We have been discussing how mean=spirited and nasty the presidential campaign has already become on both sides. With Republicans called Obama a socialist and a Muslim, Democrats are saying Romney would not have killed Bin Laden . . . and now that he is vampiric.
The new ad, “Steel” describes GS Technologies, a steel mill in Kansas City, Mo., that was bought by Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital. One former mill worker says “We view Mitt Romney as a job destroyer, a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us.” “Mitt the Job Destroyer” is still better than “Vlad the Impaler” but they seem to be saying that he is both.
The question is how strong the anti-vampire vote is. After all, Obama is no Buffy The Vampire Slayer himself, but then again who is?
Before the Republicans denounce the ad, they should consider that there could be some positive aspects to an undead president for the GOP:
1. They work nights.
2. They truly can take the bite out of crime.
3. They are always taking the pulse of voters.
5. One meeting of the Group of Eight would leave a group of one.
6. The GOP would finally secure the Goth vote.
7. We would finally have a president who is all bite and no bark.
8. Republicans can re-use those “Drill, Baby, Drill” signs.
9. No one is more anti-evolution than a vampire.
10. Perfect for the slogan, “Better Undead than Red.”
Source: Washington Post
“every other person should stay out of my business and I should stay out of yours.”
Too bad about that Commerce Clause and the fact that business is just as capable of inflicting tyranny as any government but especially when left unchecked.
You can try to make this about “telling you what to do” all you like because it isn’t. It’s about regulating business to keep them from abusing citizens for profit. If you’ve got a problem with that? That isn’t a liberal or a conservative issue. That’s either a vested interest or an ignorance as to the nature of economic tyranny. See, that’s what you fail to understand, Bron. You talk a lot about liberty but you’d gladly sacrifice liberty for profit as indicated by your “economics” and you’re not fooling anyone who has given the nature of liberty any serious thought. The economic tyranny resulting from letting business go unregulated is still tyranny. The only difference is that the tyrants aren’t elected and are beholding to nothing more than the bottom line and shareholder expectations, i.e. greed. History shows us time and again that when personal gain is to be had be it power or simply raw money, the abusive side of human nature wins when not constrained. You have not learned the underlying lesson of Milgram experiments. In fact, the only person you are fooling is yourself. The law is an engineered system and like all engineered systems it consists of a variety of interlocking control mechanisms that are only 1) as good as their design and 2) as good as the user. When user abuse is an issue, the option isn’t stop using the tool. It’s build a more monkey-proof tool. That is where Libertarians go wrong. The solution to malfunctioning government isn’t to do away with government or make it some arbitrarily small size but to design and implement it better and more responsive to the demos.
Bron,
People used to sell themselves back in the day for a few years, nothing wrong with that if it is voluntary and you have a good contract stipulating the terms.
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That was called indentured servitude. What if the contract says you’re only worth twelve cents an hour and you can be incarcerated if you disagree with the terms? Don’t forget what might happen if you unfortunately find out you’re no longer in control. It’s called chaos.
Tony C:
you and Gene H are way off in left field. But that isnt surprising.
Everything that comes out of your brains is about forcing somebody to do something.
Neither one of you is smart enough to tell anyone what to do. For that matter no one is. But goddamn if progressive/liberals dont think they know what is good for every body else.
We see it in our liberal friends, not all but a good many of them have really messed up personal lives. Dont get me wrong, they are great people and I love them but I would not take any instruction on how to live my life from them.
To be truthful, I think I have only met one or 2 people of any political philosophy who would make a good life model.
So the best thing is let people do their own thing within a boundary of very limited laws and government. That old, your rights end at my property line unless I am doing something which harms you. Like putting e-coli in a communal aquifer by spreading tainted fertilizer. Other than that you, Gene H and every other person should stay out of my business and I should stay out of yours.
If that is your definition of a totalitarian, you are lost in some alternative universe.
The stock market is a giant ponzi scheme. Anybody who thinks the average stockholder has any influence is delusional.
Wait until it takes a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy a loaf of bread.
Aynish. lol
@Gene: Between you and me, you are right and I am misusing the word, but I feel free to argue against Bron using HIS idiotic definitions. Since he defines ANY regulation of the market as “totalitarianism,” then to speak his moon language, a complete prohibition of regulation is in effect a regulation itself, and therefore “totalitarianism.”
Bron sounds like he is speaking English but he is really speaking a foreign language called Aynish, it sounds like English but the words have been redefined, sometimes with circularity, so it can be misleading. Which was the intent when Aynish was devised, of course, to mislead.
For the benefit of you non-Aynish speakers out there, Gene is entirely correct, and I apologize if the Aynish homonyms caused confusion.
Tony,
Ehhhh, technically that’s not the definition of totalitarian. Bron is a corporatist for certain and probably a corporatist fascist given that he thinks private enterprise should dictate the laws, but his bent to deregulation belies that he is truly a totalitarian. A totalitarian state believes in managing every aspect of the lives of citizens. For example, see North Korea. Bron may be a fool when it comes to the nature of liberty and tyranny (actually there is no may about it), but he’s not by definition a totalitarian. He likes his tyranny to be economic and organically based in the free market.
