“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

[The Legendary Shark]

DDD - who do organisations like Blackwater work for? Also, I think that private businesses, especially smaller ones unentangled with the state, have loyalties to more than just money. Yes, money is important in this world but there are many businesses that won't do anything for money, they do have corporate morals, as it were. Not all, sure, but many. The private company I work for, for instance, is very loyal to its customers and employees and doesn't screw either of them over because it's not good business. You don't need governments to win justice - indeed, governments are often the biggest bar to getting justice. Tony Blair, for example.

if you want to look at it like that, every business is a monopoly.

No, they're clearly not.  But some are.  And without regulation, the is no limit to the control they hold.

Depends on your view. I can't go into my local newsagent's and just start selling stuff without their permission. They have the monopoly over what they sell on their premises. (as an aside, this is as it should be but if the "government" decides to give me the right to go into my local newsagents' and sell stuff whether they like it or not, what recourse do they have? In the free economy, the premises owner decides what to sell and who to ally with.) In the free economy, the consumer is the regulator. In the free economy, the consumer limits control. In the government controlled economy, the government regulates and limits control whether the consumer likes it or not.

This view that businesses are all evil with no other goal than the rape of the public has grown up because that's what a government controlled economy encourages.

Wait...what?  Companies do evil things because...government regulation? 

"This view that businesses are all evil with no other goal than the rape of the public has grown up because that's what a government controlled economy encourages." Take the idiocy of the minimum wage as an example. We all know that if the "government" wants to make people eat more fruit, it tries to make fruit cheaper through subsidies and tax breaks. If it wants to make something popular, it makes it cheaper so more people can afford it. If it wants to discourage smoking or drinking, it makes cigarettes and cider more expensive so fewer people can afford them. By the same logic, making wages higher makes sure fewer companies can afford to pay them. The minimum wage, therefore, causes companies to destroys jobs - whether they want to or not. If it worked, why just up the minimum wage by a few pennies at a time? Why not up it by a tenner? Twenty quid? A ton? Instead of giving aid to poor countries, why not just tell them to raise their minimum wage so we won't have to send them our money? Because it doesn't work.

How many investors would put money into a service designed to shaft people?

If it made them money?  Literally millions.

And which entity protects services that regularly shaft people? If I formed a company that went around demanding money off people under threat of violence, no legitimate investor would touch me with a ten foot pole and my victims would soon put me out of business one way or another. If the "government" formed a department that went around demanding money off people under threat of violence, they'd call it HMRC, attract thousands of corporate and private investors (government bond purchasers) and protect their operatives with legislation and police and court monopolies.

Investors invest to make money, not to screw people over.

No, of course they don't invest to deliberately shaft people, but its often a side effect. (Yes - a side-effect of government protectionism.)  Look at the largest and most profitable companies in the world and you'll soon find a list of the dead they leave in their wake.  Are people poisoned by working in Apple factories poisoned because of government regulation? Yes - because companies make deals with governments, especially foreign governments strapped for cash, to turn a blind eye or legislate for exemptions. Do many companies regularly abuse their staff because of democracy? Basically the same as my last answer and also, "So, young Mwata, you don't like being beaten? Hands up anyone else who thinks the beatings are unfair. Anyone? Thought not. Now get back to work."


The thing I find worrying about your view of the world, Sharks, is that everyone seems so unusually....nice to each other. No, that's not it. In the case of a self-owned, sharing society, people will have much more choice over who they work for and what they buy. There will always be bastards but bastardry will be harder to make a profit out of. Cast free of the terribly burden of having to contribute towards the healthcare and education of the nation, free from the horror of equality laws and health and safety,(That's a misunderstanding - it's not about not having to pay anything, it's about having the choice of what to pay for, what not to pay for, how much to pay - it's about the freedom to choose, the freedom to live without coercion or threats from those entities supposedly in place to serve but which actually terrorise) free from any sort of democratic control (otherwise known as Mob Rule) and in a world were property rights are supreme...everyone seems to genuinely care for their fellow man and wants only to act in a way which will benefit society. The idea is to encourage an economy where cooperation, sharing and "care for their fellow man" is not blocked by "authority" or actively discouraged through legislation, subsidies and protectionism. As I said earlier, when it becomes profitable to treat people right, companies will treat people right - even if some of the psychopaths in charge have to do it through clenched teeth.  It's like conversing with someone who holds a devout religion. In my view, it is people who believe in the invisible Volcano God called "Government" who are the religious zealots. They support it even as it robs them and uses their money to bomb the shit out of innocents, as it encourages slavery and pollution, as it dictates morality and income, as it treats those it claims to serve as serfs, as it erodes rights and civil liberties, as it protects paedophiles, murderers, swindlers and besuited scumbags of all types, as it steals their money and pushes them around, as it spends the stolen money on things nobody wants, as it tells bald-faced lies, as it hurts anyone who disobeys it, as it destroys services, economies and people. It is worse than Satanism.  You have your vision of the perfect world, (how many times do I have to say that the world will never be perfect before people stop claiming this? I merely point out that there are other and better options to this neo-serfdom we're saddled with - take the ideas on board or don't, that's not my call; I do not expect anyone to believe what I believe but most other people, it seems, demand that I believe what they believe and vilify me (accuse me of trolling, even) when I don't) and despite how utterly unlikely it appears, despite the vast flaws in logic which everyone else imagines they can see, you are unshakable. I am.

