Corporations

Hehe! Spot on about who the corporate chipmunks are!

Objectif, even for other corps cracking new markets is almost impossible. New developments and technology in energy say, are soon controlled by the corps. In the car industry corps actually come together and make near identical models together, sometimes the corps also merge, either way choice is not increased.

non-union workers

poorer countries,

and smaller businesses who suffer more from the excessive burdens which corps can soak up.

Innovation? Where? I notice that the US still struggles to send people to space, when a few decades ago it had no trouble sending people to the moon. I'm reading 'Human Accomplishment' by neocon Charles Murray, the decline in innovation seems a more proven trend.

You can do this as well. Perhaps your just too picky. How do you know you could find good pizza 20 yrs ago - that is a value judgement, but can you remember eating pizza 20 yrs ago? Thus what are you comparing it to? An idea that 'things were better in the good old days'.

If you think people weren;t in debt 20 yrs ago your in a dream world. People choose to get in debt, its up to them what they buy. It is an expression of their freedom and corporations allow them to express this. It may not be wise but its their money. I wouldn't want to enforce my morals on them, they can buy what they want with their money.

Ok, how about India - not many mercs there but plenty of those dreadful cars from the days when their car industry was closed off from competition. Fortunately this is changing. There arn't many people wearing Gucci in Venezuala. In Vietnam you need 60,000 dollars for a Japanese car, in Japan you need 20,000 for the same car. Why? Because the Vietnamese gov puts massive taxes on imported cars thus reducing choices for people. Ghana who rejected capitalism in te post war period for protectionsim dosen't have many mercs or sushi restaurants or mcdonaolds. Go to South Korea and see their vairiety - French food, german food, Thai food, pizzas, mcdonalds etc. Its all there if you want it.The trend is clear - those with less capitalism have less choice in their products.

B]Objectif

You seem to believe there's a link between corps, and choice and price. Do you really believe that when Ford spend a billion dollars getting a new model on to the market they leave their success/failure to the whim of the consumer?

Their business plan extends to planning the customer’s future 'free choices' and his future 'personal tastes'. When the new car is launched, which typically is very similar to the latest models of ‘rival’ manufacturers , the customer unsurprisingly 'freely' wants one. Failures then are almost as rare as unusual or original products.

Price fixing. Ford, Seat and VW cooperate in building three near identical cars. Choice and value?

About unions, yes many corps have unions, more especially in their earlier stages of economic development.

The unions are formed because workers want some of the security their business (as a corp) has. Corps don’t mind because they can pass increased costs to the consumer. So union workers fix their wages, and corps fix their prices. Poorer consumers (esp. non-union employers who cannot control their wages) pay the price, literally.

About Nike and equivalents, at this stage in Vietnam's economic development, generous salaries (by Viet standards, cheap to the Corps) and benefits and unions, are a win-win for corps as they make Vietnam and other markets more likely to open up their markets to corps, who of course are able to dominate the new markets, it functions as a bribe would.

The losers again are the non-Nike, non-union workers in Vietnam, housing costs most obviously, will rise across the board as a section of the population has increased spending power. Other losers of course are manufacturing workers in the West.

Actually its a misconcpetion that corporations are 51 of the largest 100 economies. These statements and the above Portugal point are arrived at by comparing companies sales and states gdp's. This is wrong. Imagine a market trder who sells 1000 sterling pounds of fruit pw, is he icher than a lawyer who earns 900 pw. Yes according to people who side with point you made.

Corporations surely can't be as bad as you make out if you have to go deep inside them to see wha they are doing is so bad.

Anyway whats wrong with growth? Making money? You make it sound as if there's something intrinscially bad about them being happy with their progress. The richer the get the better, the more people the employ, the more tax they pay, the more products they offer etc. They are producing something, unlike government.

Sour grapes?

The idea that corps are running the world is nonsence. We have increased taxes, increased state powers for example in the UK it looks like we will all have to have id cards, there is more cctv everyday. Corps need states as they maintain property law, thats why you don't see many going to Africa as its not worth the risk but you see them locating to East Asia, Europe etc because the states can protect them.

We can all point to random examples but to be honest if the problem was bad as you say people against corps would not be in the minority as you recognise.

True they weren't in charge, if they were they would not have let welfaism to emerge. Thats why i said that era was not pure capitalist.

If thats what they want and its not violating the rights of another i see no problem. You have to remember that the entity which gives corps its position which you condemn is ultimately the state. If anything blame government




Such a contrct should be agreed before any money is given. If thats whta they wanted to do fine, but if they started blowing peoples money on chairty they'd sharp lose money and investment. The resuts would be unemployment, less products, less choice, no progress and no way out for third world countries

The above is a matter of taste, and I won't be able to prove to you that radio stations are all the same today, that Good Charlotte sucks and Avril Lavigne is no Cary Simon, and today's trickle of jazz recordings is a joke compared to the 70s of ECM, Impulse, CTI, and Black Note.

