Redstate

He passed on a while back and is greatly missed by those of us who followed his work.

And although I first said it should be required reading, I think that kind of goes against his principals. Perhaps strongly recommended would be a better way of putting it.

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.

Are you sure he hasn't been frozen somewhere in a secret government lab on a secret base out in Nevada, where top government research scientists are trying to re-animate him???

Okay, so we get a "Freidmanist(?)" economics professor to write them. As far as required reading....how about we make it....mandatory testing...if you expect to pass the test it would be in your 'economic best interest' to read the book!
(insert big grin here)

That you can watch here:
http://www.ideachannel.tv/

I highly recommend them.

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.

What a wealth of information!

How do we put a complete set of these in every school and every public library in America? How do we get this in front of every American's eyes. Can we educate Oprah with these and maybe she can create a demand for it? She's gotten people to buy into stranger stuff!

We can't keep this light under a basket, we have to put it high up so it can illuminate everyones path!

The "invisible hand" doesn't depend on businesses limited their profit and paying fair wages, it is the mechanism that forces them to do so.

If they don't limit their profit, someone else will bring in the same product and sell it at a cheaper price. This will force them to either lower their price to match or their profit will be limited by a loss of sales to their competitor. This is the invisible hand at work.

Likewise, the business owner must pay a fair wage to his workers or those workers will go to someone who pays higher or will just work for themselves.

As for the plethora of monopolies, can you give some examples other than utilities or government run institutions?

And can you explain how Smith's invisible hand doesn't work for a non-monopoly corporation no matter what it's size?

Frankly, I won't let you pollute Adam Smith's legacy by associating him with socialist ideals.

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.

I am not really going to jump into your debate. To me I see good things from Smith and from the Austrian school.

But I will take on the whole monopoly thing. In my view having an Oligarchy. That is, just a few big providers of any good or service is just about as bad as a monopoly. IMO one of the big failures in Government in recent decades has been with anti-trust. The government has allowed Oil companies, radio stations, financial institutions, and nearly every other industry to stratify as the large gobbled up the small.

Oligarchy's do compete with each other but it is sometimes a "gentleman's agreement" type of competition. Where the public does not really have as many choices as we would like.

This is not good for consumers and is not good for the taxpayer. It creates the "too big to fail" syndrome.

For example, nearly every financial pundit hated what the Fed did about the Bear Stearns fiasco, but they admitted that it probably had to be done because Bear was too big and would have precipitated a run on mortgage lenders.

We should never have been in that situation to begin with, IMO no lender, bank, news provider, oil company, or any other essential service should own more than 8-9 % of the national market. Than way we can allow the business cycle to function normally.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

Your comments about the "gentlemen's agreements" in competition between large corporations is laughable. There is NO large company that wouldn't gladly cut their prices by 5% to take 2% additional market share from a competitor IF they could do it at a profit.

The rest of your argument falls apart without such "gentlemen's agreements" (which by the way are illegal).

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.

I think you are very naive

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

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.

Coke/Pepsi, they offer specials only on alternate months to stores.

Clear Channel and Cumulus changing station formats so that they do not directly compete in the same markets.

There are many such things going on all the time but they are hard to prove. My contention is that they would be impossible if there were more players in the market and not just a few giants setting policy.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

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.

both problematical for the safety of the nation.

I never understood this modern interpretation of liberal economics that says that Big is good, and there is no inherent problem with concentrations of market power.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

The big guy wants the little guy's business and if the little guy has the audacity to say no, then the big guy just clobbers him and steals his business?

No offense, but you would do well to refrain from commenting further on this topic. You have anthropomorphized collective nouns into sentient individuals named Big Guy and Little Guy, and endowed them with individual personality features like 'audacity'. It is from such thinking that many very stupid evils arise. I ask you to stop now, before one of the evils comes here.

Both collective nouns are, for our purposes here, collections of shareholders. What you call The Big Guy cannot realistically complete this deal without the approval of the shareholders. What you call The Little Guy consists of other shareholders who most certainly will have to agree to the deal because it is the act of them selling their stock that constitutes execution of the deal.

