You could just as well rewrite that for any other politically convenient target:
We are not going to evolve as a society until we abolish corporatized capital. I know that this is a strong statement. And it is likely to attract serious disagreement. Take this as on man's opinion and nothing else.
It is my contention that in modern times corporatized capital has done absolutely nothing good for our society. I understand that they had a time and a place to exist. Today, there's far more evidence of the damage they cause than the positive effects they may have been intended to produce.
Corporations create a false economy. One where people are paid exorbitant amounts of money for work that could be done for less in an open market. Corporations also create stagnation both in terms of innovation and of human capital. Corporate shareholders exist in an isolated cocoon where there is no need to excel or evolve past your station. Corporations damage competitiveness at a national and international level. Corporations damage the economy and destroy industries by creating contracts with unreasonable terms, benefits and pensions. Corporations in government create a nasty conflict-of-interest situation where hordes of shareholders contribute as a unified block supporting the very laws and politicians that regulate their own companies (oversee your own pollution, legal compliance, etc.). Corporations also use this vote-by-dollar approach to influence politics and the politicians that want their cash.
It is my opinion that corporate managers and shareholders, as individuals, are generally good hard-working people. However, once their thoughts and actions are controlled by the need to support their "team" (the corporation) the collective can, and often becomes, evil in many ways. Case in point: HP had a contract clause that caused Carly Fiorina to get paid tens of millions of dollars just for getting fired. She earned tens of thousands of times the average worker's salary to actively damage the business. The Chinese have got to be laughing their asses off when they see us self-destruct this way.
Fossil fuel companies are yet another example. The list of evils is too long to list here. The most basic one is the inability to tax them for emitting pollution that threatens to criminally kill millions.
We would be able to move at a very different pace if corporations went away. I won't hold my breath.
Not actually arguing for the abolition of corporations, for that matter. Though my parody has some validity to it, so does what I was responding to. But my point is that there's a world of difference between noting there are some instances where an institution did a bad thing and saying that that would justify their abolition.
It's not by working with examples that you make a rule. It is by understanding the underlying logic and principles. It is fairly obvious that unions are self-centered organizations that aim only at benefiting themselves at the expense of the rest of society, as demonstrated by the post you made a parody of.
It is far less obvious to make a similar kind of statement about corporations. Corporations thrive mostly by satisfying customers/consumers/users/wider needs in society. When they stop doing so, they perish and disappear or shrink in a significant way. There are indeed very wrong things about Corporations links with Politicians (clear conflict of interests), patents abuse, etc... but as a whole, Corporations are enablers of innovation and progress in society.
It does not make much sense to try an analogy between corporations and unions.
It makes perfect sense to me. Let's try the switcheroo again:
It is fairly obvious that corporations are self-centered organizations that aim only at benefiting themselves at the expense of the rest of society, as demonstrated by the post you made a parody of.
It is far less obvious to make a similar kind of statement about unions. Unions thrive mostly by satisfying customers/consumers/users/wider needs in society. When they stop doing so, they perish and disappear or shrink in a significant way. There are indeed very wrong things about union's links with Politicians (clear conflict of interests), patents abuse, etc... but as a whole, unions are enablers of innovation and progress in society.
I don't really see where it works. Unions never care about the end users or customers. That's not their agenda. They only care about unions members benefits. They are the parasites of corporations.
Neither, for that matter, do publicly held corporations. Any caring about the end-user is a side effect of the primary mission of maximizing shareholder value.
Note that it's easy to come up with examples where unions, too, will fight for the end user. See, for instance, teachers' unions fighting for increased educational funding and smaller class sizes, or nurses' unions pushing for universal health care.
> See, for instance, teachers' unions fighting for increased educational funding and smaller class sizes, or nurses' unions pushing for universal health care.
Yeah, but you don't get it, I think. They pretend to be on the side to the end user, to get public support for their agenda. And when the State tells them they cannot do much to reduce the number of kids per class, then the unions come back on "salary negociations". They typically play the game of asking for irrealistic goals to push for more benefits, with the taxpayer money. I have seen this hundreds of time. And let's not forget the incredible pressure put on non-unionized employees by union members. This is downright criminal and would be considered as power harassment if it were from a boss or colleague, but since they are powerful unions, they can get away with everything.
That is part of the problem. They also never care about the long-term effects that their demands have on their employers. A case in point is pensions. The state of California is sinking under the weight of the ridiculous deals politicians (government workers) made with unions (of government workers) with regards to pensions. So, you have politicians who favor and need the vote of unions granting deals to unions of government workers to provide them with pensions and benefits that nobody in their right mind would even consider in the free world. The end-result is that they bankrupt the State and all of us end-up working for THEM. At the rate we are going even my kids will end-up working for the unionized government workers in California if we stay in this state. This is down-right criminal.
The vast majority of corporation exist in a free market economy. They compete with others for human resources and business.
On the political front, when was the last time you saw a corporation mobilize MILLIONS of their employees and align them to vote in support of a law or political candidate? What you are more likely to see is that a corporation has a diversity of people with different ideas and opinions. In other words, individuals.
I've worked inside a unionized environment. I know what it does to people. It's ugly. The comparison to the free market alternative is nothing less than ridiculous.
Do I really have to go into the musty bureaucracy of corporate hierarchies? The incestual relationship between CEOs and corporate boards? The sweetheart deals? The nepotism? The stacking of the deck against non-establishment players? The corruption of government to prevent market prices on pollution?