Of course there can be competition with trains

There just can't. However a system is set up, you end up with some kind of regional monopoly. There is no effective competition in such a system. Whiz-Rail says, "We're going to run our trains on this line between times A and B on days C and D for £E per ticket," Zoom-Rail says, "We're going to run our trains on this line between times F and G on days C and D for £H per ticket," and so on. Whiz-Rail says, "We've got U carriages on this train to Whereverville, with V facilities for £W per ticket," whilst Zoom-Rail says, "We've got X carriages on this train to Whereverville, with Y facilities for £Z per ticket."  It's no different from having the choice between National Express and Megabus. Private stations can be built and/or purchased and expanded/improved to offer more services than just rail travel. Private tracks can be laid by companies who think they can profit from them - just as in the beginning. Specialist companies can compete to run signals, maintain tracks, service engines and carriages, provide food and entertainment services, cleaning services, driver training, embankment management, level-crossing control and maintenance, tunnel and bridge maintenance, ticket services, timetabling construction, traffic control, safety inspections, security services and so on and on. There is lots of scope for competition.

The food industry manages to feed just about everyone in the country on a regular basis and that's a much larger and much more fragmented operation.

I have no idea what you're talking about here. In terms of supermarkets alone, there are five in my town. I can pick and choose between them. I can also visit a restaurant or buy groceries from smaller stores. In other words, there is competition. Exactly. One train operator, no competition. Five train operators, competition.

In my town, there is one train station, where I can take trains west to Basingstoke or East towards London. There. Is. No. Competition. Under. The. Present. System. FTFY.

[Modern Panther]

- who do organisations like Blackwater work for?

Whoever pays them

Whiz-Rail says, "We're going to run our trains on this line between times A and B on days C and D for £E per ticket," Zoom-Rail says, "We're going to run our trains on this line between times F and G on days C and D for £H per ticket," and so on. Whiz-Rail says, "We've got U carriages on this train to Whereverville, with V facilities for £W per ticket," whilst Zoom-Rail says, "We've got X carriages on this train to Whereverville, with Y facilities for £Z per ticket."  It's no different from having the choice between National Express and Megabus.

You know that trains run on tracks, right?  Doesn't this great inter-company negotiation depend entirely on who owns those tracks?  (Let me guess..."Ah, but, unregulated by government, new tracks would spring up everywhere! There'd be seventeen lines where once there was one, because companies would invest a huge amount of money in buying vast areas of land and laying new lines, investing in new transport links, spending billions in the hope that they would be able to compete with an established monopoly, which would continue to run at a profit until this complex web of steel was complete.  Shareholders love that kind of thing.  They love investing billions in the possibility of scratching a small return decades into the future. Boo, government.")

Take the idiocy of the minimum wage as an example.

As someone whose wages actually increased as a result of minimum wage, your pro-greed viewpoint on this is quite offensive.  The company I worked for didn't pay shit wages because it was all they could afford - they paid shit wages because they could get away with it.  I worked for them because of a severe lack of opportunity in the jobs market and because I'd rather work and earn anything than be on the dole.  Their behaviour, though, was no doubt the problem of "government regulation" and if only they didn't have to meet basic standards expected of citizens they would have behaved much better. Of course, in a "true free market" companies would treat their employees with respect and any unhappy employees would just go work for a different company,because of the cast number of opportunities which would exist for some reason.  Magic.

Are people poisoned by working in Apple factories poisoned because of government regulation?Yes - because companies make deals with governments, especially foreign governments strapped for cash, to turn a blind eye or legislate for exemptions.

Wow.