It is unlikely that Microsoft shareholders will, individually or collectively, descend on Yahoo shareholders to steal their shares, and hence their business. The prospect is so ludicrous as to make people laugh out loud at you for saying such a thing. Hence my advice to not do that anymore. Please leave further discussion of this topic to people who are either not funny, or are being funny on purpose.

Thank you and good night.

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

Although my analogy using questionable choices of nouns may have simply confused the issue rather than further clarifying it as was my intent, you have not responded to the issue of corporate ethics (if there be such a thing) that I raised.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/microsoft_yahoo

This presents the story as the majority shareholders of Yahoo acting collectively (hence my use of the collective noun) to demand a higher price per share from Microsoft than the Microsoft majority shareholders (again a collective entity) were willing to pay. The article further makes mention of a hostile takeover bid, though not currently planned, possibly an option for the future. This is the central ethics question that I raised. Hostile takeovers are not so named for no reason. They are so named, from what I understand, because they represent one corporation acting against the interest of another corporation's leadership to force said leadership from office and so acquire the, usually smaller, corporation. If I have misunderstood the use of the term "hostile takeover," please feel free to correct me, as my argument does hinge on my current understanding of the term.

Also, given the democractic nature of shareholding that you are championing, may I assume then that a majority of Microsoft shareholders are in favor of this, or simply a small oligarchy of "majority" shareholders? The same question could be applied to Yahoo's shareholders. If simply a "majority shareholder" oligarchy, then may I point out that the process of corporate decision making via shareholder vote is not so democratic as you claim.

happening between Microsoft and Yahoo.

This is roughly what was going on, greatly simplified:
1. Microsoft made an offer to buy Yahoo at a price that was above the current market price.
2. The board of directors of Yahoo was not ready to give up control of the company and made a counter offer that was well above what Microsoft thought the company was worth. This was the BOD, NOT the owners of the company who are the common stock holders (though the directors may own a significant chunk of shares).
3. Microsoft raised their bid, set a deadline and suggested that they might go "hostile" (explained below).
4. The deadline passed and now Microsoft has decided not to go hostile and had dropped their offer.

Hostile takeover doesn't mean that one company is stealing another. It means that one group has decided to ignore the NO given by the BOD of the target company. Instead they take their offer directly to the shareholder and either buy enough shares to replace the board with one that is more agreeable or get enough commitments from shareholders that they WISH to sell their shares that they can force the deal though. The hostility is to the current Board of Directors, not to the owners of the company. Hostile deals are sometimes worth pursuing, but often they are just too much trouble and too expensive. They just add extra complexity to deals that are not easy even under ideal circumstances.

Now the BOD has a fiduciary responsibility to the common shareholders to act in a way that is in their best interest. In other words, if Microsoft really WAS offering more for the company than it was likely to be worth on it's own, they had a responsibility to work with Microsoft to get a good deal for the shareholders. If they can justify the $37 they were demanding then all is well. If not and the stock price tanks on Monday, they have opened themselves up to large lawsuits. What good is it to turn down a $33 offer if the stock never trades above $10 again?

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.

I appreciate you explaining the takeover process more thoroughly.

I still take issue with a few aspects of it, however. First:

"The board of directors of Yahoo was not ready to give up control of the company and made a counter offer that was well above what Microsoft thought the company was worth. This was the BOD, NOT the owners of the company who are the common stock holders (though the directors may own a significant chunk of shares)."

I could not, for the life of me, locate a published record of whom the majority shareholders of Yahoo are. This may be public record and may be very easy to find for someone more familiar with this type of information. I'm sorry that I cannot pursue this line further, as I have no objective evidence to point to.

"Hostile takeover doesn't mean that one company is stealing another. It means that one group has decided to ignore the NO given by the BOD of the target company."

So, in effect, you are saying that the crime committed here is not theft, but rape? Yahoo's leadership has said "no;" futher action by Microsoft would be considered hostile and not particularly moral. Although I am, indeed, committing the crime of personification, corporations are, by my understanding of the law, individiuals created by legal fiction.

