interesting thought on corporate deregulation

From http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid...mmentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=15020456#15020684


That's an unrealistic viewpoint. The fact is that the shareholders run the company. If the CEO is not exploiting opportunities to the fullest, the board will replace him with someone who will. The board is made up of shareholders - big, faceless mutual funds for example.

What this means in the long run is that a publicly traded company will naturally be drawn to maximizing shareholder profits, just as organisms are drawn to reproduce and survive. To expect otherwise is to go against nature.

If you want a publicly run company to be good, you must force it to be good - either by providing incentives to make it good, or consistently enforced deterrents from being bad. Otherwise, an ethical CEO will be replaced by a profitable one. If Wal-mart should be paying for medical insurance, then make a law stating that unskilled-labour businesses like wal-mart should pay for medical insurance Otherwise they won't.

This is why corporate libertarians bewilder me. Deregulation is basically handing the keys to a drunk driver.--

 

Another one:

So think about this: Wal-mart encourages its employees to go on medicaid and welfare to make ends meet, and has programs and personnel whose roles are specifically to help new sales associates to enroll in these programs so that they can live on Wal-mart wages.

The U.S. however, has no national health for everyone, only for the "needy," which in many cases means Wal-mart employees. So you are spending your tax dollars in spades, and it is going to feed and care for Wal-mart employees, thereby increasing profits for shareholders, yes... who then pay taxes on their capital gains that will go to support these very programs, which continually have to increase as wages are drawn down. And of course, as wages are drawn down, more and more people can only afford to shop at Wal-mart.

IN short, this attitude is little more than robbing Peter to pay Paul, with Wal-mart executives skimming off the top for their salaries and shareholders encouraging a transition to defacto socialism, although an inequitable one where only those who work for certain companies are eligible for government benefits by virtue of their poor pay.

And if you are neither a shareholder nor a shopper at Wal-mart (like myself) then you are merely being forced to subsidize high Wal-mart earnings for its shareholders and low Wal-mart prices for other people who will then have a minor economic advantage over you (because they spend less for the same goods) as all of you gradually lose wealth.

In short, the Wal-mart philosophy is an insidious force in society that gradually reduces everyone who is not a shareholder to poverty, while the shareholders merely tread water as they, too, increasingly subsidize the system to counterbalance the poverty that they impose with their greed (and they have to do so because otherwise crime would skyrocket as people increasingly try to survive). Who really gets rich? Management and China, who is Wal-mart's largest supplier, by far.

 

the problem isnt wal-mart. it is the government who gives away this money to the poor. wal-mart isnt taking our tax dollars. they cant take anything from us by force. only the government can.

right, by not working there or purchasing their goods if you don't want to.

also i disagree with the title of the thread, i don't see any interesting thoughts anywhere that i didnt type.

 

I saw an interesting article about Wal-Mart earlier today. Looks like they are trying to get their foot in the door of the banking world and are having a whole bunch of opposition. I will post the article in its entirety, due to a lack of interesting topics on the board today.


http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060411/BIZ/604110343/1005

 

Award for the most gross-misinterpretation of deregulation ever.

The second all companies in the US are forced to pay for our health insurance is the day the unemployment rate goes from 4.7% to 20%.

Want a good representation of what your world would look like.......look at France right now, Germany right now. 20% unemployment, riots in the streets, job protections for everybody. Companies have no incentive to grow, hire.......sound familiar? Yeah it's communism.

 

i'm with craig. the government is there to protect you from violence, not from ****ty jobs.

 

I read a little more of this blog and find it very funny indeed. They are acting like capitalism and investment is such an enemy of the poor.....basically that our country is so unfair.

I read a report today that was called the Millionaires Next Door. It was discussing that something like 29 or 30% of the American population, when they die are worth $1 million or more......and that's from one generation.

Take my dad for instance......started out with nothing.....I mean nothing. Dirt floors as a kid OK. Got married, got drafted in the Army, got out, went to work at papermill. Worked for 10 years there and hated it so left, went to college on the GI Bill while my mom worked at a car dealership. Graduated....got a job in insurance......had a house, cars, sent 2 kids to college. Will end up with $250,000 house, cars, 401k's etc etc valued at $1 million. Average middle class, hard-working guy right?

If this people think they have it so bad in the US, try going to England, hell anywhere in Europe, Asia......start with nothing and then end up having $1 million in assets.

Can't be done unless you are a musician or a actor and get lucky. England, India and now socialistic Europe have a caste system. No way up.

 

although i'm not sure where i stand completely on this, i am probably going to quit shopping at walmart near term. i don't know if i can support any govt action to prevent walmart from doing anything. simply was some food for thought.

i definitely recommend everyone take your business to target.

 

thats a reasonable view. i think if you take any steps to force your will on wal-mart, no matter how well-intentioned, it turns out negative, because you need to let things adjust themselves and things will be ok. if that means we all get so pissed at wal-mart that nobody works or shops there, then problem solved. but we shouldnt mess with their right to hire people with whatever benfits they choose. its is their business, and their employees, let's them them figure out between each other what they will work for.

like milton friedman says:

"Who protects the consumer? It's competition among business...Who protects the worker? Again, it's not the union. It's competition among employers for employees."

if we leave the system alone, it works. the problems start when we collectivize and force our will on each other. we should just leave each other alone.

 

there is one thing i'd like to think more about though, and that's the allegation that more workers at wal mart equals more people sucking the life out of medicare/medicaid taxpayer dollars. which is worse? i would think that government forcing them to pay for health insurance/higher wages would be a net positive for all of those libertarian/utilitarians like yourself who favor less personal taxes. for example now they routinely force people to work 39 hours thusly denying them salary and benefits.

my wanting to quit shopping at walmart is less about that and more about their price fixing with manufacturers and being the single highest driving force behind outsourcing and globalization. also i hate companies which make **** versions of their products to sell at walmart. it's bad for them in the long run because it creates a negative opinion of an otherwise good brand name.

dunno, will require more debate no doubt.