Sure it does
click for larger comic7
Category: Humor, Philosophy, Really, really bad calls
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
Monarchy, Oligarchy & dictatorship works best when left alone.
Because there wasn’t any regulation involved whatsoever in any of the above things?
Because, in spite of regulation, profit and greed became the ONLY goal.
- Like the US Oil Industry, which has simply dropped all maintenance of pipelines.
- Like the Nuclear industry storing radioactive rods on the roof.
- Like Monsanto, shoving down our throats GMO food, by testing in the real world.
- Like Bayer, making pesticide that kills bees.
- Like Fracking, during a Global Drought, and poisoning water resources, while Solar and Wind get cheaper the coal.
- Like Coal, which has polluted Every lake and stream in America with mercury, and uranium.
Money isn’t the first consideration, it’s the ONLY consideration.
“The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the “rule of the game” and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.” ― Milton Friedman
Unfortunately, those determining the rules of the game and those enforcing those rules don’t seem to understand the game and/or how they’re being gamed. And if they do understand, they too often place their personal interests or ideology ahead of all else.
Unregulated anything ain’t too good. Excess, and all that.
Who knows, We don’t have capitalism any longer but fascism. Corruption of the whole system would appear to be why, but primarily at the interface between Government (Including Congress and the “Regulators” but with a helping hand from SCOTUS) and The Corporatocracy.
So perhaps it would be more accurate to say “Capitalism self-destructs in the absence of governance”.
Without regulations, politicians would have nothing to sell to the highest bidder and we would have a lot of impoverished politicians. You don’t want Sally Fields on TV for the Save the Politicians fund do you?
We can look at anyone of those and pick them apart.
Love Canal… That property was sold to the city school board with full disclosure for $1.00. The city chose to develop the site knowing exactly what had been dumped there. The chemical company, who’s names escapes me, was found to have not sealed the chemical containers properly. The guys responsible for sealing the containers were blue collar guys who lived in the community. They had no intentions of harming their own community. They did not really understand the long-term environmental danger the chemicals posed. Remember this is 1950 something. Environmental science was not exactly cutting edge in 1953. Nobody knew what they were dealing with from an environmental perspective.
The private enterprise known as Niagara Falls Gazette is responsible for breaking the story and pushing through the cover up. It was not until media attention went national that the city took action. The city knew what they had done. They had full disclosure when they bought the property. The city chose to develop it and build a school on top of a known toxic waste dump.
We can pick apart every one of those shown in the cartoon.
Best for who?
It never ceases to amaze me, that what has to be the number one source of pollution in the US, is almost never a part of these conversations. The American Farm Industry.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/08/01/620401/study-income-inequality-homicides/?mobile=nc
Study: Income Inequality Is Tied To Increase In Homicides
“In the wake of the tragic shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, CO earlier this month, the nation has been engaged in a dialogue about the best ways to prevent violent crime — including passing stricter gun control legislation, requiring more background checks for firearm purchases, and increasing mental illness reporting. However, one writer at Scientific American suggests that homicides in the U.S. actually stem from a very different kind of source: the nation’s high rates of income inequality.
Eric Michael Johnson cites a study conducted by Harvard’s Ichiro Kawachi that analyzed the homicide rates in each state and the District of Columbia. Kawachi found that as the gap between the rich and the poor rose, the rate of homicide rose along with it:
The results were unambiguous: when income inequality was higher, so was the rate of homicide. Income inequality alone explained 74% of the variance in murder rates and half of the aggravated assaults. However, social capital had an even stronger association and, by itself, accounted for 82% of homicides and 61% of assaults. Other factors such as unemployment, poverty, or number of high school graduates were only weakly associated and alcohol consumption had no connection to violent crime at all. A World Bank sponsored study subsequently confirmed these results on income inequality concluding that, worldwide, homicide and the unequal distribution of resources are inextricably tied.
Income inequality in the U.S. has been rapidly rising since 1979. And an uptick in violent crimes certainly isn’t the only documented negative effect of the widening gulf between the rich and the poor. Studies have already shown that economic disparity has caused a problematic education gap, put an outsized burden on the Social Security program, and stifled the political power of a downtrodden middle class.”