"Instead they take their offer directly to the shareholder and either buy enough shares to replace the board with one that is more agreeable or get enough commitments from shareholders that they WISH to sell their shares that they can force the deal though."

So, they are using FDR's tactics? When FDR got a Supreme Court that he didn't like, he threatened to pack the court with his own people. I consider that to be the utterly unethical tactic of a dictator. In this case, MS appears all-too-willing to engage in a similar tactic.

I am truly not trying to argue the specifics of this case with you here, but rather I am trying to point out that corporate leaders act in a way that would be utterly unacceptable to individuals on the street. The leviathan that is the corporation seems to have its own ethical standards that are well below the established threshholds for individuals. Frequently, corporations ignore even their own standards, yet they are rarely punished for it. For every MCI-Worldcom, Enron, Arthur Andersen, there are dozens more that have not yet been caught. I have no personal animus against Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. per se. My bias is against corporations in general.

the rape that you call it. Consider that a group may was a particular law changed. They contact their legislators and ask them to make the change. The legislators refuse (for whatever reason). The people with the cause have several options to change the law in a manner that is "hostile" to the current holders of the legislative office.

1. They can put up their own candidates and get the current representatives replaced with people more to their liking.
2. They can go directly to the voters with a ballot initiative.
3. They can drop the matter as too much trouble to pursue.

Option 1 is the case where there is a proxy fight to replace a board of directors. You get enough votes to replace the guys.

Option 2 is the case where they tender an offer directly to the shareholders (who OWN the company).

Option 3 is the choice Microsoft made when they dropped their offer.

Now can you make a case where the BOD of Yahoo is not behaving in a moral fashion by saying NO to Microsoft? I can....

Let's say that a reasonable review of the business suggests that Yahoo can reasonably generate enough income over the next 10 years to justify that the share price is worth $15 per share. The BOD knows that this is the reasonable expected return from the company and they also know that if they say YES to Microsoft's offer of $33, they are out of a job. By turning down the $33 offer, they have just stolen $17 from the owners of the company in order to keep a lucrative job. THAT doesn't seem like a moral action to me.

Of course the BOD may legitimately believe Yahoo is worth $37. In that case they had a moral obligation to say NO to Microsoft's offer.

As for your suggestion that because there are SOME bad actors (who have been punished severely) that ALL corporations are equally bad, that's just a logical fallacy. You can't argue from the specific to the general.

I'm at least happy to note you admit your bias against corporations. It helps when you can admit your own prejudices.

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.

I'm only too happy to admit my prejudices. Corporations are definitely one of the things that I don't like. Asparagus is another.

I find one of the major problems with the structure of the corporation, as you admit, is its dependence on pleasing the shareholders (i.e. the gamblers who have chosen to invest their money in partial ownership of the company). What about the employees? No one seems to care about their views. Suppose they don't want to work for Microsoft. Suppose they are happy working at Yahoo. Guess that doesn't matter.

Also, I cannot, for the life of me, understand why "conservatives" who stand for less accumulation of power in government and more individual freedom defend, to the death, the idea of centralization of power in the private sector. The same people who wail and gnash their teeth at "liberals" who want to expand government applaud and whoop loudly anytime a corporate merger is announced. This is not traditional conservatism in any way shape or form, but seems a new post-World War II evolution. When did conservatives start trusting any massive centralization of power?

typing on, or most other things that people consider modern necessities. You wouldn't be able to visit the local grocer and buy fresh fruit in the winter. And just about anything else you can think of. The capital required to do such things is just too large. I think your dislike of corporations is based on a misunderstanding of what a corporation actually is rather than facts. Your description of stockholders as gamblers is a good example of this misunderstanding.

As for the employees, their feelings are considered in mergers. One of the biggest assets of many corporations is the people they employ. One consideration in a takeover or merger is the retention of key employees. There is a very real possibility that the employees wouldn't want to work for Microsoft and would leave for other employment. As for having a say in the sale of the company, no company, corporation or otherwise leaves the decision to sell their assets to the employees. The owner always makes the decision to keep or sell the things he owns. Do you ask your neighbor if it's OK to sell your house? They may have an interest in who owns the house, but it's your decision when to sell, who to sell it to and how much to ask.

