Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Must Be Stopped

newrepublic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 106 posts

Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped

#81

Post by mrow84 »

davidw wrote: post #77
mrow84 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I'm sure you're aware, there is some room between "completely law abiding" and "totally above the law", where corporations find themselves quite comfortable. Corporations are amoral, and so conform to local laws only because it is economically efficient to do so, not out of ideological adherence to principles of justice.

> As I'm sure you're aware, there is some room between "completely law abiding" and "totally above the law", where corporations find themselves quite comfortable. Great, so don't write "above the law". Hyperbole is annoying and distracts from real, important discussions about these kinds of things.

Omniusaspirer actually wrote "they're effectively above the law", which is hardly hyperbolic, and was directly preceded by a decidedly relevant example: "Without a global government agreement you simply can't bust up megacorps like you used to".

Consideration of the fact that multi-national corporations transcend national law-makers is part of "real, important discussion about these kinds of things", as you put it.

Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped

#82

Post by Vulkum »

zyx321 wrote: post #80
Vulkum wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a related note about the economic system have a look at this: http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely... This is what happens when wealth accumulates at the top of the pyramid. The video is talking about people, but those people are those behind the companies you mentioned (including Google, Facebook, hedge funds and oil companies). The problem with capitalism in my opinion, is that it's not t…

9 Out Of 10 Americans Are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact Was Upworthy really the best source for this? The transcript is very nearly useless. Furthermore, 'true' captalism with a truly free market is quite unrealistic, since it would require all participants to be effectively omniscient and infinitely rational (and even then you would have to compare it to 'true' communism, where no one is ever selfish…

I think the original source is on a youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM . The video aggregates data from multiple sources:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequalit... http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealth-inequality/ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-... http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/economy/ceo-pay/index.h...

How reliable these sources are, I'm not sure. If the information is wrong, I wouldn't blame it on Upworthy, it's a distribution channel after all.

Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped

#83

Post by davidw »

mrow84 wrote: post #81
davidw wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As I'm sure you're aware, there is some room between "completely law abiding" and "totally above the law", where corporations find themselves quite comfortable. Great, so don't write "above the law". Hyperbole is annoying and distracts from real, important discussions about these kinds of things.

Omniusaspirer actually wrote "they're effectively above the law", which is hardly hyperbolic, and was directly preceded by a decidedly relevant example: "Without a global government agreement you simply can't bust up megacorps like you used to". Consideration of the fact that multi-national corporations transcend national law-makers is part of "real, important discussion about these kinds of things", as you put it.

What he wrote is plain false. It's wrong. It's incorrect. Those companies must - and do - respect the laws of the countries they wish to operate in, although clearly they try and wiggle and squirm around them where they can. When push comes to shove, they are most certainly not above the law.

When you write things that are false, it does not help a conversation go anywhere useful.

Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped

#84

Post by marbletiles »

humanrebar wrote: post #57
marbletiles wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't many things on that list that we wouldn't be better off without. Is that really what you meant? You're in favour of big oil companies, hedge funds and the military-industrial complex? The latter is particularly surprising, unless you think 50% of America's budget going on weaponry to fight threats that don't exist is a productive use of capital

> unless you think 50% of America's budget going on weaponry to fight threats that don't exist is a productive use of capital That is flatly not true. Where do you get your numbers?

You're quite right, it's 20%, and still dwarfs other nations. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/e...

Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped

#85

Post by mrow84 »

davidw wrote: post #83
mrow84 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Omniusaspirer actually wrote "they're effectively above the law", which is hardly hyperbolic, and was directly preceded by a decidedly relevant example: "Without a global government agreement you simply can't bust up megacorps like you used to". Consideration of the fact that multi-national corporations transcend national law-makers is part of "real, important discussion about these kinds of things", as you put it.

What he wrote is plain false. It's wrong. It's incorrect. Those companies must - and do - respect the laws of the countries they wish to operate in, although clearly they try and wiggle and squirm around them where they can. When push comes to shove, they are most certainly not above the law. When you write things that are false, it does not help a conversation go anywhere useful.

Your definition of illegal behaviour seems to rest on a very narrow view that unless behaviour is prosecuted then it is not illegal. By this view, corporations are not above the law because when any illegal behaviour is discovered they are duly prosecuted, when laws are available, and if laws are not available then it was not illegal behaviour in the first place. However, Omniusaspirer's contention was that corporations are "effectively above the law", not that they were literally above the law.

The exemplary area in which corporations are effectively above the law is tax arrangements, where multi-national corporations can take advantage of their multi-national status to pay lower amounts of corporation tax than companies in all the national jurisdictions in which they operate.