There is a set of quality characteristics that system engineers call the “ilities.” Among others they include reliability, maintainability, security, and safety. For these purposes you could add honesty, transparency, and financial prudence. Every example in the cartoon involves a failure related to one of these qualities. This is where the corner-cutting happens, and qualities like safety will only happen if enforced by either regulation or levels of legal liability sufficiently high as to be punitive if corners are cut.
Many business executives would rather conduct a PR campaign to convince people their products are safe or secure or financially prudent than to hire the qualified people and spend the money to make them so.
I once worked at a plant where the general manager, when he was away, left the quality control manager in charge of the plant rather than the production manager, who was actually second in command. He knew that if the production manager was in charge, all kinds of garbage would go out the loading dock. There was a journal editor named Eugene Woolsey who had an aphorism. “If the head of quality control reports to the head of production, there ain’t no quality control.”
A fundamental challenge of capitalism is how to maintain quality in its products and services. It won’t happen by being left alone.
been having trouble surfing into** TBP today .. another comic pane possibly .. hear its been a day in them WS computers like my very 1st day here (not quite that bad)
the system we use is a choice .. why I fear future & now disaster capitalism .. seems we only allow our brains to consider this system*
heretic I am … thinkin about the thread of the day “what would the “sky-god folk” do”
.. forgive the animals – they must fight for a trade to survive – still
* baby steps – evolution still takes so much time – no pain no gain
~~
** header tabs out again here
That’s a ridiculous premise, of course.
The greatest irony is the only people calling for such an environment are some bankster thieves and the most wacko OWS anarchists.
Yeah this is a great list because when I think “unregulated capitalism” I think “nuclear power.” Seriously, how far will you people go to demagogue something? If there’s anyone left on this board who’s not a leftist ideologue check out Charles Perrow’s book Normal Accidents which explains how more rules can make complex systems less stable (and specifically covers Three Mile Island).
Love Canal is a great example of capitalism run amok. Oh, except for the fact that the chemical roots in Niagara County come from the Allied war effort, and the US Army used it as a dump site including waste from the Manhattan Project (cough, nukes, cough). And the fact that the site was used as a municipal dumping ground as well as industrial before being turned over to the county in the 50s. And that despite all of that the county, not a chemical company, built a hundred houses and a school. Other than that, great poster child guys.
I know Barry believes the government was in no way complicit in the housing bubble; that pure Wall Street greed would have created the subprime mortgage all on its own without ever hearing of Barney Frank. Bovine singing lessons and all of that. But even if that’s true, can unfettered capitalism be held entirely accountable for the repeated bubble blowing of the Greenspan Fed? This seems like a weak entry, though better than the other two.
AIG, Big Insurance, the epicenter of greed in the modern world. Of course, there is a regulation directly from Congress that assured everyone that triple-A from a NRSRO was as good as gold. Unbiased opinions from Egan Jones? Who needs ‘em, Congress says triple-A from these other guys means we don’t need to worry about reserving a lot of capital for potential losses. And an overzealous hooker-loving prosecutor had nothing to do with removing a competent CEO either. Nope, no hand of government there, just pure unfettered capitalism.
Pinto is a great one for our times because one of the knocks against it, in addition to the bumper and the gas tank location, was the fact that it weighed less than a ton. The Brookings Institute has estimated that reducing the average car weight by 500 pounds will increase highway deaths by 2200 to 3900 per year. So the question is simple – will those who see the evils of capitalism in the Pinto recognize the pitfalls of regulation when CAFE standards produce a sea of cars smaller than the infamous death trap? I tend to doubt it.
And finally Asian sweatshops – as if we don’t have regulations concerning those conditions here. If anything, onerous labor laws in the US encourage sweatshops. By the way, in which paragons of capitalistic economies do these sweatshops operate, hmmm?
