You act like calling him a lobbyist makes the problem of opportunistic people using the infinite violence of the state to achieve their own ends go away.
My whole point is their shouldn't be an institution like the state of people like Kissinger and Cheney can use it to get away with literal murder.
If Jeff bezos shot someone in broad daylight rn he would go to prison. If any politician did the same he wouldn't, or if punished it wouldnt be to the same standard as someone not of the political class.
Originally posted by Blakemore
So we agree, having rich corporate owners in positions of political power are morally wrong.
I think the existence of political office makes the thing we both agree as immoral an inevitability.
Why do you think it keeps happening over and over ?
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Originally posted by ilikecomicsWell, Americans often say they don’t have true democracy. They’re a corporate federation. All you’re proposing is stopping the only thing stopping the corps getting full control.
I think the existence of political office makes the thing we both agree as immoral an inevitability.Why do you think it keeps happening over and over ?
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Originally posted by Blakemore
Jimmy Carter wanted to give the Panama Canal back to Panama and refused to give weapons to Iran in the October surprise.Corporations used their money to lobby Reagan and do the exact opposite. Reagan even had a plan to put weapons in space!
You prove my point that as long as governmental power is a lever the rich and powerful can pull, they will.
Otherwise, they wouldn't care if Carter or Reagan are in office.
You implicitly admit that the state is more powerful than corporations.
Originally posted by ilikecomicscorrupt corporations + government lobbyists = bad government.
I'm making the point that the bad business guys always use the state to have their ends met.If you remove the state, the only business people that remain are good guys.
See what I mean when I say you’ve got it backwards?
Originally posted by 0nenessYouTube video
We must pay the Church.🙏🙏
Originally posted by 0neness
YouTube video
Scorsese slaps.
Originally posted by ilikecomics
I'm making the point that the bad business guys always use the state to have their ends met.If you remove the state, the only business people that remain are good guys.
No. Corporations get away with whatever they can until the government catches up with them. An analogy is elite athletes using performance enhancing drugs to ensure they have a competitive advantage over the competition. They'll use a specific drug until the regulatory body catches up and bans them from using it then they will move onto to something else.
Corporations will use unethical practices to maximise their profits until those actions are legislated against. Once they deem legislation to be too prohibitive they will move their operations to somewhere with less restrictive legislation. That's why manufacturing moved away from the western world to the far east. Now that the far east countries are realising the damage being caused production is now beginning to shift away from there and towards Africa.
Another indication of this is the correlation between the richest, most powerful corporations in the world and the most unethical corporations in the world. If government regulation was removed they would revert back to the practices that maximise profit.
You argued previously that this wouldn't happen because of damaged reputation caused by their actions. They don't care about localised environmental damage because only the people in that local area care.
That's why no one cares what Nestle did in Africa or about all the companies that still exist today that collaborated with the Nazi regime. Or any other number of massive scandals that, in your ideal world, would've and should've meant the death knell for those companies but didn't.