No, it's not. That's what you've been told, taught and conditioned. All the time, every day ordinary people deal with moral issues and make decisions that are based on their own internal morals. It is not difficult. And the only reason, I believe, you say morality is for philosophers is because you're cruelly and sadistically practical and favor the utilitarian solution to a problem, regardless of what people want. This only works if you impose your will and force other people to do your bidding so that YOUR ideas/solutions are implemented.
Now that we have that out of the way, let me explain some things for you. The solution to any and all problems is for you to NOT FUCKING SOLVE THEM. Period. Absolutely, just stay the hell out of it. There is no morality involved in this concept; you just have to realize that what YOU think is irrelevant, as people will have their own individual/personal morals and live their lives based off of them. If you don't like it, move elsewhere and barricade your sound-proof home in a mountain. While the rest of us voluntarily solve our own problems, and work together in cooperative groups (whatever size they may be) to solve the problems we deem necessary, and in the way we deem moral and right.
Does the land belong to someone? Yes? Then Exxon is aggressing by stealing resources from someone's land. In that example, the land owner is the victim and Exxon is the aggressor. Likewise if the landowner and Exxon voluntarily decided to enter into an agreement between one another where natural resources are mined from the landowner's land and shipped overseas for Exxon to sell, and the Mexican government forbids it or imposes restrictions on it, then the Mexican government is the aggressor.
I understand, and I didn't quite want to come out with a comprehensive solution to all war and aggression in two small paragraphs. Just an overal idea and sentiment as you say. It definitely is something that we have to approach, and quite quickly.
Fantastic idea, but you speak about "an aggressor" as if he/she was easy to identify, nations go to war, not individuals. It's really hard to sort out the good guys from the bad in this situation. Their is no single aggressor in any war, their is only a tangled web of politics and agendas of the nations involved and a load of soldiers from both sides either paid to fight or deluded/damaged/desperate enough to resort to wholesale violence as a way to solve problems.
I guess it does require a bit of a specific and clearly defined solution in order to not be unambigous. Start with the person that authorized the act of aggression. As things are currently, that is a 'solution' because the slaughter of a nation's soldiers doesn't quite convince the populace of that nation to prosecute their own leaders. If anything, in each state they are usually behind a veil that prevents them from being accountable for the decisions they made during power. Hence why the "external" solution to the problem.
Also the only way to make your "law" meaningful would be to enforce it and to do so would require you to have a standing army that you could bring to war should the need arise.
I guess that depends on your definition of "enforce". Perhaps I'm naive, but I think that there are other ways of punishing individuals and states for not conforming to what we as a society have collectively deemed as acceptable. Ostracism and trade embargoes come to mind first. Having states at all, where power and resources can be consolidated and concentrated means that a military will eventually form, even if it is just to defend. Which they might eventually use to bully, attack or intimidate. I'm not entirely sure how we can approach this problem just yet, short of getting rid of states entirely and thereby not allowing power to concentrate.
I think this attitude makes you an aggressor (to use your own phrase). You are advocating wholesale genocide of an enemy nation because their leaders are warmongering retards? You have masterfully over-simplified and compartmentalized the complexity of why nations go to war into the classical good vs bad scenario except, you have defined your own rules about why the bad guy is bad.
There are but a handful of very specific scenarios where the soldiers of a warring state are not complicit in the actual war. If you have a choice, you shouldn't opt to kill/murder. No matter how poor, desperate or indoctrinated you are. You make it seem like there is a huge grey area of motivations for participating as a soldier in a war, as if that can excuse their actions. Off the top of my head, the scenarios mentioned above: Threat of direct violence against family. Mentally challenged, and thus tricked. Brainwashed/lied into thinking the other enemy is an aggressor, so you think you're actually defending. In a digital, and increasingly connected society, a lot of the options for tricking/forcing people into doing things is quickly diminishing. The moral line needs to be drawn at the choice each individual soldier makes.