“can unfettered capitalism be held entirely accountable for the repeated bubble blowing of the Greenspan Fed?” ummm…. yes…. who runs (or rather owns) the Fed?
I’m not into blame anymore, it’s time to Wake the F*ck Up America and just address the issues. Enough sh*ts been thrown against the wall and it all stuck…
What sociologists created this cartoon. All these cartoon cells were somehow engendered by government policy in one way or another.
It has been said (secretly, of course), that Ford estimated a certain number of deaths and resulting lawsuits, as it moved ahead with Pinto production- perhaps an earlier version of the now popular, ‘cost of doing business’.
Today, people are ‘hurt’ in many ways, whether through dangerous products (drugs, guns, medical implants), fraudulent business practices (Wall Street), or a corrupt health care system.
Conclusion: Power & Profits take Precedence over People.
Nothing new in a society where a portion of the population has always been considered disposable.
It is a simple fact that businessmen must be regulated because they repeatedly demonstrate their inability to avoid disaster. We have one calamity after another, in no way limited to the ones cited in the cartoon above, because money makes people crazy.
Does that mean that government is blameless? No, government is as flawed as any human institution, like, say, the Catholic Church or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
But unfettered capitalism is primitive, predatory, self-justificatory, amnesiac and prone to catastrophe. And the alibis persuade no one except other bad actors in desperate need of fig leaves themselves.
A says, maybe right, but once that percentage of “disposable” population becomes the majority, bad things happen, queens are beheaded, Caesars are assassinated.
Barry,
Have you read Einhorn’s book “Fooling Some of the People All of the Time, A Long Short Story ”
Have you?
Then perhaps you would appreciate how government regulators turned a blind eye and even encouraged the reckless lending that took place.
If the regulators consciously avoided doing their job, and telegraphed that apathy to the capitalists, why should anyone be surprised at the outcome?
I had a Ford Pinto as a senior in college and my first two years out – it cost me $100 and was a great car. I wouldn’t drive one today because I can afford better because free enterprise has given me the opportunity to improve my financial position.
Capitalism did kill nuclear power, so I don’t understand the point there.
Capitalism would have killed AIG if left to its own devices, so I don’t get that point either. And capitalism would have taken care of the housing bubble too (house prices would have fallen to the clearing price and Citi/BofA/WF would have all gone bankrupt.)
Love Canal made perfect economic sense at the time (in the 50s, we couldn’t afford Class I hazardous waste landfills) – was it a good idea knowing what we know now, probably not. Would we have the wealth we have now if we’d had current environmental regulations in the 1940s-60s, not a chance.
As pointed out above, there aren’t any sweat shops in capitalist countries – though I suppose you could argue that capitalism allows despotic regimes to take advantage of workers.
No one knows if more or less capitalism is the answer to our current problems. But acting like capitalism is the problem and that more government regulation is the answer to all of our ills shows a certain lack of humility.
The engineer of the capitalism train is PROFIT. Profit, Profit, Profit…….the leaders of this country will do anything to achieve profit, no matter what has to be done to get there. If you feel you are not achieving the profit you desire, buy the politician off.
Not too hard to understand that.
We have a nice historical view of how nearly unfettered capitalism works, the railroads from 1865 to 1893. There were two bubbles here, and the bubbles lead to two depressions 1873 and 1893 (worst prior to the 1930s). The railroad folks eventually competed themselves into receivership. Of course the government helped by giving land to the railroads (the gov had a lot of it ) in the west as well as loans to the UP/CP. But the railroads decided that they had to branch to prevent the other guy from running a line to towns and wide spots in the road. Back then someone pushing a new railroad was called a projector. In this case the point was for the management to make money and who cared about the shareholders and/or the bondholders their fate was not managements concern.
There are lots of books on this period and they provide some view of the bubbles of which it took almost 100 years for the bubble to go away.
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
Adam Smith (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations – Book I, Chapter 10, para 82)
” Liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice. Socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.”
