Power and its (im)balance

[Togo]

Except you haven't explained anything. You've posted a couple of pithy comments, and are assuming your point is obvious. It isn't. There are plenty of corporations that have little or no contact with consumers who aren't other corporations. My wife's hometown is considerably smaller than the steel plant that dominates the landscape, local economy, and local politics. What on earth does consumer power have to do with that?

OK, to summarize points already made:

1) Weapons are not a big part of what the government spends money on
2) Weapons are not a big part of the economy
3) To attempt to focus this discussion on weapons is silly because they are not particularly meaningful given #1 and #2

Oh, so that's what you were trying to say when you put forward all those rhetorical questions. You're not planning to support this assertion with any figures?

Certainly the UK spends about £17 billion a year on weapons - that's weapons procurement, Military R&D and foreign military aid. http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/year_spending_2015UKbn_14bc1n_3031363334#ukgs302
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/defence-equipment-and-support

The UK spends only £1.3 billion on ready to eat breakfast cereals.

The figures for the US should be similar, except that the US has a proportionally higher spend on weapons, and proportionally lower consumption of cereal for breakfast

Given that you were dismissing weapons as irrelevant, but citing Toasty Oat Flakes, I don't think your points stand up to scrutiny.

the problem is a problem of government. If the government didn't force me to pay for tanks, I would have the complete power not to pay for tanks.

Which is exactly why the issue of influence over the government by sellers of tanks was brought up. Given that you're paying to send other countries free tanks, through US military aid, I'm not sure why you see this as a distraction from the issue. Power over government is still power.

The fact that you enjoy and are willing to purchase Toasty Oat Flakes in no way lessens my power to not buy Toasty Oat Flakes.

Sure it does. My local stores only stock the most popular two or three brands. If lots of people buy Toasty Oat flakes, my ability to purchase alternatives is reduced.

This is called "life". The world does not exist to meet your every need.

??? Can you point to where I said it did? All I'm saying is that you claim is wrong - my ability to buy Oat flakes is not independent of you - it very much depends on their popularity.

This is not an example of the company that makes Toasty Oat Flakes having power over you.

No, it's an example of the company owning my local stores having power over me. They only stock the most popular brands, they control a vast % of the market, if Toasty Oat flakes don't manage to persuade my local store to stock the product, then my ability to buy them is reduced.

I'm genuinely curious as to why you'd suggest otherwise?

You have no inherent right to have Mapley Corn Pops provided to you by the company that makes Toasty Oak Flakes so you cannot claim they have exercised power over you by not making them.

??? Yes I can. Power over me depends on whether or not something can impact me. It has nothing to do with whether that power infringes some imaginary 'inherent right'. I have no 'inherent right' not to have my elected representative bought and sold by the highest bidder, but it's still exercising power over me when it happens.

 

[arkirk]

The question really is; What checks corporate power?

And the answer is not Delaware.

Yes the answer is "consumers". No one points a gun at me and forces me to buy a GM car. No one points a gun at me and forces me to buy GM stock. Well, anyway, GM doesn't point a gun at me and force me to buy GM stock.

But can you keep from paying for ANOTHER WAR? GM does not need your consumer money, Got it? Listen to Untermensche....it ain't Delaware. It's Wall Street.

Take just ONE WEAPON SYSTEM....the F-35....estimated cost...$1.7 trillion dollars. That would buy a lot of alternative energy or perhaps breakfast cereal for the whole world!

 

[ksen]

No guys, it's Delaware. I'm telling you!

Piss off the Delawarians enough and, since you're most likely incorporated there, they can revoke your corporate personhoods.

 

[dismal]

You have no inherent right to have Mapley Corn Pops provided to you by the company that makes Toasty Oak Flakes so you cannot claim they have exercised power over you by not making them.

??? Yes I can. Power over me depends on whether or not something can impact me. It has nothing to do with whether that power infringes some imaginary 'inherent right'. I have no 'inherent right' not to have my elected representative bought and sold by the highest bidder, but it's still exercising power over me when it happens.

If you like, feel free to go into the street and protest the fact you feel disempowered because no one is willing to make you Mapley Corn Pops.

