Thanks for implying that I wouldn't want to see a murderer prosecuted after I've been going on and on about fairness. That really makes me feel like you understand me (not.) I don't believe in "my team vs. yours." I don't believe in dogma, and I don't believe in ideology. I believe in figuring things out for myself.
Most CEOs do not come from the middle or lower class, I really don't know where you would even get that. I recently had a conversation about that with another fellow here, he claimed that most of the wealthiest people on the planet came from middle class or lower and cited Forbes. Well, I went to Forbes list of billionaires and picked a random sample of 10 or so. Now, half of those were listed by Forbes as "self made," but upon further research into their biographies they came from upper middle class backgrounds at the lowest, and most of that 50% came from real money, just not billionaire level money. The social contacts and training one gets growing up owning class are invaluable for building a fortune.
I can tell you are a good person, and mean well. This is one of the saddest facts I've found: well meaning people with a good heart often defend unfair systems most vehemently, because if the system is really unfair, their conscience would drive them to do something about it. They realize that the system is actually grossely unfair, to the point that people who try to do something about it are often kicked in the teeth. And so their fear of not being able to survive were they to rebel against the unfairness keeps them from acknowledging the unfariness at all.
It's very sad, and I don't blame those people for being in the position the world put them in. Were I more like you, and like many on the left, I would blame them. I would claim that everyone has the opportunity to see how unfair the system is and work against it, and that those who don't are lazy or evil. But like I said, I'm not like that. I might have been unlucky in a material sense, but I've been very lucky in a metaphysical sense and have been shown things and taught lessons by the universe that most people never have the opportunity to learn. Doesn't make me better, just different.
Thanks, I really appreciate it, but the fact that you point out the obvious things like "if you are having bad luck, then examine what is making your luck," still makes me feel as though you are talking down to me. You are assuming I'm not smart enough to have figured that out and done it. Which probably comes from an ingrained belief that anyone who does do that will succeed, so obviously I must not have known to try that.
I'm not complaining about my life, I'm not poor, I have my health, and I have a wife and family that I love. It's just that I can empathize with people who's position is worse than mine, and I can see how inherently unfair the system is, precisely because I have had such bad luck. I'm sure if the system had worked for me, I never would have questioned it. I just think we can make things more equitable, that we can make the world more just and fair, and I honestly believe that the people who most vehemently defend our current system realize, perhaps subconsciously, that they have an unfair advantage in this system and are loath to change it because they know they would not do so well in a system that was really fair.
Smart ass comments are often used to cover up the fact that one has no valid counter argument. Does your mind just shut off when you hear the words "means of production?" Can you refute the notion that property is theft? What gives you the right to fence off a piece of property in the first place? These are still legitimate questions to which I have seen no satisfactory answer. Maybe you can be the first to come up with a good counter argument. Or maybe all you can do is make smart ass remarks that add nothing to the discussion. The fact that this line of reasoning is just as valid today as it was in 1895 is kind of sad, though. Means that not a lot has changed since then.
Re:Why do 10% of the people own and control 90%...
on
HP's Dunn Stepping Down
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
I don't have a self defeating thought process, you callous fuckwit. I'm an optimist, even after years of bad luck. What a hippy dippy, pie in the sky attitude. The reason you like to believe things like that is to keep your own inflated sense of self worth. If it's just luck, why, maybe you aren't the fucking hot shit you think you are. Or worse, maybe it's not luck, maybe you had unfair advantages that others didn't have. Do you really think everyone has the same opportunity? That every poor black boy from the projects can grow up to be a CEO if they just work hard enough? What a pathetic, self serving fantasy. Have fun in lala land, back here in the real world, things aren't quite that fair. Fortunately, some of us have a sense of justice, fairness, and empathy for our fellow man, and are working quite hard to make things a little more equitable.
What a nice piece of propaganda. It makes my point, this is all about placating the masses. I looked up Allenwood Prison. There are low, medium, and high security facilites. How much do you want to bet, the guy in that article was going to the low securityside of things. Oh, poor boy, he had to wait two weeks in the high security side until a bed in the country club opened up.