"There are times, sir, when... men of good conscience cannot blindly follow orders." Jean-Luc Picard (ST:TNG)
Imposing your rule over another group of people sounds quite a lot like aggression to me. The way to tell this is if that other group tried to go against your will (whatever that may be), and you have to keep them in line with violence, imprisonment, or the threat of either, then you are clearly aggressing.
The only "law of war" that we need is one that states that war is not allowed, period. If you're an aggressor, you are breaking the "law of war". Seriously, we've come too far as a civilized society to still condone such a barbaric practice as war. If you do anything more than to defend yourself, then you become an aggressor. As far as I'm concerned, if you're an aggressor you forfeit all "rights" to your own safety as you are attempting to deprive others of similar rights, thus making pretty much everything against you fair game. That doesn't even touch on the moral aspects about compelling individuals to murder on your behalf by virtue of conscription and other practices that have a similar effect. And those that get paid to do such aggressing are nothing more than paid murderers.
On a side note, quite a few world leaders (ahem, America) have broken both the above simplistic "law of war", as well as actual torture, war and genocide laws of war that we already have. And we, as a supposedly civilized society, don't even have the backing/support/power to pressure their countries for any sort of accountability. Not to mention the fact that there is no ruling body that has any sort of jurisdiction to remedy this by getting those horrible individuals to a war crimes court. The current laws of war don't work, and are only there to make it unfeasible for smaller/less-powerful countries to fight in an asymmetric force situation. A similar thing was imposed on guerilla warfare when "formal" and "gentleman" warfare required countless fodder to stand in neat long rows to be slaughtered one at a time; essentially making war about who had more cannon fodder.
I'm glad you know the answer, as I've come to realize that the majority of people I talk to about import duties/tariffs don't.
It may very well be the case that quality products are better, and consumers will pick them. But what often happens is that tariffs/duties are applied flat out on broad categories. So if your country doesn't make the product, even an expensive and environmentally friendly one, then you're out of luck and you have to import the product with the tariff on top of it. This is the case of where I live currently, South Africa. Have you ever wondered why so many Asian sellers on eBay advertise "customs tracking and services"? It's their way of saying, 'we'll lie on the packaging for you so you don't pay tariffs'. This isn't the only bad thing that ends up happening to most tariffs. They usually also don't even apply on a country by country basis. So if I were to say import an American product over a Chinese one, I'd pay regardless if I pick the 'environmentally' friendly country. I'd argue that this is specifically because tariffs are protectionist rather than being some type of 'ostracism' or 'moral' enforcement.
I wouldn't quite say that the solution is 'capitalistically clean'. It ends up being a usage tax because it gets imposed on those products that people want/need and end up buying. In that sense I would argue that it already picks the winner, and that is the individual who doesn't buy it. As well as making the foreign producer a 'loser' in that they have a loss of sales. I don't think it can encourage foreign countries' producers in changing their standards. Their standard is what it is, and what you're seeking to do is to raise their general level of prices. From their point of view it's unfair, and I agree with that. The west had it's manufacturing revolution at the expense of the world's environment, so why shouldn't they. It may not have the best end result for the planet, but protectionism is a cat & mouse game with no end in sight until we stop meddling with the playing field entirely.
At the end of the day, these tariffs are a convenient political 'point' that politicians use to incense/rile the populace over, and to pander to the unions and special interest groups who are somehow no longer competitive on the global marketplace. With the added benefit of the tariffs lining the tax coffers at the expense of the local populace. And yes, this also hurts the foreign individuals. You know, the ones we so desperately want to get out of 'poverty', 'child labour' and 'unsafe work conditions'. We do so by putting their employers out of business, and then we wonder why the people there become more and more desperate for work, at the expense of lower wages and work conditions.
A proper response would be not to weaken local regulations, but to impose tariffs on imported goods manufactured in conditions exploiting such socialized costs.
Do you know who truly ends up paying those tariffs you propose?