I don't give the slightest crap you feel you have been disempowered by people not making things for you that you want.

I have no appetite for this sort of pedantry, and will exercise my power not to engage in it.

By your convoluted way of looking at things, you have now also been disempowered from having me take your post seriously.

 

[ksen]

I have no appetite for this sort of pedantry

 

[Togo]

I have no appetite for this sort of pedantry, and will exercise my power not to engage in it.

In other words, what you said was false, and you know it, but you don't feel you have to bother because I'm not addressing what you see is the core issues, which concern the claims and protests you're attributing to me that I've never heard of.

I think you're continuing an existing arguement that familiar to you, rather than what's actually been said in the thread. It makes it hard to discuss.

By your convoluted way of looking at things, you have now also been disempowered from having me take your post seriously.

I'll try and contain my disappointment.

 

[lpetrich]

dismal seems to be claiming that boycotts are the perfect solution for corporate misbehavior, and that any other solution is just plain wrong. But actually boycotting a business is being a Luddite or a treehugger or an economic terrorist, right?

However, For Conservatives, Boycotts Are Noble Efforts When They Support Them, Otherwise It's 'Economic Terrorism' | Right Wing Watch

Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel, for example, said he was outraged by liberals “intimidating” the restaurant chain, and described a similar pressure campaign against the Charity Give Back Group, which was also making contributions to anti-gay political organizations, as “economic terrorism” and proof that gay rights advocates “want to see us behind bars.”

Today, the same Matt Barber called for a boycott of Target over the company’s public support for marriage equality:

There are several difficulties with dismal's position.

There are plenty of businesses that are difficult to boycott, because most people don't deal with them directly. Like trucking companies or steel-mill companies or mining companies or data-services companies or ... dismal, if a trucking company's trucks ran right next to your home and kept you up at night and ripped up the roads, how would you boycott that company?

There's also the problem of most or all businesses in some field doing the same troublesome things. How do you boycott the miscreants when all of them are miscreants?

Protection of people from others doing nasty things to them is a commonly-accepted responsibility of government. This includes many self-described libertarians. So why are businesses supposed to be exempt?

 

[dismal]

dismal seems to be claiming that boycotts

Nope.

 

[dismal]

In other words, what you said was false, and you know it, but you don't feel you have to bother because I'm not addressing what you see is the core issues, which concern the claims and protests you're attributing to me that I've never heard of.

I think you're continuing an existing arguement that familiar to you, rather than what's actually been said in the thread. It makes it hard to discuss.

By your convoluted way of looking at things, you have now also been disempowered from having me take your post seriously.

I'll try and contain my disappointment.

No, not at all. If you want a summary, it's that I think your post was ridiculous as all hell and have no interest in responding to it.

 

[Unbeatable]

dismal seems to be claiming that boycotts

Nope.

What is the solution to corporate misbehavior?

 

[ksen]

Not buying toasty oat flakes of course.

 

[dismal]

Nope.

What is the solution to corporate misbehavior?

What sort of corporate misbehavior are you talking about?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

This talk of military hardware is part of a larger topic of corporations that are in bed with the government, exercising powers they wouldn't have if they weren't in bed with the government. And yet untermensche blames the corporations qua corporations instead of noticing the difference between those businesses that are in bed with government and those businesses that aren't in bed with government. It pays to notice the difference.

A while ago I tried to point out to untermensche the concepts of behavioral psychology: of encouraging a behavior by applying a reward, of discouraging a behavior by withholding a reward, of encouraging a behavior by withholding a punishment, and of discouraging a behavior by applying a punishment. Four separate concepts - applying a punishment and withholding a reward are two different actions. They summarize into "the carrot and the stick."

Corporations, for all their "power", have only one power. They can offer a reward, or withhold a reward. The richest man in the world can walk up to you and say "I want you to roll around in that mud puddle and grunt like a pig". You can tell him to bugger off. He can offer to pay you, and you can negotiate an appropriate level of payment. But if you refuse he cannot punish you.

Yet in the news we see stories of people being punished for not obeying a cop's orders, or for "contempt of cop." Actual punishments, ranging from being arrested to being shot. Dismal was correct when he wrote about how GM cannot force us to buy GM stock, and also right when he wasn't right because it was done through GM being in bed with the government which used our tax money to purchase said stock.