I looked up Eglin Prison, the other prison mentioned in the article, and its nickname is "Club Fed." Oooh! Sounds rough! Yeah, the article says things have changed. The inmates only get 300 free telephone minutes a month. How do they live!?! It also talks about the new, tougher sentencing laws, and how more white collar criminals get longer sentances and therefore have to go to tougher prisons. But the men mentioned get nothing when you think about what mandatory sentances for, say, crack dealing are. Poor black man on the street selling crack gets minimum 20 years, these guys get 3, 4, maybe 8 years for ripping people off to the tune of billions of dollars. That's fair. And when they get out, they still have options.
I took the time to look up these guys biographies, and I'm seeing a trend. Ken lay came from a poor family. Skilling comes from a middle class background. Andrew Fastow, middle class. Martha Stewart, poor. Bernie Ebbers, poor. Are you starting to get the picture here? None of the people in these high profile cases came from money. These are sacrificial lambs. Show me one person from old money who has been convicted of anything serious.
Things have not changed a bit, but you go on believing that everything's fair and just if that helps you sleep at night.
Could you be more condescending? Not everyone that works hard enough can get to the top. I can see why you would believe that, though. It worked for you. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth and all that. Why, if it weren't true, then maybe you aren't the superior being you like to think of yourself as. Maybe you just got lucky. That's a bitter pill to swallow, so I can see how you would want to hold on to your comfortable illusions. The fact is, there are a hell of a lot more smart hard working people than their are places at the top. I've worked hard all my life, and I'm damn smart, but I've had shit for luck, one setback after another. This happens. This is the real world, not happy capitalist dream land, and if you can't see that, you're deliberately blinding yourself to the truth, for the reasons I mentioned above.
Heh, I may be a liberal but I know conspiracies and I know people, and people want to believe in a great-big-something that's in control. They want it so bad, they'll take an evil something in control over "shit happens." At least, if it's an evil something in control, control is possible, and maybe if we squawk loud enough, good can be in control for a change. It validates the hypothesis of control.
I know people, and if there's one thing people can't do, it's keep their mouths shut. So keep that in mind when thinking about conspiracies. Ask yourself, "How many people would have to keep their mouths shut for this to have happened?"
Face it, shit happens. No rhyme or reason but that which you make, and yours is as good as anyone elses. No purpose, no grand plan, no Illuminati, no big man in the sky. Shit happens.
That doesn't mean these sick right wing bastards weren't creaming in their shorts when the towers came down, knowing it would mean they could implement all their draconian plans without people. Hell, they wrote a plan that basically admitted that what they needed in order to get away with implementing all their crazy shit was another pearl harbor.
Don't care enough to put a name behind your words? They must not be worth much then.
I'm not talking about giving everyone a free ride, I'm talking about equitable (not equal) access to the means of production. I'm talking about people like Mrs. Hilton, who make up far more of owning class society than you'd like to admit. Working hard doesn't garauntee you shit. Plenty of people work hard and aren't rewarded equitably for it. I just want a level playing field and a fair opportunity. I'm as smart and work as hard as any millionaire or billionaire, and it hasn't made me rich. I make an above average salery, but I don't come from the owning class, so I didn't have the opportunites to parley my skills into millions.
Wealthy doesn't mean you necesarily did anythything more than anyone else, it just means you had more opportunity in a system that is class based, not merit based.
Don't know, just using the GP poster's word, 'cause it sounded good.:) I was guessing he meant this definition: Dominant in position or influence; superior. Class mobility is a myth, a bread and circuses game to make everyone think they can be owning class. A rare few people make it, but most that do have to figuratively sell their souls to do so, buying into the owning class ideology lock, stock and barrel.
Bullshit, the rich stole the means of producion (natural resource) from the people, fenced them off, and only then worked them and claimed that working them was justification for stealing them in the first place. Kind of like if I stole a bike, painted it, then claimed it was mine because I had worked on it. They are only more productive because they control more resources. Love the way you gloss over inherited wealth, which is most of it.
Children play at what they will be doing when they grow up, in order to learn. When people were doing mostly manual labor, physical play was important. Now that more and more work is mind-work done one computer and electronic equipment, it makes sense for children to play with electronic toys and games, using their minds more than their bodies.
Bullshit. For every CEO jailed to keep the masses appeased, 10 more who did far worse go free. At that level of wealth and power, 90% of the people are sociopaths if not outright psychopaths. You can chant "class warfare rhetoric" with your fingers in your ears all you want, but the fact is, they know the difference, and we simply do not matter to people like that. They screw us over all the time, and when the story breaks, someone has to be sacrificed to appease the masses and keep up the illusion that it's only a "few bad apples" instead of a bushel of rotten worm infested fruit. Class is still an issues, as much as the owning class would like you to believe it isn't. Why do 10% of the people own and control 90% of the resources? Unless you are making over a million a year, you simply have no interests in common with these people, and anyone who defends them or mocks those who speak of class issues is traitor to their own kind, a toading sycophant who hopes that if they talk the owning class talk, they'll be let into the club. The only way your getting into that club is as a busboy.
