Slashdot Mirror

What makes you think corporations becoming larger than the government will happen? That's one of many things that anti-competition law is designed to prevent.

Are you sarcastic? I'm sure you are!

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295938213_Multinational_corporations_A_new_global_dimension_-_Corporations_bigger_than_governments
• http://www.globalissues.org/article/234/the-rise-of-corporations
• http://www.globalissues.org/article/51/corporations-and-human-rights
• https://www.corporations.org/system/top100.html
• http://www.globalissues.org/article/52/pharmaceutical-corporations-and-medical-research
• https://archive.skoll.org/2011/02/21/corporations-are-more-powerful-than-governments/
• https://www.businessinsider.com/25-corporations-bigger-tan-countries-2011-6?op=1
• https://business.time.com/2012/01/27/are-companies-more-powerful-than-countries/
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/5-myths-about-big-business-vs-big-government/
• https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/16598-focus-monsanto-protection-act-proves-corporations-more-powerful-than-government
• http://www.globalissues.org/article/54/tax-avoidance-and-havens-undermining-democracy
• https://makewealthhistory.org/2014/02/03/the-corporations-bigger-than-nations/
• https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/02/control-nation-states-corporations-autonomy-neoliberalism
• http://www.confrontcorporatepower.org/how-corporations-influence-the-government/
• https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/15/these-25-companies-are-more-powerful-than-many-countries-multinational-corporate-wealth-power/

South Korea is also known as "Republic of Samsung":

• http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/25/business/fi-samsung25
• https://ipezone.blogspot.com/2008/04/dismantling-of-republic-of-samsung.html
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-s-korea-the-republic-of-samsung/2012/12/09/71215420-3de1-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html

"I came from China, I know how terrible fascism is, and unfortunately I am seeing the same thing happens here, more and more"

The U.S. government has killed an estimated 11,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war. Often contractor companies do the violence, or arrange more violence so that they can make more money and so the managers can get promotions. It's killing for profit.

Why the Vietnam war? The CIA and Vietnam. "... from June, 1954 to June, 1963, that is, until two years after Dulles left office (August, 1961) the CIA was absolutely and exclusively dominant in creating and carrying out the policies which led eventually to the Vietnam War."

"To the CIA too must go the credit for the creation of the secret police forces of Diemâ(TM)s brother Ngo Dinh Nhu which prevented dissent within Vietnam until it was too late to change things."

The intention of the U.S. financial community to profit from corrupt practices was well known long before the crash in 2008. In the Berkshire Hathaway 2002 Annual Report (PDF), Warren Buffett said this on page 14: "I can assure you that the marking errors in the derivatives business have not been symmetrical. Almost invariably, they have favored either the trader who was eyeing a multi-million dollar bonus or the CEO who wanted to report impressive 'earnings' (or both). The bonuses were paid, and the CEO profited from his options. Only much later did shareholders learn that the reported earnings were a sham."

The Iraq war made huge amounts of money for the Bush family and Dick Cheney: Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War. That destruction will continue for decades: The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End.

This damned plane has been a big scam from the beginning.

But, but it's Bernie Sanders's pet project! And he's a man of the Worker, errr ... People! FREE TUTITION FOR RICH KIDS! Goddamnit, no .... F35's FOR EVERYBODY!

ah, hell, forget it - it's more rational to vote for Vermin.

The problems with corruption in the U.S. government are numerous and severe.

Matt Taibbi gives a huge amount of detail about the collapse of U.S. society as we have known it: The Divide. Quoting from the Amazon web page: "New York Times bestseller -- Named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews".

The book, House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, tells how Bush and Cheney started a war so that they could make money. One of hundreds of books and articles about the profits and violence and dishonesty: Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War. Quoting: "Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops."

#1 Best Seller: America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Room Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System.

Here is part of a transcript of a 60 Minutes show: Dissecting Obamacare:

"Brill argues that Obamacare is the product of what he calls an "orgy of lobbying" and backroom deals in which just about everyone with a stake in the $3-trillion-a-year health industry came out ahead - except the taxpayers.

"Steven Brill: Good news: More people are gonna get health care. Bad news: We have no way in the world that we're gonna be able to pay for it.

"Steven Brill says that the outrage is what the Affordable Care Act doesn't do.

"Steven Brill: It doesn't do anything on medical malpractice reform. It doesn't do anything to control drug prices. It doesn't do anything to control hospital profits.