As for cheering mergers, well not all mergers are cheered. Some mergers make sense at face value, others are obvious boondoggles and are booed instead. As for trusting massive centralization of power....
1. That isn't occurring. The "power" of any corporation is limited.
2. Corporations tend to follow rules and are far less corrupt than any government.
3. There are thousands of corporations. If a few combine, there are still thousands and new ones created all the time.
4. Corporations that abuse their positions tend to be punished severely by the government, by the stock market and by their customers. Abusers rarely survive (even the largest).

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.

you have not responded to the issue of corporate ethics... that I raised.

You raised no issue of corporate ethics. What you did was demonstrate a simpleton's grasp of a complex process, combined with a willingness to be judgmental and accusatory without knowing what you were talking about. If there is anything ethical about doing that, I don't know what it is.

I suggested that you stop while you were only slightly behind. Please do so. With each new attempt to pretend that you aren't a jukebox loaded by leftists, playing slogans at random, you dig yourself deeper. Go find a subject to discuss that you know something about. This isn't it.

corporate ethics (if there be such a thing)

Pop goes the slogan.

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

You have again, failed to engage the point that I made about Microsoft using unethical tactics to acquire a smaller corporation, Yahoo. My argument is that Microsoft has recently attempted to takeover Yahoo despite Yahoo's decision that such a takeover would not be in its best interests. Microsoft, apparently unaware of the meaning of the word "No," had initially decided to override Yahoo's decision and takeover the company anyway.

Ultimately, the Microsoft buyout may be a positive thing. It may also be a negative thing, if they fail to make a profit with Yahoo and end up cutting jobs.

So far, you have not engaged that argument, but rather attacked me personally as an easy out. That seems, at best, uncharitable.

"With each new attempt to pretend that you aren't a jukebox loaded by leftists, playing slogans at random, you dig yourself deeper."

That is entirely too amusing. In my discussions with commenters on left-leaning sites, I am accused of being a fascist tool of the neoconservative right. I suppose it is only a matter of perspective, eh? Again, ad hominem, with little intellectual engagement. I thought the so-called right claimed that it was better than that?

You ARE aware of the origins of Fascism, right? It certainly has nothing to do with conservatism (neo or otherwise).

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.

Tim Schieferecke

Or to those on the left who accuse me of being a fascist?

Origins of fascism and National Socialism. Do some research and use it the next time someone throws out the fascist label at you.

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.

Since the question was indeed directed at me.

Fascism has become an incredibly diluted term. That dilution has led to ambiguity and increasing misuse. Although I loathe Wikipedia due to its frequent failure to cite sources or fact check, its basic definition of fascism is as good as can be found in today's murky world of political science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#Definitions_and_scope_of_the_word

I would stop after reading the section on fascist as epithet as the rest skews off into bias or ambiguity.

The left-leaning sites that I sometimes comment on have, at times, included radicals who used the term fascist as an epithet directed at me more out of ignorance than anything else. As you mention, the origins of fascism are generally considered more socialist than anything else, although the Nazis were not, by any means, mainlstream fascists. The ideal fascism was demonstrated by Franco's Spain and, to a lesser extent, Mussolini's Italy. Hitler took bits and pieces and cobbled them together with loose interpretations of Nietschze, Hegel, Marx and Heidegger. Add in anti-Jewish attitudes and an obsession with the occult and you have Nazism.

On the whole, I find the general ideas of fascism to belong neither on the left or the right, but rather somewhere in the middle. The fascist hates communism as much as the conservative, yet he embraces the idea of corporatism and centrally planned economies like the socialist. He embraces nationalism and, sometimes, religion like the old European right, yet he triumphs in militarism and totalitarianism clearly ideas opposed by the right. I think that the oversimplification of fascism by those on the left and right today leads to finger-pointing by both sides. "It's your idea, you're responsible for it." "No, it's your's." etc., etc.

phrases that you throw around would immediately state that "Fascism is what conservatives turn into if they go too extreme." never bothering to explain how people who support small government, free markets and personal freedom become totalitarian statists when they get to extreme forms of their beliefs. They don't understand that an extreme form of our side tends more towards libertarianism than fascism.

