AdamC has the best avatar, bar none! Now, gentlemen, back to the discussion…
I wish everyone in the world had a nice place to live, good medical care, clean food and water, and could live without fear. But wishing counts for shit.
The world is a brutal place driven by power. The hope is that, in the race for power, scientists stumble across things that lead to the things in my first paragraph…and those things are more likely under capitalism and freedom than under any other system.
[quote]AdamC wrote:
Again, i am not against capitalism because it’s the only thing that works. But at least try to do it ethically.[/quote]
There’s nothing preventing a corporation from acting ethically, except for market forces.
If you incur additional costs because of ethical concerns that your competitors do not share, you’ll have a harder time competing against them. If your common consumer base do not care about your ethical concerns and prefer paying less for your unethical competitor’s product (or more, like in the case of Nike, who spends millions to get superstar endorsements), what are you to do?
The only way to get ethical behavior from corporations is, as consumers, to refuse to do business with unethical ones.
And that’s a lot easier said than done.
Rainjack’s Hobbesianism, Nemorph’s realism, Rsg’ confusion of Communism and Bolshevism, or Orion’s bad-taste sarcasm (kids sucking dick is NEVER funny!) don’t invalidate any of the arguments in the documentary.
Corporations are, by their very nature, evil entities because they lack any humanism. They are profit-making machines that will crush anything that stands on their way. Heck, many of them are already more powerful than many countries.
We can fight back, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult because of the power corporations have on governments. They are revoking laws that were intended for the public good and pushing all kinds of horrible ones. I’m thinking about the broken patent system and the environment.
We have to stop spreading the myth that capitalism is behind medical advances. Most of people in the research community aren’t doing it for the money. We have also to stop considering that it’s a fatality.
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with capitalism, but one must admit that it has ran amock, and that if Adam Smith was alive today, he’d be appalled by the way his work was twisted to justify such excesses.
All in all, something must be done!
What do you guys think of parecon?
[quote]Mick28 wrote:
AdamC wrote:
Mick28 wrote:
AdamC wrote:
Nike are blatantly exploitative.
You can say that but you offer no proof. You sound like a starry eyed college kid.
Just Google Nike exploitation and you’ll find plenty of examples. It’s common knowledge.
But what you can’t see from that site is Nike’s side. And of course how the employees are actually treated and paid by the company. You are assuming the worst, which might be true, but then again it might not be true.
You have a point when you state that the people of these countries need jobs. It’s true, it’s better than sucking dick. But things can be done better.
And everything can be done better. Why do you seem to have it in for corporations?
Why don’t you start with an unfair tax system which places an unfair penalty on those who actually try to get ahead.
And beyond that there are numerous other problems which effect children in your country and mine directly.
Do you care about those things?
If i’m the CEO of a multi-million $ company I can say to myself, ok, we can go to Asia and get cheaper labor but i can do it the right way. I can do the decent thing and look after my workers at least. Is there really any need to be so cheap?
As I have stated on this thread, you are comparing your standard of living to the children who live in squaller. You have no idea how happy those families might be that little Pedro found a job. He used to walk the streets and get into trouble, now he works for Nike.
I do have an understanding of the standard of living in these countries. I have been to Cambodia and Vietnam. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve spoken to the people. They all want jobs. Let me tell you, the Vietnamese that I spoke to wanted out of Communism and wanted capitalism.
Exactly, capitalism is far from perfect but it’s well ahead of whatever is in second place. Keep telling yourself that when you want to go off on “kill the corporation” tangents.
My problem is that these people are often desperate and are ripe to be taken advantage of, and that’s what I don’t like. sue me.
Again, they are being taken advantage of according to YOUR standard of living. But, according to that specific regions standard they are being paid appropriately.
But at least try to do it ethically.
You mean try to do it according to your standards and ethics.
You are living in la la land…I think you should move.