Government doesn't have carrots, it only has sticks. And that statement isn't accurate because it does have carrots, but it only has those because it took the carrots from other people by use of the stick.

When one is dealing only with carrots, the application or withholding of a rewards, yes consumers do have the ultimate authority because it is not only the business that can decide to withhold a reward. The customer can also decide to withhold a reward. A spectacular example of this happened in the 1990s when the gun nuts were trying to ram some new gun controls on the public. Gun nut mayors were trying to sue gun manufacturers, and the gun nuts in the White House came up with some insane deal that the gun manufacturers were supposed to voluntarily agree to.

Only one manufacturer agreed to the terms; Smith and Wesson. The gun buying public was outraged that Smith and Wesson caved to the gun nuts and stopped buying Smith and Wesson. The gun nuts were hoping that since S&W caved they would lead the way and all others would cave, but it didn't happen. S&W's sales plummeted, and gun dealers stopped carrying their products because nobody was buying them. The gun nuts reacted by trying to force police departments to give purchase preference to S&W (which failed), and gun nuts also tried to get the Justice Department to launch an anti-trust investigation against thousands of independent gun dealers (which also failed).

Eventually S&W sacked their entire management, sold out to a new company, and reneged on the deal with the gun nuts. Eventually the gun buying public forgave them and they are now a stable company again.

All because of the power to say "I do not want to do business with you."

 

[PyramidHead]

Corporations, for all their "power", have only one power. They can offer a reward, or withhold a reward. The richest man in the world can walk up to you and say "I want you to roll around in that mud puddle and grunt like a pig". You can tell him to bugger off. He can offer to pay you, and you can negotiate an appropriate level of payment. But if you refuse he cannot punish you.

If the richest man in the world is in bed with the government, why do you think he would stop short of granting himself the power to punish people?

 

[arkirk]

This talk of military hardware is part of a larger topic of corporations that are in bed with the government, exercising powers they wouldn't have if they weren't in bed with the government. And yet untermensche blames the corporations qua corporations instead of noticing the difference between those businesses that are in bed with government and those businesses that aren't in bed with government. It pays to notice the difference.

A while ago I tried to point out to untermensche the concepts of behavioral psychology: of encouraging a behavior by applying a reward, of discouraging a behavior by withholding a reward, of encouraging a behavior by withholding a punishment, and of discouraging a behavior by applying a punishment. Four separate concepts - applying a punishment and withholding a reward are two different actions. They summarize into "the carrot and the stick."

Corporations, for all their "power", have only one power. They can offer a reward, or withhold a reward. The richest man in the world can walk up to you and say "I want you to roll around in that mud puddle and grunt like a pig". You can tell him to bugger off. He can offer to pay you, and you can negotiate an appropriate level of payment. But if you refuse he cannot punish you.

Yet in the news we see stories of people being punished for not obeying a cop's orders, or for "contempt of cop." Actual punishments, ranging from being arrested to being shot. Dismal was correct when he wrote about how GM cannot force us to buy GM stock, and also right when he wasn't right because it was done through GM being in bed with the government which used our tax money to purchase said stock.

Government doesn't have carrots, it only has sticks. And that statement isn't accurate because it does have carrots, but it only has those because it took the carrots from other people by use of the stick.

When one is dealing only with carrots, the application or withholding of a rewards, yes consumers do have the ultimate authority because it is not only the business that can decide to withhold a reward. The customer can also decide to withhold a reward. A spectacular example of this happened in the 1990s when the gun nuts were trying to ram some new gun controls on the public. Gun nut mayors were trying to sue gun manufacturers, and the gun nuts in the White House came up with some insane deal that the gun manufacturers were supposed to voluntarily agree to.

Only one manufacturer agreed to the terms; Smith and Wesson. The gun buying public was outraged that Smith and Wesson caved to the gun nuts and stopped buying Smith and Wesson. The gun nuts were hoping that since S&W caved they would lead the way and all others would cave, but it didn't happen. S&W's sales plummeted, and gun dealers stopped carrying their products because nobody was buying them. The gun nuts reacted by trying to force police departments to give purchase preference to S&W (which failed), and gun nuts also tried to get the Justice Department to launch an anti-trust investigation against thousands of independent gun dealers (which also failed).

