Do you think Wal-Mart is evil?
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Sunday, November 27, 2005 20:12
VIEWED: 21084
PAGE 12 of 17
Quote:I see. Such desperate ad hominem are characteristic of a truly closed mind. Just because you find yourself in the unique position of realizing that Wal-Mart takes tax breaks from the government, like every other corporation in the country, doesn’t mean I’m a terrorist or Wal-Mart is socialism. I’m sorry if your grand delusions of a perfect capitalist world have been shattered, but if you’d ever actually bothered to read up on the issue, you would have found that such grand delusions are myths created from the ignorance of people who don’t bother to pay attention to frivolous things like definitions in the dictionary. Adam Smith, over two hundred years ago, understood that capitalist corporations will seek profit, even at the expense of the public, if necessarily. That, evidently, has escaped you, but it’s true.
Originally posted by Valdron:
Whatever dude. Colour me bored. Give my regards to Mr. Kaczynski, I'm sure you'll have a great time together.
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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
capitalist corporations will seek profit, even at the expense of the public, if necessarily.
I think that's exactly the point at which it tips over into evil, no matter what the law says about what is allowed. I see our laws as being especially flawed where business is concerned.
I think the concept of evil is mutable and subjective right up to the line where, through violence or coercion, I remove the ability to choose from another party. In addition to that, I try to act from the perspective that I have a responsibility to do the work to recognize and avoid any point where my will abrades another's choice, whether that choice belongs to the person sitting next to me on the bus or to an 8 year old in China. I don't think it's possible to hide behind the facade of corporation, law or convention to evade that responsibility.
Thanks to viral marketing...SERENITY: reopening soon in a theater near you.
Shiny Trees! Yavanna made Shiny Trees!
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:Quote:I see. Such desperate ad hominem are characteristic of a truly closed mind. Just because you find yourself in the unique position of realizing that Wal-Mart takes tax breaks from the government, like every other corporation in the country, doesn’t mean I’m a terrorist or Wal-Mart is socialism. I’m sorry if your grand delusions of a perfect capitalist world have been shattered, but if you’d ever actually bothered to read up on the issue, you would have found that such grand delusions are myths created from the ignorance of people who don’t bother to pay attention to frivolous things like definitions in the dictionary. Adam Smith, over two hundred years ago, understood that capitalist corporations will seek profit, even at the expense of the public, if necessarily. That, evidently, has escaped you, but it’s true.
Originally posted by Valdron:
Whatever dude. Colour me bored. Give my regards to Mr. Kaczynski, I'm sure you'll have a great time together.
I'm not calling you a terrorist, I'm merely calling you a crackpot. Now, I'm sorry if you're feeling put upon, but the world doesn't revolve around your callow philosophical ruminations, and narrow parochialisms.
My old law professor, Art Braid, once told us that the only purpose of an incorporated share entity is to seek profit. This was an actual legal principle, and consequences flowed therefrom. Corporate (shareholding entity) executives and corporate boards could be held legally liable if they acted in any other fashion.
But you've taken an objective, which is a fairly narrow legal obligation and you're presenting this as some sort of fuzzy moral imperative. Sad to say, the principle does not sustain the weight you put on it.
The fact that a corporation has a single goal of maximizing profits is not a moral or social imperative, its not even necessarily an imperative of corporations. It's an imperative created by statute for a particular kind of business entity. There are, even in Western culture, a variety of other business entities, including partnerships, limited partnerships, general partnerships, joint ventures, non-share corporations, statutory corporations, letters patent entities.
The principle that a corporation has the single objective of maximizing its profit is one created by statutory construction. Further, that statutory construction always presupposes that the corporate entity will not be autonomous, but that it will always be embedded in a regulatory framework.
If we existed in a hypothetical legal and social void and the corporation simply pursued its objective to maximize revenues at every turn and that the pursuit of that objective was effectively value neutral, then Wal-Mart would inevitably be selling crack cocaine to children.
However, there is no legal or social void, a corporation is not free to simply act in whatever way it wishes, nor should its actions be immune from criticism.
