Yeah, anything that doesn't affect the shareholders is nothing to worry about. Those are just externalities that don't show up in the end-of-year report. It's actually a legal requirement for companies in many Western countries to pursue only the interests of the company and its shareholders. Whether they're an ethical company or not (sort of an oxymoron) doesn't really matter beyond marketing and public image purposes. And if any CEO of such a company decided to put profit aside in favor of actually helping people in an appropriate manner, he'd be thrown out and replaced with someone else immediately.

The inability of these corporations to voluntarily take steps towards improving the healthcare coverage they give to people, by favoring their interests over those of the shareholders, stems from the organizational structure to which they're bound.

Which if you really think about it is both unethical and VERY shortsighted. (that is, focusing on profit, something that is only measurable in immediate results)

According to the capitalist notion, it's perfectly ethical to focus only on profit, because that's how the system is supposed to work: people "vote with their money". Of course, there are lots of reasons for why this doesn't "work". (I put that in quotation marks because capitalism isn't really meant to "work" in the way that people think it is.)

A corporation is basically a piece of society that's sectioned off from public view and accountability. Since our lives are virtually entirely controlled by them, what it comes down to in practice is that regular people end up having no say whatsoever in how most society is run. We have to accept it, and even the slightest protest is taken as an attack on capitalism itself and faced with rebuke from "both" parties (guess I'll pretend I'm an American since we're on the subject of Obamacare, but also because it's the most iconic capitalist state).

I don't think private corporations are even compatible with the notion of democracy to begin with, in any shape or form. At least, I don't see how reducing public accountability (which is basically what private corporations do, by definition and design) can be.

ps: I really feel like a lousy armchair anarchist/hipster when I write these posts.

For those who miss Glenn Beck: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/29/glenn-beck-sells-t-shirts_n_1638229.html

http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2009/8/13/saupload_profits.png

Congratulations, you've proved nothing, and you've disproved nothing I said. This is a random, decontextualized statistic, not an argument nor an analysis.

It would be hard to find another way to please unions, but I guess the inflation is a small cost compared to being a president (eating expensive food and travelling everywhere for free)

I literally don't even know what this means.

Money is just a medium of exchange, something to make trading things easier, so I think it would be more correct to say that it's a system where people vote with their value (or at least it should be). Money itself is pretty useless, even more so now that most of it is actually intangible. You could still use paper bills as toilet paper. You could still turn coins into a paper weight. What can you do with a bunch of zeroes and ones? People accumulate value by assembling useful artifacts out of natural resources or developing useful skills. Stuff in general doesn't work not because of evil profit seekers, but because people tend to fuck up/ignore perfectly fine ideas and somehow reward the bad ones if they sound good enough and feelings. Economic calculation problem, what is that lol? I want muh equality!

Wealth is not the same thing as "value", at least according to my definition. Value means you've helped or improved society in some way. I'm not attacking money as a medium of exchange. The traditional capitalist notion is that money is basically society saying "thanks, here's a fair reward for your service", but that doesn't take into account the fact that some transactions in a capitalist system can be extremely systemically damaging, and the fact that there are externalities.

So if I sell you a car, for example, it might be a good deal for both of us, but the rest of Salt World had no say in the matter despite the fact they're affected too (another car on the road, more exhaust gases, increased greenhouse gas effect leading to global warming, higher chance of accidents, et cetera).

And then there's the immensely powerful financial corporations. They bounce around money like a game of ping-pong. So if a trader makes an automated investment in a company and sells the shares a few minutes later to make a million dollars, does that help society in any way? As we can see from the latest financial crisis, it's actually extremely dangerous to the system as a whole. Probably nothing positive about it whatsoever (the opacity makes it hard to tell). In a state-capitalist society, banks have a function: they invest your and my unused money into useful things, like the creation of a new company or someone's education. That's not what's being done anymore, and these practices are causing serious, mostly hidden damage to the economy.

Same with the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. The fact that the planet is probably going to undergo significant if not catastrophic climate change doesn't show up on the end-of-year balance sheet, so it's irrelevant to the perpetrators. Just because you made some money doesn't mean you've actually done anything positive.