Apple are making deals with governments so that health and safety laws are not applied.  This is the fault of the governments, which are corrupt, but not the fault of Apple.  If the health and safety laws did not exist, conditions would be better (somehow), because bribes would not be necessary.

Your unending support for the Volcano God of the "free market" is terrifying.  Companies across the globe treat employees and customers appallingly everyday.  They pollute and abuse. They spread chaos in the unstoppable quest for more, yet you bow before them, happy for them to go uncontrolled, in the bizarre belief that, given more power, they will become better.  You would happily cast aside the rights which have taken centuries to put in place, to kneel before the altar of capitalism and unregulated greed.  All because government, which is accountable to the people, is automatically corrupt whereas companies, which answer only to shareholders, can be trusted to provide everything society needs.

[I, Cosh]

So the pretty obvious answer to your train conundrum is some form of communal ownership where, rather than being run for the private gain of a small number of people, they are operated for the public benefit of all. As part of this we collectively agree that services which would not viable if we were operating solely for the generation of profit but which are actually important to people (e.g. weekend evening services in the Western Highlands) should continue to run because of the social benefit to those unable to travel in any other way.

Obviously, people need to work on this to maintain and make it work but I'm not sure I could be arsed doing it myself. Seems that the most reasonable way of running something which we all need would be some form of centralised agency to which we deputise our collective responsibility for governing it. Can't think of a suitably snappy name for this idea.

You say there's lots of scope for competition and give a bunch of spurious examples of railside services while ignoring the key point that somebody, somewhere, somehow has to own the land and lay some tracks for any of that to exist.

Can you give an example of anything which can be done better by an organisation which needs to siphon off some of the resources as profit compared to one which is run solely for the benefit of those who require the product or service?

[I, Cosh]

Are people poisoned by working in Apple factories poisoned because of government regulation? Yes - because companies make deals with governments, especially foreign governments strapped for cash, to turn a blind eye or legislate for exemptions.

Going to have to jump on this one here. You seem to be saying something that makes absolutely no logical sense. You posit that the government of country A does not allow Company B to, as an example, dump toxic waste in its rivers. Company B therefore sets up shop in Country C where it's able to exercise its economic clout to overrule any attempts to prevent it dumping toxic waste in the river.

Your conclusion from this is that the government of Country A is to blame for this rather than the management of Company B and, by extension, its shareholders. Really?

Your solution is to remove all government restrictions from all countries rather than to try and extend the protection to all? Trying to look at it from your point of view I can see how this is problematic. Here is a clear example of the hated "government" (or "authority" or whatever the current idea is) providing a tangible benefit to the governed without any obvious ulterior motive. But that doesn't fit with the paradigm, so the facts must be wrong rather than the concept.

[The Legendary Shark]

- who do organisations like Blackwater work for?

Whoever pays them. Fair enough. The original accusation by DDD, however, asserted that Blackwater (which was renamed XE Services in 2009 and renamed Academi in 2011) operates "under the radar." It has clients including the US Department of Defense, the CIA, the US State Department, Monsanto, Chevron, Deutche Bank, Barclays, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and even the Walt Disney Company. A fair few of those clients have the financial and political clout to keep operations under the radar, but that cover is not and can never be absolute as proved in 2008 when four of its guards were convicted in a US court for killing 17 and injuring 20 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad the year before - thereby proving that, even under present conditions, private security companies can still be held accountable for their actions. One wonders if this is simply the tip of the iceberg, with other atrocities hidden by government and corporate bodies with at least as much desire to keep such actions quiet.


You know that trains run on tracks, right?  Doesn't this great inter-company negotiation depend entirely on who owns those tracks?  (Let me guess..."Ah, but, unregulated by government, new tracks would spring up everywhere! There'd be seventeen lines where once there was one, because companies would invest a huge amount of money in buying vast areas of land and laying new lines, investing in new transport links, spending billions in the hope that they would be able to compete with an established monopoly, which would continue to run at a profit until this complex web of steel was complete.  Shareholders love that kind of thing.  They love investing billions in the possibility of scratching a small return decades into the future. Boo, government.") Ownership of the tracks is indeed a factor but you need to guess again. You might want specialist corporations to own some of them, or some to be owned by private companies staffed and run by the people who live in towns and cities where specific parts of the rail network reside, you might want to own 10ft of track yourself. There would not, of course, be unlimited track construction. If anything, laying new tracks would be more difficult because there would be no more compulsory purchase powers. Any company wishing to lay a new stretch of railway would have to be able to purchase land legally, abide by the decisions of local communities and be sure the track they want to lay would be necessary and profitable. Unregulated by government does not mean unregulated by anything. The biggest regulator is reality - nobody's going to invest billions in a line that will piss people off and yield a pound a week in profits. Government skews reality (as we all know) and provides profits where there should be none.



