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Period? What about socialized fire protection, law enforcement, military, and infrastructure? Do you think that private corporations should do those things?

But only enough to provide for efficient market operation and a healthy society.

Things are allowed to be both awesome and dangerous. I propose that there is a positive correlation between the the two descriptors, actually.

If the management believes it would be profitable to do so.

Rhetoric aside, corporations often go as far beyond the law as they think they can get away with, but that doesn't mean they will be self-destructively malicious. They typically want profits, after all.

They don't just give their products away. We don't live in a post-scarcity system where people no longer need to economize. In exchange for the products and services that underlie the modern Western lifestyle, consumers have given major corporations wealth and power comparable to nations of the past.

Government subsidies and price stabilization prevent the boom and bust cycles that led to shortages, price swings, and farmer bankruptcy in the formerly "free" markets, to the betterment of all, including the agricultural corporations that invest in food production because they can count on relatively stable prices. It was largely government-funded research that enabled the Green Revolution.

Strict government regulation is needed to maintain a semblance of a competitive market in telecommunications, which is a natural monopoly market. Without mandated infrastructure-sharing, spectrum regulation, and antitrust laws, places would see either fragmented service (and therefore lower utility and higher costs from reduced economies of scale) or monopolies (and therefore higher costs and reduced attention to consumer satisfaction due to the telecom corporation exercising market power to maximize profits).

Which came from the establishment of demand for military computation in World War Two. Private sector demand caused it to snowball, but the initial demand for large scale electronic computation came from governments.

They charge what they think will be most profitable, which is usually affordable for many but not all people. They also do other things if they think it will be profitable, like first-day DLC and rootkits

Walmart keeps costs low by importing goods from China (Chinese currency policy artificially lowers the cost of Chinese goods in foreign markets) and by reducing worker compensation to the least it can get away with. So cheap stuff is nice, but that's not the only relevant datum about Walmart.

Which are built largely using technology initially developed by military research, and operate under strict government safety and operational regulation. What do you think air travel would look like without the FAA or similar agencies?

Which would not be very useful without government-provided transportation infrastructure and regulation.

Iffy. Private corporations can operate effective rail networks, but only if they operate cooperatively to maintain system cohesion, and that takes some heavy regulation to prevent monopolistic abuse.

Where would the major gun manufacturers be without military and police contracts? Look at their history. Wartime orders let them expand and take advantage of economies of scale, which then let them offer lower prices to the private market.

Which was initially built on government orders for its own use. It was decades before private consumer use really took off, and governments regulate the Internet today to ensure global functionality. What do you think the state of Internet businesses would be like if we'd had a Beta vs. VHS type fight for global data infrastructure during the dot com boom?

In which you are subverting the operation of legal markets, taking advantage of government-mandated network freedom to make data flow more freely than media corporations would like. What do you think things would be like if corporations could do what they wished with the Internet?

Regarding the above, yes, corporations do a lot of cool stuff. However, they don't do that cool stuff on their own. In order to work effectively for society, corporations need governments to provide basic research and regulation to ensure enough safety and honesty to enable markets to work. Many markets are volatile enough when left to themselves that they need regulatory stabilization to operate effectively over the long term. Also, corporations need a strong consumer base in order to provide demand for their operation. Minimum wage and other employment laws help ensure that, even though a single corporation considered in isolation would see larger profits by slashing worker compensation (tragedies of the commons hurt everyone, including corporations which would rationally inflict them if not prevented by regulation). Consumers acting independently are not in a position to compel corporations to systemically act nice.

I suppose this is something of a semantic issue.

Irrelevant, since DaCrum's personal experience is not the issue. Are you unfamiliar with what corporations did (and do now in parts of the world) when not restrained by regulation from making profits by being dicks? Do you not know about 96 hour work weeks, child labor, wage (and chattel) slavery, truck systems, unregulated workplace safety, snake oil, banana republics, corruption, and moral hazard?