@Bron: On the contrary, YOU are the totalitarian; you would totally prohibit any rules in the market whatsoever, and totally deny people protections, and totally subject them to every evil form of danger and coercion imaginable. In your “free market” lives do not matter because all that matters to you is money; whether people live or die, are protected or not, all boils down to whether they can pay to live or pay for protection. You are the wannabe totalitarian, because you would defy the will of people, even 99.99% of them, in order to prohibit ANY regulation of the market whatsoever.
@Gene: Yes, another rule I would make if I were king: Not only are businesses not people, I would prohibit them from making any attempt to influence regulation, even by speech against it.
That would not apply to individuals spending their own money, even if they were employed by a company subject to proposed regulation, I consider that protected free speech of a citizen on a proposed law that may affect them, and it makes no difference how rich they are.
But I do not believe businesses of any kind should be allowed to expend business money of any amount in any attempt to influence politics or legislation for any reason. Which would rule out paid lobbyists, btw. Not lobbying by private citizens acting in their own self interest.
I believe businesses should be forced to embrace their supposed purpose: satisfying customers for a profit, without endangering employees or citizens, or ripping off investors, suppliers or creditors. That is tough enough, and any involvement they have in government is inherently corrupt because it is exclusively designed to circumvent the will of the people and the markets to which they should be subordinate.
“I believe government’s involvement should be limited to protecting consumers and companies from what SHOULD be crimes, like keeping fraudulent books or producing unsafe food or products with no way for consumers to determine liability for harm.
But any legislation (or even contract) that favors one company or individual or entity over another is, in my view, out of bounds.”
Yep. And that includes any legislation that allows corporate interests to define what is and is not acceptable behavior from their industry. If they – such as some group like JP Morgan Chase – don’t want to have to play by any rules, I cordially invite them to move their organization to someplace like Somalia.
The others are illegal anyway,
That is an illogical argument, if I made it illegal to sell small shares, then that would be illegal too! In this post I am talking about what should and should not be illegal, whether it is illegal NOW is beside the point.
As for selling your heart or sovereignty over your own body: I disagree.
Such a decision does not affect only you; if such a market existed, then sooner or later people are coerced by circumstance and ruthless buyers to give up their lives. You can see that, to a lesser extent, in the one-sided transactions of the health market: Pay up with everything you own or die. That is not a free market, it is blackmail, it is no different than a mugging, except the mugger doesn’t take your house and life’s savings. Any transaction that presents the choice of “pay me or die” should be restricted to the government.
Sounds to me like you want to keep the little guy out so you can make all the money, isnt that just like the 1% of which you are a member.
It depends on how you measure the 1%. If you measure by income, then I haven’t been a member for several years. I retired to academia, it doesn’t pay in the 1% range unless you are the President of the University or the football coach. Since I am not tenured and do not even know the rules of football, I do not expect to be either.
Look at facebook and how they are offering their IPO, only the fat cats are going to make the money.
Pretty true. That’s my point, the system is rigged now so investors can be screwed with impunity, only the very rich REALLY have any say. If it were up to me, I know how to correct that situation and level the playing field.
Institute free market capitalism now …
In free market capitalism, the men with the gold make the rules, it is ruled by the rich and nobody else. Only regulated capitalism will level the playing field.
We can close with an agreement, however: I do not think government should be involved in either subsidizing or picking winners and losers in private industry AT ALL. I believe government’s involvement should be limited to protecting consumers and companies from what SHOULD be crimes, like keeping fraudulent books or producing unsafe food or products with no way for consumers to determine liability for harm.
But any legislation (or even contract) that favors one company or individual or entity over another is, in my view, out of bounds.
Tony C:
Selling shares of stock is not in the same category as your other examples.
If I want to sell my heart, I should be able to. To be free a person should have sovereignty over their body.
People used to sell themselves back in the day for a few years, nothing wrong with that if it is voluntary and you have a good contract stipulating the terms.
The others are illegal anyway, you cant hire someone to do a crime and you cannot murder someone for money or otherwise.
Really Tony, you need to quit being such a totalitarian.
Sounds to me like you want to keep the little guy out so you can make all the money, isnt that just like the 1% of which you are a member.
Look at facebook and how they are offering their IPO, only the fat cats are going to make the money. The people who made facebook what it is are going to be fucked over. They will have to buy shares in the secondary market at double or triple the price. I hope Zuckerberg falls right on his face, I am shutting down my facebook account and others ought to as well. What a little prick. But I guess he falls right in line with your thinking. That is how all the fat cats make money, by taking opportunities from us little guys and then asking us to pay their losses.
The 1% can go f its collective self.
Institute free market capitalism now and f. . . the 1% hard, where it hurts; in their wallet. A 1 percenter – “what? I have to compete without government favors and support, are you kidding me?”
@Bron: As for the company structure, I am not preventing people from selling shares, I am preventing them from making shares very small.