The corporations are effectively above the law because they are legally paying lower taxes than those other companies. That is, they get preferential treatment by satisfying the letter of the law, but not the intent, that being evidenced by current international efforts to close these loopholes. Such issues can only be addressed by multi-national or even global agreements, as Omniusaspirer said.

Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped

#86

Post by davidw »

mrow84 wrote: post #85
davidw wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What he wrote is plain false. It's wrong. It's incorrect. Those companies must - and do - respect the laws of the countries they wish to operate in, although clearly they try and wiggle and squirm around them where they can. When push comes to shove, they are most certainly not above the law. When you write things that are false, it does not help a conversation go anywhere useful.

Your definition of illegal behaviour seems to rest on a very narrow view that unless behaviour is prosecuted then it is not illegal. By this view, corporations are not above the law because when any illegal behaviour is discovered they are duly prosecuted, when laws are available, and if laws are not available then it was not illegal behaviour in the first place. However, Omniusaspirer's contention was that corporati…

So your definition is "corporations are effectively above the law if they do things I think are bad" ?

Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped

#87

Post by mrow84 »

davidw wrote: post #86
mrow84 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your definition of illegal behaviour seems to rest on a very narrow view that unless behaviour is prosecuted then it is not illegal. By this view, corporations are not above the law because when any illegal behaviour is discovered they are duly prosecuted, when laws are available, and if laws are not available then it was not illegal behaviour in the first place. However, Omniusaspirer's contention was that corporati…

So your definition is "corporations are effectively above the law if they do things I think are bad" ?

No, my definition would be that multi-national corporations are effectively above the law if, in a particular jurisdiction, they can engage in behaviour that companies constrained solely to that jurisdiction cannot engage in.

I am glad that we have cleared up the difference between being literally and effectively above the law, but I doubt we'll make any progress towards agreement about what being effectively above the law might mean. As we have already circumvented the HN efforts to avoid debates that aren't going anywhere several times, I guess I'll leave it at that. Have a nice day!

edit: Just to be clear, my above definition would also extend to arbitrary numbers of joint jurisdictions. So if corporation X, doing business in jurisdictions A, B, and C, can engage in behaviours within jurisdiction A that are unavailable to corporation Y, which only does business in jurisdictions A and B, then X would be effectively above the law with respect to Y. This definition seems very natural and clear to me: one group is allowed to do things another group isn't by some special status, ergo, they are effectively above the law.

Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped

#88

Post by netcan »

emotionalcode wrote: post #78
netcan wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I don't think " human culture can be (honestly) recognized as a consciously directed emergent property, " any more than an individuals personality can be directed. We know some things. We control some things. We can't engineer a human personality. Same goes for human culture. We can't decide to model Iraqi culture on Italian culture. We can copy some institutions, the copying is indirect. The cards will f…

No, I am saying that the collective unconscious belief system of a system itself (here, I am calling a collection of humans, or a society - to be a system) is what can direct it. This means all those side thoughts you think you ignore. When you choose to listen to analysis over intuition, but you might not consider the effect of ignoring intuition in favor of analysis, or you may even deny the existence of intuition…

We're getting into tricky territory with words :)

I think it's important to make a distinction between clever emergent processes that people are involved in but aren't in control of and those that people made and are in control in. The distinction is vague, and arguable.

I'm generally pretty down on systems (politics and economics are really burdened by these) which overreach by overstating our understanding of things. Just because a theory is the best we've got, doesn't mean it's good enough to be made operational. When people start getting grandiose with their social and political theories I think of 18th century surgery.

Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped

#89

Post by netcan »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #71
netcan wrote: post #22

We have to remember that when we talking about giant companies we are talking about giant institutions, of a form and culture that has not existed in human history. The closest parallels common throughout human history are armies. I think that our 20th century paradigms have failed to understand and shape these institutions, each with their own trappings. Labour unionism, which was deeply rooted in man labour culture…

Kinda wish this was the top voted answer because you do a much better job putting things in perspective in terms of all the interactions that are involved. Maybe HN should implement a vote transfer feature.

thank you.

Re: Amazon Must Be Stopped

#90

Post by ende »

dkarapetyan wrote: post #53
jamespo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should no longer have elections as there's a lot of duplication between > 1 political parties too

There is an entire field of mathematics dedicated to answering such questions and the answer is a lot more complicated than your simple quip. In fact the way most democracies are set up they are theoretically much less optimal than they could be and in some cases are as good as dictatorial systems because of susceptibility to being rigged. As usual wikipedia is a pretty good starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/w…

Would you mind slapping a name on said field of mathematics, because I dig that stuff but only ever stumble upon smatterings of it here and there. I'd love to get to the core of that field. Its like game theory + lots of other stuff. (Sorry for off topic)
Post reply on HN