[/quote]
Ok to sum up…i NEVER stated i want to kill of capitalism. I am not a starry eyed kid. I do think about other problems, but i just watched a movie about corporations hence i thought i’d start a thread! And i feel i’ve learned something in doing so.
Errr, what else? Oh yeah…I think the state of capitalism is a HUGE issue. We are all part of it EVERY day. We all consume. And that choice, that consumption, affects someone, somewhere. It’s probably the biggest impact any of us have on other people and the planet. So we really should be thinking about it and more importantly, acting.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Rainjack’s Hobbesianism, Nemorph’s realism, Rsg’ confusion of Communism and Bolshevism, or Orion’s bad-taste sarcasm (kids sucking dick is NEVER funny!) don’t invalidate any of the arguments in the documentary.
[/quote]
These are their choices:
Subsistence agriculture, i.e. working the soil with a stick.
Prostitution, way better than first choice, you get to eat every day.
Criminality, the best of all choice really, if ot weren?t for their victims.
This is the same situation capitalism found in England when it started and it has less to do with sarcasm than with reality.
[quote]lixy wrote:
We have to stop spreading the myth that capitalism is behind medical advances. Most of people in the research community aren’t doing it for the money. We have also to stop considering that it’s a fatality.
[/quote]
It is just that agriculture has to be efficient enough to let people work in other industries.
The capital in form of agricultural equipment probably helps.
Then, a lot of people have to work in all kinds of industries using capital in all its forms to create a surplus a capitalist might invest in medical R&D equipment in order to make a profit.
Then after having financed these professionals for years this capitalist hits it big with a cure for cancer and now he must produce it, capital, distribute it, capital, and have it used by medical professionals whose enormously
expensive education was possible because of capitalism.
Of course some stone age genius might stumble over penicillin. Too bad noboy will ever hear about it.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Corporations are, by their very nature, evil entities because they lack any humanism. They are profit-making machines that will crush anything that stands on their way. Heck, many of them are already more powerful than many countries.
[/quote]
Where to begin? Corporations are evil? No. The goal of a legal corporation is to fulfill a human need and make money doing so. You resent this. To you, it somehow seems immoral to make money in this way. That’s because you have accepted altruism as your morality. You believe that somehow the able are here to work for the benefit of those who are not able. You somehow think its moral to force one group, the capitalists, to work for the benefit of others. In essence, you believe in slavery.
This sort of system is simply impossible and not viable. You propose to use force against brilliant people whose goal will become to thwart you. Many will simply refuse to produce at all — see the old Soviet Union. There, libs believed that force was a viable option when dealing with the most intelligent of men. How laughable. The system collapsed relatively quickly.
Altruism is actually cannibalism — a society consuming its best and brightest by forcing them to work as milch cows. Such a society is bound to become violent and totalitarian, as the government must resort to more and more harsh force to squeeze the capitalists. Thus, a mixed economy is a prelude to Fascism and the rise of a military dictatorship. Witnes this, our magnificent country, being destroyed by liberalism…
Lixy, that’s where your philosophy leads.
For those of you that believe corporations are inherently bad or evil, be true to yourself, look around your house, and abandon all things created by the power of a corporation.
First stop - your computer, the software, and this website.
Walk it like you talk it.
[quote]orion wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
dollarbill44 wrote:
The alternative to “the corporation” is “the government”. Throughout human history, it has not worked well in providing goods and services to its customers.
DB
How about nicer corporations, regulated by government law? Like, oh, I don’t know, refusing to allow child labor made goods be sold in America?
You want them to suck dick again?
[/quote]
It was an example I didn’t put more than a few seconds of thought into. Sue me.
You get the idea right? Regulating corporations instead of letting them do all the corrupt horrible things they do.
How about asking Nike to raise it’s factory standards? How about forcing them to?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
For those of you that believe corporations are inherently bad or evil, be true to yourself, look around your house, and abandon all things created by the power of a corporation.
First stop - your computer, the software, and this website.
