Jenny's Argument

I wish that I had copied it, but I didn't, and now it's lost somewhere in the black hole of Face Book. As it so happens, I will be visiting her tomorrow, so I will ask her to elaborate on the meaning of her statement. By the way, I won't be going on line tomorrow, see you Friday. The way I remember it, Jenny was responding to a guy who had asserted that corporations are evil incarnate. Her argument was that, although corporations might not be perfect, they are certainly better than politicians. Corporations get things done, while politicians just dither around, accomplishing little. Corporations generate income for people, while politicians take money away from people. Corporations produce useful goods and services, while politicians cause more problems than they solve.

Of course corporations have not wiped out poverty, but neither has government. Corporations do, however, hire people, and an employed person is generally less poor than an unemployed person. The government just gives handouts to the poor, the poor spend the money, and then they're still poor. It's like that old Chinese saying: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for one day. Teach a man how to fish and he will be a regular customer at your bait and tackle store for the rest of his life." Of course corporations don't hire people as an act of charity, they spend money to make money, and their employees also make money in the process. Their stockholders make money too, if they just hang on to the shares and collect the dividends. Of course they hope to make more money than that when they sell the shares for more than they paid for them. That's kind of a gamble, but it's a risk they take of their own free will, nobody forces them to do it.

I would never invest in a company whose motto is "lie, cheat, and steal", but I'm sure you were speaking allegorically with that one. Picking individual stocks is a job for the professionals anyway, which is why most of my money is in a mutual fund. This fund has been good to me for 24 years now, and I have no intention of changing it. Vanguard, the parent corporation, has been in business for a long time and, to my knowledge, they have never cheated anybody or otherwise ran afoul of the law.

I have heard of that Dodd-Frank law, but I don't know a lot about it. I took a quick look on Wiki, and it's way too long and complicated for me to get involved with tonight. As far as corporations making political campaign contributions, I think they passed a law regulating that, but the Supreme Court threw it out, so it's back to the drawing board on that one. Soon it will be a brand new year with a brand new congress, so I'm sure they'll have everything straightened out by spring. ( I  make small joke.)

Merry Christmas!

uncle ken makes an error

Well it sounds like I am a biblical figure: Uncle Ken 12:19:14. I’ll stand by the first statement. In the second statement, in the first sentence I seemingly deny the first statement, but in the second sentence I deny the first sentence (trying to goad you into an argument about whether there is such a thing as evil, one of those muddy philosophical discussions which are as useful as debating the number of angels dancing on a pin, but have a certain logic for the sake of logic charm). And then in the third sentence I reaffirm the first statement. But oops I don’t, I misspoke, I meant to use the word amoral, but instead I used immoral. The corrected last sentence should read: I am really just saying that it is amoral. My error.

But then I see that you persist in confusing big business with corporations. A corporation can consist of one person. A big business can be as big as Walmart and yet not be a corporation. I think it is now a corporation, but let me look at the wiki.

Ah it is more complicated than I thought. Walmart is a corporation, but it is also a family-owned business, which I assume means that the family owns a majority of the stock, which means they have total control of what happens. So how does that effect my now shaky theory of how corporations are more amoral than businesses because they lack the milk of human kindness?

What if the Walmart family finds Jesus, and the Jesus they find is one of those eye of the needle Jesuses, so they raise the wages of their workers, and quit doing all those crooked shenanigans, like paying bribes, that we all know those big corps do. This causes Al Walton, the black sheep of the family to quit in disgust and form up Al’s Hedge Fund Corp, whose motto is Lie, Cheat, and Steal, and he makes piles of money. When it comes time for you to invest your nest egg, where are you going to put it?

Well it’s all got kind of confusing to me because it is hard to draw a line between corporations and non-corporate businesses, like it’s hard to draw a line between businessmen and politicians. My argument that corps are worse than moms and pops because mom and pop might be good people but the ceo inherently could never be good, was weak to begin with. I was just responding to your daughter’s comment that it would be better to let the corps run America than the politicians which still seems not very well thought out to me.

In your next to the last paragraph you seem to be saying that corporations are the method that can pull the poor out of poverty, which makes one wonder why they haven’t. You have to have money to get in the game, and the poor, by definition don’t have money.

