single day. Market forces generate profit, wealth that accumulates.
This is all about the libertarian faith in the god freemarket.
Because government is the owner that encourages the bad behavior and removes the ability to punish the animal.
We don't want to remove the leash - we want to hand the leash from the current owner to the people.
Government creates by charter corporations. Government gets in bed with them to create "regulating" agencies that actually protect the corporations. They subsidize and bail out their favored corporations.
End this and allow the people to regulate the corporations by being free to vote where their money goes and be free to sue them without being restricted (such as EPA regulations that allow X amount of pollution and prohibit suits if the industry remains in that guideline) and stop the government from directing by force our money to support them (bailouts, corporate welfare).
If we do hand the leash to the people, then government will still be the owner that encourages the bad behavior. Corporations see the people as the enemy. As seen from the front lines of industry, corporations use the power of think tanks to influence legislation. Many of those spouting their so-called populist rhetoric on the television screen or writing in the newspaper are attitudes hired from the front lines of industry scapegoating. This is where many right-wingers get their views from, and many of them don't even know it. I bet if the truth about their constituents were told, then there would be a lot less right-wingers among us. Not that they are not liberal ones, either. Take the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a liberal industry front group funded by Bill Gates, who makes his money in attempts to monopolize the software industry and striving to put open source software out of business.
Handing the leash to the power of the people can only mean restructuring, not only attacking corporate power but also its methods of organization that both most left and right-wing organizations adhere to, namely the idea of "command hierarchies." People need to be in control of not just the political system, but also the economic system.
Also, government rarely gets in bed with a corporation to produce regulating agencies. In fact, it usually is the opposite. Corporations get in bed with the government through the creation of policy institutes. Why do corporations do that? It's obvious. They do not want the people in control of the government. They want to be in control. We are their enemy.
You see you fundamentally understand the pairing as well when you say "they use think tanks to influence legislation". Remove the ability to legislate inside the market and what power of force do corporations have? None. It is through their use of the government power to compel action or face punishment that corporations harm the consumers.
Governments get in bed all the time with corporations to produce regulation. Look at any substantial regulatory reform in detail in the past forty years and you will find the experts called in to advise regulation and current business practices are members of the industry that is being regulated.
People are in control of the economic system - no one else can be. The free market is nothing more than summation of all the private decisions all people have made. The market literally is the result of human action. It isn't some thing to be controlled its the expression of the free will of every human.
The idea of removing the ability to legislate inside the market, though, is a fantasy based on our traditional economic system. It is a fantasy to think that rich people are going to sit back and relax if we were to somehow remove such a desire.
I agree that there may be ways to do it without government. If I wanted to know what such and such company was putting into the air, then I suppose I could take a sample, send it to a university for testing, and then start a campaign. It's another issue, though, if that same company said I was trespassing and broke the law to do so. If I did found out, regardless, what can I do about it? Sure, we can cause a disruption. Isn't that what OWS is now doing? I suspect, though, the disruption is going to be in favor of more regulation. You can argue criminal and charge a fine, but isn't that still a form of regulation? Then, it's no longer the free market at work. Simply stated, such a concept is a fantasy.
People are not in control of the economic system. If they were, then workers at a given factory would be defining the rules and regulations that governed its business. Instead, workers are co-opted into becoming subservients to the managerial class and ultimately to the CEO. This system is good if you want a few to get mighty rich, and then lots of those mighty rich people are going to naturally collude and corrupt the system to support their interests.
With that said, government regulatory agencies are a problem. I do believe that, but that is a problem lying in the concept of bureaucracies. Ultimately stated, a bureaucracy is an organization that starts out in the best interests of those it supports and then becomes self-serving over time. Bureaucracies often line up with hierarchies and are often seen in system with a vast array of hierarchical structures, for obvious reasons.
Good conversation. Sorry to say I have to go for the day. Look forward to talking to you later.
"We don't want to remove the leash - we want to hand the leash from the current owner to the people."
Just how can the people "vote where their money goes", with companies such as BP for example, stop driving?
They can do several things - stop investing in portfolios which contain British Petroleum stock, drive less, get more fuel efficient or alternative fuel vehicles and the like. When pollution causes harm citizens can individually or band together to take class action claims without the protection written into governmental regulating documents.
However yes the oil industry is a tough nut because of the arrangement and distribution of American living, working, and retail space. Cars become almost mandatory quickly outside of cities. This is more of a systemic problem of design following the car rather than one of regulation or not though.
I agree. People can and do that. Much of that entirely is misleading, however. Do you see industry attempting to push alternative energy? I mean, yes, there are hybrid cars now, but it's still a measure that uses a reliance on oil. And all of that is mostly due to government measures involving stricter conservation measures. If such measures were never in place, do you really think there would be hybrid cars right now? Maybe the catalytic converter would have just been invented yesterday, when corporations finally woke up and realized their profits were at stake because oil was starting to dwindle. Still, corporations insist on drilling more and more, and are not even daring to really fund alternative energy.