Walk it like you talk it.[/quote]
Most people who think all corps are evil are retarded college kids who think the world can be run on old rock music and acid. Corporations can be good and they can be evil. They can DO good, and they can DO evil. The problem is, the system is set up in a way that makes evil a huge ass temptation. That temptation needs to be taken away.
Corporations are, in general, a good thing. But some of their actions can be down right despicable. Like the music industry and its willy nilly suing of random teenagers who’ve ever downloaded an Eminem song off the internet.
Corporations are good as a whole, but they are bad in specific incidents. These incidents need to be controlled or somehow regulated in a way that deters them.
[quote]Beowolf wrote:
orion wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
dollarbill44 wrote:
The alternative to “the corporation” is “the government”. Throughout human history, it has not worked well in providing goods and services to its customers.
DB
How about nicer corporations, regulated by government law? Like, oh, I don’t know, refusing to allow child labor made goods be sold in America?
You want them to suck dick again?
It was an example I didn’t put more than a few seconds of thought into. Sue me.
You get the idea right? Regulating corporations instead of letting them do all the corrupt horrible things they do.
How about asking Nike to raise it’s factory standards? How about forcing them to?
[/quote]
Because raising factory standards means raising costs which means sucking dick for some kids.
It is simply not necessary anyway. This problem will be gone in fast growing countries aoon and maybe then some African countries will be happy to have massive child labour because some multinational capitalist organisation forced some governments to have a legal framework that makes economic development possible.
Ironically that organisation will probably be China, but then, what the hell…
[quote]Beowolf wrote:
Corporations are good as a whole, but they are bad in specific incidents. These incidents need to be controlled or somehow regulated in a way that deters them.
[/quote]
Unfortunately nobody is smart enough to know when corporations are really, really bad or when life is really, really bad and corporations are just dealing with it.
Even if someone was, you?d just be replacing private with public corruption.
[quote]Beowolf wrote:
thunderbolt23 wrote:
For those of you that believe corporations are inherently bad or evil, be true to yourself, look around your house, and abandon all things created by the power of a corporation.
First stop - your computer, the software, and this website.
Walk it like you talk it.
Most people who think all corps are evil are retarded college kids who think the world can be run on old rock music and acid. Corporations can be good and they can be evil. They can DO good, and they can DO evil. The problem is, the system is set up in a way that makes evil a huge ass temptation. That temptation needs to be taken away.
[/quote]
Exactly. A mixed economy allows richer corporations to buy influence and wield that influence against smaller competitors. Eliminate all regulations, taxes, and restrictions. Fire AT LEAST 70% of all government employees not involved in national defense, the judiciary, or police. All the rest…‘You’re Fired’!!!
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Exactly. A mixed economy allows richer corporations to buy influence and wield that influence against smaller competitors. Eliminate all regulations, taxes, and restrictions. Fire AT LEAST 70% of all government employees not involved in national defense, the judiciary, or police. All the rest…‘You’re Fired’!!![/quote]
I don’t agree with your conclusion, but I think the first part is dead-on - for those that think corporations have too much influence over the government (special interests, etc.), it’s not the corporation where the blame lay:
once government was “opened up” to all comers waving cash in hand, it was a natural consequence that corporations would wield their financial power to dip into the government largesse and score opportunitistic deals.
The solution isn’t fewer corporations - the solution is limited government.
[quote]Mick28 wrote:
And you are assuming that they are slave labor.
[/quote]
No, I am saying that if we assert that capitalism is nothing but good to these people in underdeveloped countries we have to make a broad assumption that they are ALWAYS there working of their own free will and not the slaves of someone who is making them work so that he can fatten his own pockets.
This happens…like it or not. It happens mostly with children whether in the sex trade or stitching shoes for Nike. That is the reality of globalization and it isn’t ALWAYS a good thing.
BTW, guess why many children are forced into the sex trade…western businessmen…