I was just trying to express why I'm not exactly turning cartwheels over the stale sushi in the supermarket.

No, actually it was like this until about 7 or 8 years ago. Then it started quickly changing, & was quite noticeable.

First of all, you did say "30 years ago," not 20, didn't you? I think people weren't in as much debt 30 years ago as they are today.

I reserve the right to consider the things I like and dislike about a society, without being accused of "imposing my morality on them."

Yeah, now South Korea is less capitalist than the US, isn't it?

How about Italy, France, Denmark, etc.? Wouldn't you agree that Western Europe has "less capitalism" than America has? I thought W. Europe was dominated by the welfare state.

I thought we were using the 20-30 yrs framework now its suddenly 7 or 8 yrs. These things you suggest, if they had happened, would have occured gradaually, after all the market is so massive and so diverse with so many actors involved, the time frame you suggest makes it sound like it happened quickly. Your point about it being 7 or 8 yrs ago sounds odd, can you also remember the day? Exactly what started changing? Clothes began to fall apart? That time sure past me and about everyone else as i have never heard this idea before.

Again its their choice. People can afford to get into debt more these days, people earn more, bonuses are more often, people get promotion more thanks to less sex and race discrimination for example. Such things have rbought new opportunites to buy more.



So you dislike society, but don't want it to change? If you do want it to change you would inevitably me enforcing your morality on others.

Well given acts of this administration e.g subsidies, tarrifs etc i wouldnt be too sure. Either way the fact remains the USA and S Korea are fairly capitalist and both have great choice for the bulk of their people when it comes to products. Thats just the reality.

But the point remains they are allow capitalism, true not to the extent that the US does, perhaps that partially explains why there is less choice in products, for example the US gets most of the movies, CDs etc way before we do. They get choice, while we're still buying products that are thought of as old in the US. Also in the UK our satellite box from the BBC offers nothing like 300 channels more like under 30. True many get more channels but not as many as a propotion in the US where having hundreds of channels is not out of the norm. Foodwise we get less choice thanks to CAP. Thanks to CAP we pay over 80% more than we should for bananas for example, two and half times as much for sugar.

Yes they would, sooner or later. Isn't it true that every means of profit maximization must be tried at some point?

I don't know; I think revenues vs. GDP is fairly accurate. Maybe EBITDA vs. GDP would be better, but the point is it's gross, not net, domestic product.

I wasn't that deep inside at all. I was just below the surface (but most people never get even there).

You make it sound as if I'm the only person besides Marx to see any danger in it. Jefferson warned about the dangers of excessive business power. If I'm not mistaken Adam Smith did too. Many people have seen the danger there: simply put, it's that money equals power and these are massively powerful institutions that aren't accountable to any population.

Why not? You can fool all of the people some of the time.

Wouldn't it be reasonable to expect them to be more or less in charge, in proportion to how pure the capitalism is? Thus, 19th-century America's corporate personnal would be closer to the folks in John Galt's valley than today? ...But is this what you actually find?

Cool. Cheers, as they say over there.

Who cares that much about whether you can get sushi in the store?

Yes, tastes change. What if I want pork chops & gravy, but the neighborhood is lousy with Japanese restaurants? This is just chasing fickle public taste, and I'm not going to praise or blame corporations for it.

With music, though, I think corporate leaders have made decisions far above "catering to the public." They decide to market almost exclusively to teens and pre-teens, because they're the easiest to manipulate ... they bribe radio stations in key markets for airtime ... they sign talentless performers who will never be in control of their artistic direction, etc.

No, re. the "7--8 years ago" thing I'm just talking about bagels & pizza, etc.

Yes I remember when it became difficult to get a good bagel. It wasn't "overnight," but there was a turning point.

I don't care; bananas & sugar are cheap.

There's no denying we have ever more choice in music, go to any record store and you'll see the massive range of genres and decades.

So you only critisicse corps who offer food, not clothes and so on now

What happened in the bagel industry?

Yes they are in the US - a more capitalist state than EU states. Thanks for proving my point. People who don't get enough fruit certainly care. If gov didn;t interfere corps prices wouldn't be distorted and more competitiors would be able to enter the field but they can't. For example we can;t buy bananas from many African farmers at the market price thanks to big government.