Yes, people can band together to make class action claims. However, lots of people are also convinced of reports from industry front groups that buy up reporting space on local media and consider their associates "reporters". You can't really blame people for thinking the way when they do, when the same rhetoric is spouted over and over again with great fervor and vehemence and tied to mass mobility under the guise of "fair and balanced" and the "nation's most #1 watched news network."
I don't know - they are pushing it hard enough for me to have gone solar and geothermal in the last two years. The more the technology is worked on and used the more it will become competitive and the more people will come to trust it. Its a slow process but it is much preferred to anything that imposes changes on people for people always resist things imposed on them.
Corporations (in a free market) react just as individuals react - in that their profits are tied to how individuals weigh factors. If someone decides that a cleaner car is worth paying X more and if enough people make that same decision a business will seek to fill that demand because people will pay to have it met. It is a yin yang reaction balancing all the sum total concerns of the population. Niche concerns won't get as much traction as popular concerns so it behooves niche concerns to convert more people to their way of thinking - peacefully. As the environmental movement has done. At the end of it we can "maybe" all day but I prefer a solution that involves freedom of choice and without anyone forcing anyone else to do things because of the negative consequences force creates.
Yeah so people have to be tougher on their standards. Luckily even today non corporate aligned businesses exist to provide studious reports on a variety of (consumer reports) or specialized (Underwriters Labs) reviews for consumers. Since information itself has value - these business opportunities will grow.
I can't really blame people no - most people's lives are very busy but at the same time if you remove the incentive to pay more attention people never will.
How about the pharmaceutical industry?
Just how can the people "vote where their money goes", with companies such as Pfizer for example, tell their doctors which drugs to prescribe or just stop taking them altogether?
I actually on a Pfizer system right now funny enough.
There are alternatives for much of the drugs out there on the market so yes a patient can refuse medication or state preferences - most people don't though which is sad. I've told my doctor I wanted other options and their pricing - more education for patients I think is key here.
So you would be fine if I formed a Corporation, developed completely untested drugs, sold them to the public by way of clever advertising, sickened thousands… then retired in the cayman's with billions in profit?
This is what is possible in a completely unregulated free market system.
Interesting. I wonder what John Stossel or Ron Lawl would say if that were the case? "Oh, that's the magic of the free market." I wonder. Drugs would certainly be an interesting test on that one. The free market just killed hundreds, and still, we need to preserve it. I wonder, too, how the spin would be put on it. Even without government regulation, I bet Fox News would find some way to say the government caused it. They would have to.
No because that wouldn't happen. How could you not be fraudulently advertising drugs if you never tested them? That would be fraud and you would rightly face civil and criminal charges. You would be exposed rather quickly and your profit would turn to loss. You could perhaps cut out very early and take what little profits you had but it wouldn't be much. Word of mouth about bad products tends to spread rather quickly.
Before the FDA existed companies tested their own drugs but you act like this didn't happen. There is a reason the snake oil salesman was a lone actor and not a business with a real location but someone who had to keep on the move to stay ahead of their shams. And even now with the FDA these shams exist in the form of internet scammers and illegal pill pushers.
Are you trying to say that pharmaceutical industries never face charges? There are numerous cases to show evidence that is not the case. Still, those same companies are still operating and still not properly testing their drugs. It's even worse today, because they are experimenting with genetic engineering. The effects of that are very hard to test, because it may take years before it is known. Yet, they are scrambling to put this stuff on the market. John Stossel has already lined up with the industry front groups in stipulating that GMO is OK and that we have nothing to worry about. The industry is already trying to convince the public on that one. You engineer a crop with a synthetic insecticide in the middle of a seed? Are we supposed to think that's OK? If, one day, everybody is exposed to a hidden problem? Hundreds die. You can then say they ought to face criminal or civil charges, but it's too late.
No I am not claiming that - I never even suggested anything near it.
Don't get me started on Monsanto - the farmer behind my house grows with the method: Spring - let all the weeds grow and then RoundUp them all. let weeds grow a little bit then plant GM corn in the ground while spraying more RoundUp, don't harvest the corn just plow it under and collect government subsidy check. Repeat every year.
And we have well water.
"How could you not be fraudulently advertising drugs if you never tested them? That would be fraud and you would rightly face civil and criminal charges. "
It would NOT be fraud in an unregulated system.
"How could you not be fraudulently advertising drugs if you never tested them? That would be fraud and you would rightly face civil and criminal charges."
The reason is because the snake oil salesman couldn't compete with the corporations of the time that were filled with 7-8 year old kids stuffing cocaine in soda water, lead in paint and asbestos in your underwear.
Yes it would be fraud. If you advertise X as being able to do Y yet have no support for that claim - it is fraud.