Eventually S&W sacked their entire management, sold out to a new company, and reneged on the deal with the gun nuts. Eventually the gun buying public forgave them and they are now a stable company again.

All because of the power to say "I do not want to do business with you."

You really view this whole matter of human interactions and trade from a reductionist point of view with only one consideration...YOUR RIGHT TO BUY A GUN OR NOT BUY A GUN. Your little story only is illustrative of what the gun makers must do to keep their factories humming. Guns from S&W take the lives of lots of people every year and the more guns there are, the more people die from guns (accidentally and intentionally). Guns are tools that are used to deny people their human rights. You speak of carrots and sticks and condemn government because it only can use a stick. At the same time, you seem to think that a "citizen" or a cop (representative of government) should have the power of life and death over others through the agency of possession of a gun. You invest in the notion of coercive force to enforce your own power in society and imagine there is an army of armed citizens who think just like you.

For some reason you discount the notion of universal human rights and accept that the person with the gun will magically have more right to rights than those without guns. Should the government make sure everybody gets a gun to make your utopian world (everybody armed) a reality? I am of the persuasion that people should not need to have a gun to be a fully empowered citizen. The more these guns are part and parcel with life in America, the more gun deaths. Hmmmm. Yes, it doesn't appear to be working.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I don't view it as only one commodity, I used that one commodity as an example. Goodness, is that all you took out of my writing about how corporations have the power of the carrot and government has the power of the stick?

And do you actually honestly after all this time think I believe that police should have unquestioned absolute power? I'm the one who thinks they are the only ones who should not have guns. I'm not a conservative cop-worshipper ... who do you think I am? Underseer?

 

[Togo]

This talk of military hardware is part of a larger topic of corporations that are in bed with the government, exercising powers they wouldn't have if they weren't in bed with the government. And yet untermensche blames the corporations qua corporations instead of noticing the difference between those businesses that are in bed with government and those businesses that aren't in bed with government. It pays to notice the difference.

A while ago I tried to point out to untermensche the concepts of behavioral psychology: of encouraging a behavior by applying a reward, of discouraging a behavior by withholding a reward, of encouraging a behavior by withholding a punishment, and of discouraging a behavior by applying a punishment. Four separate concepts - applying a punishment and withholding a reward are two different actions. They summarize into "the carrot and the stick."

Corporations, for all their "power", have only one power. They can offer a reward, or withhold a reward. The richest man in the world can walk up to you and say "I want you to roll around in that mud puddle and grunt like a pig". You can tell him to bugger off. He can offer to pay you, and you can negotiate an appropriate level of payment. But if you refuse he cannot punish you.

??? Yes, he can. He can hire security guards to restrain you, or hurt you, as we've seen in various campus protests around the US, and in security firms hired as strike-breakers. He can fire you, or get you fired, by owning or putting pressure on your employer. He can put you on a business black-list, collaborating with other companies to deny you vital services (most often credit or credit rating). He can slander you using the corporate personhood of the company to distance himself from any repercussions. He can poison your environment, drive you crazy with noise and disruption, choke your air, undermine your property, arm people trying to kill you, steal your savings, buy and sell your representatives in all walks of life.

What are you thinking he can't do?

Government doesn't have carrots, it only has sticks. And that statement isn't accurate because it does have carrots, but it only has those because it took the carrots from other people by use of the stick.

It only has sticks because of the cooperation of people offered carrots. I understand what you're trying to say, but this argument doesn't really work. Companies use sticks, governments use carrots. Just like people.

All because of the power to say "I do not want to do business with you."

Still want to know what happens with companies that don't have retail customers. Still not seeing an answer.

Let's take an example. KNEB is presently extracting magnetite ore from under a nearby town. The town is gradually disappearing in a series of large holes that are opening up under the town and swallowing several buildings at once. You also can't drink the water or grow anything within a mile or two of the mine. How does consumer pressure fix that? How does stopping buying Toasty Oat Flakes give you the leverage you need.