Posted on 10/11/2004 1:14:10 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Exactly correct. Corporations need government to influence policy or they would, in many cases, fail in the marketplace.
With all due respect to lincoln though, he was wrong. Labor in and of itself has little value.
You don't have much of a work ethic, do you?
Using abstract reasoning/generalisation is the fundation of real thinking. How can you say that some things cannot be compared without comparing them first? Please, do not commit lobotomy on yourself.
What I did, it was the reductio ad absurdum.
All of that said, the US model of capitalism will never, and can never feature the levels of government intervention and economic guidance experienced in Europe after the fall of the nobility. In Europe, even after the nobility's fall, and even after the various "equalizing" anti monarchical revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the bourgeoisie were largely uninterested in investing in corporations and therefore the nation states had to fill the void. Our model grew up very differently, and at this point, it is essentially the general public who "run" corporations. The government is a bystander with little but a rare police role, ala Enron and Digital Crossing. So, if anyone wants to bemoan "corporate power" in the USA, we have met the enemy and he is us. In order to improve corporate behavior, it is the thinking of sharholders that must be targetted. Now, as for the matter of non US shareholders, that is a very interesting converation. Are we too lenient in terms of allowing overseas investment in our securities markets? When does foreign ownership of securities become a threat to national security?
"sharholders" S/B shareholders & "converation" S/B conversation.
Was what you did reductio ad absurdum? No.
Survival was not the measure of success in the original comment. Survival and thriving was the measure of success. Your failure to understand the original comment flawed your attempt at logical symbolism but the symolism was flawed as well. After all the reason that we know about the Gulag and Pol Pot is that so many did not survive.
I've argued for years that Micro$oft's ultimate goal is to rule the world. So, this sort of article comes as no surprise to me.
Never? Do you know the future? Nothing is for ever.
Sure you would. You would have a ditch which you didn't have before.
Same principle applies as when the pioneer farmers cleared stumps to create their fields. Nobody paid 'em to do it.
And of what value would a ditch be if I dug one where it wasn't needed? A farmer clearing his land is increasing the plantable area of his farm. There is a plan behind the labor. Certainly anyone can have a good idea and without labor it is useless. Labor without thought is just as useless. Labor has no more inherent value then thought.
If nobody paid you to dig a ditch, and you were dumb enough to dig one that you didn't need, that's your problem.
That's an interesting concept: corporate socialism. Corporations are becoming as bad as the trusts were in the late 1800's. Conservatives need to rethink their pro-business outlook.
It is structurally impossible. The US is the land of mob rule. Thomas L. Friedman, who I generally despise, called it by an appropriate name - The Electronic Herd. The Electronic Herd, for better or worse, controls the US economy.
It would be my problem yes because I would have found out the hard way that labor has no inherent value.
What would you suggest then? The mercantilist mess that has been rampant in this nation of states for the last 100 years at least? Where those that cannot produce as efficiently as their competitors go to the government falsely claiming monopolistic actions? Capitalism hasn't existed in this nation of states for many years.
The suggestion is Distributism, first thunk-up by GK Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.
It's a small-business/agriculture oriented system which utilizes some aspects of the Guild system. Unlike the current situation, it's centered on people, rather than money.
The difficulty will be in persuading most Americans that being filthy-rich is NOT an ideal; rather, that being comfortable is sufficient.
I'm not telling you that the system will work easily; I'm just telling you the answer to your question.
Lincoln's point was NOT "labor"--but rather, men, or specifically, each man.
IOW, Lincoln placed the emphasis on one's neighbor, not some machine or pile of cash.
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