Bakunin
Capitalism is a relic of freemasonry and the industrial evolution. Being “left alone” is not possible as the capitalists themselves will influence it. So if the government doesn’t “deal with it”, they or some other group will. Having international capitalists central planning for countries is dangerous. Think John Carpenter’s “They Live” when the aliens aka the capitalists had taken over earth and were “developing it”.
With the end of industrialization, capitalism became in crisis during the early 20th century. Government “deficits” came to fill in the gap and kept growth growing except in the “information boom” 90′s which acted like a mini-industrial revolution and the amount of government spending needed declined of course.
The problem with capitalism right now is lack of innovation to drive profits. So everything is stagnating while capital eats everything around them to keep the profits moving through. Excessive capital destruction will just expose the farce it has become as businesses die, laborers are dismissed and rich capitalists justs sit on their piles of cash/gold/arms and trying to rule life kings. International slaves states it will become as civilization dies.
The Kali Yuga. Then comes the final Avatar…………
THIS IS THE TRUTH..all the rest is rubbish
Capilalism is like an Olympic Boxing Match
Without the rules, head gear and ref
Its just ugly brawal, where the weak get crushed
With the correct amount of protection, laws and police : The best are free to express them selves while the others fall away.
FINITO !
Another reason to hate the media, and to go with the Black Swan injunction against reading newspapers and others of that ilk; I mean, does this cartoonist have any idea of what the connection between these things and “capitalism” might be? Any idea at all? Just more time-wasintg bs.
As to the thinkprogress.org source for the income inequality being tied to homicides, repeat after me, “correlation not indicate causation.”
~~~
BR: All profit motivated industries, who captured their regulators, and shifted their risks & cost burden to the public.
All of these corporate crimes are incurred by protection of government. If Corporations didn’t have limited liability and executives weren’t protected from their actions then “corners wouldn’t be cut”. Govt allows limited liability to encourage corporate growth but coincidentally encourages profit maximisation at the expense of responsibility. If we removed this imagine how the world would change. Companies would have to be much smaller as executives would need to have a greater handle on what was being done in “their” name by staff. Goods/services would be more expensive (as less economy of scale) but more corporate responsibility and less globalisation. Likelihood that “TPTB” would ever allow this – ZERO.
“Capitalism Works Best When Left Alone” . . . . . .
Especially when that new rock group, The Al Gore Rhythms, is in charge of trading!
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/business/unusual-volume-roils-early-trading-in-some-stocks.html?_r=1&hp
Have you ever worked in a wood shop with lots of power tools running, each with its own collection of healthy sounds?
Funny how the lurking and imminent failure of a machine is often preceded by a disharmony of sound.
SOCIALISM WORKS BEST TO CONTROL
GREED AND PROMOTE FAIRNESS
Chernobyl The Gulag Killing Fields
Disaster Archipelago of Cambodia
Ukraine White Sea North
Famine Baltic Canal Korea
Holocaust Mass Murder
You can use your imagination to fill in the cartoon images. When we get done admiring the cartoons, perhaps we can examine the common factor: human beings operating without appropriate checks on their tendency to look out for themselves and have limited empathy for or knowledge of the effect of their acquisitiveness on others. Without cultural mechanisms for instilling self-rule in individuals, culling out (or checking the power-grabbing schemes of) those who are tyrannized by their appetites, and incenting producers to serve consumers by assuring them of respect for property rights, events like the ones depicted in both sets of cartoons will emerge as reliably as the sun rising in the morning.
m2smith Says:
“By the way, in which paragons of capitalistic economies do these sweatshops operate, hmmm?’
________________
They operated here, and in Britain, and probably in every other western capitalist country . . .
. . . UNTIL THEY WERE REGULATED OUT OF EXISTENCE.
The fundamental purpose of regulation is to address the issue of socialized costs and losses that can occur when making privatized profits.
The US approach to this is woefully inadequate, expensive, and inefficient. The US regulates a subset of problems while giving exemptions to major lobbyists. It then writes detailed rules on the regulated subset which force specific actions that may or may not be the right solution to the problem and often suppresses the ability of engineers, scientists, and managers to come up with innovations to address the problems. The regulated subset now struggle to compete with the unregulated successful lobbyists because of the increased costs that their comeptition does not have to bear.