The bit about fascism being neither right nor left is a polite nod to the leftists. It was clearly a splinter group from the socialists, though there are significant differences from the main body of socialist thought. Their hatred of communism is more due to family rivalry and power struggles than anything really different in their philosophy. Some commentators have described the primary differences between fascism and socialism as practicality. Their idea of corporatism was something more akin to how you have portrayed our corporations than how our corporations actually function. The fascists considered corporations to be a practical tool to achieve socialist goals and allowed them to exist so long as they produced what the state told them to produce. In other words, they weren't independent operators, they were under complete state control. Later writings by the fascists tried to obscure their origins and distance themselves from the socialists, but they were definitely a child of socialism.

A good conversation starter with leftists throwing the fascist term around is "Mussolini was one of you're boys."

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.

So far, you have not engaged that argument, but rather attacked me personally as an easy out.

Nonsense. Thrashing you personally for wasting our time with an ignorant rant is hardly the easy way out. I hate having to do this. I'm actually a very nice guy.

This is by far the more difficult of the two tacks. It would have been much less trouble to explain to you those things which you clearly do not understand. The problem is, you would not listen. You would blithely continue with your slogan-filled ignorant ranting. We know this because that is what you in fact did, even after Brian took the trouble to explain to you what a hostile takeover is and how it differs from the violence-filled evil scheming of your fantasies. Yet here you are again, talking about Microsoft's "unethical behavior," even after you've been told twice by The Good Cop that what they are doing is perfectly normal and may even be beneficial to the actual owners of Yahoo; and by the Bad Cop to stop now because you don't know what you're talking about.

The truth is, recent arrivals from the forest who come to the village filled with certainty about things they don't understand are really, really annoying.

If this continues, there won't be much to do with you except toss you on The Pile™. It may not happen today, but it appears that you have no interest in learning anything new; only in insisting that you are right. For lefties, that way lies the exit.

By the way, there is nothing more ludicrous than a biped from the forest who spouts leftist rhetoric and attributes Fascism to conservatives, all the while insisting that his friends think he's a right-winger. Maybe you just fell off the turnip truck. We didn't.

I have tried to be polite, Mr. Hahn. For some reason, reasoned, civil discourse appears to be beyond your capacity, despite your protestations of being a "very nice guy."

Unlike you, Brian has demonstrated the capacity for reasoned argument with someone who holds a differing point of view. Although this may not be acceptable in the lofty frontier echo chamber which you inhabit, it is considered the norm for the rest of civilization.

"It would have been much less trouble to explain to you those things which you clearly do not understand."

And seemingly beyond your capacity to do.

"You would blithely continue with your slogan-filled ignorant ranting."

Clarify, please.

"Yet here you are again, talking about Microsoft's "unethical behavior," even after you've been told twice by The Good Cop that what they are doing is perfectly normal and may even be beneficial to the actual owners of Yahoo"

That remains to be seen. Has every corporate takeover resulted in a net benefit to the shareholders AND the employees? I would love to see you twist yourself into intellectual pretzels to demonstrate that.

"If this continues, there won't be much to do with you except toss you on The Pile™. It may not happen today, but it appears that you have no interest in learning anything new; only in insisting that you are right. For lefties, that way lies the exit."

I always have an interest in learning. Unforunately, you appear to have no interest in teaching. I do not insist anything. I propose questions, which so far you have not answered. Please define "lefties."

"By the way, there is nothing more ludicrous than a biped from the forest who spouts leftist rhetoric and attributes Fascism to conservatives, all the while insisting that his friends think he's a right-winger."

Demonstrate please where I attributed fascism to conservatives. Again, reading comprehension appears to be an issue with you.

My friends' opinions are none of your business and have nothing to do with the discussion at hand. Again, pointless ad hominem. You appear to be an intellectual one-trick pony, Mr. Hahn.

"Maybe you just fell off the turnip truck. We didn't."

I'm not sure who wasted more energy on this statement. You for coming up with it and taking the time to type it or me for bothering to read it.

