HAHAHA. You win the internet today, being so funny
Trump was the swamp. So is most of the people for and against him. He didnt lift a finger to do any draining. He poured more swamp in to make it overflow
Well um ackshually dark money, spooky PAC's, and unlimited corporate campaign money is good, sweaty.
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Trump was the swamp. So is most of the people for and against him. He didnt lift a finger to do any draining. He poured more swamp in to make it overflow
A lot of people seem forget that a substantial chunk of corporate interests are everybody's interests. They do, after all, represent a very substantial part of a nation's economic production.
In this, they have at least one thing in common with labour unions in terms of outlook. What fundamentally screws up production hurts company, shareholder, worker and consumer alike.
Up to a point. Corporate interests happen to provide things we need, which is a happy coincidence at best. If they could make the same or more money selling us literal poison rather than food they would. Hence US food regulations compared to basically any other developed nation. Profit is corporate interest. Even if it means destroying the planet. Or leaving the majority living in poverty.
Sure. But is it necessarily much better in any other system?
If we were to take a look at the USSR, where factories were state owned and had no profit motive, the factory managers arranged for themselves to have a nice easy life by overdemanding resources (and potentially underpromising results) to get the job done. This was great for the factory owners and workers, but not for society. Or one could consider the forced collectivisation of the farms, which occurred in part because the rural farmers were happy producing food for themselves and not much bothered about producing enough for the cities, leading to food shortages. One might note - let's use the USSR again - that the state literally poisoned its own people (and murdered them and sent them to gulags) to achieve production in the greater name of the state.
So if we take these three models of production: shareholder / capitalist, state run, and worker-run, in practice the interests of the people who run production frequently does not meet wider societal needs. This is not an excuse for capitalists to be selfish pricks, but it is to say that we would still have problems in making production work for the greater good with other systems too.
If you know anything of the history of the Portland Police Union, you’d understand how something that can be for workers can be very against society
I thought your point was that "corporate interests are everybody's interests"? Which is y'know, bollocks.
Yeah there would be issues in any system of production. I think the one that has literally brought our planet one spicy chilli fart away from a climate disaster and relies on the majority of the developing world living in practical and literal slavery to maintain our overproduction and has given all of the power to a handful of billionaire sociopaths is the worse one. But this is all besides the point because "yeah but Russia" is just a deflection worthy of some of this boards trollier members.
Bad example. The eastern block was horrrible at environmental protection. Including CO2 production. Because solving that was hard and just forbidding to talk about it was way easier.
I grew up in one of those countries and have seen how our emissions sink drastically after the fall of the iron curtain, our rivers becoming non toxic again and our woods becoming more healthy.
So don't you dare tell me how capitalism of all things is supposed to be responsible for our current ecological srisis.
So don't you dare tell me how capitalism of all things is supposed to be responsible for our current ecological srisis.
But Capitalism you guys! But Capitalism!
If your argument is that Capitalism is the worst of the worst you simply cannot dismiss an entire block of communist nations doing worse.
Except it wasn't "but capitalism". I was responding directly to the claim that corporate interests are societal interests. Which is bollocks and I pointed it out. Then people decided to bring up communism to distract from the fact that that is bollocks rather than address the fact that it is bollocks.
And global emissions have skyrocketed. And the more capitalist china has become the worse impact it's had on the environment. Turns out mass overproduction of tat and gutting environmental regulations purely for the profit motive has been largely bad for the environment.
The difference is that under any system, pollution and waste are possible, under capitalism it's necessary because literally all that matters is profit.
And I'm done with this now. I'm not engaging with the Houseman special of distracting from the actual issue with whatabouttery to avoid ever actually having to defend the bollocks that's been said.
It kind of was in this part: " Yeah there would be issues in any system of production. I think the one that has literally brought our planet one spicy chilli fart away from a climate disaster and relies on the majority of the developing world living in practical and literal slavery to maintain our overproduction and has given all of the power to a handful of billionaire sociopaths is the worse one. "
But Agema's point wasn't that corporate interests are societal interests either. The point was that there is a substantial overlap, which there is (Although how much may depend on the sector/company/socio-economic context).
I'm saying there is an overlap.
Producing goods and services and employing people is important for the societal good. Businesses telling you that they cannot do business can be a genuine concern, because if they cannot, workers lose their jobs and what they make for society doesn't get made.
Thus businesses have interests where the societal response should be "fuck you", interests where society can say "we appreciate that, but sorry you're going to have suck this one up for the team"; but they also have substantial interests which align closely with the societal good where they merit being listened to.
Of course, they can always just dump their stock and buy another one (or short sell, even better!) instead of bothering to voice any concern. Capital is mobile. They're not stuck in like workers.
If we want to know what a business thinks then it's the CEOs that speak, not the shareholders. Whilst they have a lot more freedom than most workers, most CEOs are effectively employees too.
What's the process of becoming one? Do you have to qualify? Do you volunteer? Who decides who gets chosen?
You have to ask in order to volunteer so that some old person who is likely conservative unless you live in a blue district says yes or no. They likely assumed the following for me
Minority -> liberal -> bad
or
Chinese/East Asian -> subversive foreign policy actor -> bad
Well that seems like a bad system, ripe for that kind of discrimination, if it's just up to someone sizing you up.
It should just be something like a blind "number-from-a-hat" lottery thing, so that one's name, gender, ethnicity, or political affiliation is not a consideration. It should be illegal for any of those things to be a factor.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were a high correlation between the political affiliations of poll workers and which candidate won the vote in a county, especially in the "battleground" states. In a fair election, that shouldn't matter, but it shouldn't be that way if you want to have a fair election...
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Welcome to conservatism. It tends not to be very open to "outsiders." Of course it isn't helped that you are apparently East Asian and trump spent a lot of effort into villainizing the chinese. I mean its not like China needed the help considering all the sketchy shit it does, but to trumpers you probably looked like a plant.