Corporations Screw Everybody

a reply to: FyreByrd

Another to consider...

On the eve of his becoming Chief Justice of Wisconsin's Supreme Court, Edward G. Ryan said ominously in 1873,

"[There] is looming up a new and dark power... the enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly marching, not for economical conquests only, but for political power....

The question will arise and arise in your day, though perhaps not fully in mine, which shall rule --wealth or man [sic]; which shall lead --money or intellect; who shall fill public stations --educated and patriotic freemen, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital...." [7]

The feudal serfs of corporate capital made a lot of headway during the next fifteen years. But in 1888 President Grover Cleveland echoed Justice Ryan's sentiments:

"Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters." [8]

..a two part series with excellent references...

www.thirdworldtraveler.com...

a reply to: FyreByrd

Government programs run much more effeciently and put more dollars into services that serve everyone then private capital ever can. True beauracacies move slowly - but I ask you:

You are so full of it, dude.

This is hogwash of the bovine excrement quality. I really cannot believe anything you say after this claptrap.

I call BS on you having any contact with the federal govt. ANY contact.

It is amazing the bs people will post on this site, and yet I believe this is the worst bs I have ever seen.

a reply to: bbracken677

Your tantrum is noted and ignored. The below is for any people interested in rational discussion.

From Forbes (pretty conservative bunch):

But while we might all grant that there are exceptions, the general question still stands: does it make sense to run government like a business? The short answer is no. Bear in mind, first, that “efficiency” in the private sector means profit. Hence, to ask that the government be run like a business is tantamount to asking that the government turn a profit. The problem in a nutshell, is that not everything that is profitable is of social value and not everything of social value is profitable

www.forbes.com...

Social Secuity is much more effiecient and puts many more dollars into care then any private insurance.

We also have:

We show that smaller businesses are far more efficient that big businesses, and would also be more profitable if our tax system was correlated to benefits received.

savingcommunities.org...

from a debate on the subject:

Anyone who has worked in government does indeed know that there are a lot of inefficiencies. There is a lot of waste and generalized stupidity. But guess what? There is even more of that in the private sector. The notion that the private sector is more efficient generally is simply not empirically supportable.


Whether the issue is health care or, say, private vs. public prisons, there is just no compelling evidence that the private sector is more generally efficient. You’d think it would be. After all, the profit motive ought to generate more efficiency, but the reality is that while corporate management has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders or owners in principle, in practice management is just as concerned with maximizing its own rewards.

www.outsidethebeltway.com...

a reply to: ketsuko

I'll repost a previous quote:

We show that smaller businesses are far more efficient that big businesses, and would also be more profitable if our tax system was correlated to benefits received.

from savingcommunities.org...

With the supporting reasoning here:

savingcommunities.org...

So much for 'big business effeciency. But I understabd your support for your husbands livihood - I justified in much the same way when my ex working for Royal Dutch Shell.

Corporations or any business for that matter are not evil.
I think it is when they get too big and especially big enough to buy government is where the problem occurs.

There are many corrupt human beings that are egotistical and think only of their selfish desire over the well being of other people.

We need to be protected from those kinds of people by allowing for the division of power
Our country was designed on that principle where we have 50 united states backed up by 50 separate local governments.
When our Federal Government was sold to the highest bidder, it allowed the concentration of power between Big Business, Banking and Politicians.

This power is fine in the private sector where Capitalism is allowed to run but when they are able to buy our government, a government that is supposed to be for all Americans, they basically turn our government into a money making machine to benefit the shareholders and CEO's. Exactly how it is in private business, but is not what it is supposed to be for all Americans. We are not supposed to be slaves to Big Corporations that own our government even in our private time.

Politicians should be instituting policies beneficial to all Americans and that is not happening.
They are catering to Multinational Corporations and Banks that want to spread their wings in a Globalist Utopia backed by a Globalist Police Force all on the back of the tax payers.

Solutions?
Boot out the Money paying Lobbyists
The more I think about, the more I agree that lobbying is not evil, but money backed lobbying is.
Kill the revolving door between Dc and Industry.
Public Campaign Finance

You can see who the true "Progressives" are that promote Globalism. It is not the Liberals or Conservatives, but the ones donating to both parties.

The ones that have a lucrative stake in power and wealth by promoting open borders and cheap foreign labor while everyone else pays for it

They use Patriotism and Nationalism to promote their Globalist Interests Abroad via our Military when they have no allegiance to any country and promote Individualism and Responsibility, while they collude together collectively in board rooms and in political offices to rig the game in their favor at the government level.

a reply to: FyreByrd
Do you have any other sources? Say, for example, something academic? Not a tin-foil-hat website?

Only someone who has NEVER done business with the federal govt could claim they are efficient.

Govt will create the unnecessary specs for a bolt that will cost $50 and then pay for them, and not question the decisions. Do you ever see corporations doing stupid crap like that? Yet what I described happens all the time.

When you bid on a job in the corporate world, you do the job at that cost if you win the bid. Period.
If you win a bid with the govt, you can petition for higher pay/rates than what you bid. No sweat.

OMG the examples out there are legion!