Laws like this are generally only enforced when it is convenient for those that make the rules. When they are no longer convenient, they go out the window.
Government and the state are not the same thing as "society" or "community". Either way, your logical fallacy is false dillemna. "Either we have a state that steals money as taxes, or we must live as hermits".
I won't say unions are godsends, but there has to be some check on industry or we end up with legal slavery.
10-50% of your income is taken away from you every year, and you think capitalism is the problem? My, have you got lots to learn. For every 10 minutes you work, 1-5 of it was for the state. You can mangle the definitions, and twist the meanings all you want... but at the end of the day, eventually you'll realize that you already are a legal slave, just not a 100% one.
FrdmFghtr, or shall I say "FreedomFighter". Ironic how you think you're fighting for "freedom" by endorsing an institution that by its very nature is there to restrict some, and "enforce" other freedoms. Take a step back, and ask yourself if you're really free. And then take another step back and ask yourself if other people will be truly free if your ideal government is in power.
That's very interesting, I've never heard of a place that does that. Which country/city do you live in that doesn't have government-provided trash disposal service? What is it like, are you exploited in any way by 4 private haulers that you mention (prices, services, etc)? Are there difficult government licenses involved if one wants to become a trash hauler, or can any old person open up such a business?
He's using the same one everyone else in his jurisdiction does, where (like every where else in the world) "ownership" is defined by statute.
I.e. implying that the definition of the word varies from place to place. The world is a very varied place, and I've been in places where "ownership" was "defined in statute" up until the point when the "statute" changed and individuals no longer "owned" certain things. That tells me diddly about what "ownership" means. Not only that but it, as well as the example in the other post, are contrary to the definition that most people accept in their minds without resorting to "statute".
I understand that you are perfectly content with taking the spoon fed definition of ownership defined by "statute", however there are some of us that tend to think about these things as innate properties by virtue of us being human beings. Welcome to the world without spoon-fed state definitions; it's wonderfully ethical, and if you can stomach it and go past your own hypocritical definitions then you definitely should try it sometime.
If you don't like it you have options. You can quit if you're an employee. You can not buy their product if you're a customer. You can choose to not do business with them if you're a supplier (good luck on that one, buddy). Or, if you're an investor/stockholder, then you're entirely welcome to sell your shares and get rid of whatever benefit you might get by investing in that company. Life isn't sunshine, rainbows and peaches.
You also forgot to mention the biggest factor of what makes a company profitable, more so than your other petty complaints. A company gains profit by doing something in the market better than it's competitors. It identifies a need no one is servicing, or a new market that no one has anticipated. The great success stories are all around for you to see, AC. Open your eyes, and see it for what it is. Someone had a good idea, and implemented it before you did. No need to bag on them for making a profit out of it because that just sounds like jealousy on your part.
I don't condone any unethical behaviour by a company/manager/corporation. So exploitation doesn't factor into my comments above. Of course there will always be ass holes out there that want to abuse loopholes, use government coercion to get their way, and generally do unethical things. That's not fair game, and they should be called out and punished for whatever damage they do.
I call bullshit on this. Union membership was never "most" or a majority of the population. The highest it has ever been in the US was in the 50's when it was in the low 30s% range, and has been declining steadily ever since. Probably as a consequence of people realizing that unions have done all they can for worker rights, and all they're interested in now is keeping their power/income at the expense of workers' and the companies both. I didn't even have to look hard for this stat, as it's already on Wikipedia here.
From what I've heard union members negotiate salaries based on seniority, and not on any sort of merit. It may bring security/assurance to a lot of people, but it does not distribute fairly according to effort/skill.
Not necessarily. If you own a listed historic building then destroying or altering it is a criminal offence. There are quite a few other examples where you can own something but not legally destroy it.
Well then, you don't really own that building; it's not your property. Then you're just licensing the right to lease out floor space in the damn thing, or something. As soon as you start mangling definitions, then you can do anything to this world.