Well, every so often the hoi polloi catch a whiff of some scandal big enough that one of the Ascendancy must be sacrificed in order to maintain the illusion that they are generally "Good People" who "Work Hard" to "Make This Country a Better Place" and "Provide Jobs." Of course, they go to Rich Man's Prison. You and I would have to pay to get into a club that nice. But this isn't that big of a scandal. To be frank, most of us hoi polloi don't care if they are only fucking over each other.
Gathering requires not only excellent navigation, but great memory, too. You need to remember where all the different types of plants are and when they will be ripe. How do you know the groups don't split up? Hunting doesn't involve navigation so much as it does tracking. You aren't navigating to a particular spot, you are following signs. And some sort of hypothetical compass isn't going to help you remember where the other members of your party are. How does how fast something is moving have anything to do with navigation?
Your logic skills are sub-par, what are you, a girl? (Joking!)
Bah. I scoff at your desert navigation. Polynesians can navigate across 3,000 miles of open ocean and arrive within a few tens of miles of their target island without using instruments.
I hear getting bit by a radioactive duck will do it. Plus you get the whole feathered look, which is nice. But there is a drawback. You know how Spidey (in the movie, anyway) got the power to sling webs? Yeah, well, you get to sling eggs. I'm not gonna mention where you get to sling them from...
Yeah, you are right in that geckos use the van-der-waals force, but they are closely related phenomenon. From wikipedia:
The London-Van der Waals force is related to the Casimir effect for dielectric media, the former the microscopic description of the latter bulk property. First detailed calculations of this were done 1955 by E. M. Lifshitz.
I should add, I can't really take credit for this idea. The three stooges comes from The Simpsons, where the doctor is explaining to Mr. Burns why he isn't dead even though he has every disease known to man, plus a few new ones present only in him. The diseases all try to get him at once and bunch up like the three stooges going through a door.
The atoms bunching up around the event horizon thing was from a science fiction book, but I can't remember the name or who wrote it. I just remember there was a tiny black hole found on the earth, encased in a hard shell of compacted matter.
Hawking radiation is when a black hole sucks in a virtual particle, not a real one. You know that vacuum is a seething cauldron of vritual particles, right? A pair of them forms, moves apart, back together and annihilates into nothingness again. This is what causes the Casimir Effect, the very thign that causes (for instance) gecko's feet to stick to things. But if one of those particles happens to get eaten by a black hole before it can rejoin its partner, the partner becomes real. The eaten particle has negative mass, decreasing the mass of the black hole, and so it appears as if the black hole lost mass by ejecting a particle.
I am not an astrophysicist, just an interested amateur, so don't take my word as any kind of gospel on the subject, but I believe your first guess is right, it would alter the atom in question, probably in a very measurable way.
The size of the event horizon does vary in size, though, and that's what matters. From further reading, I take it the holes they are talking about are so small, they can pass right through atoms without doing a thing except for possibly sucking in a subatomic particle or two.
I think microscopic black holes couldn't eat up the earth due to the three stooges problem. They are so small that only an atom at a time can get in, but the gravity is strong enough to try to suck in more, so all the atoms get bunched up around the event horizon like the three stooges all trying to get through a door at the same time. Problem nullified. Whoop hoop oop! Nyuck nyuck, why I oughta!
Initially, "limited liability" meant limiting the possible loss of investors to the amount invested. This was done to encourage long term and potentially financially ruinous investment into colonization. Imagine owing all the debts incured by a failed colony, rathe than just what you put in. It had little to do with limiting liability for crimes. In fact, the monarchs of the day realized they were creating landless fiefdoms, which could grant immense power to those recieving them and potentially challanging the power of the crown if not severely limited. So corporations initially were limited in the scope of business they could do, the area they could do it in, and the corporation would be dissolved when the last charter member died. Corporations were not created as some con to shield those in power from prosecution. Those in power were already well shielded from prosecution. But the monarchs and nobles were losing control to the rising merchant class at the time, and needed a way of getting that merchant class on board their plans for world domination. Far from creating corporations as a shield, the powers of the day knew they were a powerful tool that could be used against them, and created them with specific limits.