Only on ATS could this be suggested with a straight face.

originally posted by: bbracken677

The assumption that all corporations take the attitude to screw this, that and the other guy is false.

You lump in there "offshoring". Also false...sending jobs overseas is not the "preferred" way of doing business unless the choice is staying in business or shutting down.

A

I have to correct you here because it is simply not true.
A big portion of the corporations that went overseas to China did so at a time in the 90's when our economy was "overheating" as many pundits said and many were making money hand over fist from the Wall Street Derivative Scheme here in this country alone.

They moved because there were more profits to be made

When is enough enough? If I ask you what is acceptable enough profits, will you stop at a number?

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: FyreByrd

there was this idea floating around that CEOs and corporations only should do what was best for the shareholders.

CEO's are people too. If I kill someone I face the law. If a policy they enact kills someone so should they.

At some point they became like Gods, immune to their decisions that affect us all.

Corporations may not be people but the controllers that run them are.

The Big Corporate CEO's and Top Management that employed lobbyists to $$$speak$$$ on their behalf need to have some skin in the game and take a paycut from their reckless policies that they had politicians to "pass" (bought) so they could see what is in it.

originally posted by: Hoosierdaddy71

Money has always been the main deciding factor of laws in "murica" the rich have always run the country to. Corporations are just the target of the angst today.
Obama is going to run all the corporations out of business anyway so I'm sure that will fix everything.

Big Money has always run the country but in a time when Mom and Pop Shops and small business were very abundant, economic and political power was spread across this nation in the hands of many people, not just the few Corporate Conglomerates and Banking Institutions that run our government which have gobbled up their market share from their disastrous polices.

originally posted by: Zcustosmorum
a reply to: FyreByrd

I fail to argue with this statement:

Today the masters of mankind are multinational corporations and financial institutions, but the lesson still applies and it helps explain why the state-corporate complex is indeed a threat to freedom and in fact even survival. By now there are important elaborations of Smith's truism applied to the modern world. The most significant and sophisticated version that I know is by political economist Thomas Ferguson, what he calls his investment theory of politics which in brief, simplified, simply views U.S. elections as occasions in which the coalitions of private investors coalesce to invest to control the state. It turns out to be a thesis of quite predictive success over more than a century as he shows.

history.genius.com...

Very Informative Post.
The Market will correct in time away from this corporatocracy that we are currently living in.
Humans will not put up with it and in the "Free Market" gods, the human equation is part of it.

a reply to: jacobe001

The Big Corporate CEO's and Top Management that employed lobbyists to $$$speak$$$ on their behalf need to have some skin in the game and take a pay cut from their reckless policies that they had politicians to "pass" (bought) so they could see what is in it.

Yah, the whole game is rigged.

Just pay cuts?

I vote for tar and feathering, run out of town on a rail. Or bring them down out of their lofty perch high in the skyscraper, put them in stocks in front of the lobby so the people there can throw tomatoes at them.

Humiliation or fines will hurt them more? You're right, probably dollars.

a reply to: jacobe001

Based on the usage and context of the phrase, I surmise you do not really know what the "Wall Street Derivative Scheme" was.

Is that correct? Or is it just used improperly in conjunction with corporate jobs moving overseas?

The economy of the 90s was a bubble economy. Manufacturing was feeling the squeeze when trying to compete internationally. I was there. Jobs did not move overseas to increase profits, manufacturing moved overseas in order to compete. To have remained here was to eventually close doors.

a reply to: jacobe001

The 'market' won't do ****. It's a theoretical construct nothing more - it isn't real.

When we look at the history of our states, we learn that citizens intentionally defined corporations through charters--the certificates of incorporation.

In exchange for the charter, a corporation was obligated to obey all laws, to serve the common good, and to cause no harm. Early state legislators wrote charter laws and actual charters to limit corporate authority, and to ensure that when a corporation caused harm, they could revoke its charter. . .

Our right to charter corporations is as crucial to self-government as our right to vote. Both are basic franchises, essential tools of liberty. . .

The colonists did not make a revolution over a tax on tea. They fought for many reasons, but chiefly to create a nation where citizens were the government and ruled corporations. . .

They knew that English kings chartered the East India Company, the Hudson's Bay Company and many American colonies in order to control property and commerce. Kings appointed governors and judges, dispatched soldiers, dictated taxes, investments, production, labor and markets. . .

Having thrown off English rule, the revolutionaries did not give governors, judges or generals the authority to charter corporations. Citizens made certain that legislators issued charters, one at a time and for a limited number of years. They kept a tight hold on corporations by spelling out rules each business had to follow, by holding business owners liable for harms or injuries, and by revoking charters.

www.ratical.org...

a reply to: FyreByrd

Do you only use tin-foil-hat websites as sources? Are there no academic or actually legit websites or papers that you can use as a source?

Might as well use other ATS threads to support your opinions. Academically, intellectually dishonest at best.

I found this interesting and from an aplogist for corporate rule:

Contrary to this pluralistic view, I will try to demonstrate how rule by the wealthy few is possible despite free speech, regular elections, and organized opposition:

"The rich" coalesce into a social upper class that has developed institutions by which the children of its members are socialized into an upper-class worldview, and newly wealthy people are assimilated.