Just like video game publishers would love for you to believe you "own" a copy of their game, when in fact you're just "licensing" it from them. The double-definitions and re-definitions needs to stop here, else the road it goes down isn't very pretty.
Just because you have an anarchist / libertarian / bully hardon for making governments do your bidding, doesn't mean the real world works like that.
Well, I'm not going to bother to be subtle about my response to you. Fuck you. No seriously, what in the world does being libertarian or anarchist have to do with a corporation making a government do it's bidding? Have you been listening to your statist propaganda so much that you can't even hold a coherent definition of the ideologies you are against?
You know, it's one thing when you disagree with an ideology and debate against it. But it's a completely big douchebag thing to present positively incorrect definitions and associations about that ideology. It's intellectually dishonest, it shows that you have no valid arguments for attacking that ideology and that the only way you can do so is by demonizing it. Like your insinuation that anarchists/libertarians and bullies are interchangeable terms. Like your ridiculous insinuation that anarchists/libertarians believe that governments should be at the beckon of corporations. Sorry, buddy, but we believe no such thing, and you'd be hard-pressed to prove it if we call you out on your non-sense. Guess what, I'm calling you out.
Taxing the corporations won't fix anything. They're not magical little ponies that make money out of thin air because all the money they have comes from us. If you tax a corporation, the money they use to pay those taxes will be absorbed by either smaller salaries for employees or by higher prices in the products/services they sell. Either way, we pay.
On a side note, I understand why you want to tax corporations. In your mind (and a lot of others') they make a butt load of money, and that is true. In essence, your "corporate taxation" idea is essentially "tax the rich" misguidedly re-branded. This is probably a very fundamental thing that I don't think we'll agree on. It feels good to think that we can just tax the well-off to fix all the ails in our world. They can probably handle the increased taxes, anyways. But I tend to look at it more from a ethical point of view rather than a practical one. Sure, taxing the super rich may work to help us a lot, but it's not ethical. It definitely isn't ethical in a society that prides itself on "equality".
However, getting rid of "corporate welfare" is very important and it's something I completely agree with you on. Lots of industries currently have a slew of government aide. Ranging from tax rebates on certain activities, to lowered tariffs, to all sorts of exemptions that the rest of us don't have. Finally, government has been aiding quite a few cartels over the years. All of these things result in subsidies paid by our taxes, or higher costs for the things we buy.
Following from my above paragraph regarding government aide to certain industries. A lot of the inequality we today see between the ultra rich and the rest of us is quite possibly the direct result of government meddling in the free market. We like to think of government as our only means of recourse against the greedy but often times government is the very tool that the greedy use to milk us. Fix that, and most of the problems you feel the need to fix by taxing the rich or corporations will vanish.
The problem with having a currency that has no "intrinsic" value is that it needs to be issued somehow to individuals. Either it's random, and distributed equally to all individuals, or it's given to favorable parties (like it is now). Not only that, but you need to keep this "issuing" in check, otherwise your currency will quickly be worth diddly.
I have absolutely no idea why you're obsessed about the price of your cheeseburger being constant. Life isn't all sunshine and rainbows, and you can't get daddy government to fix it for you so you can have a worry-free life. Just leave the rest of us the fuck alone; why is that too hard for people like you to understand?
Yet you go on about all of your "God" given rights....I don't think you'll end up where you think you will. Say hi to Stalin for me.
They're not "god" given rights. They are inherent rights that every individual possesses. And I'll end up exactly where I think I will end up when I die: No where, because I don't believe in your superstitious non-sense. This is our only life, and I choose to live it morally and without infringing other people's rights. Say hi to Santa Claus for me, you'll find him in your head with all your other imaginary friends.
Unfortunately, the gun proponents often sound like the real reason that they want a gun is that they're really, really hoping that they will get the chance to shoot someone dead.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, just stay out of everyone else's lives.
Morality is for the philosophers.