But anyway, have you ever used a checking account or telecommunications service (say, from Comcast)?

Runaway selection for intelligence. Development of language, ranged weapons, and control of fire. Agriculture. Social specialization and civilization. Metallurgy. Writing and law. Philosophy and math. Currency, banking, and finance. Democracy and representative government. Capitalism. Printing. Science. Engineering. Electricity. Antibiotics. Telecommunications. Computers. Modern-style corporations have been important, but calling them the best is a stretch.

Of course. Oh, wait.


Deteis represent.

Debatable. The depredations of corporations a century or so ago are why communism showed up. Butterflies, ripples, etc.

An advocate of technological capitalism should understand the economics of corporations, and accordingly know that they can cause a lot of trouble if not suitably controlled.

Except governments and major institutions. We do have them for reasons, after all.

Meaning, if a corporation thinks that it would be profitable to meddle in politics, it will do so. What do you think of the recent Citizens United case and the rise of superPACs?

And what are people? Or some are, at least.

Except executive compensation has been decoupled from performance, often by way of gaming the system.


Ever heard of the Peter Principle? Incompetence in middle management is ubiquitous comedic fodder for a reason. And yet they often enjoy standardized compensation packages with scheduled raises by corporate policy.

Ideally, sure, but it seems that in reality, real wages have stagnated while productivity and executive pay have increased. Why is this? It seems that the common man's negotiating power for wages has declined concurrently with the decline in union power. It's as if corporations have exercised their greater power in labor markets.


A problem with democracy and free markets is that they are only metastable. Change and randomness can make it hard for power to accumulate too much, but once it does, that accumulated power can be used to entrench the control of those at the top. From there, they can ride out instability short of a revolution while suppressing potential competitors. That is why democracies turn into dictatorships and free markets turn into monopolies if they are not prevented from doing so. Now, what do you think is going on in real life regarding such preventative mechanisms?

And it seems that wealth inequality does indeed vary inversely with social mobility.

There are different kinds of evil. Corporations tend to be interested primarily in profit, and therefore pursue self-interest regardless of the effects on others, making them Neutral Evil in the usual alignment scheme. Such evil can work out nicely for others, since rational evil can recognize that it is often better to live in a nice place. The people that make up corporations run the gamut, and they are not entirely rational or perfectly informed, so real-world practice varies.


Who you gonna call?

In an ideal free market, no entity has appreciable market power. In the real world, large corporations can control significant percentages of their markets, which lets them use market power for monopolistic practices like price fixing of products and wages. The more power controlled by a single entity or small group, the more they are able to steer the functioning of markets to modes of operation that benefit them at the expense of the economy / society as a whole (they capture more of the market surplus in a manner that reduces the total market surplus). This is exacerbated when politics is added, where those with some concentration of money can use it to enact legislation that protects their position at the expense of others. For example, this has led to a significant shift in the balance between the public and private domains in copyright law. Long-term copyright allows media corporations to milk established franchises indefinitely instead of innovate, while incentive to innovate was the major justification for copyright in the first place. What would you expect tax, capital gains, and inheritance policy to look like if those with the most wealth were allowed to use it to influence politics without meaningful restriction? What would those with the most wealth want it to look like? Remember this?

Your impression is wrong. I mentioned it in previous discussion, but while there are many people who pay zero or effectively negative federal "income" tax, there are local, state, and other federal taxes that affect poorer people much more than wealthier people. Things like payroll taxes (percentage of income up to a cap), property, gas, sales, etc. taxes (percentage of something's value) apply very much to poorer people but relatively little to wealthier people whose income and wealth tend to be used in ways not applicable to those taxes. The overall tax burden is rather flatter than you characterize it. And recall that the really rich folks make most of their income from capital gains, which is taxed at 15%. Remember Mitt Romney's 13.9% tax rate (lower than what the bottom quintile pays, even though Romney makes thousands of times as much)? More info.