And in your last paragraph you ask me which laws I would like governing corps. Well I haven’t got all day. How about Dodd-Frank, and any law prohibiting a politician to raise an unlimited amount of money.

Potato - Potahto

"Let me rephrase it that corporations are completely amoral, and in general work in ways that are detrimental to human welfare." - Uncle Ken on 12-19-14

"I’m saying the corporate system is inherently, in its structure, evil. But I am really not saying that it is evil, because, as I said previously, I don’t believe in evil. I am really just saying that it is immoral." - Uncle Ken on 12-22-14

Not wanting to quibble about semantics, but you did indeed say that corporations are both amoral and immoral. Since they obviously can't be both, lets just say that it is your assertion that corporations are a bad thing.

If I understand you correctly, you said that the main reason corporations are bad is that all they care about is making money. First of all, I assert that a corporation can't care about anything because a corporation is a collective of individuals and doesn't have a mind of its own. Each individual in the corporation contributes to the corporation's perceived personality, but the corporation itself doesn't really have a personality. Of course there's the corporate image that is put forth to the public, but that also comes from certain individuals within the corporation, not the corporation itself. If the public doesn't buy the corporate image, it will create one of its own, which becomes the corporation's reputation. Like the contrived image, this reputation may or may not accurately reflect what's really going on.

I agree that the primary purpose for which corporations exist is to make money. So what's wrong with that? If the corporation didn't exist, all those people would have to find some other way of making a living. The reason they join the corporation is that they believe it will provide them with a better opportunity to make money than they can readily find on their own. If, in the process, they run afoul of the law, that's their own fault. Like societies, corporations do not corrupt people, people corrupt corporations. In the process of making money, corporations provide goods and services for which there is a market demand. If the corporations didn't do it, Mom and Pop would. The reason that corporations displaced Mom and Pop in the marketplace is that they found a way to provide those goods and services for a lower price. If you want to drive the corporations off the face of the Earth, you need to come up with some kind of structure that provides those same goods and services for an even lower price. Another way to get rid of corporations would be to legislate them out of existence, but then you would still have to replace them with something else or the economy would collapse.

You have previously expressed your concern for all the poor people in the world. Well, what better way to alleviate poverty than to make money? If you want to confiscate and redistribute people's money, they first have to make money. If you deprive them of their ability to do this, there will be no money to confiscate and redistribute. Personally, I would rather see the poor people form their own corporations and make their own money but, either way, somebody has to make money. Well, technically, it is the government that actually manufactures the money. I suppose they could just dole it out equally to everybody, but then the money would soon lose its value. In order for money to have value, it has to be traded back and forth between people. I'm not sure why, but that's how it works.

So if corporations are so bad, what would you replace them with? Or would you rather try to rehabilitate them through legislation? There are already a lot of laws on the books that regulate corporations. Which ones would you change?

back to the crucible

I don’t think I said corporations are immoral, I didn’t mean to, especially since I don’t think there is such a thing as evil, so how could they be? I did rather imply that society would be better off without them, and I will continue to stand by that, although I have to admit that my knowledge of the origination of corporations is limited to something I learned in high school, and I haven’t gone back to research it since then because, well because it’s so goddamn deadly dull. I suppose if I were, as I often imagine I am, on my high horse leading humanity to a brighter future, I would be obliged to go to the wiki, but since in reality I am just half of two batshit old farts flapping their gums, I am not going to bother.

Like I said before I don’t think the republicans give a fig for states rights. They have their agenda, actually the only agenda they really have is lowering taxes on the rich, and the rest of it, like their morality crap and bogus patriotism, is just window dressing to appeal to the saps to get their votes so they can get their people in and give the plutocrats lower taxes. But anyway if states rights aligns with what they want they are all for them, if not they just don’t mention them.

I don’t see pot becoming a big issue, especially since apparently it is a big moneymaker. Cuba too, I don’t see becoming a big issue. The only people against it are a few hotheads in Florida like Rubio who are giving the issue lip service so as not to lose touch with their base, but most people just see it as a stupid cold war relic that is standing in the way of cigars and baseball players and more money, and once the embargo is gone we will wonder why was it ever there.