Corporate wage slaves? Really? Are you forced to work for a corporation? Can you not choose to do something else to make a living? Nope, I don't accept your socialist phrase.

And corporations aren't immoral, they are amoral. The example you give assumes that the people who said NO to Microsoft's offer were the owners. They aren't or rather they only own a small portion of Yahoo. They were making the decision on behalf of the vast majority of owners who haven't had a say in the matter (yet). Microsoft MAY (they haven't yet) decide to take the offer directly to the owners rather than accept a NO from their representatives. Adam Smith would have no problem with that.

And do you REALLY think Wal-Mart has a "gentleman's agreement" with Target to set wages? If so you have no clue how the world works. Yes, they'll offer only as much as they need to attract and keep good workers. And they have a good idea what the other companies are offering, but it's not the government or unions that set those wages in either case (neither is unionized and both pay higher than minimum wage) . It's the supply of workers and the demand from the market that sets the wages that both companies pay. And in ALL cases the worker can legitimately choose to say no to both.

As for your monopoly example, are there really no other choices for media? Sumner Redstone controls all media in all markets? You gave an example of a second company in the same business in your reply so I think it's definitely not a monopoly and they aren't the only 2 companies in the business. And even those businesses are constantly facing new competition. No I don't think Adam Smith would fear them.

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.

The term corporate wage slave, though certainly used by socialists is not, by any means, exclusive to them. It is and has been in use by people of many different socio-economic beliefs: paleoconservatives, socialists, third way economists, agrarians, etc. So I reject any stigma attached to the term as an inaccurately assigned prejudice.

Whether I am forced to work for a corporation personally? No, I would rather not compromise my beliefs and go to work for a corporation, but my personal prefernces are irrelevant and also a useless ad hominem attack designed to shift the topic.

"And corporations aren't immoral, they are amoral"

That is certainly true in one sense. A corporation is neither more nor less moral than a gun, a bomb or a nuclear weapon. It is the person operating the corporation that determines the morality, or lack thereof, in play.

For the rest of the Microsoft-Yahoo battle, see my above reponse to Mr. Hahn.

"And do you REALLY think Wal-Mart has a "gentleman's agreement" with Target to set wages?"

Possibly and possibly not. That issue cannot really be proven one way or the other by anyone not directly involved in the workings of Wal-Mart corporation. What is known is that corporations frequently set wages at the lowest possible level that they believe will still attract enough workers to meet their needs. You have admitted as much. That seems along the lines of maximizing profit at the expense of the employees, which is clearly not ethical. Minimum wage is set by the government, and Wal-Mart, or any other corporation, bases it wages on that established rate. If the government set no minimum wage, then Wal-Mart would be offering the .15/hour instead of its competitors' .10/hour as I mentioned above. The fact of the matter is, sadly, that a large part of our population lives in urban areas. There are simply not enough small business or government jobs for every member of the workforce living in an urban setting. These workers must, therefore, work for the corporations or "go on the dole" or starve. Given the difficulty of moving away from the city for many, that is very much a rock and a hard place choice. Which is part of the reason that I use the term corporate wage-slave.

AS for the media: well, I think we can both agree that the MSM is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America. A fair amount of alternate media is becoming so, as well. Despite the efforts of "citizen journalists," the majority of America still draws its daily news data from either the MSM (in its televised, online, and print formats) or the radio (and many of the radio stations are owned by corporations). I think a definite filter is placed on the news coming into the US by corporate interests, which are not necessarily in line with those of the average American. Is there competition? Sure, but only between one corporation's filtered news and another's. If your choice of news is between corporate vanilla A or corporate vanilla B, then I suggest that a monopoly does exist.

Whether you reject the stigma or not, "Corporate Wage Slave" is a loaded term used by socialist propagandists to incorrectly stigmatize anyone who works for a corporation. It is not I who am giving it prejudice, it is you. If I were to accept such phrases unchallenged it leads an observer to think that people who work for wages paid by a corporation are slaves.

The rest your response suggests that you don't really understand what a corporation is or how it functions. A corporation is strictly a way of dividing ownership of a company into small enough pieces that it can sell portions of itself to people and raise enough money to operate. Without this structure, many companies would not exist, many of our best inventions could not have occurred and our standard of living would have been roughly equal to that of the 1850's.