We see it in full flight in the financial sector where a pretty effective piece of legilsation on less paper than a weekly magazine was eliminated (Glass-Steagal), only to watch the system implode itslef within a decade resulting on a 2,500 page complex law that turns out to be unenforceable and unworkable. The end result? Instead of ending up with more smaller financial insitituions that can actually operate as capitalist firms, the financial secotr is even more concetnrated than before with similar risks as before but now has an implicit government guarantee against failure which virtually ensures that another financial crisis will occur in the near future.
m2smith makes an Insane point, in that it’s “the government”.
Still doesn’t get that “the government” is bought by the campaign contributions of the Koch Brothers, made legal by the Koch Bought Supreme Court, whose wives have been on Koch payrole.
re: mathman
Study: Income Inequality Is Tied To Increase In Homicides
That sounded odd to me (murder based on jealousy) so I read some of the actual report. Found some interesting things.
“The proportion of single female-headed households
predicted virtually the same range of crimes associated
with interpersonal mistrust, but in addition, rape
(r =0.43) and motor vehicle theft (r= 0.41) (Table 1
Interestingly, indicators of deprivation Ð % unem-
ployment, % poverty and % high school graduates in
a state Ð were only weakly or inconsistently related to
either violent or property crimes (Table 3). The sole
exception was the correlation of these variables with
homicide rates, though even these were not as strong
as those found with either the Robin Hood Index or
the social capital indicators.
So the headline is “Study: Income Inequality Is Tied To Increase In Homicides” but in the text it says “Other factors such as unemployment, poverty, or number of high school graduates were only weakly associated and alcohol consumption had no connection to VIOLENT CRIME at all.”The sole exception being, homicide (see study above).
Further down we get “Studies have already shown that economic disparity has caused a problematic education gap”
Really? How do we know that the education gap didn’t cause the economic disparity?
One simple thing in life in america, if your kids graduate high school and you stay married, odds are you kids will not end up poor.
How many business and political leaders have you seen in the news that had this misfortune befall them?
“I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. As the partridge sits on eggs, and hatches them not; so he that gets riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.” Jeremiah 17:10-11
another undisputable factoid .. human intellect has the shape of a diamond
with the majority of IQ and talent in the middle ..
they need a job in this modern world too .. maybe more so (no Probably)
people care for the IQ unfortunate (disabled) a business model has developed*
the superIQs there is no question they are needed in this world ..
a capitalist with other peoples money at his/her disposal will court their servitude
with the rewards mostly to __ (guess)
who made who
it takes a village
LOL
* before submit – the middle is disposable in western capitalism :-|
“The big lie is that allowing capitalism to function without any oversight whatsoever will lead to a flawlessly functioning machine”
No capitalist believes this, this is a big lie.
Capitalism is a series of small failures over and over and over that weed out bad ideas. Simple rules are adopted by the participates to keep each market healthy, but 100% health is never reached. the rules have to be refined and tried out again and again. Sometimes more rules, sometimes less.
When “less free” markets are tried, the less the number of decision makers, the more the risk of following one giant mistake. The US is centralizing most of it’s economic policy, using borrowing and money printing to grow the economy, instead of letting bad legislation be exposed and destroyed with better rules.
The worst we thing we could do when the greenspan/b.franks/clinton/paulson ideas failed was to bail them out. worst possible idea. That combined the worst ideas of a freer market with the very worst idea of a centralized market: bail out the bad ideas. We have to let bad ideas fail and push the failures on the advocating actors and companies.
>>BR: All profit motivated industries, who captured their regulators, and shifted their risks & cost burden to the public.
Bazinga! And therefore, ipso facto, no longer capitalism. QED. It’s corporatism, statism, or the form of fascism most closely aligned with Peron in Argentina. Capitalism allows the occasional spectacular failure, which is necessary to purge the system and reboot. Peronism/Corporatism is a heads-the-cartel-wins / tails-the-public-loses affair.
