Comments on: Why Is That?

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:50:22 +0000

Leaving aside the point that I have never been for sale, basically because money doesn’t interest me all that much, the problem is how the President can affect the overall economy. Regulation has to be key, so what regulations and by what agencies?

My interest is in systems, concepts, and ideas. Money can be a useful tool, but its accumulation is a pointless goal. The real question is what you do if you accumulate it, otherwise, you are no different than a dog chasing cars, i.e. a pursuit without a reason.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:31:31 +0000

Bryan, small business is irrelevant to my point. We’re talking about people who can buy and sell you a hundred times before breakfast, and disparity of wealth is the measure of that.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:57:07 +0000

Actually, Micheal, it is the norm in many small businesses for the owners to make the same or less money than their employees. The business may generate the income, but the average small business owner doesn’t take more from the business than is necessary, using the excess for expanding the business.

During the start-up phase, most owners are living on their savings, not on any income from their business. This is one of the reasons true capitalists hate the corporate model and the CEO pay structure – the management isn’t willing to “bet” its salary on its decisions.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:11:00 +0000

Hipparchia made the point before, income inequality is what the rich benefit from more than anything else. If two people have comparable incomes, neither can hire the other.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:50:34 +0000

I realized that, Hipparchia, but wanted to expand on my thoughts. Regulations and executive orders can affect a lot of things, but trying to figure out how they affect the economy isn’t easy to figure out, unless it is simply the psychology of feeling that things are getting better which overtakes the consumers.

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 02:12:25 +0000

those examples were the ones that leaped to mind [solely because of my own biases] as illustrations of just how easily a president’s actions, without any help from congress or the supreme court, can subvert the mission of a regulatory agency. i didn’t really mean to imply that subverting those particular agencies is necessarily responsible for the phenomenon that krugman was talking about.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:30:35 +0000

We prosecute the heads of crime families, so why not the CEO? The top-down structure is the same. The capo rarely directly orders a hit, but you can still prosecute them. Charge corporate malfeasance under the RICO laws and start sending people to prison. The CEO is the individual that profits the most from the “corner cutting” that results in these deaths, so they are responsible.

Michael, you’ll get no argument from me on corporations. I had to compete against them, and the “playing field” was definitely not level. I had to have bonds when they didn’t; I had to meet payment schedules when they didn’t; I had to provide all kinds of evidence of capabilities that were not required of corporations. Hell, in many states, no matter how badly they screw up, a court isn’t allowed to force them into bankruptcy. Corporations have no place in capitalism.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:53:27 +0000

The idea of corporations as persons with rights at all is ridiculous. Corporations cannot be imprisoned, they cannot bleed, they cannot feel pain, they never die. They can make unlimited profits and limit their liability. Truly, how could an ordinary human being compete?

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:48:22 +0000

It has always baffled me that if I go out and give someone poisoned food and the person dies, I would be charged with at the least manslaughter (depending upon whether it can be proven that I deliberately poisoned the food), but if a multi-billion-dollar corporation poisons thousands of people, nothing ever happens other than a fine. If CEO’s are getting $6 million dollar paychecks, they should also get the subpoena for the manslaughter charge if their food ends up killing someone. I mean, what *else* are they getting those big bucks for?

As for the notion “a boss should not be responsible for what his subordinates did”, bull fuckin’ shit. It’s called “command responsibility”. But oh, I keep forgetting, “responsibility” is a dirty word when you’re talking Rethuglicans…

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:02:35 +0000

I tend to concentrate on the financial side trying to figure out what’s going on to produce these results, because I’m looking at the money movement and markets on a mass scale.

On the social and human side, I think publicly hanging a few CEOs would probably improve safety regulations immensely, although I would probably settle for a few “criminally negligent homicide” convictions.