You are totally wrong about that underbrush thing. Weren’t you in the debate club? There are rules to this thing, which like wrestling, are only relevant when applied in academia and mean nothing in the real world. Let’s take the worst example, the presidential debates. Now, don’t laugh, this is supposedly two high minded folks laying out their plans for the country so that the high minded populace can choose who best to lead them.

Actually it is what you call an adversarial situation. It is like when the Bears play the Packers, only in this case with very timid referees. In the end one of the teams will win, but it won’t prove anything beyond just a win or a loss for either team.

Adversarial situations where I am just in it to win the argument or not, are something I don’t get into unless I am sort of loaded. I don’t want to get into an argument unless I feel there is a possibility that the guy on the other side might know more than me and I might come out learning something. Not that it happens often but I think that possibility has to always be there, or else it’s just a painful waste of time.

And no, logic isn’t just some trick to win an argument. It just isn’t, think about it.

Oh another piece of underbrush we should toss out of the gentlemanly discussion is the slippery slope. It’s just a bogus argument. People hear it so often that they think it might make sense, but if they thought about it, brought it into, yes, the crucible, they would discover it is just a bunch of bullshit.

Amoral, Not Immoral

I think you were right he first time when you said that corporations are amoral, but now you say they are immoral, which is not exactly the same thing. Corporations are not in the morality business, they are in the money making business. Churches and governments are in the morality business, and they're not expected to make a profit. All three are collectives, a group of people with a common interest who form an organization to further that interest.

I just thought of another type of collective that we haven't discussed before, the cooperative. Cooperatives are like corporations only different. Both have a board of directors, and both usually hire some kind executive to run the nuts and bolts of the operation, the board being mostly concerned with broad policy issues. Both may hire employees, although some of the smaller cooperatives make do with volunteer labor. Both may be either profit or non profit organizations, the difference being how the profits, if any, are distributed. Instead of stockholders, cooperatives have members. The difference is that each member has one vote, whereas stockholders get a vote for each share of stock they own. Credit unions are cooperatives, as are many providers of electricity and natural gas in rural areas. Artists, musicians, and farmers sometimes form cooperatives to market their products. I think that some investment companies could be classified as cooperatives, although they operate under different regulations than the other cooperatives I have mentioned. Well, maybe not so different from the credit unions, I'm not sure about that. Are cooperatives any more ethical than corporations? I don't know, but they certainly are more democratic.

I thought it interesting that this pot issue might put Republicans on the opposite side of states rights. I don't know if I like it or not, but it might be fun to watch. I'm not so sure about all that "clearing the underbrush" stuff you talked about. When people are trying to prevail in an adversarial situation, it's natural for them call up any resources that they can find to support their position. They might come off sounding high and mighty in the process, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. You could fall into the same trap using pure logic to win an argument. The challenge lies in using the guy's own sources against him. If he uses logic, you use logic. If he quotes the Bible or the constitution, you do the same thing. You still might not win the guy over, but you can have a lot of fun trying.

clearing out the undergrowth

I’m not saying there are a few bad apples in the corporate system. I’m saying the corporate system is inherently, in its structure, evil. But I am really not saying that it is evil, because, as I said previously, I don’t believe in evil. I am really just saying that it is immoral.

I am not talking about business in general, only about the corporate system, and by the corporate system I am not necessarily talking about big business, because many big businesses are not corporations, and many corporations are small.

What I am saying is because the ceo is driven by the stock prices, and this is not like people investing in some company because they admire their business practices, it is only for how fast the stock rises and therefore their income, that is important to them. The corporation has no interest in the fate of the world or the state of the union, or whether they provide a good product, or they treat their people well, their only motivation is stock prices.

If they had a human owner then that human might feel bad about despoiling the environment or whatever, and he might, in the mellowness, of age, decide to fund some nice project like the Carnegie libraries or whatever. Of course he might be a sumbitch and never feel guilty and never endow anything, but at least there is that chance.

I wonder about corporations. It seems like I remember hearing in high school how great their invention was, like how great it was that the nation states arose, and I am not so sure that I am a fan of either development.