As long as the share you are selling is at least 4% of the company and carries a 4% vote, feel free. sell at will. I would add one more right to the ownership of a share, which is currently not granted: Every owner has full and unrestricted access to all financial and contractual information of the company, including all payroll and expenses in full detail, and if that company owns any share of another company, this right transfers in full effect to such other companies as well. I would add the right that all share owners have the right to observe and record all board meetings.
You are not an “owner” if you can’t look at the books, you are not an “owner” if board decisions can be made without you knowing it. Right now, shareholders are not even entitled to know what happened in a board meeting or what decisions were taken.
The problem with selling stock is that it is a con; you are not an “owner” in any real sense unless you can buy a hefty percentage of it. But when the stock is sold, this fiction allows the company to do anything it wants with the money raised, including just paying themselves exorbitant salaries and bonuses, and loading the company with debt to do it with no restrictions on how the proceeds will be spent: including on themselves. Which is how Bain drained GS Tech into bankruptcy; by borrowing money in the name of GST to pay Bain, and then showing that GST could not make their loan payments!
If somebody needs public financing for a venture, there are other ways that could be accomplished but WITH accountability and liability. For example, use-specific bonds could be sold, backed by the equipment or asset they will build, so the money raised is used for a specific purpose and is NOT just used in a general fund. Similar instruments can allow for a permanent payment stream (like an annuity). The point is that unlike stock, we can arrange that the usage of publicly raised money is constrained and the company is obligated to use the money only for the stated purpose, and to pay the interest and or capital on their public loans (or annuity) and if they have money left over, they can do with it as they will.
That would actually be MORE freedom for companies than selling actual ownership, the only reason to NOT do that is to avoid the responsibility of restricting the use of the money raised.
Many of the same dynamics would exist as in the current market. If you are inclined to take risks, loan your money to small businesses raising money for risky ventures that might fail, we can find ways to let the market set the rates, and the higher risks will have the greater returns. You can still sell your bond and its rights to somebody else if you want, at the market rate.
The advantage is in the honesty created by use-specific contracts: Just like a mortgage the company must use the proceeds for what they detailed, and your rights of repayment are not some amorphous claims of future growth and income, they would become a legal responsibility of the company, they would be terms in a contract that must be met, and over which you could bring legal action with other lenders (which is what you would be) against the company. I would legally require terms in such use-specific contracts to make such action reasonably easy; such as keeping the current list of bond-holders with a third party, etc.
Tony C — may I add to your list?
I would prevent one person from giving a second person that which belonged to a third — which is, reduced to simplest terms, our way of life.
@Bron: so you would prevent one person from engaging in a voluntary act with another?
Yes, just as I would prevent one person from selling their freedom to another. I would prevent one person hiring another person to commit a crime. I would prevent a person from offering volunteers ten million dollars to fight to the death. I would prevent a person from paying a volunteer to plead guilty to their crime. I would prevent a wealthy man from paying a volunteer to trade her young and healthy heart for his old diseased heart by transplant.
Yes, there are voluntary acts I would prohibit, because unlike you, I do not think everything comes down to money or property and nothing else matters.
Tony C:
so you would prevent one person from engaging in a voluntary act with another? The selling of shares of a company in this example.
I cant believe you would say that, well yes actually I can.
@Matt: The Gilded Age is here again.
Pretty much, yes. But it won’t last long. This time around, money moves faster and change is faster, because information moves faster, TV is everywhere, and cell phones, twitter, and the Internet are not far behind. Other technologies, such as air transportation, accelerates everything. We are inflating money at 9%-10% a year (if computed by 1980 standards).
I think the wars are economically unsustainable. I don’t know what happens next, but I think we hit a tipping point by 2016, I do not think anybody can do anything about it, and it won’t be pretty for any of us.
Tony,
The Gilded Age is here again. Before WWII, they were worried about revolution in the United States. The Great War provided distraction. History repeats itself.
@Matt: Beats me. You could regulate, I suppose, but as you say, they will find ways around it to do what they want.
Personally, although I have done well in the stock market, if I were king I probably wouldn’t let companies go public; the idea of hundreds, thousands or even millions of “owners” is the root of the problem in the first place. Combine that lack of control and the ability of insiders (of all stripes) to make killings (which rip off the average player), and the license it gives corporate leadership to line their own pockets at the stockholder’s expense, even to the point of legally betraying the stockholders, and the whole thing is a crazy mess.
You can still make money, but I do not consider it “investing,” I consider it gambling. Nowadays if I want to invest I do it directly in small companies, and I do not bother if I will end up owning less that 10%. After over 30 years in the stock market and consulting for companies large and small, I do not think companies should be allowed to have owners of less than 4%. That would be a maximum of 25 “owners.”
And frankly the loss of liquidity and the much larger stake in what the companies are doing would be very good things.
Tony,
Most human relationships are based on power. Of course they’re going to keep control, with the facade that they’re being fair.
How do you deal with that? Appropriate government regulation is the only way.