There is no "subsidiary of corporate America" that owns the MSM. That statement assumes that "corporate America" is a single entity. It's not. It's hundreds of individual companies owned and operated by millions of individual people. The individual companies compete with each other. They will sometimes cooperate on projects. Sometimes they have supplier, customer relationships, other times act as partners. But they are separate companies and operate the same as smaller businesses only on a larger scale.

As for wages, Wal-Mart doesn't base it's wages on the minimum wage. It bases it's wages on the lowest wage it can pay while attracting and maintaining a competent work force. That's not immoral, it's common sense. You don't pay 3 times the going rate for a Ford car in order to be more fair to the dealer selling it. You shop around and try to get the lowest price for a car that meets your needs and wants or the "best deal". In the same way Wal-mart shops for the best people it can get for a reasonable wage or tries to get the "best deal". THAT's how the world works.

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.

Then surely the people whose ideas I have drawn my political philosophy from must be, too, then? Yes?

I suppose that makes G.K. Chesterton, Hillaire Belloc, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dorothy Day, and every Pope since Leo XIII a socialist? Under your definition, even He Who Shall Not Be Named (but whose initials are R.P.) is a socialist.

"If I were to accept such phrases unchallenged it leads an observer to think that people who work for wages paid by a corporation are slaves."

Aren't they? How many Americans own their own homes, free of the usurious debt imposed by financial corporations? How many Americans produce the products that they consume (or even have the means to do so)? How many Americans live paycheck to paycheck dependent on the whims of corporate masters who may lay them off at any time? How many Americans work for themselves or their family businesses rather than working to enrich their corporate masters? That is a partial range of the questions raised by the term "corporate wage slave;" there are many more, but this thread is not really appropriate for a full discussion of the issue.

"A corporation is strictly a way of dividing ownership of a company into small enough pieces that it can sell portions of itself to people and raise enough money to operate."

And that is part of the problem that I have with the corporate structure. It is, as Ambrose Bierce described it, "CORPORATION, noun. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility." Are individual shareholders entitled to a say-so in the running of the company? Only to the extent of the amount of stock that they own (democracy by the rich, I believe would be a better way of explaining shareholder meetings). Are shareholders held personally liable for unlawful actions of the corporation that they "own?" I don't think so. There is, therefore, no incentive for shareholders to act in the interests of either the public or ethics, but rather in the interests of their own bank accounts.

"Without this structure, many companies would not exist, many of our best inventions could not have occurred and our standard of living would have been roughly equal to that of the 1850's."

And the problem with that is? Indeed, one of the great crimes of the corporate baron, the economist and the scientist is the foisting of the worship of "progress" onto the minds of the naive public.

"There is no "subsidiary of corporate America" that owns the MSM."

A very small cabal of plutocrats owns the majority of the American media. Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone, etc. push their own agendas through the various media outlets that they own. I suggest that very few broad themes are addressed by CBS that are not first Ok'ed by Mr. Redstone. The same goes for Murdoch at Fox. This is hardly new, though. Media barons have been driving politics and public debate in America for over a century. William Randolph Hearst is an easy example of just such a man.

"That statement assumes that "corporate America" is a single entity."

It acts monolithically in all matters concerning its own self-preservation.

"But they are separate companies and operate the same as smaller businesses only on a larger scale."

And without the level of personal responsibility inherent in the small business.

"It bases it's wages on the lowest wage it can pay while attracting and maintaining a competent work force. That's not immoral, it's common sense."

And here, alas, we disagree. Maximizing corporate profit, while minimizing employee benefits is utterly immoral in my mind.

"You don't pay 3 times the going rate for a Ford car in order to be more fair to the dealer selling it. You shop around and try to get the lowest price for a car that meets your needs and wants or the "best deal"."

