Miguel de Maria
1/7/2012 12:37:00 AM
On Jan 6, 4:26 pm, Matt Faunce <mattfau...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, January 6, 2012 4:41:21 PM UTC-5, Slogoin wrote:
> > On Jan 6, 2:28 pm, Matt Faunce <mattf...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Anyway, the power in this world resides not
> > > with people but with a corporate/capitalist
> > > mechanism. Talk about lack of conscious!
>
> > Having worked for many major corporations and for many different
> > government agencies I see them groups of individual people and not
> > abstract things like the "corporate/capitalist mechanism".
>
> > The power structure is in the hands of the most aggressive assholes
> > pretty much everywhere on this globe and it's been that way for our
> > entire written history.
>
> Sure, just like "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Well the corporate/capitalist mechanism is worse than guns. There are some CEOs who would like to put the brakes on the harm their corporation is doing to people.. But they can't because of the pressure from the shareholders who don't see anything but their own bottom line. The corporate/capitalist mechanism makes what used to be a mild negative consequence of "trying to better one's position in life" into a devastating consequence for way too many people. Many of these shareholders just want a nest egg maybe to help ensure their children don't slip through the cracks of society. Who can blame them? Most of them aren't assholes! Like Chuck Prince, CEO of Citi said after Bear Stearns and others fell, "as long as the music is playing you've got to dance." The music is the mechanism I'm talking about. ... Unlike deciding not to pull the trigger to kill someone, it's almost impossible to live a life where you avoid supporting some corporations who cause human harm, even death. The best we can do now is to choose lesser evils, but even that isn't easy since the media fails to inform us. They are part of the mechanism.
>
> The modern corporate/capitalist mechanism wasn't the brain child of asshole individuals. It's a societal mechanism out of control.
>
> Matt
The difference between a toaster and a gun is that one is by nature,
extremely dangerous and lethal. We could say the difference between a
corporation and one of Larry's "group of people" is that it tends to
antisocial behavior. It is not the same as any old mob; it's greedy
and is constrained against doing too much good by laws that
corporations essentially wrote. When a corporation serves the common
good, it is a laudable tool, yet in today's world, at least half its
purpose is just fleecing the general population, degrading the
environment, and externalizing its costs to innocent bystanders.. As
to who decides the common good, that is the job of democratic
government, and our government has been captured by the corporate/
elite already. Corporate power and the veil it provides the rich is a
factor that could be addressed to the good. That has nothing to do
with the impersonal "flat world" changes to which Larry ascribes all
importance.