Corporations did not have the legal rights of a person when first created. That power was granted (in the US) by a clerical mistake! From wikipedia:
In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886), Justice Harlan delivering the opinion of the court said the question regarding whether a corporation is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment is an issue upon which the Court "did not deem it necessary to pass."
In the head notes of the case prepared by Supreme Court reporter J. C. Bancroft Davis, there is the sentence: "The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution...." Because of illness, Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite never reviewed the head notes.
Thus, without any deliberation, decision or ruling by the United States Supreme Court, the United States law has proceeded since 1886 with an accepted legal precedent based on the mistake of a clerk who reported something that never occurred.
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Thanks for implying that I wouldn't want to see a murderer prosecuted after I've been going on and on about fairness. That really makes me feel like you understand me (not.) I don't believe in "my team vs. yours." I don't believe in dogma, and I don't believe in ideology. I believe in figuring things out for myself.
Most CEOs do not come from the middle or lower class, I really don't know where you would even get that. I recently had a conversation about that with another fellow here, he claimed that most of the wealthiest people on the planet came from middle class or lower and cited Forbes. Well, I went to Forbes list of billionaires and picked a random sample of 10 or so. Now, half of those were listed by Forbes as "self made," but upon further research into their biographies they came from upper middle class backgrounds at the lowest, and most of that 50% came from real money, just not billionaire level money. The social contacts and training one gets growing up owning class are invaluable for building a fortune.
I can tell you are a good person, and mean well. This is one of the saddest facts I've found: well meaning people with a good heart often defend unfair systems most vehemently, because if the system is really unfair, their conscience would drive them to do something about it. They realize that the system is actually grossely unfair, to the point that people who try to do something about it are often kicked in the teeth. And so their fear of not being able to survive were they to rebel against the unfairness keeps them from acknowledging the unfariness at all.
It's very sad, and I don't blame those people for being in the position the world put them in. Were I more like you, and like many on the left, I would blame them. I would claim that everyone has the opportunity to see how unfair the system is and work against it, and that those who don't are lazy or evil. But like I said, I'm not like that. I might have been unlucky in a material sense, but I've been very lucky in a metaphysical sense and have been shown things and taught lessons by the universe that most people never have the opportunity to learn. Doesn't make me better, just different.
Thanks, I really appreciate it, but the fact that you point out the obvious things like "if you are having bad luck, then examine what is making your luck," still makes me feel as though you are talking down to me. You are assuming I'm not smart enough to have figured that out and done it. Which probably comes from an ingrained belief that anyone who does do that will succeed, so obviously I must not have known to try that.
I'm not complaining about my life, I'm not poor, I have my health, and I have a wife and family that I love. It's just that I can empathize with people who's position is worse than mine, and I can see how inherently unfair the system is, precisely because I have had such bad luck. I'm sure if the system had worked for me, I never would have questioned it. I just think we can make things more equitable, that we can make the world more just and fair, and I honestly believe that the people who most vehemently defend our current system realize, perhaps subconsciously, that they have an unfair advantage in this system and are loath to change it because they know they would not do so well in a system that was really fair.
Smart ass comments are often used to cover up the fact that one has no valid counter argument. Does your mind just shut off when you hear the words "means of production?" Can you refute the notion that property is theft? What gives you the right to fence off a piece of property in the first place? These are still legitimate questions to which I have seen no satisfactory answer. Maybe you can be the first to come up with a good counter argument. Or maybe all you can do is make smart ass remarks that add nothing to the discussion. The fact that this line of reasoning is just as valid today as it was in 1895 is kind of sad, though. Means that not a lot has changed since then.
I don't have a self defeating thought process, you callous fuckwit. I'm an optimist, even after years of bad luck. What a hippy dippy, pie in the sky attitude. The reason you like to believe things like that is to keep your own inflated sense of self worth. If it's just luck, why, maybe you aren't the fucking hot shit you think you are. Or worse, maybe it's not luck, maybe you had unfair advantages that others didn't have. Do you really think everyone has the same opportunity? That every poor black boy from the projects can grow up to be a CEO if they just work hard enough? What a pathetic, self serving fantasy. Have fun in lala land, back here in the real world, things aren't quite that fair. Fortunately, some of us have a sense of justice, fairness, and empathy for our fellow man, and are working quite hard to make things a little more equitable.