No, it's not. That's what you've been told, taught and conditioned. All the time, every day ordinary people deal with moral issues and make decisions that are based on their own internal morals. It is not difficult. And the only reason, I believe, you say morality is for philosophers is because you're cruelly and sadistically practical and favor the utilitarian solution to a problem, regardless of what people want. This only works if you impose your will and force other people to do your bidding so that YOUR ideas/solutions are implemented.
Now that we have that out of the way, let me explain some things for you. The solution to any and all problems is for you to NOT FUCKING SOLVE THEM. Period. Absolutely, just stay the hell out of it. There is no morality involved in this concept; you just have to realize that what YOU think is irrelevant, as people will have their own individual/personal morals and live their lives based off of them. If you don't like it, move elsewhere and barricade your sound-proof home in a mountain. While the rest of us voluntarily solve our own problems, and work together in cooperative groups (whatever size they may be) to solve the problems we deem necessary, and in the way we deem moral and right.
Does the land belong to someone? Yes? Then Exxon is aggressing by stealing resources from someone's land. In that example, the land owner is the victim and Exxon is the aggressor. Likewise if the landowner and Exxon voluntarily decided to enter into an agreement between one another where natural resources are mined from the landowner's land and shipped overseas for Exxon to sell, and the Mexican government forbids it or imposes restrictions on it, then the Mexican government is the aggressor.
Fantastic idea, but you speak about "an aggressor" as if he/she was easy to identify, nations go to war, not individuals. It's really hard to sort out the good guys from the bad in this situation. Their is no single aggressor in any war, their is only a tangled web of politics and agendas of the nations involved and a load of soldiers from both sides either paid to fight or deluded/damaged/desperate enough to resort to wholesale violence as a way to solve problems.
I guess it does require a bit of a specific and clearly defined solution in order to not be unambigous. Start with the person that authorized the act of aggression. As things are currently, that is a 'solution' because the slaughter of a nation's soldiers doesn't quite convince the populace of that nation to prosecute their own leaders. If anything, in each state they are usually behind a veil that prevents them from being accountable for the decisions they made during power. Hence why the "external" solution to the problem.
Also the only way to make your "law" meaningful would be to enforce it and to do so would require you to have a standing army that you could bring to war should the need arise.
I guess that depends on your definition of "enforce". Perhaps I'm naive, but I think that there are other ways of punishing individuals and states for not conforming to what we as a society have collectively deemed as acceptable. Ostracism and trade embargoes come to mind first. Having states at all, where power and resources can be consolidated and concentrated means that a military will eventually form, even if it is just to defend. Which they might eventually use to bully, attack or intimidate. I'm not entirely sure how we can approach this problem just yet, short of getting rid of states entirely and thereby not allowing power to concentrate.
I think this attitude makes you an aggressor (to use your own phrase). You are advocating wholesale genocide of an enemy nation because their leaders are warmongering retards? You have masterfully over-simplified and compartmentalized the complexity of why nations go to war into the classical good vs bad scenario except, you have defined your own rules about why the bad guy is bad.
There are but a handful of very specific scenarios where the soldiers of a warring state are not complicit in the actual war. If you have a choice, you shouldn't opt to kill/murder. No matter how poor, desperate or indoctrinated you are. You make it seem like there is a huge grey area of motivations for participating as a soldier in a war, as if that can excuse their actions. Off the top of my head, the scenarios mentioned above: Threat of direct violence against family. Mentally challenged, and thus tricked. Brainwashed/lied into thinking the other enemy is an aggressor, so you think you're actually defending. In a digital, and increasingly connected society, a lot of the options for tricking/forcing people into doing things is quickly diminishing. The moral line needs to be drawn at the choice each individual soldier makes.
"There are times, sir, when... men of good conscience cannot blindly follow orders." Jean-Luc Picard (ST:TNG)
Imposing your rule over another group of people sounds quite a lot like aggression to me. The way to tell this is if that other group tried to go against your will (whatever that may be), and you have to keep them in line with violence, imprisonment, or the threat of either, then you are clearly aggressing.