Nice straw man this knucklehead cartoonist tried to construct. Can we expect the Tin Man and Lion in next week’s cartoon.
“made legal by the Koch Bought Supreme Court”
Duuude. I have the number of a good shrink in DC if you need it. Step down from the ledge, man!
hm..not sure why are surprised that unregulated capitalism will run a muck. because that is the definition of chaos. the only reason that regulations end up specifying how to fix the problem is because companies want to be able to defend them selves in court. its a lot harder to defend what you did if its based on performance as opposed to process or procedure. its also why laws and regulations became so much larger (in pages) and more detailed. otherwise the courts would be inundated with law suits. and companies could go broke on just that alone. and not sure that nuclear power was killed by capitalism. unless you think the oil and gas companies funded hollywood to make lots scary movies where nuclear power plants blow up (which they can’t do). and then also pushed the power company that owned 3 mile island to screw up. causing a failure. its possible that both are true. but then we humans always fear the unknown. and even today its not exactly common knowledge how it works. or why. but power companies love it because after the plants are built, there is very little to buy to power the plant. but they tend to be short sighted (like all business now days) and cut corners (like oil companies and their pipelines. and rigs. who seems to cause as much havoc as they can. and get away with it too)./
not today banksters, wall street and the top 1% own the government and the media (all of it, including Fox). so why are you surprised that capitalism is always running amuck?
I think the Key point to take from what Milton Friedman is quoted saying with regard to government (see comment from Buffalo Bill) is that their is a distinction to be made between regulation and good regulatory oversight.
As others asked “Did the parodied situations in the cartoon involve zero regulation” -of course they did, anyone who would argue other wise is very misinformed. Point in case, the most recent housing and proprietary trading & derivative issue: look into Larry Summers, Hank Paulson, et. all backgrounds and one can see fairly clearly the regulators had been captured by the industry and were serving their own interests. There was no lack of regulation, it was a total lack of good regulatory oversight.
My point is that to claim this was unfettered capitalism and this is where it got us is completely misleading. It’s really much more correct to state that this is were Corporatism and Kleptocracy got us.
I think capitalism can work and function perfectly well with proper regulatory oversight, not more regulation. It’s subtle but a very pertinent distinction to be made in order to better learn from our mistakes.
I am confused….won’t pipes leak or cars crash and burn no matter what economic system is in place? Pipes corrode and crack, and cars are driven by people. The only way to completely ellimate these things from happening is to regulate them out of existence. That seems to be the path we are taking in this country.
Danimal, get real.
Middle class wages have dropped as a percent of GDP since 1978, meanwhile tuition for a four year college has risen 900%, healthcare has risen 600%. (http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/10/27/cost-of-college-on-the-rise-again/)
The government now pays 60% of all medical, government debt is higher than since WW2..
Student loan debt is at never before seen levels, consumer debt is in even worse shape than government debt.
We’ve slowly allowed a convenient mixture of privatized profits paid for with public debt.
The neo-con, Romney argument now wants US to pay the loans we’ve all taken out to subsidize outrageous profits made via bribed government that has artifically bloated prices and wages at the top.
Trickle down, that’s what it’s called.
Again, get real.
Pinto Myth debunked:
http://www.pointoflaw.com/articles/The_Myth_of_the_Ford_Pinto_Case.pdf
Practically the whole list is some pretty pathetic “occupy everybody else” bumper stickerism, unworthy of inclusion on this blog except as parodic humor. American manufacturers balance safety against costs? In order to enable this essential task, Government provides business with guidelines estimating the “value” of a human life!? INCONCEIVABLE. :-\
“$200,000.00 is the value-of-life that NHTSA itself had developed in a 1972 study calculating the social cost of motor vehicle accidents.”31
31. NHTSA, Societal Costs of Motor Vehicle Accidents: Preliminary Report 1, 2 (1972)”
There is no shortage of regulation of the US economy. Regulatory capture by TBTF, et al, make sure of that. Unfortunately, the regulatory law, written by industry and voted on by law-sellers who don’t even read bills, is designed more to hamper competition than to accomplish anything else. Corporatist, kleptocratic, cronyism is exactly what we have and it’s being nurtured by the biggest, most powerful government in the history of the world led by the most irresponsible political class in American history.
Willid3: did you see this one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjx-JlwYtyE That sucker blew up real good!
Nuclear power: I suggest a review of the WPPSS bond default, a biggie.
Capitalism is a system with fundamental conflicts with Western society; at this point the accumulation of wealth for its own sake threatens the health and safety of the entire planet if you accept McKibbens three numbers argument. Our institutions are corrupt, flagrantly so, and beyond the point where we can rely on them to be predictably corrupt. I think we are going to have some kind of reckoning soon and it will be difficult to predict how it sorts out, save for the potential for a lot of discomfort, unhappiness, and blame casting.
i think those who suggest that no regulations are needed to police capitalists are suggesting that will enable utopia. which oddly enough when regulations were much less (say the 19th century) was never described as being that. thought many seem to want to go back to that day. not really sure why
Corporations are people; sociopathic people, but people. Sociopaths cannot feel any connection, compassion etc. for other people but are exclusively focused on obtaining their own goals, regardless of the cost to others. The goal set for a corporation is to have this quarters profit beat the previous. Often times real flesh and bone sociopaths become CEO of corporations because they are the types that can let all other concerns behind and focus on quarterly profits. All you have to do is connect the sociopath CEO’s own personal compensation with quarterly profits, then they will energetically implement that as their own goal (with no concern for customers, employees or the long-term health of the company). The sociopathic CEO’s can be as effective short-term as they are destructive long-term. But as long as the shareholders are only in it for the short-term that is perfectly acceptable to them.
Sociopaths are almost by definition a danger to society, although their single-minded focus and energy sometimes can be harnessed and become a useful and productive engine. To suppress the destructive activity of flesh and blood sociopaths, society create laws that set restrictions on behavior and harsh punishments for those who break those laws. Normal people may restrict themselves from killing or robbing other people because their ethics and compassion allow them to understand that it is wrong – sociopaths hold back from these destructive behaviors for fear that it may eventually hurt themselves (if they get caught and punished).
The harsher the punishment, and the higher the probability of being caught (and punished), the more likely it is that the flesh and blood sociopath will obey the law. The same rules that apply to low life criminal sociopaths also apply to the “high life” CEO and corporation sociopaths. They have no concern about the harm they do to society or other people, so their destructive behavior must be restrained by laws (regulations). Furthermore, the only thing that makes them obey the law is the fear of the consequences if they are caught and punished – so punishment must be extremely harsh and enforcement must be very effective.
Biffah Bacon , thats not exactly the explosion think of. they are thinking of this instead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsTRxXvQY0s
the one you showed is no different than the one any power plant could have. and less than the one that a refinery could have
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb9u7vWxTbE
and maybe less ex
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQQrYR8y3Cs
Regarding the Pinto:
In the Indiana case, Ford’s own executive acknowledging that they were aware of the problem and that it could be fixed for $5 to $10 per car, but that was too expensive, was what drove the jurors to issue the high award. Plainly, Ford valued $5 in profit above human life. There was no market effect. A $5 increase in the price of the Pinto was negligible and wouldn’t have affected the market. But it would have affected the Ford family profits by millions.
Who knows?… it’s never been tried.
Liberal Pundits seem to have big issues with unregulated capitalism, but for some reason seem to have little to no problem whatsoever with ineffectual governmental regulatory systems, a vaporous prosecutory and legal system, and the revolving door of industry weened regulators. All of which can pointed to more readily as the causes of the above mentioned ‘debacles’. Statists always love to blame companies for the failures of supposed governmental oversight.
PS – is Jon Corzine ever going to see the inside of a holding cell? I’m sure evil corporations are holding Eric Holder’s family hostage in exchange for his continued legal exemption from prosecution. I’ll light a prayer candle on the sidewalk of the courthouse for their safe return.