What a nice piece of propaganda. It makes my point, this is all about placating the masses. I looked up Allenwood Prison. There are low, medium, and high security facilites. How much do you want to bet, the guy in that article was going to the low securityside of things. Oh, poor boy, he had to wait two weeks in the high security side until a bed in the country club opened up.
I looked up Eglin Prison, the other prison mentioned in the article, and its nickname is "Club Fed." Oooh! Sounds rough! Yeah, the article says things have changed. The inmates only get 300 free telephone minutes a month. How do they live!?! It also talks about the new, tougher sentencing laws, and how more white collar criminals get longer sentances and therefore have to go to tougher prisons. But the men mentioned get nothing when you think about what mandatory sentances for, say, crack dealing are. Poor black man on the street selling crack gets minimum 20 years, these guys get 3, 4, maybe 8 years for ripping people off to the tune of billions of dollars. That's fair. And when they get out, they still have options.
I took the time to look up these guys biographies, and I'm seeing a trend. Ken lay came from a poor family. Skilling comes from a middle class background. Andrew Fastow, middle class. Martha Stewart, poor. Bernie Ebbers, poor. Are you starting to get the picture here? None of the people in these high profile cases came from money. These are sacrificial lambs. Show me one person from old money who has been convicted of anything serious.
Things have not changed a bit, but you go on believing that everything's fair and just if that helps you sleep at night.
Could you be more condescending? Not everyone that works hard enough can get to the top. I can see why you would believe that, though. It worked for you. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth and all that. Why, if it weren't true, then maybe you aren't the superior being you like to think of yourself as. Maybe you just got lucky. That's a bitter pill to swallow, so I can see how you would want to hold on to your comfortable illusions. The fact is, there are a hell of a lot more smart hard working people than their are places at the top. I've worked hard all my life, and I'm damn smart, but I've had shit for luck, one setback after another. This happens. This is the real world, not happy capitalist dream land, and if you can't see that, you're deliberately blinding yourself to the truth, for the reasons I mentioned above.
Heh, I may be a liberal but I know conspiracies and I know people, and people want to believe in a great-big-something that's in control. They want it so bad, they'll take an evil something in control over "shit happens." At least, if it's an evil something in control, control is possible, and maybe if we squawk loud enough, good can be in control for a change. It validates the hypothesis of control.
I know people, and if there's one thing people can't do, it's keep their mouths shut. So keep that in mind when thinking about conspiracies. Ask yourself, "How many people would have to keep their mouths shut for this to have happened?"
Face it, shit happens. No rhyme or reason but that which you make, and yours is as good as anyone elses. No purpose, no grand plan, no Illuminati, no big man in the sky. Shit happens.
That doesn't mean these sick right wing bastards weren't creaming in their shorts when the towers came down, knowing it would mean they could implement all their draconian plans without people. Hell, they wrote a plan that basically admitted that what they needed in order to get away with implementing all their crazy shit was another pearl harbor.
Don't care enough to put a name behind your words? They must not be worth much then.
I'm not talking about giving everyone a free ride, I'm talking about equitable (not equal) access to the means of production. I'm talking about people like Mrs. Hilton, who make up far more of owning class society than you'd like to admit. Working hard doesn't garauntee you shit. Plenty of people work hard and aren't rewarded equitably for it. I just want a level playing field and a fair opportunity. I'm as smart and work as hard as any millionaire or billionaire, and it hasn't made me rich. I make an above average salery, but I don't come from the owning class, so I didn't have the opportunites to parley my skills into millions.
Wealthy doesn't mean you necesarily did anythything more than anyone else, it just means you had more opportunity in a system that is class based, not merit based.
Don't know, just using the GP poster's word, 'cause it sounded good. :) I was guessing he meant this definition: Dominant in position or influence; superior. Class mobility is a myth, a bread and circuses game to make everyone think they can be owning class. A rare few people make it, but most that do have to figuratively sell their souls to do so, buying into the owning class ideology lock, stock and barrel.
Bullshit, the rich stole the means of producion (natural resource) from the people, fenced them off, and only then worked them and claimed that working them was justification for stealing them in the first place. Kind of like if I stole a bike, painted it, then claimed it was mine because I had worked on it. They are only more productive because they control more resources. Love the way you gloss over inherited wealth, which is most of it.