The only "law of war" that we need is one that states that war is not allowed, period. If you're an aggressor, you are breaking the "law of war". Seriously, we've come too far as a civilized society to still condone such a barbaric practice as war. If you do anything more than to defend yourself, then you become an aggressor. As far as I'm concerned, if you're an aggressor you forfeit all "rights" to your own safety as you are attempting to deprive others of similar rights, thus making pretty much everything against you fair game. That doesn't even touch on the moral aspects about compelling individuals to murder on your behalf by virtue of conscription and other practices that have a similar effect. And those that get paid to do such aggressing are nothing more than paid murderers.
On a side note, quite a few world leaders (ahem, America) have broken both the above simplistic "law of war", as well as actual torture, war and genocide laws of war that we already have. And we, as a supposedly civilized society, don't even have the backing/support/power to pressure their countries for any sort of accountability. Not to mention the fact that there is no ruling body that has any sort of jurisdiction to remedy this by getting those horrible individuals to a war crimes court. The current laws of war don't work, and are only there to make it unfeasible for smaller/less-powerful countries to fight in an asymmetric force situation. A similar thing was imposed on guerilla warfare when "formal" and "gentleman" warfare required countless fodder to stand in neat long rows to be slaughtered one at a time; essentially making war about who had more cannon fodder.
I'm glad you know the answer, as I've come to realize that the majority of people I talk to about import duties/tariffs don't.
It may very well be the case that quality products are better, and consumers will pick them. But what often happens is that tariffs/duties are applied flat out on broad categories. So if your country doesn't make the product, even an expensive and environmentally friendly one, then you're out of luck and you have to import the product with the tariff on top of it. This is the case of where I live currently, South Africa. Have you ever wondered why so many Asian sellers on eBay advertise "customs tracking and services"? It's their way of saying, 'we'll lie on the packaging for you so you don't pay tariffs'. This isn't the only bad thing that ends up happening to most tariffs. They usually also don't even apply on a country by country basis. So if I were to say import an American product over a Chinese one, I'd pay regardless if I pick the 'environmentally' friendly country. I'd argue that this is specifically because tariffs are protectionist rather than being some type of 'ostracism' or 'moral' enforcement.
I wouldn't quite say that the solution is 'capitalistically clean'. It ends up being a usage tax because it gets imposed on those products that people want/need and end up buying. In that sense I would argue that it already picks the winner, and that is the individual who doesn't buy it. As well as making the foreign producer a 'loser' in that they have a loss of sales. I don't think it can encourage foreign countries' producers in changing their standards. Their standard is what it is, and what you're seeking to do is to raise their general level of prices. From their point of view it's unfair, and I agree with that. The west had it's manufacturing revolution at the expense of the world's environment, so why shouldn't they. It may not have the best end result for the planet, but protectionism is a cat & mouse game with no end in sight until we stop meddling with the playing field entirely.
At the end of the day, these tariffs are a convenient political 'point' that politicians use to incense/rile the populace over, and to pander to the unions and special interest groups who are somehow no longer competitive on the global marketplace. With the added benefit of the tariffs lining the tax coffers at the expense of the local populace. And yes, this also hurts the foreign individuals. You know, the ones we so desperately want to get out of 'poverty', 'child labour' and 'unsafe work conditions'. We do so by putting their employers out of business, and then we wonder why the people there become more and more desperate for work, at the expense of lower wages and work conditions.
A proper response would be not to weaken local regulations, but to impose tariffs on imported goods manufactured in conditions exploiting such socialized costs.
Do you know who truly ends up paying those tariffs you propose?
Laws like this are generally only enforced when it is convenient for those that make the rules. When they are no longer convenient, they go out the window.
Ah yes, the old "plug my ears, go la la la and call people names" defense mechanism. I see it has served you well.