As someone whose wages actually increased as a result of minimum wage, your pro-greed viewpoint on this is quite offensive.  The company I worked for didn't pay shit wages because it was all they could afford - they paid shit wages because they could get away with it.  I worked for them because of a severe lack of opportunity in the jobs market and because I'd rather work and earn anything than be on the dole.  Their behaviour, though, was no doubt the problem of "government regulation" and if only they didn't have to meet basic standards expected of citizens they would have behaved much better. Of course, in a "true free market" companies would treat their employees with respect and any unhappy employees would just go work for a different company,because of the cast number of opportunities which would exist for some reason.  Magic. It's not pro-greed, it's pro-logic. Just because the company you worked for was despicable, that doesn't mean they all are. In the wider economy, enforcing a minimum wage has the knock-on effect of increasing labour costs. These costs must be met by either reducing profits, thereby decreasing the ability for further investment, increasing the price of products and services, thereby nullifying the benefits to the workers themselves (I get an extra £5 per week but then, so does everyone else, so my overall shopping and services bill has increased by at least £5 per week), or a combination of the two. The minimum wage exacerbates problems in poor areas and has no effect on affluent areas.  In the area where you lived and worked, Panth, was there scope for you and others to set up your own businesses, to become self-employed in some way? What stopped you doing this? Was it lack of opportunity or the sheer number of government hoops you'd have to jump through to even get something off the ground, let alone make a profit from it? Licenses, permits, fees, assessments, etc? Or a combination of the two? Getting rid of government creates countless opportunities. It's not magic at all. What is (black) magic is the idea that you can't be a street vendor, a window cleaner, a taxi driver, a shopkeeper or even a shoe-shiner unless the magic pixies up at your local enchanted fairy council castle issue you with a piece of supernatural paper.

Are people poisoned by working in Apple factories poisoned because of government regulation?Yes - because companies make deals with governments, especially foreign governments strapped for cash, to turn a blind eye or legislate for exemptions.

Wow.

Apple are making deals with governments so that health and safety laws are not applied.  This is the fault of the governments, which are corrupt, but not the fault of Apple.  If the health and safety laws did not exist, conditions would be better (somehow), because bribes would not be necessary. You do know that entities like the World Bank, which are supported by governments, which are supported by corporations, attach conditions such as the sale of infrastructure (to the corporations that support the governments that support the banks) to so-called loans, right? You know that foreign companies go into places like the Amazon to plunder logs with little regard for the livelihoods and even lives of indigenous populations, right? You know that foreign companies pay peanuts in local fines for polluting rivers, providing poor working conditions and such, don't you? You know that local governments, or the corrupt politicians making them up, enjoy the foreign income so much that they send their hired thugs (police) to quell any dissent from the workers/indigenous people/victims, don't you? In such circumstances, it makes absolutely no difference whether safety laws exist or not because it's up to governments, not the people to whom the laws are meant to apply and protect, whether these laws are enforced or ignored.

Your unending support for the Volcano God of the "free market" is terrifying.  Companies across the globe treat employees and customers appallingly everyday (despite the existence of governments put in place to prevent this very thing).  They pollute and abuse (despite the existence of governments put in place to prevent this very thing). They spread chaos in the unstoppable quest for more (despite the existence of governments put in place to prevent this very thing), yet you bow before them (I bow before nobody, and neither should anyone else be made to - that's kind of the whole point) happy for them to go uncontrolled (uncontrolled by government, not uncontrolled by law and society), in the bizarre belief (bizarre? hey, you're the one who believes that a government official is better than you, able to tell you what to think, how to behave, how much you have to pay them and whether or not people in a distant country deserve to die) that, given more power (um, no - remove government coercive power and the power of corporate cronies would be severely weakened), they will become better.  You would happily cast aside the rights (governments do not and cannot bestow rights upon anyone - they can only bestow privileges) which have taken centuries to put in place (yet have existed throughout recorded time and beyond), to kneel before the altar of capitalism and unregulated greed.  All because government, which is accountable to the people (like Tony Blair - he killed a bunch of people because of a lie and then went on to live a billionaire, globetrotting lifestyle of fabulous wealth, glamour and respect but not before we'd voted him out - yeah, we really showed him who's boss, didn't we?), is automatically corrupt (power corrupts - it's virtually inevitable; I own there may be an honest politician somewhere, maybe even more than one, but nowhere near enough to make a difference) whereas companies, which answer only to shareholders (and customers and employees and communities), can be trusted to provide everything society needs.