So that’s the gist of my argument against corporations. Not all that strong because many other systems are immoral, but it just seemed odd that people look up to corporations for leadership. It’s like these guys who stand up for capitalism as if it were a moral force, like Christianity or communism, when in fact it is simply the law of the jungle.

That thing about how the GOP might be trying to squash legal marijuana, and therefore run afoul of states rights, and business I might add, illustrates something that happens in politics all the time. For instance how when they were fighting civil rights in the south, rather than admit that they were oppressing black people they claimed that they were for a higher cause, namely states rights, and that made them seem more noble, they were merely protecting the constitution. Or like some of the gun nuts who claim they are defending the second amendment, when in fact they don’t give a shit about the second amendment. If somebody proved the second amendment really applied only to militias or that it was written when all the founders were drunk, it wouldn’t change a thing for these guys, because all they really want is to provide a loving home for Old Betsy and all her lovely sisters. And I suppose the gun control nuts could find something in the constitution that went against guns and claim that they too are defending the constitution.

Guns galore may be a good idea or it may not be, but to pretend that you are only walking in the founders’ footsteps is a bunch of baloney. I just picked the gun issue at random, it could be any issue, and my guys do it all the time too, we should just stop it.

Another issue I don’t like is, so is your mother, like when some candidate gets his teat in the wringer he replies that his opponent has done the same thing or something similar. The question then is well if it was wrong for your opponent to do it, isn’t it wrong for you to do it too?

And that’s kind of version, of look over there, to distract from an issue you don’t want to talk about. When somebody points to a peculiarity in your income taxes, the common rejoinder is look at my opponent’s income taxes. The wise response is very well, we will when we are done talking about yours.

There are a lot of arguments that just in their logical structure are bogus, we should toss them out like so much undergrowth clogging the pure prairie of Beaglesonia so that we may pursue our lofty discussions without tripping over weeds.

"All Generalizations Are Invalid" - Mrs. Ohara

You are painting corporations with a pretty wide brush here. That's like saying that the Catholic Church is evil because a few priests like to fool around with the alter boys, or saying that all artists are gay. Oh wait, according to you, there is nothing wrong with that. All kidding aside, it's the bad apples that get most of the publicity.

Coming from a small business background as I do, I would agree with you, except that I have worked for a few corporations myself. While they lack the homespun charm of the Mom and Pop stores, they generally pay better. Of course they don't pay any more than they have to, just like most people don't pay any more than they have to for the goods and services that they purchase. The main reason that corporations are more competitive with both prices and wages is something called "the economy of scale". Not always, but usually, the bigger you are, the better prices you can negotiate with your suppliers. That's also why labor unions were formed in the first place. Too bad about those unions. They rose to the occasion, had their moment in the sun, and then faded away like the morning dew. Hopefully they will be replaced someday by something that is more effective, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Maybe corporations will also evolve into something better but, until they do, we're stuck with them. Mom and Pop still have their niche to fill, but we can't rely on them to produce on the scale that the modern economy demands.

I found out who write the article that I read about that Virginia rape story. He wrote a follow up article about it today, and I'm sure it's the same guy. He is Gene Lyons, a syndicated columnist who writes for the Arkansas Times. He comes down left of center on most issues, but he seems to value truth over ideology. He has previously lamented the sorry state of journalism today.

Another article of interest in today's paper : "Travel industry carefully eyeing Cuba tourism." Apparently Cuba was a popular tourist destination before Castro, and some people hope to make it into one again. They are cautiously optimistic for now, because it's still a long way from being a done deal. I said "some people", but I really meant "some corporations", like airlines and hotel chains. So if you ever get to take a vacation in Cuba, you will have corporations as well as the government to thank for it.

Another article of interest was the one about the states legalizing pot and what, if anything, the new GOP congress is likely to do about it. One interesting comment from Philip Wallach of the Brookings Institution, a Washington based think tank: "They're sort of asking for a head-on collision with states' rights." I seem to remember one of the learned scholars at the Beaglesonian Institute saying the same thing awhile back. Is it possible that this guy stole the idea from us? Should we sue him or something?