Bankers/Rich/Poor/Bailouts

[epiphany]

I've been boycotting the likes of Starbucks, McDonalds, Tesco, et al for years

 

Can I just say, whatever our differences in opinion, good for you. Most people don't care enough or are not informed enough to boycott.

 

It takes time, but there has been a huge increase in consumer awareness over the past decade or so. I hope it continues and people start to vote more consciously with their money. I think the biggest change will occur when people start using more responsible banks, because it's these banks who will be more selective over who they invest in. Empower the right banks, and the nature of the economy will evolve to reflect their lending policies.

 

In theory

 

I agree with the often misunderstood Ricardian socialists as much as I do the market libertarians, that true reform will occur in the market place, not through government intervention, because all too often the large state inevitably becomes a creature of the large corporation. I don't think one can exist without the other.

 

A lot of the very real problems you mentioned in your previous post are due to excessive corporate privilege, which let us not forget is granted by the state when they hand out corporate licences. Perhaps we need a radical rethink over how we licence business, elements such as limited liability, corporate personhood, subsidies, property rights and the general relationship between the state and private sector (i.e. who really serves who?).

[truman]

I know full well who it was! they are just as bad the Government and vast majority of mp's couldn't care less about the rest of us it's about time the people of our country fought back on a wide range of issues and said enough is enough.

 

Just wondered why you'd saved your venom for the tories and didn't mention Brown and Darling..

[Staunton]

Can I just say, whatever our differences in opinion, good for you. Most people don't care enough or are not informed enough to boycott.

 

It takes time, but there has been a huge increase in consumer awareness over the past decade or so. I hope it continues and people start to vote more consciously with their money. I think the biggest change will occur when people start using more responsible banks, because it's these banks who will be more selective over who they invest in. Empower the right banks, and the nature of the economy will evolve to reflect their lending policies.

 

In theory

 

I agree with the often misunderstood Ricardian socialists as much as I do the market libertarians, that true reform will occur in the market place, not through government intervention, because all too often the large state inevitably becomes a creature of the large corporation. I don't think one can exist without the other.

 

A lot of the very real problems you mentioned in your previous post are due to excessive corporate privilege, which is granted by the state when they hand out corporate licences. Perhaps we need a radical rethink over how we licence business, elements such as limited liability, corporate personhood, subsidies, property rights and the general relationship between the state and private sector (i.e. who really serves who?).

 

Once again, concise, to the point and powerful. Many thanks epiphany.

 

But please do forgive me. Let me just focus on just one fascinating clause which is hiding in your words - this idea of 'corporate personhood'. Surely you are not suggesting that a corporation like Chevron or McDonalds is regarded in law as an individual? Hmm - I wonder if such 'individuals' can be put in prison if they kill people (like Dow Chemicals), or fix interbank lending rates (like Barclays).

[L00b]

But please do forgive me. Let me just focus on just one fascinating clause which is hiding in your words - this idea of 'corporate personhood'. Surely you are not suggesting that a corporation like Chevron or McDonalds is regarded in law as an individual? Hmm - I wonder if such 'individuals' can be put in prison if they kill people (like Dow Chemicals), or fix interbank lending rates (like Barclays).

A small introduction into the topic for your reading pleasure, Staunton

 

Directors of a business concerned can indeed do hard time where a conviction occurs. In the UK. The MD of the business at which a relative of mine was killed was getting ready for it, until SYP/CPR decided not to bring criminal charges. Though that may yet change at the Coroner's inquest.

 

FYI, UK legislation goes well beyond that, insofar as corporate criminal liability is concerned.

[Staunton]

We are entering into complex and academic territory. However, there is an accessible and informative book that helps us to get our heads around such issues - Ha-Jooh Chang's 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism (Penguin Books, 2010), and there is a very absorbing film by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bacan, the Corporation, available on DVD.

[epiphany]

...there is a very absorbing film by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bacan, the Corporation, available on DVD.

 

I was also going to reference this very important film. Whether you see yourself on the economic left or right, the film makes you realise that the type of capitalism we have today is guided by a very specific set of principles, and should not have a monopoly over the definition of capitalism (just as Soviet communism should not have a monopoly over the definition of communism).

 

When people talk about "free market capitalism", they may think of super sized corporations dominating the economy. However, corporations are just one type of business that is permitted to operate within the market, and they are granted numerous privileges, by the state, that actually serve to undermine the competitive (and therefore self correcting) nature of the free market.

 

Any serious critique of the free market, in my opinion, cannot be made by using examples from within the current system, because those economic activities are the result of aforementioned, anti-competitive privileges, not the free exchange of capital and labour as Adam Smith envisaged.

[Mister M]

Yay! Somebody who understands it is not the free market's fault.

 

So if the credit crunch wasn't a fault in the operation of the free market, who's fault was it????

And when the Credit crunch did occur in 2008 why did the head of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan admit that it was a flaw in the operation of the free market that had caused the problem? http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/24/economics-creditcrunch-federal-reserve-greenspan

[Staunton]

For a slightly more ambitious read, do take a look at Michael Rowbotham's 1998 publication, The Grip of Death: A Study of Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics (John Carpenter Publishing), the book that inspired Ben Dyson of Positive Money, who co-authoured with Andrew Jackson the equally fascinating Modernising Money: Why Our Monetary System is Broken and How it Can be Fixed (Positive Money, 2012).

[SevenRivers]

Nobody seems to know what actually happens when a country goes bankrupt, default on it's sovereign debt etc.

 

Cyprus would have been a perfect one to expreiment with and simply let it happen instead of bailing it out.

[Vague_Boy]

What do people think would have happened if they hadn't done this?

 

Exactly what is going to happen anyway.

 

Are you familiar with the phrase "kicking the can down the road"?

 

Sooner or later you will run out of road.

 

The problem hasn't gone away.