Dave writes:
a “choice” between:
> Scumbags R’ Us
> Criminals Incorporated
> The Devil Himself Ltd.
> Worldwide Sociopathic Enterprises, LLC.
> Evil Scum Industries
> Ted Bundy’s Spawn CorporationAre corporations the problem or the people running them? I ask because I have 2 corporations, and I believe they have done zero harm. Where am I wrong?
Couldn’t the argument also be made that your above list applies to everything in life from finding a mate to politicians?
I doubt there is any police manual that says to shoot unarmed kids, yet human officers keep doing it. I doubt there is any corporation policy that says to screw people, yet humans use corporations to screw people. I doubt any government constitution says to strip citizens of freedoms yet human leaders have used the power of government for centuries worldwide
Isn’t the real problem humans?
Unfortunately, this is the typical conservative argument whenever anyone brings up the significant downside of capitalism. If they acknowledge it at all, they generally say that the problem is human nature. The moral to the story is that nothing can be done.
I am not saying that all corporations are evil. Personally I think there are many good businesses in the US and elsewhere. But you end up with the diabolical list above when you refuse to regulate an industry. Look at the Internet. Totally unregulated. A very large % of for-pay Internet sites are apparently run by criminals. I have never seen so many criminal businesses as I have seen on the Internet. Obviously there is nothing inherent about the Net that causes criminals to flock to it to run their ugly enterprises. So many Net businesses are evil because the Net is totally unregulated. The % of raw, naked fraudulent businesses on the Net would blow you away.
For example, let us look at dating sites. Really there are no good dating sites. There are scummy sites, less scummy sites, more scummy sites and extremely scummy sites. The vast majority of the people running dating sites are criminals and most of them belong in jail or prison in my opinion. You ever wonder why every dating site is headquartered in Panama or Cyprus? Because that way they will not be susceptible to our laws.
The proliferation of evil businesses under the rubric of Internet dating sites gives the lie to the Libertarian propaganda that good businesses will drive out the bad ones. Libertarians acknowledge that due to the sociopathic nature of capitalism, quite a businesses will spring up that will be very bad for consumers. However, Libertarians argue that if you are a consumer and some business is screwing you via their product, you can simply vote with your wallet and take your business to a more consumer-friendly business. If enough consumers are angry at consumer-hostile businesses in some industry, consumer-friendly businesses will spring up to lasso all of that demand. Consumers will flock to the consumer-friendly businesses and abandon the consumer-hostile ones.
Problem is it doesn’t happen. Instead you get whole industries where all of the businesses, or maybe 95% of them, are fraudulent ripoffs run by the scum of the Earth. Where are you supposed to go? In many industries, it seems that the worst, most consumer-hostile businesses drive out the better, more consumer-friendly ones, presumably because the more you rip off and screw the consumer, the more money you make. And this doesn’t work in industries where every business is run by a crook.
Unregulated capitalism is a world of shit. Properly regulated capitalism allows us to harness the significant benefits of the market while limiting the inevitable sociopathic downside in any capitalist economy. With unregulated capitalism, you get the panoply of the bad side effects of capitalism and few if any of the good effects. It’s great for the crooked capitalists, but bad for workers, consumers, the environment and society.