People can't "vote with their money", whether you want to call it value or not. These things are permitted to happen because we consider the "profit doesn't lie" model to be sacred. It's probably going to end up having very bad global consequences, and as we can see in the last major climate summit in Durban, there's still no real incentive for the US to start taking serious steps to avoid catastrophe despite the fact that our current understanding of the science very clearly calls for them.

Capitalism doesn't "not work" because of consumer failure (which is what I think you're suggesting, although you're being very vague), but because of the institutional structure. All of this is a deliberate framework that favors sharp inequality, which is why the business world is so class-conscious.

Attacks on capitalism are pretty lame because they usually consist of people complaining about a situation they helped create like it's everyone else's fault but their own / people being nonsensical in general because feelings. Just give me a minute to update my facebook status with my macbook pro and drink my coca-cola and then I'll fight those evil capitalists a bit more.

We're all tainted. There's not much you can do about that. Either you boycott everything and become an anarcho-primitivist, voiding your ability to enact change, or you accept that you're part of the system.

A corporation is a group of people who provides goods/services to people who feel such products have more value to them than their idle time or whatever good they possess. It's a win-win situation.  If they fail to meet the consumer standards they stop operating (because of LOL NO PROFITZ) and someone takes their place. Unless... Unless they had some kind of institution that they could count on to leave people with no choice but consume their products, that could enforce a monopoly, that had access to unlimited firepower and the ability of cancel anyone's rights at will... OH WAIT! They already do! it's called a "state".

I think everybody here understands what a corporation is and what they do. The point, however, is that everything is done opaquely and without public accountability. Which leads to situations like the US healthcare system, which is a massive ripoff with some of the worst outcomes in the developed world (and, thus, very profitable). What the public needs is to have a say in what goes on in society, and the corporate system is structurally defined to prevent that.

Take something like hydraulic fracking, for example: it destroys the environment and significantly impacts the people living in the area. The result is an increase in inequality, because a small elite group reaps massive profits while the many get left behind with flammable and undrinkable tap water.

I don't think we even need to discuss why removing the state from the picture, like some right-libertarians would like, would be disastrous (both for the people as well as for the corporations). If you're interested I can explain, but this is such a fringe opinion that I'm not even sure you share it.

Your vision of value is a collectivist utilitarian one, where it is defined more or less by how much happiness an action adds to a society, but would you bother working your ass off in a coal mine if it did more to improve the living conditions of CHRIS-CHAN than your own? I don't think so, people would have to force you to do that at gunpoint.

That's a good example of a false dilemma. The factories ran just fine during the 1930s Spanish anarchist experiment. In fact, the whole society ran quite well, despite the fact they were doing something extremely novel and on a very large scale. It only ended when it got crushed by force.

By the way you could also force people to protect the environment and adopt sustainable consumer practices at gunpoint if you wanted but I think it's better to let them learn with their own failures, like europe learned with the black plague that being filthy is bad for several reasons.

The black plague killed about two thirds of the population of Europe. Yeah, we could have another scenario just like that, with the Earth becoming so polluted that entire continents get plagued by food crises which leads to a massive increase in global inequality as well as instability. It has a very real chance of happening, and one good way of ensuring it is taking the laissez-faire route and letting corporations do whatever they want. As I mentioned before, their organizational structures prohibit any kind of real action on their part.

Think about it. People only care about the environmental effects of cars now because for a brief moment owing one was a good idea and they were allowed to find out why it really isn't in the end. I, personally, wouldn't, because I live in a city and the cost of purchasing and maintaining one is much greater than walking/bus riding and I'm poor. It adds me no marginal utility. Why would I even need to hear from the rest of saltworld when being a bad deal is reason enough for me to not conduct the exchange? If everyone made better choices themselves the result would be a collective improvement, but, noooo!!! I have a better idea, let's have a popularity contest and give him a massive amount of power over everything (which no one else should have) to the winner. We'll hold him accountable, so that we'll be able to punish him after he does something that affects millions negatively. Nothing can go wrong with that plan, right??