"Lesley Stahl: So all the cost controlling side of this just went by the wayside?

"Steven Brill: 99 percent of it."

"This is not fraud, it's marketing."

Protecting citizens against public fraud is one of the major functions of a healthy government. As I said above, I can remember when the U.S. government protected its citizens against fraud.

If rich people and corporations are allowed to be extraordinarily destructive to everyone in the world as a way of making money, then there is effectively a dictatorship and citizens are, effectively, slaves.

Matt Taibbi gives a huge amount of detail about the collapse of U.S. society as we have known it: The Divide. Quoting from the Amazon web page: "New York Times bestseller -- Named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews".

Read the book, House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger. Bush and Cheney started a war so that they could make money. One of hundreds of books and articles: Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War. Quoting:

"Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops."

And yet, local, state and federal agencies were found guilty of conspiring to assassinate him. http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/16784-how-the-government-killed-martin-luther-king-jr

People tend to forget that MLK said more than "I have a dream."

Exactly what type of "horrible shit" are you talking about?

Basically, standard big business horrible stuff. This is behavior that lots of megacorps engage in, Monsanto just uses a new set of tools.

I don't consider their GM stuff to be evil, but Monsanto's predatory practices are pretty shameful, and organic farmers do tend to take it in the shorts, more than most.

Monsanto is certainly not alone in these types of scandals.

This is one reason why I think that classifying businesses as "people" is ridiculous. If people behaved the way that corporations do, they would be locked up. However, corporations are rewarded for that type of behavior.

He picked the wrong battle.

Whenever a Mr. Natural starts lecturing me about how we need to all return to hunter-gathere lifestyle, I counter with "No problem! We just need to exterminate about 90% of the human population on Earth. Would you like to start?"

Whether we like it or not, the future is here, and we can't survive without factory farming, container transportation, nuclear and fossil energy, farm fishing, etc.

There's just too damn many of us.

The only answer to "too damn many" is "culling the herd."

And where exactly do you get help for a kid like this? http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/272-39/15073-i-am-adam-lanzas-mother

Homicides: Jan. 1, 2007 to Nov. 10, 2012

Blunt force 246

Gunshot 3,227

Other 192

Stabbing 438

Strangled 47

Unspecified 99

Even if all the Other and Unspecified were done by "beer bottles", they would only total 6.9% of the total. Stabbing, which is the second largest category, are 10.3%. Guns are 75.9% of the total. In the real world, guns are used in homicide three times out of four. These numbers ignore suicide and accidental gun deaths, which would make the gun death numbers even larger.

Gun homicides in Great Britten vs. the US http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/335-156/12554-58-murders-a-year-by-firearms-in-britain-8775-in-us

Number of Murders by Firearms, US, 2010: 8,775

Number of Murders, Britain, 2011*: 638 (Since Britain's population is 1/5 that of US, this is equivalent to 3,095 US murders)

Number of Murders by firearms, Britain, 2011*: 58 (equivalent to 290 US murders)

Number of Murders by crossbow in Britain, 2011*: 2 (equivalent to 10 US murders).

The international comparisons show conclusively that fewer gun owners per capita produce not only fewer murders by firearm, but fewer murders per capita overall.

In the case of Britain, firearms murders are 30 times fewer than in the US per capita.

* British crime statistics are September to September, so 2011 is actually 2010-2011.

If I fear for my life because of someone with a beer bottle, it's because they are drinking and driving. So who is responding with "ignorant panic"?

Murdoch's NewsCorp makes Billions of Dollars in Profit/Revenues a year, and is one of the largest media companies in the world. Yet NewsCorp only pays about 4% in Taxes on all this income, thanks to an intricate network of hundreds of shell-companies in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Article to back this up: http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/276-74/6796-focus-pay-your-taxes-murdoch ---- So, Rupert Murdoch, perhaps you should pay your taxes properly before you go after anyone for "Piracy"? You owe multiple governments and territories hundreds of millions of Dollars in back taxes. --- Perhaps you should clean up your "Tax Piracy", before you go after hapless individuals for "Content Piracy"? --- Better yet, run your "archconservative" NewsCorp dinosaur biz into the ground for good, so more ethical, talented, objective news and content producers can fill the gap you leave in the market.

"How does efficient market theory explain all the millionaire and billionaire stock traders Manhattan and London?"

It doesn't, of course. But... given hundreds of years of solid evidence, it should. So... what is the difference? How did those things happen?