Members of this upper class control corporations, which have been the primary mechanisms for generating and holding wealth in the United States for upwards of 150 years now. Note that it says 150 years not the initial 90 years of the US's history.

There exists a network of nonprofit organizations through which members of the upper class and hired corporate leaders not yet in the upper class shape policy debates in the United States.

Members of the upper class, with the help of their high-level employees in profit and nonprofit institutions, are able to dominate the federal government in Washington.

The rich, and corporate leaders, nonetheless claim to be relatively powerless.
Working people have less power than in many other democratic countries.

I found this a consise and honest model of how CLASS works and accumulates weath. And the proverbial 1% hides behind corporate structure to do so in modern times. You cannot separate individual wealth from corporate power.

I did a search for more academic sources in reponse to a poster and found two things.

1) the said poster doesn't ever cite sources or references ...

and

2) most traditional academic sources, understandably, act as proponents and cheerleaders for corporate/wealth rule. But I'm nothing if not persistant and one finds gems everywhere....

I found a link to a database where you can find the linkages between companies - also another corporate rule booster but really useful here.....

www2.ucsc.edu...

And here's a very dry and boring paper on the whys and hows of so-called and clearly stated ethical rules for corporate finance personel.

www.hks.harvard.edu...

I don't think anyone would really read the last reference, nor the two others cited. First - not too many members actually even look at cited material.

I like to hear differing opinions but I want to understand how they were arrived at, what material a person is reasoning from. My experience is that the more complaints about an OPs sources and references come from those that don't do anything to support there opinions.

You find good stuff when you expand your worldview - look at the goodies I found by a short interent search of Corporate Rule supporters. And that's the point of this post.....

By reading, listening, evaulating both or multiple sides of an issue, you can more effectively argue your own point of view and in the process change some of your 'fixed' ideas. That's called growth.

In our Googled world the tendency is a every narrowing field of information and not an expanding one. (See "The Filter Bubble: What the Interenet is Hiding from You" by Eli Parsier).

His web site: www.thefilterbubble.com...

His TED Talk: www.thefilterbubble.com...





www2.ucsc.edu...

a reply to: FyreByrd

1) the said poster doesn't ever cite sources or references ...

Is this generated at me? Since I am the one who asked for academic sources as opposed to tin-foil-hat sources.

If this is generated at me, then it is also a bold faced lie. Commonly perpetrated by those who have nothing going for their side of the argument.

I present this (amongst others) for your perusal to establish the outright lie that was presented above.

Often I will make claims, for the express reason of enticing someone to "ask for a source" thinking they have "got me". Then I drop the academic sources, or non-tin-foil-hat sources at worst on then. Bam! If I make statements that are not opinions I am always prepared to provide a source at the time or if asked.

Bam!

a reply to: FyreByrd

This post is to congratulate you for your sources. Hella better than the tin-foil-hat ones you presented earlier.

I have not had the time to explore them all, the first will take quite a bit of time to make it through, and I am still there.

This is how you conduct a debate! Presenting BS sources as part of your argument only establishes your (the generic you) argument as BS as well. If I open a source and it is of the BS nature, I immediately close it and go about my business.

Thanks again! You have renewed my faith in ATS!

Somewhat irrelevant to this particular OP, maybe it is now that I think about it, but definitely relevant to the 'discussion' is this:

The Death of Adulthood in American Culture at:

www.nytimes.com...

But the antics of the comic man-boys were not merely repetitive; in their couch-bound humor we can detect the glimmers of something new, something that helped speed adulthood to its terminal crisis. Unlike the antiheroes of eras past, whose rebellion still accepted the fact of adulthood as its premise, the man-boys simply refused to grow up, and did so proudly. Their importation of adolescent and preadolescent attitudes into the fields of adult endeavor (see “Billy Madison,” “Knocked Up,” “Step Brothers,” “Dodgeball”) delivered a bracing jolt of subversion, at least on first viewing. Why should they listen to uptight bosses, stuck-up rich guys and other readily available symbols of settled male authority?

The original source was expanded on in this secondary source which is more directly applicable to our subject (however diverted of Corporations screwing everyone):

The “death of adulthood” is really just capitalism at work

He is right that this happened, but he doesn’t appear to see (or doesn’t want to say) exactly how and why it happened. The suit-wearing, gin-drinking 35-year-old Organization Man of 1964 and the couch-bound, action-figure-collecting 35-year-old fanboy of 2014 are dialectical mirror images of each other, economic archetypes called forth by their respective eras. The freedom and autonomy each perceives in himself is better described by some other term, a force of compulsion or overdetermination (there’s the college Marxism again) that disguises itself as liberation from the stodginess of yesteryear. For better or worse, the “crisis of authority” Scott sees in contemporary culture is not a matter of “choosing” to emulate childhood long into adulthood, or to read J.K. Rowling instead of Philip Roth. (A choice for which I cannot blame anyone!) It’s the latest manifestation of the corrosive, creative and revolutionary force of capitalism, which may or may not be in terminal decline but continues to shape us into its instruments.