I honestly don't get what this entire paragraph means. "Popularity contest"? "Give him massive power over everything"? Who's "him"? Why are you acting like I'm giving you an advice on whether to buy a car or not? The point of the part that you quoted is to show you there are tertiary effects to a business transaction. Those effects are called externalities.

Do you think I'm pro-totalitarianism? If you do, you shouldn't make assumptions.

So fucking what? They're earning residual monopoly money which is essentially worthless. It's not like they're force feeding crack cocaine to small children.

It puzzles me that you agree with me they're essentially getting free money (which eventually, society will have to pay for, as happened during the bailout; either a bailout occurs, or the following systemic failure is so massive that the consequences are immediate and terrifying), yet you just don't seem to care or think it's such a big problem.

No, in a state-capitalist society the government will try to maintain a trade balance surplus by coercive methods, which is what happened when monarchies were all cool in Europe and no one else (except China and other backwards countries) does that anymore because that's a retarded ass idea that benefits a few people in detriment to everyone who actually produces stuff. The function of a bank in any society is to hoard valuable stuff and lend it for a fee (interests). Lending is a form of investment, and I agree that it should be used to fund useful stuff (activities that are most likely going to be profitable, decreasing the risk of a default). What happens now is that banks are forced to make risky investments (i.e: allowing someone to buy a house that he normally wouldn't because he wouldn't be able to afford it, or even worse, allowing someone to buy a house because he thinks someone in the future will pay big bucks for it) and they're not allowed to fail (all at the detriment of everyone else), which in turn encourages them to take more risks. It's like how having seat belts/airbags/other safety features on cars encourages people to drive more dangerously.

State-instituted protectionism is still one of the prime reasons for why the rich countries are rich and the poor countries are exploited. That's not over, and never going to be. That's why you don't see the business elites pouring money into Ron Paul's campaign.

Exactly as I said, banks have a role in a state-capitalist society: to take unused money and use it to fund useful things that better society. But the reason why banks take such massive risks is foremost because they can, and it took a very long time and a lot of lobbying and money to get to this point, and also because they can expect to receive a taxpayer bailout when things turn sour, which they ultimately always will. It's really a new stage in capitalist excess: the point where self-destruction is more profitable than a sustainable path.

Again, "It's not my fault, it's US and they have to take measures!".

Europe is bad as well, but we can't ignore the fact that the US is the one taking steps backwards. They used to say they'd be on board with serious action on climate change as long as the BRIC countries are on board. Well, they are now. The US responded by saying "well, let's just wait a bit longer." The only major change the US lobby managed to accomplish in the field of climate change legislation in the run-up to Durban is a larger role for the free market in any action that takes place. That shows you who's in charge of the situation.

The US is important in this regard because that's where power lies, and that's where the major propaganda efforts are focused on.

The "profit doesn't lie" is adopted because it's stupid to make too much effort for stuff that is not worth it. Maybe if everyone cared only about everyone else everything would be free and there would be no evil profit seeking, but that's just not the way people work. We're not ants. Things are permitted to happen because there's nothing physical that prohibits them. Maybe those conditions will be met someday, maybe someday it will be possible to build underwater cities. Good intentions will be of no consequence in the long term.

That's baseless cynicism. Most popular movements since the 18th century have been progressive and left-libertarian in nature. If you look at the laborers, the "99%", and investigate their political inclinations and the popular movements that have sprung from it, you'll find the same thing. There's an extremely big drive towards a more social society. Maybe I'm naive, that's very possible, but I don't agree with the notion that people are serial backstabbers by nature. I think they're social creatures who help each other not because their cognitive faculties tell them there's something in it for them, but because it feels right to do so.

Yes, there's a massive group of people that favor sharp inequality and a society based on the slave/master principle, but they're in the minority. They're the so-called 1% and their foot soldiers. That's what we have to fight.