A few were smart. A few got lucky. Many of them already HAD family money.

Most of the rest is due to market-fixing, cronyism, insider trading, etc.

When the free market is allowed to work, it works. But we have over 100 years now of government and insider interference in the free markers, to the extent that they can hardly be called free anymore.

Sorry, but you can't point to a system that has been almost hopelessly corrupted, and call that evidence that the system as designed doesn't work. That's a logical fallacy.

Today's Wall Street is very, very far from a "free market".

"It certainly doesn't resemble a casino."

It most definitely does. But let me clarify a bit what I meant.

TRADITIONALLY, stock investment helped raise capital for large projects. (Which was also the reason for the formation of corporations: large projects could be funded that even rich individuals could not afford to undertake.)

But even given that, stock trading is still indeed gambling. There is no justification for calling it anything BUT. You put out your cash and hope it grows. But it may not. If you trade at random, given many transactions you should have about a 50/50 chance of staying even. BUT... just like a casino, there is a house advantage here too: there are usually percentages or fees charged for each transaction. So again, if you assume randomness, odds are you will actually end up in the red.

There is nothing about this scheme that differs from gambling. Not... one... single... thing.

And just as with gambling, corruption has been (is) rampant.

But even aside from that, what I was getting at is: the majority of wall street investment today is in one or another form of derivative. And a derivative is, quite literally, betting on other people's bets. Unlike regular stock investment, it produces nothing, and does not finance production. It simply finances the financiers.

You can argue with me all you like about that, but it doesn't change the facts. For the most part, Wall Street today has very little to do with actual capitalism. Instead it has to do with Corporatism and Governmentism (which, put together, were defined by Benito Mussolini as "fascism"). There is very little resemblance, even superficially, to actual "capitalism" to be had there.

I think the point is abundantly clear in the following article:

http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/186-186/4184-net-neutrality-is-a-ruse

Designate Comcast as a common carrier and watch how fast they split their business between content and carriage. For as long as Comcast is connected to a public network carrying data from other networks to their customers, they are a common carrier, no matter what the FCC says. If Comcast wants to remain a private network, they can cut their connection to the Internet and provide their own content to their users.

True. Texas police already have them.

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/316-20/8187-new-texas-police-drone-could-carry-weapons

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Texas-civil-libertarians-have-eye-on-police-drones-2245644.php

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/16/drone-gives-texas-law-enforcement-birds-eye-view-on-crime/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS5vm149vGc

If government always works in favor of common citizens is a different matter, but your statement, "government does not exist to serve you," leads only two places: anarchy or a government you expect to only wrong you, and thus a lack of surprise or anger when it does. I consider neither of those options good, so I have to go with you being full of it.

Well, you can deny reality all you like, if it makes you happy. Reality is that 26,783 Americans account for the greatest share of campaign contributions, and government exists to serve them. It will, as a backup plan serve retirees, who have plenty of time for political action, but it serves primarily the 27k people who personally donate, and who direct the lobbyist fundraisers to support re-election campaigns. Think about that the next time you sign over 15.3% of your salary to keep retirees fed and drugged.

Yeah: "nuclear power plant working perfectly fine as planned" doesn't make the news.

You know, as the majority of them do, year after year, decade after decade.

There are plenty of nuclear failures all the time, but of course they are not publicized. America reactors are known to contain unreported defects. Meanwhile areas around threatened reactors in the USA have been declared no-fly zones. You don't do this unless it's actually dangerous, or you have something to hide, or both. You know, like when they declared the entire gulf to be a no-fly zone in an attempt to hide the extent of the devastation... and of the spraying of dispersants, which occurred at a level vastly above what it should be. No-fly zones are for hiding malfeasance, barring long-running ones above airports and test sites.

This article documents Bill Gates and his associations as well as his foundations holdings rather well and given that information, I find good reason to question his motives. I simply don't believe he is as charitable as he wants us to believe. The article is quoted in relevant part as follows:

"According to the Wall Street Journal(1), among others, the Gates Foundation has holdings in:

- Walmart (9.2 million shares)
- McDonald's (9.4 million shares)
- ExxonMobil (6.3 million shares)
- Berkshire Hathaway (76.4 million Class B shares)
- Monsanto (500,000 shares)"

Some might find him to be accurate in his assessment of the vaccine situation, but they might at least consider the source. I'm not so sure myself.

...Comcast, AT&T and others are really just common carriers. That's why I say that Net Neutrality is a ruse.