As Art Braid once said, the fastest way for a corporation to make money is not to pay its bills. Unpaid bills are effectively a loan or grant from the creditor to the debtor. It's free money, particularly if you never ever pay your bills.
That seems somewhat ridiculous, but the corpspeak name for this practice is 'offloading'. That is, trying to make sure that other people wind up paying your expenses so that you don't have to. If your expenses wind up on someone elses ledger, yours is correspondingly improved.
As an example, suppose a corporation has to deal with waste products. It can spend a lot of money treating its waste, or it can dump it in the community water supply. Under narrow corporate imperatives, it makes more sense to poison the community than it does to spend money treating its waste. If the community then expends money treating your waste, you are ahead in the game. But you are ahead at the expense of the community.
Believe it or not, this sort of conduct may be legitimately criticized as wrongful, evil, and a variety
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Lim,
I disagree. I think the laws are fine. There are plenty of laws regarding everything that walmart is doing that make it illegal, but it fails to obey them. In fact we seem to have a govt. which is completely ignoring the extant business law.
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After all that I think you missed the point entirely. Nobody here is disagreeing with your assertion that it is "a bad thing" (tm) just that your conclusions seem off the mark.
For a law student you have failed to make your case, in what way is government payments to any industry socialist? That *was* your assertion right? As far as I can see the only way in which the socialism aspect could hold true would be if the government either owned or directly controlled the industry in question but it obviously doesn't. In fact, considering the amount of lobbying, campaign contributions and strong arming that corporations apply it would probably be farer to suggest that companies own congress. In socialism industry is owned or at least controlled by government for the people's benefit, even if it didn't work out that way that is the definition. In corporate capitalism the government is being manipulated for the benefit of business, something 180 degrees opposite.
So tell me, convicted many victims recently??
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In my time, I convicted quite a few criminals and a handful of deadbeat dads.
If you want to redefine your terms such that state subsidized business is not a form of socialism, that's your lookout. I'm really not going to engage in these semantic games.
Now, you'll excuse me, but I'm bored.
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I disagree. I think the laws are fine....In fact we seem to have a govt. which is completely ignoring the extant business law.
I don't think laws that give business entities the status of an individual, while allowing them to evade legal responsibility for their actions are good laws. On the other hand, I think we have an empire which is crumbling, and will allow business to get away with all manner of gruesome behavior as long as the economy can be propped up with a stick.
caveat emptor
Limi
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We're not playing symantic games, or redefining anything. You are the one that is deviating from standard accepted usage. The irony is that nobody here disagrees that this is "a bad thing" just that what you describe is corrupt practices not socialism.
Keep talking, I didn't think my respect for lawyers could go much lower but you seem to be going for the record.
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Quote:I find it amusing that your whole argument rests on trying to convince me of your own self-worth, and there is almost a since of accomplishment in your self-assurance that you have bruised my feelings. My feelings aren’t going to get bruised because you don’t know what you’re talking about or you’re mean spirited. You put an awful lot of undeserved stock in your opinion to think that I care that much about you say.
Originally posted by Valdron:
Now, if you'd like to confine yourself to the topic at hand, then fine. If you don't, I'm not terribly interested. Now, this is a bit harsh, and I'll apologize for bruising your feelings. But that's life. You've bored me.
Though even with your vast supposed knowledge of the subject you can’t confine your arguments to the facts or even the definitions. No where did I argue that Wal-Mart does not procure state subsidies or that subsidization is in no way socialism (basically impossible to get that form anything I’ve ever said, I would imagine). These are your own fabrications, evidently. All I said was that neither excludes capitalism, which is a far cry from how you’ve conveniently characterized it. But while you have completely misconstrued my point, you have also completely failed to argue your own. You’ve not made a single convincing point that suggests that a company that receives moneys from the government is not capitalist. Indeed companies of all sizes receive money from the government in many different forms, from small business incentives to investing in high dollar technology. Incentives and tax shelters abound in the US corporate capitalist world.
But finally, it may be fruitless to continue this line of argument, since the only thing we can be sure of at this point is that you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can’t seem to make your own argument, and your solution to this is a juvenile attempt to bully people with some highbrow cliché, not to mention referring to definitions in the dictionary as “half-baked.”
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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.
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