Bush and company, and heinous as they are, are a syptom of the disease infesting this country, not the cause.

The cause is "American" corporations that exist as entities for one purpose: to make money. These corporations' charter and boards and bylaws act as a sort of DNA forcing them to make as much money as possible in any way possible.

Even if they choose to do the right thing, they will eventually be out competed and destroyed or consumed by another firm. This process has continued through the years until the companies in question have consumed their smaller competition and ruined our way of life, and now is entering the terminal stage of parasitism: invading the government. Since the media age, our government has been a product of exposure, and our elected officials are those that have the most money, and the corporations are those that have the money to get people elected.

So if you will: Corporations have become parasites or viruses, or more aptly a cancer, which used to be part of the country (the host) but now have turned against them and are destroying the host and altering their environment at an ever increasing rate to the sole purpose of making money.

Am I saying that corporations are evil? No. Evil doesn't enter into this, just as morality doesn't enter into the DNA of the virus. There are corporations that are not destructive and all consuming, but it is the nature of the system that they be out competed, because it is expensive to take society into consideration. It is the nature of the parasite to consume and spread.

This has happened before. The sickness in our society will spread until it has so weakened the host that a collapse occurs. Last time it was the Great Depression and World War 2. But last time there was a free press not wholly owned by the corporations, who therefore own the minds and perceptions of the people.

Has anyone read Snow Crash?

Sure, but the root cause of that is capitalistic greed. Big corporations are natural given the system. If you did a computer simulation of the financial world, making sure that greed was a constant motivation, you'd find that eventually small businesses would evolve into large corporations--they're simply the most efficient way to make money. And then you'd get emergent behavior, like influencing politics and skirting around employment laws, because those make more money than not doing them. Really, I think they're an inevitable result of the system, and so to remove them would require changes to that underlying system.
And if it's all based on greed, perhaps change is impossible.

Capitalism is one leg of the stool that supports America. The second leg is the Government that regulates the unbridaled greed of capitalism. The third leg is the citizens that decide how our community will function.

The fallacy of the right is that capitalism (the market) is always good. The fallacy of the left is that government knows best. The fallacy of the citizens is that they don't make a difference.

Hence, you end up with Bush selling America and its assets to the highest political bidder for 2 cents on the dollar.

Even though this is a complaint, that's not why I'm bringing it up: I'm sick of hearing about stuff like this and so are millions of other people across the country. We're sick of hearing about this becuase we've had it shouted in our ears more times than we can count. I've heard all this before. I hear it on a weekly basis. I understand what you're trying to tell me: "Bush is evil" "people are greedy" "there's no free media" etc. etc. etc.
Again, I'm not trying to insult you, I'm not trying to start an argument, I'm just trying to tell you that the more people like you scream about this, the more likely people like me are going to ignore you.


Good analogys though.

You know there is a limitation to how evil corporations can be. The second the lose the trust of their stockholders or their public image or both they are heading down the tubes. A corporation can only do so much with their money because they have to prove where that money went to their valuable stockholders.

Also Big-O be thankful that corporations aren't allowed to have their own armed security forces. Walking by Wal-Mart and seeing a gaurd with a gun, now that would be a scary indication of evil.

I once read a book set in the future when big corporations had taken over everything...

Can't currently recall the title. But if you want scary, try these quotes:

On rumours of population increase and average IQ drop:






Not a future I would like to be in.

Meh. Before they had TV Politics, people mostly voted blindly along party lines. Usually inheriting their party affiliation from their parents. How's that any better?

Greed, well, greed's a given. The question is how institutions deal with it. Greed itself is no big deal, it's monopolies, cartels, fraud and embezzlement you should be worried about.

And democracy? It never lives up to a civics textbook. I think of it as an illusion that gives people the impression that they're really in charge of their country. Which is completely untrue, of course, but the useful thing the illusion performs is to give everyone an excuse to maintain civil liberties. Whether Bush and co. have permanently and irrepairably damaged civil liberties remains to be seen.

If you allow competition, it makes sense businesses would tend to get larger and larger, since smaller ones are easier to destroy. But there might be other trends, and I don't believe the result had to be corporations.

Corporations have a very particular legal status that allows limited liability, which greatly increases their power but only exists because governments decided to endorse it. And although corporations are dominant today, remember that as little as a century ago they weren't so important. We could get by on other types of business. So although predictions about future corporatocracies seem plausible, they're still speculative.

Anyways, the whole corporate system is based on cheap resources and labor (especially oil). So they can only last as long as those do - not that I think it'll be a smooth transition when they someday run out.