Long before the word "globalization" was even coined, cities had many different types of restaurants. Before there was a World Bank there were Chinatowns in America's cities and curry shops all over London. There were tiki bars and palm trees and Copa Cabanas, fine Italian restaurants and casual pizzarias, international food of all kinds, taco stands, barbecue joints, teriyaki bars, you name it. These restaurants were not big business; they were not corporate; their founding and success was not a function of the shareholder-profit model. They were generally owner-operated and always local. We do not owe our variety of restaurants to corporations.

If "globalization" in the modern sense has any legacy in the food of my country, it's The Olive Garden, Taco Bell, Red Lobster etc.---in other words, the legacy of "Generica," the aspects of America which are exactly the same no matter where you go. The corporate restaurants offer inferior, non-fresh meals cooked by non-chefs. They're lousy.

Not really true. There's a lot of good stuff out of print. The glory days of the record industry have passed ... But my point was about radio, because you were bringing up TV. Radio programming now is inferior to practically any stage in its history.

I think it's "what happened in retail"? At least 3 bagel shops that I can think of became Starbuck's. Some changed hands, to new owners (sound Capitalists, no doubt) who saw nothing wrong with frozen bagels and Kraft cream cheese.

How much is a frigging pound of bananas?

American fruit is lousy anyway.

Everyone I know who comes back from Europe talks about how fruit & vegetables taste "real" over there, & when they come back here they have to get re-accustomed to fruit tasting like chemicals and causing indigestion

Thats your personal judgement and you are free not to buy that food. But i assure you there is good food out there is you look for it, there are still family ownwed Indian restaurants for example. Now we have two options - family businesses or corps who offer cheaper, quicker food and to some nicer food.

Corporations also offer different foods in different parts of the world, for example in Mexico and parts of California you can get chilli with your food in McDonalds, lamb in India and beer in France.

If its so lousy why do so many people buy this food? Why arn't we seeing a massive boom in traditonal family type businesses if there is such a demand. If there was a demand do you think corporations would ignore it when there is money to be made?

If you want it, you can buy it, look on the internet there are whole companies dedicated to finding out of print songs and books for example. Why? Because there is a demand. Also your point about radio, how do you know its the worst stage in hisotry? Have you listened to them all? Lived them all? Of course not, your merely presuming. Which a fair few do i.e 'it was better in the good old days'.

Neither do most consumers, otherwise they'd be provding it. Its consumer democracy - what most want, get what they want. Those in the minority can get what they want just not as easily. Either way why should capitalists have to make a loss just because you have picky tastes? Should people pay taxes to keep the old products you so like going just because you liked them? I don;t think anyone has a duty to give up the fruits of their labour for someone else happiness, because in the process they lose their happiness.

Its 80% above what it should be. Read Legrains 'the truth about globalisation'.
You;ve ignored many of the points i made in relation to this.



Again another value judement. See my above comments. Do you think it would be better with protectionsim?

.

Actually i find that very hard to believe as CAP makes fruit very poor due to the amount of pesticides and chemicals farmers are enouraged to use.


You have missed out quite alot of my points as well.

This isn't the way it works. Globalization removes choice. The corporate tendency is to get rid of choice altogether. I just drove through the Midwest, and in Indiana all the rest areas have a Hardee's restaurant. There used to be unpredictable, unique places to stop off the highway, but today your only choice, for hundreds of miles, is Hardee's. And this is ABSOLUTELY characteristic of modern big business. It obliterates choice. When that self-replicating molecule of GAP/Barnes & Noble/Starbuck's hits the block, it replaces unique businesses. In New York in 2005, you can drive down 6th Avenue from Central Park to Union Square (I did last week) and see a total of 2 businesses that you can't find identical chains of in the shopping malls of Connecticut or Oregon (or, for all I know, Hong Kong).

and not in 1,000 years "nicer," than a pizzeria.

This is what the corporate world is doing: knocking down and stamping out local flavor, in order to cater to the tastes of the kind of idiot who would drink beer when in France.

You're really stuck in about 1905, you know that? Corporations stopped catering to public demand, & started shaping it instead, decades ago.

Your arguments are open to the exact same objection in reverse; this is so obvious I'm amazed I even have to point it out. You say things are better now than ever: how do you know?

If your statements were true, you would of course be forced to abandon the position that capitalism fosters individualism. There is no room for idiosyncrasy (or in your words, pickiness) in a consumer democracy

But there is no "consumer democracy" when shareholder interests drive business. What consumers want is airlines with tolerable seats, decent food, polite staff ... but an airline like that wouldn't get off the ground, because it wouldn't attract capital.

The "demand" for new Starbuck's stores comes from shareholders. They need to grow. This is not in response to consumer demand; it's in response to investor demand.

Look, you're using "fruit" as an example of the evils of regulation, and it's not something I even notice. What more can I say?