Government and the state are not the same thing as "society" or "community". Either way, your logical fallacy is false dillemna. "Either we have a state that steals money as taxes, or we must live as hermits".
I won't say unions are godsends, but there has to be some check on industry or we end up with legal slavery.
10-50% of your income is taken away from you every year, and you think capitalism is the problem? My, have you got lots to learn. For every 10 minutes you work, 1-5 of it was for the state. You can mangle the definitions, and twist the meanings all you want... but at the end of the day, eventually you'll realize that you already are a legal slave, just not a 100% one.
The guy posted a very similar comment in the "wooden flute" story just now. Spelling mistake and all.
I don't want to fund a *lot* of things my federal tax funds on moral grounds, I still have to pay it.
Land of the free, huh?
FrdmFghtr, or shall I say "FreedomFighter". Ironic how you think you're fighting for "freedom" by endorsing an institution that by its very nature is there to restrict some, and "enforce" other freedoms. Take a step back, and ask yourself if you're really free. And then take another step back and ask yourself if other people will be truly free if your ideal government is in power.
That's very interesting, I've never heard of a place that does that. Which country/city do you live in that doesn't have government-provided trash disposal service? What is it like, are you exploited in any way by 4 private haulers that you mention (prices, services, etc)? Are there difficult government licenses involved if one wants to become a trash hauler, or can any old person open up such a business?
He's using the same one everyone else in his jurisdiction does, where (like every where else in the world) "ownership" is defined by statute.
I.e. implying that the definition of the word varies from place to place. The world is a very varied place, and I've been in places where "ownership" was "defined in statute" up until the point when the "statute" changed and individuals no longer "owned" certain things. That tells me diddly about what "ownership" means. Not only that but it, as well as the example in the other post, are contrary to the definition that most people accept in their minds without resorting to "statute".
I understand that you are perfectly content with taking the spoon fed definition of ownership defined by "statute", however there are some of us that tend to think about these things as innate properties by virtue of us being human beings. Welcome to the world without spoon-fed state definitions; it's wonderfully ethical, and if you can stomach it and go past your own hypocritical definitions then you definitely should try it sometime.
If you don't like it you have options. You can quit if you're an employee. You can not buy their product if you're a customer. You can choose to not do business with them if you're a supplier (good luck on that one, buddy). Or, if you're an investor/stockholder, then you're entirely welcome to sell your shares and get rid of whatever benefit you might get by investing in that company. Life isn't sunshine, rainbows and peaches.
You also forgot to mention the biggest factor of what makes a company profitable, more so than your other petty complaints. A company gains profit by doing something in the market better than it's competitors. It identifies a need no one is servicing, or a new market that no one has anticipated. The great success stories are all around for you to see, AC. Open your eyes, and see it for what it is. Someone had a good idea, and implemented it before you did. No need to bag on them for making a profit out of it because that just sounds like jealousy on your part.
I don't condone any unethical behaviour by a company/manager/corporation. So exploitation doesn't factor into my comments above. Of course there will always be ass holes out there that want to abuse loopholes, use government coercion to get their way, and generally do unethical things. That's not fair game, and they should be called out and punished for whatever damage they do.
I call bullshit on this. Union membership was never "most" or a majority of the population. The highest it has ever been in the US was in the 50's when it was in the low 30s% range, and has been declining steadily ever since. Probably as a consequence of people realizing that unions have done all they can for worker rights, and all they're interested in now is keeping their power/income at the expense of workers' and the companies both. I didn't even have to look hard for this stat, as it's already on Wikipedia here.
From what I've heard union members negotiate salaries based on seniority, and not on any sort of merit. It may bring security/assurance to a lot of people, but it does not distribute fairly according to effort/skill.
Not necessarily. If you own a listed historic building then destroying or altering it is a criminal offence. There are quite a few other examples where you can own something but not legally destroy it.
Well then, you don't really own that building; it's not your property. Then you're just licensing the right to lease out floor space in the damn thing, or something. As soon as you start mangling definitions, then you can do anything to this world.