1. Occasionally, someone would have parents who had disagreed when they first met. Either one parent would have convinced the other, or any children would have to choose. Such children would be exposed to both sides and would be most likely to make an informed decision. Admittedly they were not a large voting block, but they could swing around some areas and would be open to influence by genuinely good policies.
2. Given what I have heard of America, and comments here pre-election about votes being wasted in one or more states due to the prevailing attitude, I'd ask how many people still vote blindly along party lines.



I'd like to add a rousing agreement about the monopolies.



The people are always in charge (until some government starts using mind control drugs or similar, of course). This is shown by the French Revolution. Democracy merely lets the mob sleep more soundly.

LeoChopper: The result does not, it is true, have to be corporations. It all depends on your model parameters. If tax was exponential i.e. the more you earn the higher percentage of it you pay, up to over 100% for multibillionaires (they can pay the extra tax and live off their interest), the corporation is no longer stable. Even now, the corporation is unstable, since a large enough corporation becomes a monopoly, stops innovating and researching and merely charges more, and is finally either legislated out of its monopolistic position (like Telkom soon, I hope...) or caught napping by a new paradigm (which it immediately tries to either buy out or litigate into oblivion, but too much of that makes it unpopular and eats into the capital). Technically, a large enough monopolistic corporation could litigate and/or buy out all competition almost indefinately, but it's more a tightrope act than a stable idea.

Another possible result is several small companies, all innovating like mad to try to get an edge on each other. (Take a look at cellphone manufacturers for a prime example.) This provides a notable benefit to the consumer, especially since none are then big enough to pose a danger of monopoly.

A third potentiality can be seen in the OSS world, and as far as I know pertains only to the software market. The basic idea is several (thousand) seperate people, all co-operating in a non-competitive manner. Although this prevents monopolies and tends to result in cheap, high-quality goods, it may not beat the several small companies paradigm when it comes to speed of innovation.

Possibility number four is the "small-village" scenario, where each person works for themselves and trades their goods or services for life's luxuries and necessities. This model is generally considered obsolete, but may make a comeback if robot labour becomes more common.

I’m not sure I am getting your point. There are several ways to interpret this:

1. You agree, and are simply tired of hearing about it. I like to keep informed about the various degrees to which Bush and Capitalism are evil, but that doesn’t mean everyone does.

2. You don’t agree, and are tired of hearing about it. If this is the case, then by all means please go ahead and start an argument. That is what this section of the forums are for.

3. You don’t care. Why would you even be reading this?

I also don’t understand what bearing repetition has on veracity. If I told you the sky was blue 100 would start to disbelieve that too?

I agree on some parts, disagree on others, but that was not the point that I was trying to make. My point was and is that everyone has heard the "liberal" side of the argument and that continuing to shout it out was only going to do harm to your case.

Imagine someone coming up to you at the polls and screaming into your ear as loud as they could for you to vote Bush and they where comparing Kerry to the devil. That would not only make you never want to vote Bush (assuming you might have) and also hate the person who was screaming at you.

I'll add more to this if it's needed but I have to get off the computer now.

P.S. If anybody here considers any of what I've said flaming, that's not the intention and please tell me if it offends you. I've offended a number of people during debates unintentionaly and that's the last thing I want to do.

If more than a tithe of that is true, then why do about a third of the American public still believe Dubya's lies that there are WMDs in Iraq, and that Saddam was behind 9/11? The short answer is, alas, that it isn't true; the GOP and their billionaire paymasters have made very damned sure that much of the country never got to hear the `liberal' side of things (which is to say, the truth). The CIA motto has no friend among the GOP.

Weremensh, just because someone has an opinion different than yours does not mean that they are being lied to.
I've got a couple of suggestions for you:

1) Check your sources, get a couple of them and try and make them unbiased and make sure that they're accurate.

2) Understand that you're opinion on politics is just that. An opinion. Not a fact, not a truth, just an opinion. You can beleive that they're facts, but that doesn't make them facts. If you're going to think that anyone who's republican is just another greedy, amoral, capitalistic *******, then they're going to think of you as just another pot smoking, tree-hugging, save the plankton hippy.

3) Take a look at it from their point of view. They're needs are different from yours, they're wants are different from yours. Be the devils advocate for a change.


Edit: Examples for sources deleted.

waitaminute... is someone telling Were to post links? WTF? I never thought I'd see the day...

Jarnes new too POOP. He hasn't seen how many links Were can cram into one post.