Also, did you mean that 40+ million American workers pay zero taxes? Because there are more than that many children in the US too young to legally work. I hope you don't expect them to pay the same tax rate as business dudes. They still pay sales taxes, but that's not very high.

The thing is, fast food (and its attendant franchises and vertically integrated supply) is very appealing for its convenience even apart from issues of direct monetary cost. When pressed for time or when traveling, it is very nice to be able to travel a short distance to a franchise restaurant with a known menu, quality, and cost, and get a meal in less time than it would take to cook. I don't think that reasonable market intervention will make fast food go away or remove its appeal. However, I propose that it can be made healthier in practice with targeted incentives to shift consumer preferences within their offered menus. Say, a cent tax per milligram sodium after each item's first two hundred grams, and a similar tax on calories per item. Fast food would still play its (useful but hopefully smaller) role, but hopefully some of the health issues would be lessened.

Fair enough. Though I don't know of there being any food poisoning cases from it. Unlike many other foods (fresh vegetables, say).

Actually, fat and risk of obesity isn't really an issue with this type of meat. In its manufacturing process, it is heated and centrifuged to separate the muscle fibers from the fat, and the resulting meat paste is rather lean (this is why the "pink slime" is technically called lean finely textured beef). It is often used to make ground meat leaner.

Friend who wants to become a meat scientist told me there's nothing dangerous about pink slime so I'm inclined to agree with the woman who makes the damn stuff.

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Escape will make me God.

I missed Valhallen.

Can you just, like, run for president or something?

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I still don't want to eat food and taste ammonia, do you? If it only saves them about 3 cents per pound, can't it be eliminated entirely?

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The only real returning issue with MSM like that would be spinal cord bits that tend to get into the pink slime and their relation to bovine spongiform encephalopathy. As for fat, the issue there is method of preparation rather than the substance itself. Deep frying everything is not the healthy solution. And that seems to be the most common and popular way of eating pink slime.

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The meat is tested after the ammonia bath for ammonia levels. It only goes on once the ammonia levels are back to trace. Have you ever tasted ammonia in your meat?

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I don't really go for ground beef; if I want beef, I go for a steak or jerky or something. But there have been reports of either the smell of ammonia, or just that it tastes strange. A journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times did a taste test and remarked that the pink slime burger just tasted "flat." Perhaps it is the amount of ammonium hydroxide they use?

Either way, why do we allow this practice to go on at all?

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The short answer, lobbying.

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CAUTION: Would anyone tell me if I was getting stupider?

Because it isn't dangerous? Did people notice this before the whole 'pink slime' controversy started? No. This is mental effect. People are just being whiny, again.

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I'm not so sure about that, based on the fact that it was only the USDA's decision to allow this meat into the markets (which did not apparently receive congressional approval). According to the Wiki on pink slime:

People used to think that amalgam fillings in teeth were harmless. The WHO released a study in 1991 saying that the leading cause of mercury in the body was in fact these very amalgam fillings.

The long term effects of ammonium hydroxide include chronic inflammation of bronchi, and airway hyperactivity[1]. There is no way to tell whether the "small" amount of ammonium hydroxide that is left over from the process will cause these problems or not. I wouldn't call that risk "nothing dangerous." Meat scientist be damned.

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Lobbying can extend past congress, if you notice the woman who approved later joined on the company that produces it.

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CAUTION: Would anyone tell me if I was getting stupider?

Except there is already trace amounts of ammonium hydroxide in meat. Your body produces ammonium as nitrogen waste which is then released as urea. All ammonium hydroxide is ammonium suspended in water. Considering you already have nitrogen waste IN your body, I'm fairly sure trace amounts aren't going to kill you. Those diseases caused by ammonia are caused by the inhalation of it. In large amounts, the ingestion of it would be fatal, but trace amount are hardly noticeable or deadly.

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Escape will make me God.

Every time i eat bread there is a risk of me dying from asphyxia because of the lack of moisture in the dough. I propose we test every bread for moisture levels before consumption.