Children play at what they will be doing when they grow up, in order to learn. When people were doing mostly manual labor, physical play was important. Now that more and more work is mind-work done one computer and electronic equipment, it makes sense for children to play with electronic toys and games, using their minds more than their bodies.
Bullshit. Where's your sources on that? Or do you just like saying "pound me in the ass prison" and daydreaming about all the fun they have there?
Bullshit. For every CEO jailed to keep the masses appeased, 10 more who did far worse go free. At that level of wealth and power, 90% of the people are sociopaths if not outright psychopaths. You can chant "class warfare rhetoric" with your fingers in your ears all you want, but the fact is, they know the difference, and we simply do not matter to people like that. They screw us over all the time, and when the story breaks, someone has to be sacrificed to appease the masses and keep up the illusion that it's only a "few bad apples" instead of a bushel of rotten worm infested fruit. Class is still an issues, as much as the owning class would like you to believe it isn't. Why do 10% of the people own and control 90% of the resources? Unless you are making over a million a year, you simply have no interests in common with these people, and anyone who defends them or mocks those who speak of class issues is traitor to their own kind, a toading sycophant who hopes that if they talk the owning class talk, they'll be let into the club. The only way your getting into that club is as a busboy.
Well, every so often the hoi polloi catch a whiff of some scandal big enough that one of the Ascendancy must be sacrificed in order to maintain the illusion that they are generally "Good People" who "Work Hard" to "Make This Country a Better Place" and "Provide Jobs." Of course, they go to Rich Man's Prison. You and I would have to pay to get into a club that nice. But this isn't that big of a scandal. To be frank, most of us hoi polloi don't care if they are only fucking over each other.
Gathering requires not only excellent navigation, but great memory, too. You need to remember where all the different types of plants are and when they will be ripe. How do you know the groups don't split up? Hunting doesn't involve navigation so much as it does tracking. You aren't navigating to a particular spot, you are following signs. And some sort of hypothetical compass isn't going to help you remember where the other members of your party are. How does how fast something is moving have anything to do with navigation?
Your logic skills are sub-par, what are you, a girl? (Joking!)
Bah. I scoff at your desert navigation. Polynesians can navigate across 3,000 miles of open ocean and arrive within a few tens of miles of their target island without using instruments.
I hear getting bit by a radioactive duck will do it. Plus you get the whole feathered look, which is nice. But there is a drawback. You know how Spidey (in the movie, anyway) got the power to sling webs? Yeah, well, you get to sling eggs. I'm not gonna mention where you get to sling them from...
Hey, that's what I heard from the department of redundancy department.
I should add, I can't really take credit for this idea. The three stooges comes from The Simpsons, where the doctor is explaining to Mr. Burns why he isn't dead even though he has every disease known to man, plus a few new ones present only in him. The diseases all try to get him at once and bunch up like the three stooges going through a door.
The atoms bunching up around the event horizon thing was from a science fiction book, but I can't remember the name or who wrote it. I just remember there was a tiny black hole found on the earth, encased in a hard shell of compacted matter.
Hawking radiation is when a black hole sucks in a virtual particle, not a real one. You know that vacuum is a seething cauldron of vritual particles, right? A pair of them forms, moves apart, back together and annihilates into nothingness again. This is what causes the Casimir Effect, the very thign that causes (for instance) gecko's feet to stick to things. But if one of those particles happens to get eaten by a black hole before it can rejoin its partner, the partner becomes real. The eaten particle has negative mass, decreasing the mass of the black hole, and so it appears as if the black hole lost mass by ejecting a particle.
I am not an astrophysicist, just an interested amateur, so don't take my word as any kind of gospel on the subject, but I believe your first guess is right, it would alter the atom in question, probably in a very measurable way.
The size of the event horizon does vary in size, though, and that's what matters. From further reading, I take it the holes they are talking about are so small, they can pass right through atoms without doing a thing except for possibly sucking in a subatomic particle or two.
I think microscopic black holes couldn't eat up the earth due to the three stooges problem. They are so small that only an atom at a time can get in, but the gravity is strong enough to try to suck in more, so all the atoms get bunched up around the event horizon like the three stooges all trying to get through a door at the same time. Problem nullified. Whoop hoop oop! Nyuck nyuck, why I oughta!
Corporations did not have the legal rights of a person when first created. That power was granted (in the US) by a clerical mistake! From wikipedia: