The 99% Are Back

I don't care for Fox News or any other major news outlets.

I use my own brain to form my own opinions.

 

But what gives corporations the power they have now? It's not their money. It's the laws the government enforce. Without government, would corporations be able to put people in jail for starting up their own business without a license? Would they be able to keep people from selling lemonade in lemonade stands? Would they be able to arrest people selling unknown pharmaceuticals? Government is the reason corporations have that kind of power.

And of course there are dirty, corrupt corporations. They are only this way because it doesn't hurt their bottom line, and can probably increase it. Profit is the only incentive businesses have. They will do whatever makes them the most money. Now ask yourself what would happen if there were no government influence and corporations were all subject to competition. Would the company that cuts corners and puts out a worse product keep making more money than a better company? No. They would either go broke or they would have to start doing what the consumer wants in order to gain more business from them. This is the incentive. When going against what the consumer wants hurts your bottom line, the companies simply won't do it. Though none of this matters now because these corporations that are on top aren't subject to competition. They don't have to worry about pissing the customer off or not because there are so few options in the market to choose from. Government kills competition and the market.

You can take a look at areas with the least amount of regulations like cell phones and computers and see what real competition does. The best rise to the top. Once they cease being the best, others fill their void in the market by adapting to the consumer. The easiest example is Apple and Microsoft.

 

Actually it is the money. Money gives them the power to buy laws.

But hey, if you want anarchy, I won't stop you. In fact I will love to see how your head will spin if it does happen.

 

Without government, corporations could still buy laws?

Edit: Without government, businesses bend over for the consumers. Everything would be run through them. Their incentive is profit. Government doesn't have that incentive because they get our money no matter what through force. This is why government is inefficient and corruptible. They don't have an incentive to be efficient and please its consumer (us). We have no choice but to pay them. If we did have a choice, government would have to bend to our will or wouldn't have any funds to keep running. A lot of us wouldn't pay for them to keep bombing random countries or having military bases all over the world. We wouldn't pay for them to run police forces that are unjust and power hungry and that aren't held accountable for illegal acts or who are more concerned with giving out tickets than catching violent criminals. We wouldn't pay for them to suppress our rights.

 

The thing that upsets me about these occupy protest is that THERE IS NO SINGLE OBJECTIVE. Everyone is protesting for different reasons and different causes. It's disorganized and makes the protestors look stupid. Some people don't even know what they're protesting FOR!

 

Your comment doesn't make sense, because you're trying to get me to picture a system where corporations exist and government doesn't. How would they have money? How would there be jails? You're not changing one variable, you're changing a million, and that doesn't make for good illustration because I have to rebuild the entire world in my head, and even then I have no idea if we would be on the same page.
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I am also confused by suggesting software as.... the best example of capitalism? Apple is one of the biggest abusers of lawyering their competitors to death that I have ever seen, and the reason why the software world is in a lawsuit arms race. Apple is THE reason that source code was ruled a trade secret rather than copyrightable (which opened a huge can of worms that I will not digress into here). Microsoft in its heyday didn't compete fairly against its rivals, they throw their already massive weight around to buy partners into exclusively supporting them, thus making it impossible to compete. Just try to walk into a random store and buy a PC without a Windows license on it. Look at what happens to your options. Microsoft wins because they were already there. They continue to win because they have more money than their competitors. They built their own positive feedback loop by dividng and conquering. Microsoft is rarely dinged for putting out a bad product. Look at how many people still use IE, it's installed by default. Look at how futile it was to try and take Microsoft down for their trusted computing gambit.

Speaking of software startups, it will only get harder and harder for them. Software patents is a fucked up world. If Oracle wins it's current copyright lawsuit against Google, a shitton of more fuck is gonna hit the software world. The Software world is built of individuals standing on each other's shoulders. Your computer is built not by a single entity's efforts, but a whole army of different entities contributing parts directly onto the layer beneath them, and then watching more entities build a new layer above that. In software, the natural state that creates the most innovation is where everybody borrows from each other and builds something new on top of it. I wonder if you know what FOSS model is, or know how prevalent it is in whatever system you are using right now?

 

No, I was simply commenting on the ass-backwardness of your own claim. And if there weren't government, businesses could find all sorts of new ways to exploit consumers (and be free of regulation that prevented them exploiting us in old ways). And they don't have any incentive to be efficient or any reputation to prevent them doing something seriously harmful. After all, who's gonna stop them? There are no laws to constrain irresponsible business practices.

 

What do you mean what will stop them? If they are doing harmful stuff, people won't give them their money. Why do you say there is no incentive to keep them in line? Do I have to say it again? Their incentive is PROFIT. If you put out products that kill people or cause serious side effects, you're simply going to go broke. If you cheat the customer, you're going to go broke. This is why you don't need regulations. You think that if there weren't regulations, McDonald's wouldn't regulate their own beef? If a bad batch of beef got through a made people sick or killed them, it would tarnish their reputation and would cost them a ton of money by scaring off the consumer. You think Advil wouldn't regulate their product themselves? Eggs? Milk? Peanut Butter? Etc. All companies would regulate themselves because they know that if something goes wrong, they're going to lose a lot or all of their business. Being greedy (profit incentive) keeps companies in line all by itself. It doesn't make them more dangerous in a free market.

Edit: So instead of having companies use their own money to regulate themselves, the taxpayers have to pay for regulations. And in turn, those regulations are used against them by big corporations using money to buy the regulations that will kill competition and allows them do whatever they want.

Edit:So the consumer gets double fucked. We have to pay taxes for something that would be handled on its own anyways, and we also get fucked by regulations that allow corporations to be dishonest and corrupt.

 

Here's one.

Windows Vista. Extremely dinged. Extremely shitty.

I.E. shouldn't count you don't have to buy it and even though it comes installed, the only person I know that uses I.E. is my mom.

 

Wrong, this is a factor that depends on how important it is to obtain something and how many alternatives there are. This tactic only works when people have the time or freedom to make educated choices, or when they have enough expertise to make a proper decision. it completely fails in monopolies. So it works for peanut butter, but not healthcare.

Now there's dead people, where their deaths could have been prevented. Congrats. This is wrong to everyone with a basic sense of ethics.

Oh wait, that's still wrong. If there's no competitor and people must purchase your good, they will anyway. Without government there is nothing to destroy monopolies. (see: the big paragraph about Microsoft I posted above).

I suggest reading about how shitty American life was before the antitrust act and before basic things like nutrition labels were enforced. Read about how ungodly powerful railroads were. That is what you want to go back to?

 

Even with all the regulations, there's still outbreaks of shit quite often it seems like. The FDA isn't even good at regulating stuff. There was stuff in peanut butter killing people within the last couple years I thought. And E. Coli in meat. And Mad Cow Disease. I'm sure there's tons of shit I could dig up where they completely fail at what they are supposed to be doing.

So there's still dead people. The thing you want government to prevent doesn't even prevent it.


Edit: There are two types of monopolies. A coercive monopoly and a non-coercive monopoly. A coercive monopoly isn't possible in a free market. This type doesn't allow for any new companies to compete/be created because government regulations make it impossible. A non-coercive monopoly isn't dangerous because it is still possible for new companies to fill the void if the non-coercive monopoly company starts displeasing consumers. A non-coercive monopoly occurs when it is above and beyond every other competitor and gains the vast majority of business in that market. But when there's a void in the market, there will always be companies trying to fill it because there's money to be made.

 

Sorry but I highly doubt corporations would stop cutting corners if there were no government regulation. All that the consumers care about are lower prices so what we'd get would be the bare-minimum of self-regulation. No company would do anything to reduce their impact on the environment, and they'd hide all of the disgusting things they do. It would be just like the 20's again. I'm sure we all know about Upton Sinclair and the meatpacking plants. Not to mention monopolies and/or trusts would be fucking over every small business. Granted, they are basically still a problem in some areas, but I digress. Come on, there's no way they wouldn't do those things again. It's simply naive to have so much faith in corporations and the American public.

 

So we should have faith in government instead? Which is run by people who are a part of corporations and the American public?

 

So it either has to be 100% effective or get rid of it? How about something more reasonable, like 99%, because not everybody is perfect. I am intrigued because you seem to have a real double standard here. So the government has to be 100% effective, but business can be all "LOL I can kill whoever I want" and they don't have to be held accountable? That's inconsistent.

There's also a basic logic error. You SAY the FDA isn't very good at regulating stuff, then you show all the errors they made. What you should have done was give me a percentage of their success rate, to prove that you weren't ignoring their successes. After all, successes of the FDA don't make the news.

And we failed at Mad Cow Disease? The USA only has three human cases, two of which had visited the UK, where the disease was found, and one that could have gotten it from Saudi Arabia. The FDA did take steps to lessen the blow from that.

 

There is absolutely no double standard. There will absolutely be mistakes by businesses self-regulating. There's also mistakes made by the FDA. There is just more incentive from the business to self-regulate than there is the FDA to regulate, which is why the self-regulations will be more effective.

Edit: And wtf do you mean the businesses wouldn't be held accountable? They would go broke and they'd be charged in a private court. It's the government that isn't held accountable. What happens to the government when they fuck up on regulating something and it hurts someone? Nothing. At least when a business fucks up they would go bankrupt and nobody is ever affected from them again.

 

Bunch of theoretical stuff that is contradicted the real world examples I already posted about.

Conglomerate A buys the court, or already owns it. Trial Over.

A non-fucked up government would have representatives being voted the hell off.

This sentence is so wrong I don't even know where to start. Bye.

 

I don't have the energy to keep this up. You guys brought up good points and hopefully thought about this subject more. Keep questioning things.

For those interested in this topic, here's an article about it: The Free Market: A Primer on Regulation

 

The idea that people outside of positions of authority will always hold corporations with shitty ethics accountable is naive idealism at best, ironically. There are already plenty where common knowledge of their practices does nothing to make them lose custom.

 

This used to be my thought as well, but that naivete is driven by an agenda, usually one of former white privilege trying to regain what they've lost, oftentimes driven to this urge ironically by the very people who took their money in the first place (Republicans).