You act as if corporations are some Captain Planet like villain who exist only to cause harm. At the time children working in factories was safer than working in fields and it was either work or starve. Those were the real options that existed in the day - which would you choose? The negative effects of cocaine (and many other things) were not known at the time and even doctors were using cocaine and heroin for real medical uses (pain management). Lead in paint was used because it increases durability and reduces drying time while improving appearance. Asbestos is a good thermal insulator. So they all had valid reasons for being used at the time long long before people knew that they were bad - and when they did they choose not to buy them so the products were removed.
"Yes it would be fraud. If you advertise X as being able to do Y yet have no support for that claim - it is fraud"
TRUE, only because THE GOVERNMENT REGULATES THE AD INDUSTRY. In your regulation free system IT WON'T.
No that isn't the reason. Fraud is a part of contract law - as in the right of contract. Fraud cases for advertising existed long before there was any regulation of the ad industry because its is a breach of the right of contract.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud
yeah. or boycott...what is this site about ?
getting organized and motivated and get shit done
and in a free market BP would never have the power that they do without the Empire to control world resources
hence the Brent Woods 1945 after WWII, the USA?RUSSIA?UK carved up the world especially the middle east.
Hence IRAN and this whole mess, BIG GOVT=BIG cluster fuck
there would be competition and most likely solar/electric/hydrogen would be most likely thriving, I can show you footage from the 1970's where in JAck Nicholson driving a hydrogen car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJVzySk0Pks
big govt stopped the competition due to the corruption of Big Oil
I don't want restrictions, I want transparency. As long as all business deals between us and consumers is transparent, consumers have NO right to complain. If they sign on the dotted line, they will have no excuses for when things go badly.
Local cities can have their own regulations. Dr. Paul deals with federal regulations. Denver had a ban on pit bulls. If that community wanted that law then they can get it without interference from the Federal Government.
If Dr. Paul ran at the state level, do you think he / she would apply regulations to companies at the local level? I seriously doubt it, as he is a member of the libertarian party, which believes in free market fantasies. The views that the libertarian party expresses would likely be met with so much popular resistance, that they would have serious trouble getting anything across without some form of authoritarian control. I'm not that worried about the libertarian party, Paul, Stossel, whoever. They believe in fantasies.
He doesn't run at state level so I can't speak to that but if a dog attacks someone then the owner should be fully held accountable. What a lot of people don't understand now is that the Fed Gov protects large corporations from being sued when they should be if they pollute, damage property or health. He was against Obama capping the oil spill damage fines in the gulf for example.
The idea that the federal government protects large corporations from being sued is behind this whole notion of "takings" legislation, making the taxpayers pay for the damages. I find it ironic that conservatives aren't moaning about how such legislation has the ability to increase taxes. That's likely because the conservative media personnel refuse to present it that way. If it benefits industry, they're ability to craft populist ideology is almost stunning.
Secondly, Stossel, another vehement libertarian, strictly makes it part of his campaign to attack personal injury lawyers. Surely, the conditions of our society make the legal system something akin to massive corruption. However, most of these attacks are from people with ties to corporate front groups. For example, in 2002, Stossel hosted a gathering for such a group called "Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse," a front group whose primary funder is none other than tobacco giant, Phillip Morris. Again, the Libertarian Party prides itself as being in favor of the people and personal responsibility, yet it makes no bones about producing activists hosting cabals with the 1% in trying to influence legislation. I doubt Stossel is going to be hosting any party in trying to advocate environmental awareness or how to help people avoid foreclosures. In fact, he used to do that, but nowadays, his sympathy towards the 1% is something of a joke.
John Stossel works for FAUX and is in the entertainment business hes a horrible spokes man for the Revolution.
judge Andrew Napolitano from Freedom Watch is the only thing you can pretty much trust on FAUX News
Yes, obviously. But I brought it up as a means of education, or as Faux would put it, propaganda. Alerting some people to the fact that they are not getting their views from the honest people they may think they are can only amount to a good thing in the end, I would think, if it has the ability to make some see through the darkness.
What fantasies?
End the drug war?
End the Empire foreign death wars?
end the Patriot act?
End Corporatism?
End the Fed?
Individual Civil Liberties
Libertarianism or Austrian free market economics and politics
is Ludwig Von Mises, F.A. Hayek Nobel Prize winner, Murray Rothbard Tom Woods,
Basically
Individual Liberties Protected by private property rights( as in you own your body), upheld by voluntary contracts, enforced by a small local government, and the more complex the situation the more local it should get
That's Libertarianism, if thats fantasies I want in.
Fantasies:
Monopolies don't occur naturally.
Consumers voting with their dollars are the best moral agents, and the best defense of the common good.
Post-facto lawsuits are superior to preventative regulation, and the courts will provide justice to the little guy when faced with an array of corporate lawyers.
An advanced capitalist system can survive without a central bank.
Corporations will be good citizens left to the devices of the market.
Etc.
Another fantasy:
That there's anything voluntary about wage slavery.
The Gilded Age is all the evidence I need to fight libertarianism until my dying breath.
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