This seemed like the thread to post the following piece:
This Is Why They Hate You And Want You To Die: Explaining to Bank of America why awarding $11 million to ousted executives was not a good idea.
Highlights:
So let me give you a hint that will save you countless hours and millions of dollars spent on consultants and the public relations morons you keep on staff: This is why they hate you. This very type of thing, while just a single example, epitomizes the piggish mentality that has set you apart from everyone else. This is why they're marching against you and calling for boycotts and writing their politicians. And this is why your whole model and way of life is on its way to being dead. Forever.
You want to roll your eyes and make snide remarks about "dumb college kids" and "socialists"? Go ahead but you're be missing the point. Because it is the small business owner who's really been wronged here, not the fringe elements you mockingly dismiss. The business owner whose losses are not socialized like yours, the business owner without the government in his pocket, the business owner who is forced to play by the rules that you have paid to have written. He's not a hippie, he's not a Marxist...but he's waking up, dummy.
Nahhh. I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that we'll have plenty of white collar criminal parasites sucking on the lifeblood of the world for centuries to come.
But yes, seeing headlines about massive bonuses being paid out to high-placed executives in a time when many people can't find a job that pays well enough to live off of - or any job at all - does not set a great example for the peons. You'd think they'd at least try to be more subtle about it, hiding the dollars in red tape benefits and whatnot, but the truth is, they have enough of the power on the political stage and in popular culture that they can afford to not give a damn what the little people think of them.
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.I keep saying it feels like we are drifting towards the future of The Time Machine
Well the only way that way of life is going to end is that people vote in a political party that does away with it (which is unlikely for decades to come, since the best thing people came up with in USA was the tea party which in fact reinforces CEO salaries despite their failures) or to have a revolution (violent or peaceful). So, it's likely to stay for a long time.
Anti-corporate sentiment stems from the large amount of inefficiency and allocation of resources to people who would otherwise be utter failures. If life were about gaining the allocation of society's resources based on achievements, the people at the top would be nobel-winners and other similarly deserving scientists and engineers, with doctors trailing behind and then skill labour and such, with management floating somewhere around there. As it stands, we have CE Os who make more money than the average American does in the entire year, before he eats lunch on the first day of the fiscal year... and what does he do? We like to say he "heads/steers" a company but in reality, the actual individual contribution pales in comparison to the entire corporate bureaucracy and gruntlings at the bottom.
I don't necessarily hate corporations (the vast, vast majority of them are simply successful small businesses whose owners chose the massive undertaking of expanding, with the fiscal responsibility to match the increase in power). I do, however, want them to be liable. The problem with corporatism is that it understates, or flat out refuses to acknowledge the need to hold corporations responsible for their actions to the same standards of individuals.
Likewise, I'm a fan of Individualism, but Rule of Law must be maintained to prevent the powerful or opportunistic from violating the freedom of others.
And sure, while these corporations may be tools used to do something, there's still people calling the shots, and they're doing so as a representative of their corporation. Sure, a corporation in and of itself may not be inherently good or evil, but public perception can change real quick when you start doing things a lot of people don't like in the name of whatever company you work for or represent. Add religious subtext to that if you'd like.
I'm not sure what the term is that you're groping for, but it's something along the lines of stockholders, major ones at that (someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm nearly certain that I am); people that own a business and rake in all the benefits from being part of the company, especially the head of it, without doing much work. Yes, that's the textbook definition of a parasite, but most bosses aren't like that.
To the later posts, yeah, that’s usually why people, including myself, have something against corporations. It’s not wrong, but it certainly makes people scratch their heads. Very much in the same manner as if someone gave nearly all available food and basic nutrition to a dying animal while barely giving a newborn enough to survive. Call it allocation of resources if you want, but it’s more than enough to make someone start to wonder.
thats true in small businesses. In larger ones, its very likely the guys up top have never worked a day in the shoes of a line employee.
^ Well I think it's more that they luck their way into the position rather than do something so meritorious (is that even spelled right?) as to warrant a 10 million dollar salary plus stocks and other perks.
Often it's simply a matter of knowing the right person. Do you know how many executives sit on each other's boards of directors? (The worst part is finding out how much overlap there is between these guys and the accountants/consultants who work for the SEC. You should not be retiring from a job at a government agency overseeing corporate fraud to be rewarded by a plushy exec position with the guys you were presumably investigating, the implications there just aren't pretty.)
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.Big buisness is good in certain things, but always needs regulation. For a summary of my reviews, see Teddy Roosevelt . I don't like huge chains becaue they kill little shops and put more money in few people's hands. Especially Wal-Mart. Banks too. They should have a limit on what the CEO can earn, then with all those savings, pay the ACTUAL WORKERS what they deserve. Not to mention not robbing customers.
I'm baaaaaaack
That's part of the reason sociopaths can thrive in the corporate environment.