hahaha
If you think I can (and actually will) provide forensic evidence for that just to prove my point to some random stranger on a game mod community forum…
blah, finish the sentence yourself.
I just found it strangely correllating that the war in Iraq was started by a president (or government) that had connections to both the oil industry and firearms lobby.
But I tend to be a bit paranoid, so I am no reliable source for proven facts.
It’s also pretty logical. Politicians need money for their campaigns. The ones providing the money obviously have an influence on the ones receiving it.
Which was only started when they crashed two planes into the world trade centers. Yeah.
Still, no hard evidence.
Nobody who has paid any attention to politics ever would ask for “evidence” that corporate financing influences politicians. And following it up by saying Iraq did 9/11… Now I know you’re trolling. Please don’t feed the troll, guys. Lets move on.
EDIT: Shit blasted motherfuckin doublepost, faggot! Fuck!
Wait. I do support government regulation of corporations, but not because they’re evil… unless you think LAWS are in place because people are evil…
No. Government regulation protects both people AND corporations from harm; harm they might cause themselves (and, if they’re big enough, their actions can harm others) or harm others might cause them. If someone is a hapless layabout, the law is there to protect the business from prosecution if the person that is terminated from their position in the company tries to sue. It also protects the person in case the business tries to do something to harm them.
There’s nothing about “evil” anywhere. It’s simply about following the rule of law. Corporations have to abide by the law just like we citizens do. We tell them that there are certain things they have to do in order to operate within this country or within the several states.
I work at a major multinational corporation (whose name you would immediately recognize if I told you) doing payroll. The corporation has to abide by the certain pay laws in each state that it operates in. Inversely, an ex-employee attempted to sue the company for wrongful termination and the company won because the law (read “regulation”) protected them from the amount the ex-employee was trying to get.
I’m sure that you actually talked with someone that said that “corporations are evil”, but then again, I’ve talked with people that said that “people are evil”.
I’m not either. I think corporations should be regulated, for the good of themselves and for the good of others. Regulations could have protected the big businesses from their destructive actions which eventually led to the crashing of the economy in multiple countries.
Lack of regulation, to me, is akin to calling for anarchy.
wat
I was trying to lead him into saying whether or not he thinks the government did 9/11, as I have forgotten.
And I agree that corporations should be regulated, I just want to know what you think the extent should be.
Dang it, caught.
You can just ask, this is an “ask a” thread. No, Bush didn’t do 9/11, and Iraq is a dumb example of corporate influence on government. The daily occurances of this are much more mundane.
To me, if they want to be treated like natural persons, then they should be treated like persons. They must follow the laws of the land just like we do. If they kill people negligently, they should be held to account (not sure how you go about that, tbh).
But, then again, corporations aren’t people and they have MORE rights than the average citizenry (they get to own other corporations, they are shielded from liability, etc, etc). I don’t think they should be micromanaged, but I do think they should be managed. You fuck up, you pay. The problem is, whenever someone suggests something like that, they’re labeled a socialist.
Like I said prior. These people use these words and it does not mean what they think it means. It’s not “socialist” to require corporations follow the laws of the states and country in which they operate.
I think its when people suggest things like raising taxes of a few successful companies to pay for the bailout and direct intervention into companies when they haven’t broken the law, just done something stupid, that people cry socialist.
I do feel, however, that a corporation should be shielded from liability because often it is a person who is out of line and not the entire company’s fault, and as such the individual should be responsible and not the company.
The problem with this statement is that you’re calling companies that fucked up so badly that that they needed to take billions of dollars from the government in order to avoid fucking the global economy “successful.” If requiring these “successful” capitalists to pay back the money we were forced to give them is “socialist” then sign me up. And if government regulators intervening in their corrupt business practices before they were allowed to fuck the global economy would have been “socialist,” I think that’s a pretty damn good argument for socialism.
Sheilded from liability by whom?
No, I’m saying that in a capitalist society they should just fail and not take money from the government in the first place.
But what I was referring to was that now some companies are turning a profit and are successful they could be required to pay for the money used by companies that failed anyway.
And they should be shielded from liability by laws.
You’ve now described a company that is NOW turning a profit, AFTER fucking up so badly that they needed to take $billions from the government in order to save our economic system, as “successful” TWICE.
The taxpayer already “bought” the debt of these companies in order to save our economic system. Getting something in return for that sale is “socialism?” These failed companies should have been nationalized and sold to a third party, with all profit of the sale reimbursing the taxpayer - that would be Socialist. Buying the debt of failed companies and getting nothing whatsoever in return, I don’t know what that is. “Corporate socialism?”
Laws can’t award a bankrupt company money that it owes. Where does this money come from?
Its not the returning of the money given to the company that is socialism, it is them also returning money that was given to other companies that still failed that is socialism.
I’m not sure that this discussion has any connection to reality, as far as whats actually being proposed that financial service companies pay back to the government.
Reality aside, if the government saves an entire industry with a trillion dollar bailout, the entire industry needs to repay that debt. Bankrupt companies obviously can’t repay anything, therefore companies which have profited from the bailout need to repay the total sum of the bailout. Because without the entire amount, regardless of which money went to which company, none of these hypothetical companies would exist. That’s not socialism, it’s not even getting a return on our investment. But again, if you want to call it socialism, it’s a pretty good argument for socialism being the right thing to do.
But, when that happens in a capitalist society, it takes the ECONOMY down with them. So, when these ginormous companies fail, this happens:
And I’m not advocating that. Our country is a blend between socialism and capitalism, with the extreme of either a bad thing, however, I favor minimal intervention by the government, but I can allow in my beliefs a bailout like what happened, although it was notable larger than it should have been, politics requiring at least ten million to go to each bribed senators home state.
In response to Mattemuse, I think that the government needs to accept that they lost some money. God knows that the government is not concerned about going into debt. Also, I suspect several billion of the bailout didn’t go anywhere near the companies (see above point), and I’m sure the government wants them to pay for that too.
The size of the bailouts didn’t bother me. It was the lack of agreement about how said bailouts would be used and the repayment of them that bothered me. When Bush began giving out these bailouts, he didn’t give ANY restrictions about how they would be used. He didn’t require the money to go to innovation or anything like that. So, instead of using the bailout money to help the business, the businesses gave out huge bonuses to retain the “top talent” that caused the businesses to require a bailout in the first place.
When Obama got in, at least he started fixing these issues. He started capping executives’ salary until the bailout money was paid back. Of course, he was called a SOCIALIST by people that had absolutely no idea what that means.
The bailouts were a necessary evil to prevent a fundamental collapse of the American (and possibly the world) economy caused by a downswing in the economy made so dangerous by insane economic policies over the last couple decades that a simple downswing became a freight train heading off a cliff.