What institutional structure? Capitalism is just about having a low time preference. What you're talking about is a system that benefits a few individuals, imposes itself on everyone else through the use of force and is dominated by con artists (what does that remind me of, hmmm?). That comes for free with a state.  And why is inequality even a bad thing? You're not an injection molded android equal to everyone you know. Tesla was not your equal.

I just explained the institutional structure. A capitalist society works according to certain rules that guarantee inequality.

And yes, inequality is a bad thing. For one thing because the inequality is astonishingly large, so large there are no valid adjectives to describe it. It's slaves and masters. And yeah, some people are smarter than me, and some people work harder than me. But you're not going to convince me a single mother working overtime with no benefits and poor health-safety regulations is literally millions of times less useful to society than a financial company's CEO. The poorest people are so absurdly poor despite working so hard that I have a hard time seeing how you could miss this.

Now you sound like an armchair anarchist. You could also also stop working and live off welfare, which guarantees you a poverty-line type living standard. You could encourage other people to do it, in the end you'd have a massive external debt and your government wouldn't be able to feed you anymore and it would decide to cut off your handouts. You'd burn everything you saw up like in the greeks did (also, where is fatty?) and that would be the perfect catalyst for change.

Ironically, what you just wrote is exactly what armchair revolutionaries are all about: coming up with insane, unworkable plans for quickly overthrowing the state.

They already do, it's just that they're too vulnerable to people who know how to use their feelings to manipulate them, so they'll eat all that like it's delicious cake as long as whoever is doing it promises them equality, change, freedom from oppression, whatever. That's how people work.

The US is structurally an extremely undemocratic place. You've got "two" parties, and a vote for either of them doesn't get you what you want. Compare the US public's opinions on individual policy points with party platforms sometime, it's very illuminating. Then there's the massive propaganda machine built specifically to sustain this system.

It should be obvious that the people don't have the structural tools to enact what they want. Healthcare reform is a great example. Look at the specifics of what people want out of their healthcare system and compare it with Obamacare: it falls pathetically short. And it's been like that for decades. It's one of the best examples of the failure of US democracy I can think of. Recently it was pointed out that while half of US citizens support the legalization of marijuana, it's only 0-1% among elected officials. That's a failed democracy if I ever saw one.

People really just don't have a say in how society is organized in any significant sense.

You don't poop in your own bedroom because it stinks and you know it's a bad idea. But before that, other people had to spend their entire lives shitting in their own bedrooms before they figured out why it was dumb. We need a major global collapse. We need a major global catastrophe. It will be the only thing that will make people realize that whatever it is they're doing is bad for themselves.

A global catastrophe may well be on its way, and it will be game over when it happens. Saying we need it is pessimism and lazyism. It's the equivalent of shrugging your shoulders.

I can think of very few justifications for letting a major catastrophe or disaster occur as a way of teaching a state (or its people) a lesson. In some cases it's justified, such as the major military defeats Germany suffered near the end of the WWII. They needed to suffer a major defeat to be shocked back into being a just nation. What we're talking about here is different, though. The consequences of global warming aren't going to be restricted to just a few extra degrees centigrade. When the major food-producing sectors in the world dry up, we're not going to be protected just because we live in the rich West.

I do believe we'll have to get rid of states in order to progress, but they will have to fail completely before anything can take it's place. People will sooner or later realize it's an archaic structure of power, that it is a bad idea.  What if we were born just to see that happen? That would be so cool.

If you remove the state, ceteris paribus, the result is a power vacuum. If you don't have anything to fill that vacuum, the corporate world will. The results of that would be catastrophic. It would essentially mean the end of democracy, and a new era of fascism and complete opacity of power.

The state doesn't need to fail before something can take its place. That would do nothing but create massive poverty and give the corporate sector a chance to properly abuse its powers. What exactly can take its place, I don't know, but it will probably have to be in the form of a massively organized, rich, powerful network of cooperatives and community organizations and worker-controlled industries. When you have that framework in place, then maybe you can talk about eliminating the state, but that's like looking a thousand miles away. It's something that will require a lot of work.