Redstate

"Advocating that corporations or individual business owners place patriotism above greed is not anti-free market."

Nothing wrong with advocating, but are you proposing more than mere advocacy? Moreover, the pursuit of one's self interest can ultimately provide for benefits for the public good. Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Andrew Carnegie, and your average small business owner pursue PROFITS, and those profits provide money for the sick and hungry, educational endowments, churches, etc. Given the data on charitable giving, there is no reason to conclude that the US is somehow less generous or more greedy now than it has been in the past. Beating up on "greed" is a strawman.

"In a free market businesses are free to choose, I believe some things are more important that excessive profits."

Are "excessive profits" even possible? What is wrong with profits? See above. What makes profit excessive? This is where you start to sound kind of Marxist like. I would point out that almost every business goes through years were little money is made and there is always the possibility of losing money. Excessive profits in the auto industry in the 90s helped the Big Three weather to storm of recent years. Oil companies made little money in the 80s and 90s, and are making up for it now. Once you decide that government can be judge and jury for "excessive profits" you are asking for socialism.

"I would like to encourage American businesses to chose responsibly. Greed and avarice lead to dishonesty (and some creative bookkeeping)."

Guns can lead to murder. Knowledge can lead to the misuse of that knowledge. Love can lead to hurt. Expectations can lead to disappointment. What do you mean by "encourage." The Soviet Union used to use euphamisms like that all the time.

"Exorbitant salaries lead to not only business downturns but also attempts to manipulate financial systems and this costs everyone."

I assume you are not chastising professional sports here. Does Major League Baseball cause business downturns by paying a utility infielder more than $1M per year? Does Tom Cruise making $20M a picture hurt the US economy? If your criticism is aimed at CEOs, you should note that most CEO compensation is performance based. Besides, isn't it the job of the shareholders and the board of directors to determine what is proper and what is exorbitant?

Conservatism is a humble philosophy that says we don't have big shots makec oollective decisions for society up high. Rather, we trust the free men and women actually involved in the enterprise to conduct themselves as they determine best, so long as they comply with relatively basic ground rules.

Conservatives acknowledge that life is not fair. We do not hope for Utopia on earth. If we wait for fair trade, we are making a decision not to trade at all.

Local trade between me and my grocery store is not free from government intrusion. Agribusiness is subsidized in the this country, to my trading with the local grovery store is hardly fair.

Should I stop buying groceries?

...after all, the modern business' goal is to provide a return on investment to those that have invested in it. It's not so much "greed" as it is "doing what the millions who hold stock in the firm want them to do". Distorting the bottom lines of corporate America is not "free market," but rather a top-down command and control system that is more in line with Marxist class warfare than anything remotely related to capitalism.

You mention that greed leads to various issues, but seem to only place the blame for greed on corporate America, not the entity that now consumes roughly 24% of our GDP, the Leviathan known as the federal government.

Your definition of "fair trade" as provided by the ITCD is rather lacking... granted, since they seem to be in the business of training NGOs, this isn't a huge surprise. There's also an inherent social justice factor in fair trade that goes beyond just export manipulation; if it weren't, you'd be seeing fair traders seeking to dismantle the US' farm bill rather than being its most vociferous (and imbecilic) supporters, continually fleecing our country with very short-sighted economic decisions.

What we need is the ability to allow everyone to be able to form their own economic outcomes, rather than allowing the government to muddy the waters, ultimately slowing economic mobility. I don't say what I do because I'm rich, far from it (I don't even make $9 an hour!)... I say what I do because I, like everyone else, hope to someday, and realize that the government is one of the greatest impedances to that.

"No matter how much lipstick you put on the taxation pig, it's still a pig... and it's currently snout-down in your wallet." - Michael Fisk

You were doing so well at defining your terms. And then you stopped. Let me help you with the ones you neglected to define:

• Patriotism
  Activities which seem to TxPoet to be public-spirited or otherwise desirable. Not to be confused with activities that other people think are public-spirited or otherwise desireable. See also "From each according to his ability."
• Greed
  The desire to acquire material goods beyond the quantity deemed necessary by TxPoet. Not to be confused with the amount deemed acceptable by others, in particular that other which is doing the acquiring. See also, "To each according to his need."
• Excessive profits
  That level of profit which exceeds the amount deemed acceptable by TxPoet using caprice. Not to be confused with the rate of return on assets necessary to be competitive when acquiring investment capital.
• Exorbitant salaries
  Salaries paid to those rare individuals who possess — often unfairly, due to genetic endowment — some talent or ability which is in high demand. See also "It's not fair!" and "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful and make $22 million a year."

None of this is meant to suggest that we do not value your uncommon ability to know how much profit is acceptable, how much money other people should make, and how other people should behave. It is regrettable that you were not born King, because in the absence of an ability to force people to behave as you want, your arbitrary judgments will most likely fall on deaf ears.

Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.

They always fail and they always will. Some problems with command economies are:

1. The people who decide what gets produced where usually get things wrong.

2. The command economies distort supply demand processes and tend to cause either unexpected shortages or unexpected waste.

3. People don't like being told what they can or can't buy, who they can or can't buy it from or what they have to pay for it. Not being told these things is associated with a little thing known as freedom. You might try looking up the definition of that one.

4. People have different ideas of what resources should be allocated to which uses. Command economies don't allow a value to be assigned to the different uses, but rather dictate these things.

In short, your ideas need a little more bran in their diet.

Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.