And sure, union culture mobilizes labor to vote because they have bodies. But corporations are more than happy to mobilize and coordinate billions of dollars to effectively bribe government officials, either pre- or post-election. And that's just directly: just as unions have fostered a culture where labor and their families will vote for their interests, corporations have fostered a culture where management and shareholders will give money to corrupt and warp government.
A small detail here. Corporations use THEIR money to follow what they want to do. That is not for your to decide what they should do or not do. Unless they indulge in illegal activities. And let's not make a generalization here. There may be a few big corporations actually involved in bribing, but most certainly a large majority has never done so. This is not the core of their business.
Unions regularly abuse taxpayer money with their agendas. And you have no say about it. Their business is corruption and pressure on officials. That is what they thrive on. Thay do not "produce" anything.
Corner bakery
Local health club
Childcare center
Starbucks
Children's Hospital
Cancer Centers of America
Local used car dealership
IT Consultant
Your kids' Karate studio
Your little girl's Dance studio
The restaurant you might frequent
The only remaining local book store
The Bed and Breakfast at that camping spot
The bicycle rental shop
Chevron
GE
United Airlines
Ford
The Humane Society
Microsoft
Google
Facebook
Apple
And, probably most businesses you frequent, recommend and have worked for.
All evil? All colluding to destroy the planet? All secretly communicating through back channels to concoct schemes to extract untold profits by polluting and buying-off politicians?
I don't know you so none of the following is aimed at you whatsoever. Again, this comment is not --it is NOT-- about you:
This is the kind of crap our colleges and universities are pounding into kids brains simply because most professors don't have a clue as to how the real world works.
Very often when I hear pro-union, anti-corporation, anti-business or anti-capitalism comments its from people who have had very little experience in what I call "the real world".
No experience in actually making something. No experience taking a risk; failing; taking another risk; failing again; not giving up; taking yet another risk; and finally succeeding. Yet, these people want and use all of the benefits that come from evil corporations and capitalism. And, yet again, these people think that entrepreneurs magically become evil once they make it and particularly if they make it big.
The very computers and the communications networks they use to spew-off these moronic ideas are monuments to the triumph of the free market system over every other idea in history. Yet, as they make use of everything that these economic system have provided they insist that all of it is evil.
I have yet to see one of these people forgo all that has come out of these evil systems and go live somewhere where capitalism is rejected and corporations are not allowed. Somewhere where, presumably, everything is owned and run by the --always benevolent, of course-- government and nobody is allowed to make a profit beyond a government-approved level. I'd love to see see folks who spew out these ideals actually live by their own words for a few years and then compare notes.
The good news is that we still have such bastions of alternative though in this world. Pick one. Go live there. Have fun.
To re-iterate, none of this is about you.
The general sentiment expressed by these groups also reminds me of an argument a good friend of mine had with his neighbor. He is into guns. I'm not, but I don't have any issues with people owning them. His neighbor is as anti-gun as you can possibly get, to the point of harassing my friend about his gun hobby (not very smart, if you ask me). They've had this argument for years. One day my friend decided to settle the argument once and for all. He had these nice large signs printed. The first red something like: "We own guns and support your right to own them" while the second said "We are against guns and don't own any". In the middle of the night he placed the sign on their corresponding lawns. Predictably, in the morning his doorbell rang. The neighbor was angry about this sign. When my friend asked him why this sign was a problem if it was what he believed he replied: "We'll get robbed". Case closed.
Don't like capitalism and corporations? Go find a place that does it some other way and enjoy.
> Don't like capitalism and corporations? Go find a place that does it some other way and enjoy.
Luckily enough (well it depends on one's perspective) we have a number of examples of how countries turn without free market, where evil, self-centered, corrupted corporations are abolished and where people are closer to experiencing true Paradise on Earth: Cuba, North Korea, the former Soviet Union, former East Germany, former China...
We are not going to evolve as a society until we abolish corporatized capital. I know that this is a strong statement. And it is likely to attract serious disagreement. Take this as on man's opinion and nothing else. It is my contention that in modern times corporatized capital has done absolutely nothing good for our society. I understand that they had a time and a place to exist. Today, there's far more evidence of the damage they cause than the positive effects they may have been intended to produce.
Corporations create a false economy. One where people are paid exorbitant amounts of money for work that could be done for less in an open market. Corporations also create stagnation both in terms of innovation and of human capital. Corporate shareholders exist in an isolated cocoon where there is no need to excel or evolve past your station. Corporations damage competitiveness at a national and international level. Corporations damage the economy and destroy industries by creating contracts with unreasonable terms, benefits and pensions. Corporations in government create a nasty conflict-of-interest situation where hordes of shareholders contribute as a unified block supporting the very laws and politicians that regulate their own companies (oversee your own pollution, legal compliance, etc.). Corporations also use this vote-by-dollar approach to influence politics and the politicians that want their cash.
It is my opinion that corporate managers and shareholders, as individuals, are generally good hard-working people. However, once their thoughts and actions are controlled by the need to support their "team" (the corporation) the collective can, and often becomes, evil in many ways. Case in point: HP had a contract clause that caused Carly Fiorina to get paid tens of millions of dollars just for getting fired. She earned tens of thousands of times the average worker's salary to actively damage the business. The Chinese have got to be laughing their asses off when they see us self-destruct this way.
Fossil fuel companies are yet another example. The list of evils is too long to list here. The most basic one is the inability to tax them for emitting pollution that threatens to criminally kill millions.
We would be able to move at a very different pace if corporations went away. I won't hold my breath.