And that is part of the tragedy of our society. Everyone is looking for the "best deal," aka the easiest on the bank account and who cares what they have to do to get it. This is a large part of the problem with the disconnect between ordinary people in our society. We feel that getting a particular product for the cheapest price possible is in our own best interest, but is it in the best interest of the man who produces that product (I don't mean the salesman, or the CEO, but the actual person who makes the product)? If he doesn't get a good price for his product, then his own salary drops and he suffers as a result, while we enjoy the fruit of his labor at a "bargain price." Since he makes less, he has less to spend on our product, thus forcing down our salary. And how much of the profit from the final sale goes, not to the man who made the product, but to the salesman or the CEO? I will go out on a limb here and point out that this alienation of labor was described over a hundred and fifty years ago by the bete noir of the modern liberal capitalist, Karl Marx.

"THAT's how the world works."

I agree absolutely with you. That is how our society works today. And look where the commodification of human labor and the societal disconnect has led us. The founding fathers would be disgusted.

made based on some socialist ideals. Namely:
1. People who work for corporations are wage slaves.
2. Corporations are by their very nature evil.
3. All corporations cooperate to form one giant monopoly.
4. Corporate masters? Get real. That went out of style with Marx.

These are socialist ideas that are just wrong. Basing arguments on these ideal will get you a wrong result.

Your diatribe against people trying to get the best deal shows a complete misunderstanding of Adam Smith's unseen hand. Frankly that is a large part of what makes the hand move.

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.

And I appreciate your willingness to engage in civil discussion on this issue, unlike Mr. Hahn who has, so far, done nothing but vomit ad hominems.

I disagree that the origins of the ideas that I have presented are socialist. Although some are shared by socialists, marxists, etc., they are not the exclusive property of those subscribing to those ideologies. I distrust the accumulation of power by government or corporate entities. The vehicle of the legal fiction known as the corporation is an attempt to avoid personal responsibility whilst simultaneously accumulating personal wealth. That is, frankly, immoral.

Corporations do engage in competition with each other, however any attempt to reign in their power results in a united, monolithic front against said attempt. Corporations share with individuals a devotion to survival and enlightened self-interest.

I use the term "corporate masters," because in a very real sense we do live in a plutocracy. Those with the most money influence the decisions of our government in a very concrete manner. I cannot believe that anyone would debate that point. George Soros is a perfect example. In addition, the heads of corporations determine when jobs are slashed, that is "reductions in force." For those who depend for their livelihood on a paycheck from a corporation, the head of said corporation becomes, in a very real sense, their master. He doles out the benefits which allow his employees to survive. The counter-argument is that people can work for whomever they choose, but as I have pointed out, there are simply not enough jobs in the small business or government sectors for everyone living in cities. If they want to have a home, utilities, clothes, food, etc., then these workers MUST work for a corporation. Or accept welfare, which is not a viable solution.

Smith was an agrarian, small business-minded fellow. He well understood the dangers of monopolies, which is why he castigated the mercantilist system in WON. I agree entirely with his views on this matter. The small, family owned, local business is the ideal for America, not the multinational, megacorporation.

Many here talk of the dangers of statism. I fully acknowledge those dangers, but I see the power grab by American corporations over the past hundred years (and especially the last 40), as nothing more than capitalist statism. That is probably a very poor choice of terms to describe this phenomenon, but I cannot think of any other. Hillaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton described this very thing happening in the early 20th century in Europe and were much more eloquent than I am. Essentially it boils down to: when the corporations control the governments, how free will the market really be? How free will any of us be? President Roosevelt, though not exactly free of the taint of dictatorship, warned against the dictatorship of the corporations in 1938. He had first hand experience with it in the failed coup against him in 1934.

I suggest that there the origins of fascism lie.

I think what you are experiencing is a long time poster who has argued these points incessantly and tires of explaining the whole mess over and over again.

I haven't given up trying to correct people who have been poisoned with socialist ideology. It's sort of a hobby of mine.... I've occasionally even gotten into similar discussions on openly communist sites, though it takes a while to get them to quit throwing around terms like proletariat and bourgeois before you can get their brain engaged. Sometimes they never engage a brain cell and just keep spouting phrases, those people are hopeless and you have to move on. When I get one who will discuss rather than catch phrase at me, I TRY to get them to look at "Free to Choose" in either book or film form.

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.