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For god's sake, I'm a socialist, and I don't want too much freaking oversight on my meat.

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Escape will make me God.

Do you understand what you just told me? "Trace amounts" of ammonium hydroxide exist in meat, yes. We're talking about treating "waste" meat with high doses of it in order to disinfect it, then mixing it into regular ground beef; they don't even have to add a label saying that this is what they've done.

I thought you were anti-big business, and yet you would allow these meat packaging corporations to make extra profits by selling a cheaper, lower-grade product at the same price?

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Oh my god Ruff you are not listening to me and it's very annoying. The meat AFTER the ammonia bath is TESTED for ammonia levels, and can only pass if rated safe by the USDA. Generally regarded as safe ammonium hydroxide is trace amounts of it within the meat. They aren't just blinding injecting ammonia into the meat and keeping it there. Also you misspelled trace. A LOT of your food is disinfected with an ammonia wash, and just like LFTB, the amounts after the bath are TRACE. What that means is that the amounts are in such little PPMs that it is not dangerous. It is significantly below the LD50 of the chemical.

I am against business when business is wrong. I am against irrational fear mongering, especially when it hurts business, and I am against waste when you don't have to. The fact is this meat is edible, it is safe, and there is no reason to make such a fuss over it.

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Escape will make me God.

whoops. trance. trace. typing too fast. haha

Well anyway, I see we're not going to agree. I won't bother trying to convince you.

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That, I can agree with. Accessible and cheap food is very convenient for the society and economy. I do also, however, wish there were more efforts to making it more healthy rather than less. But as we both know, that would require an interested consumer, and tough controlled regulations. Unfortunately regulations are too often ignored or bypassed, and the majority of the consumers are happy to eat trash so long as it costs next to nothing and doesn't kill them within 30 minutes after eating it. And since the great decline of health and obesity epidemic stemmed from fast foods, and since I really doubt the problem can be tackled effectively with your proposed approach, I jumped immediately to the more forceful method. I mean, sure, if you can come up with a working way to make fast food incentivised to be healthy then It's better than what I'm proposing.



Just to point out. There's not a single element of the periodic table, molecule, chemical compound or substance in the universe that would be harmful to you in the right dosage/exposure. There's not a single one of those that would be harmless in an excessive dosage/exposure.

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The WHO reports that no level of mercury exposure is considered safe. The long term effects of mercury poisoning (that is, people who have been exposed to small quantities of mercury over a long period of time) has been linked to nervous system damage, memory loss, muscle coordination problems, and so on, and may be irreversible (from what I can tell, people with long-term mercury poisoning have shown improvement when the mercury has been removed from their environment, but have never fully recovered).

We have the technology now that we no longer need the amalgam fillings, yet they are still used in some offices. I just think we should rather be safe than sorry and always choose the safer alternative.

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Weekly discussion 20 (6/28-7/5): Obamacare

Dun dun dunnn. So it looks like it will mostly be going into effect after all. Thoughts?



If anyone wants to continue the previous discussion, I can make a new thread for it.

Obamacare?

I'm awaiting the upcoming storm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn5c1FuLDd4

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Shall I comment? No one seems to like or agree with anything I have to say. I don't want to start some kind of flame war...

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i am basically happy that for a little while longer i won't have to worry about my 3000$ every two weeks injected drug costing over 5$ instead of not that not happening and me having until basically the end of the year to find a way to pay for those injections or just hope my local doctor can prescribe me pain pills. best poster, worst digestive system. :X

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Puff Most Epic.

Most constitutional professors, even most conservative ones, agreed that Obamacare had solid constitutional backing, whether or not they liked it on its merits. The fact it came so close is rather ridiculous.

Also Clarence is still a bit of a scumbag for not recusing himself from the case despite the fact that his wife is actively involved in an organization that wishes to repeal the ACA.

I don't much like Obamacare, given how much of a conservative idea it is, but it's a step in the right direction and better than nothing.