Just like video game publishers would love for you to believe you "own" a copy of their game, when in fact you're just "licensing" it from them. The double-definitions and re-definitions needs to stop here, else the road it goes down isn't very pretty.
Just because you have an anarchist / libertarian / bully hardon for making governments do your bidding, doesn't mean the real world works like that.
Well, I'm not going to bother to be subtle about my response to you. Fuck you. No seriously, what in the world does being libertarian or anarchist have to do with a corporation making a government do it's bidding? Have you been listening to your statist propaganda so much that you can't even hold a coherent definition of the ideologies you are against?
You know, it's one thing when you disagree with an ideology and debate against it. But it's a completely big douchebag thing to present positively incorrect definitions and associations about that ideology. It's intellectually dishonest, it shows that you have no valid arguments for attacking that ideology and that the only way you can do so is by demonizing it. Like your insinuation that anarchists/libertarians and bullies are interchangeable terms. Like your ridiculous insinuation that anarchists/libertarians believe that governments should be at the beckon of corporations. Sorry, buddy, but we believe no such thing, and you'd be hard-pressed to prove it if we call you out on your non-sense. Guess what, I'm calling you out.
Taxing the corporations won't fix anything. They're not magical little ponies that make money out of thin air because all the money they have comes from us. If you tax a corporation, the money they use to pay those taxes will be absorbed by either smaller salaries for employees or by higher prices in the products/services they sell. Either way, we pay.
On a side note, I understand why you want to tax corporations. In your mind (and a lot of others') they make a butt load of money, and that is true. In essence, your "corporate taxation" idea is essentially "tax the rich" misguidedly re-branded. This is probably a very fundamental thing that I don't think we'll agree on. It feels good to think that we can just tax the well-off to fix all the ails in our world. They can probably handle the increased taxes, anyways. But I tend to look at it more from a ethical point of view rather than a practical one. Sure, taxing the super rich may work to help us a lot, but it's not ethical. It definitely isn't ethical in a society that prides itself on "equality".
However, getting rid of "corporate welfare" is very important and it's something I completely agree with you on. Lots of industries currently have a slew of government aide. Ranging from tax rebates on certain activities, to lowered tariffs, to all sorts of exemptions that the rest of us don't have. Finally, government has been aiding quite a few cartels over the years. All of these things result in subsidies paid by our taxes, or higher costs for the things we buy.
Following from my above paragraph regarding government aide to certain industries. A lot of the inequality we today see between the ultra rich and the rest of us is quite possibly the direct result of government meddling in the free market. We like to think of government as our only means of recourse against the greedy but often times government is the very tool that the greedy use to milk us. Fix that, and most of the problems you feel the need to fix by taxing the rich or corporations will vanish.
The problem with having a currency that has no "intrinsic" value is that it needs to be issued somehow to individuals. Either it's random, and distributed equally to all individuals, or it's given to favorable parties (like it is now). Not only that, but you need to keep this "issuing" in check, otherwise your currency will quickly be worth diddly.
I have absolutely no idea why you're obsessed about the price of your cheeseburger being constant. Life isn't all sunshine and rainbows, and you can't get daddy government to fix it for you so you can have a worry-free life. Just leave the rest of us the fuck alone; why is that too hard for people like you to understand?
Yet you go on about all of your "God" given rights....I don't think you'll end up where you think you will. Say hi to Stalin for me.
They're not "god" given rights. They are inherent rights that every individual possesses. And I'll end up exactly where I think I will end up when I die: No where, because I don't believe in your superstitious non-sense. This is our only life, and I choose to live it morally and without infringing other people's rights. Say hi to Santa Claus for me, you'll find him in your head with all your other imaginary friends.
Unfortunately, the gun proponents often sound like the real reason that they want a gun is that they're really, really hoping that they will get the chance to shoot someone dead.
I believe they're called "police officers".