@Lugnut;
The correct response to an ineffectual governmental regulatory system is not to abandon it (ensure 100% inefficiency for eternity), but to reform it such that it becomes more effective. I am all for much tougher and tighter regulations and severe punishment – but the GOPsters just want to repeal the regulations.
This cartoon is a campaign poster by marxists for “useful idiots”. What would you think is the cartoon was titled, ” GOVERNMENT WORKS BEST WHEN LEFT ALONE”?
Yet again, you point out that its a political/governmental problem, more so than a business problem. If I was unclear, then I apoogize. I’m NOT advocating free reign of the corporations. Au Contraire’, business can always be assumed to push the envelope; thats a given. I want a regulatory system that works. The kids will always misbehave, its how the parents who know better react and how they enforce the rules that matters.
“but the GOPsters just want to repeal the regulations”
Careful with the broad brush. Businesses want to repeal regulation. Which party actually repeals it is dependent mostly by who’s in power at the time. Gentle reminder: http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z167/liberalamerican/clintonsignsglasssteagallrepeal.gif
Biffah Bacon you are wrong. Capitalism is the basis of Western Society. This is what made it possible for the masses to enjoy prosperity and freedom that was not available in the stultified centrally governed societies and empires that ruled the rest of the world for thousands of years.
lingnut, there is no doubt that the GOP wants to repeal all regulations, they advertise it! from the roof tops as loud as they can.
and just what makes a regulation ineffectual? business only really wants those that restrict others from getting in their business, and those that restrict their customers, or those that force business to treat customers well, or actually do what they were paid to do. the reason so many regulations are some specific is because it makes it easier for business to defend them selves in court. cause in a of of cases business will argue over the word ‘be’. for hours even and day and years
This is what happens when government leaves capitalism alone.
“There’s no question about it, Wall Street got drunk, that’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras. It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments.”
President George W. Bush (07/18/08)
Unaware he was recorded, Bush #2 spoke truth to a gathering of his most longstanding, most loyal, most wealthy political donors attending a GOP fundraising event in Houston. Clearly, he was uncomfortable with his remarks intended to calm nervous constituents and did not want them disseminated to the public at large.
Bear Stearns was a new ghost and the ground was shaking. In confidence behind closed doors, Bush privately informed his benefactors that his administration already concluded it was rabid Wall Street machinations, specifically complex derivative trading and its “fancy financial instruments” spawn, that destabilized and threatened the global banking system. Furthermore, he told them his government would do nothing to avert the quickly spreading international financial crisis. Ideology trumped action. Capitalism is inherently perfect, inherently self-preserving, inherently self-regulating. Wall Street will instinctively sober up eventually and stop playing Russian roulette. Government interference can only make things worse.
Within a few months the global banking system seized, requiring massive, coordinated government interventions that saved capitalism by replacing it with socialism. Almost overnight, the mother of all socialist safety nets was constructed to support what became TBTF. (Who says government doesn’t work?) That multi-trillion dollar, government subsidized, socialist backstop remains in place growing larger potentially stretching to infinity. Unrestrained Wall Street malfeasance permanently lowered standards of living previously enjoyed by hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, except of course the bailed out bankers most responsible for the malfeasance.
Would it make a difference if the Bush administration didn’t blindly adhere to dogma holding capitalism works best when left alone? … Would it make a difference if that same Bush administration didn’t ignore CIA warnings about Osama bin Laden planning terrorist strikes inside the U.S. targeting landmarks in NYC and Washington D.C. that involved hijacking commercial jets?
“The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday.”
Steve Colbert roasting George W. Bush at 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner
Just four years after Osama bin Laden (not Saddam Hussein) launched his CIA predicted terrorist attacks inside the U.S. and just two years before Wall Street malfeasance nearly destroyed the global economy, Colbert’s now clairvoyant roast made no dent on the re-elected Bush #2, who more than anyone else on earth, could have made a difference.
The consequences of government failing to act in the face of impending crisis will more often than not be far more devastating than government acting, even incorrectly, to avert crisis.