Re: Corporatism: First, yes companies have damaged common resources, people do have the power to organise to protect themselves, HOWEVER they do not necessarily have the information. I doubt the corporations are going to freely admit how they are making record profits (that's a trade secret afterall) so how does the public prove any damage is being done? Well research of course, but that costs money...

So your 'free-market' mechanism assumes that corporations will have the benefit of the doubt when it comes to common resources, and that the people will bear the cost of proving both of organising a boycott AND of proving a problem exists in the first place - this is against the fact that it is not in the corporation's interest to have these facts known, and they have more money to throw at the issue, both in terms of propaganda AND falsified research.

Re: Labour Unions, yes, though there is no reason to think that the management should be a separate entity. The FACT is there is a class division, and the management works for the elite, the shareholders. The workers or stakeholders do not have the same interests.

It is in principle entirely possible to reward the workers as stakeholders with bonuses dependant on the profit which the company makes - a dividend based bonus scheme for every worker. This may be a step towards a better working environment. I don't know.

Re: Bank bailout - so, no matter what happens, you blame it on government intervention. Yet i'm still waiting to hear you say you disagree with the protection of the banking system.

@"I would argue that the reason a person is a low-wage worker and is forced to "work or starve" is due to earlier decisions he or she made."

In some cases this may be true, in some cases a person may have dropped out of high school to get a job and work to provide food for their family. Now maybe there is less poverty at that level than there was in the 20s and 30s but only BECAUSE of social programs and the new deal... but that just demonstrates the important of this kind of social program.

:: Yes, i'm glad you said 'slippery slope' because there is a balance between personal responcibility and (government) collective responcibility. I don't mean to make the case that there should be no personal responcibility. You need to find a balance - between government and the individual.

Ultimately people are not free to make decisions. The violence of authoritarian regimes has been replaced with the propaganda model of the democratic states. People are influenced to buy MacDonalds by advertising, education programs can counter bad habits which people choose, but the choice they make in the first place is not entirely their own, it is massively influenced by the environment and the information which is available to them.

The fact that TV (at least when i was growing up, the internet may now be more significant) is controlled by corporations, and managed to be more interesting to children than school work is an example of the success of corporations, they managed to build and leverage a system for providing information to people which was considerable better than the education system. HOWEVER it was not in the public interest, it was only in corporate interest. Education systems failed to leverage TV in the same way.

I agree that people should be free to make their own decisions, and school curriculum do fall prey to the weakness of authority dictating what we should learn, it was recently brought to my attention that other schooling models exist ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_valley_school )

BUT only at public expense. Personal responcibility for learning out of the tax payer's pocket. Of course i could see an alternative system where there is no education provided by the government and corporations instead educate their workforce as needed... but this again would result in biased information content.

Again, as with stakeholders in companies this does not result in totalitarianism, it instead facilitates a system of personal responcibility.

If the government provides free education and people fail that's their fault, but their education system is still authoritarian. Education is a failed social program if you ask me.

You're speaking out of two sides of your mouth: If it's exploitative and coercive (both terms used negatively) than you are saying the entrepreneurial spirit should be looked down upon.

You are free to work at McDonalds, start your own company, work for a newspaper etc. Free to buy what products you want. Or do you live in North Korea?

Why are you looking at everything as absolutes? The corporate system is exploitative and coercive. It is also has aspects that work, and the so called entrepreneurial spirit (such as it is) can have positive impacts. And if you're going to spend your life in that system, is it really really such a terrible thing to try to be aware of the consequences of that, both positive and negative?

"You are free to work at McDonalds, start your own company, work for a newspaper etc. Free to buy what products you want." - Sure, I'm free to work where I'm qualified and for whoever is willing to give me a job. I'm free to choose who I give all my work to so that they can make a fortune off it. But you know what? I'm not free to choose not to give my work to someone else. Why? Because to exist as a member of society, I NEED MONEY.
And yeah, no one is putting a gun to my head and forcing me to buy goods and services I don't want. But we live in a consumer culture. If I want to have a social life, if I want to interact with other human beings, I need to be a consumer.

@orathaic

We (you and I both) are starting to go around in circles a bit here. I do need to correct you on one thing though: A corporations profits are not "trade secrets" a corporation must in fact disclose it's profit.

no, the mechanisms which they use to make those profits may indeed be trade secrets.

It is the advantage that they have over their competitors. I hope that's what i said, if not i'm sorry that you weren't able to see what i meant and suggest that correction.