[The Legendary Shark]

So the pretty obvious answer to your train conundrum is some form of communal ownership where, rather than being run for the private gain of a small number of people, they are operated for the public benefit of all. As part of this we collectively agree that services which would not viable if we were operating solely for the generation of profit but which are actually important to people (e.g. weekend evening services in the Western Highlands) should continue to run because of the social benefit to those unable to travel in any other way. Can't disagree with that, sounds reasonable.

Obviously, people need to work on this to maintain and make it work but I'm not sure I could be arsed doing it myself. Seems that the most reasonable way of running something which we all need would be some form of centralised (why centralised? Why not local to the people such things actually have an impact on? People who not only have skills but also care?) agency to which we deputise our collective responsibility for governing it. Can't think of a suitably snappy name for this idea. Local investment?

You say there's lots of scope for competition and give a bunch of spurious examples of railside services while ignoring the key point that somebody, somewhere, somehow has to own the land and lay some tracks for any of that to exist. I addressed this point in my last reply to Panth.

Can you give an example of anything which can be done better by an organisation which needs to siphon off some of the resources as profit compared to one which is run solely for the benefit of those who require the product or service? I'm not sure I get this question. How about, ooh, I don't know, a bakery? A family run, local bakery produces and sells products at such a price that it's possible for the employees and owners to profit. If the product and service is good, people will buy it. If it's not, they won't. It is therefore important for the product to be good. The bakery serves the local community with a good product and the local community serves the bakery by allowing it to profit and maybe even invest in expansion to serve the wider community. Let's compare that with a local "bread charity" where everyone works as a volunteer from a donated premisis. People donate whatever bread they don't want to the charity, and maybe the charity even has a few ovens of its own, which gives it away for the benefit of the community. The charity uses stolen money (taxes) or voluntary donations to pay for the services it requires (electricity, water, etc) and depends on people willing to work for nothing who may or may not know anything about bread. The bread the charity produces will be inferior to the bread the professional bakery produces. It would even be in the professional bakery's interest to give some of its product away (batches from yesterday or the day before) to reduce waste and to gather good publicity and to produce a range of products of varying cost, from simple and cheap to elaborate and expensive. In this case, the profit-driven company will provide a better service than the charity. This might not answer your question as, as I said, I'm not sure I grasp what you're getting at.

Are people poisoned by working in Apple factories poisoned because of government regulation? Yes - because companies make deals with governments, especially foreign governments strapped for cash, to turn a blind eye or legislate for exemptions.

Going to have to jump on this one here. You seem to be saying something that makes absolutely no logical sense. You posit that the government of country A does not allow Company B to, as an example, dump toxic waste in its rivers. Company B therefore sets up shop in Country C where it's able to exercise its economic clout to overrule any attempts to prevent it dumping toxic waste in the river.

Your conclusion from this is that the government of Country A is to blame for this rather than the management of Company B and, by extension, its shareholders. Really? No, the responsibility is shared. Governments act as enablers for bad corporate behaviour.

Your solution is to remove all government restrictions from all countries rather than to try and extend the protection to all? Trying to look at it from your point of view I can see how this is problematic. Here is a clear example of the hated "government" (or "authority" or whatever the current idea is) providing a tangible benefit to the governed without any obvious ulterior motive. But that doesn't fit with the paradigm, so the facts must be wrong rather than the concept. I think I addressed this in my last answer to Panth.

[Professor Bear]

It's like the Mayor never left.

[TordelBack]

It's like the Mayor never left.

"Larry, the summer is over. You're the mayor of Shark city."

[Theblazeuk]

 

Has never been more fitting.

[Hawkmumbler]

It's like the Mayor never left.

"Larry, the summer is over. You're the mayor of Shark city."

A seeker of thrills indeed.

[The Legendary Shark]

You know, my kids* were in the water too.

* Well, they would have been if I had any. Does my dog count?

[Hawkmumbler]

You know, my kids* were in the water too.

* Well, they would have been if I had any. Does my dog count?

The Brody's had a dog I think...

[The Legendary Shark]

Not forgetting poor Pippet :-(

[Jim_Campbell]

Just when you thought a forum member couldn't come up with a more annoying or impenetrable posting style...

Jim

[The Legendary Shark]

Yes, Jim, I agree. That is a crap posting style. No real excuse except for being in a rush to get to work and having many points to address.

I'll try to do better in future.