51–56 of 56 posts
No, as long as the money kept rolling in, a blind eye was turned to the kind of behaviour described. Hard times has changed what is acceptable practice.
I used to buy into the MBA mentality. Now I really think MBA / todays managerial wisdom is slowly destroying the world. The business climate in most corporations is plain awful and most people don't even realize because they don't know what a healthy business environment looks like. It seems that these days that as long as your numbers on your spreadsheet match up, it doesn't matter how you got them to match just as…
"Give a manager a numerical target & he will hit it, even if it means destroying the company."
It never works. If you want to incentivize something, you need to be measuring that actual thing and giving incentives for that measurement. If you can't measure it, your incentives are doomed.
Don't worry, in the "long run" the laissez-faire approach to corporate regulation will "end up" minimizing malfeasance and maximizing freedom. Liberty just needs more time. Like, say, another year. Two, max.
What is laissez-faire about the major industries (banking, defense, oil, agriculture and many more) being the biggest lobbyists? They pay politicians to write laws favorable to them. Their PR industry tells you its laissez-faire, but think through what you say.
If anything it's member's only laissez-faire, where only those with enough money to buy lobbying influence are given carte blanche.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is laissez-faire about the major industries (banking, defense, oil, agriculture and many more) being the biggest lobbyists? They pay politicians to write laws favorable to them. Their PR industry tells you its laissez-faire, but think through what you say.
Take it a step further: if there weren't any government intervention, then they wouldn't have to pay any lobbyists. The companies wouldn't even need any laws enacted. They would - as the phrase implies - do whatever they wanted. The lobbying is the process by which they are able to enact their will, despite, in theory, being a regulatory mechanism. If anything it's member's only laissez-faire , where only those with…
That thought experiment doesn't help though, since at the level of abstractions we are talking on, just having courts to enforce normal contract law can be construed as "intervention" of a kind. Wolves of various kinds typically decry shepherds for not allowing them the liberty to eat of the flock. The whole point of this civilization thing is to pull us a bit above/out of the state of nature. So "no government intervention" isn't a viable setting for a civilization.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to mention "snake oil" liniments and other forms of quackery.
Obligatory: real Chinese snake oil is a valid cure. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=snake-oil-s... The problem then (as now) was charlatans claiming similar properties from substances which lacked the original's active ingredient: high Omega-3 oils. I see this as the fundamental Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance problem: what is quality, and how does one identify it?
People weren't stupid -- it definitely made them 'feel better'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take it a step further: if there weren't any government intervention, then they wouldn't have to pay any lobbyists. The companies wouldn't even need any laws enacted. They would - as the phrase implies - do whatever they wanted. The lobbying is the process by which they are able to enact their will, despite, in theory, being a regulatory mechanism. If anything it's member's only laissez-faire , where only those with…
> "if there weren't any government intervention, then they wouldn't have to pay any lobbyists." That thought experiment doesn't help though, since at the level of abstractions we are talking on, just having courts to enforce normal contract law can be construed as "intervention" of a kind. Wolves of various kinds typically decry shepherds for not allowing them the liberty to eat of the flock. The whole point of this…
I suppose I could have stated it better by saying that the regulation that's in place is merely a puppet for the lobbyist, providing the facade of regulation, when it's 'laissez-faire' since those paying the lobbyists are allowed to do what they wish.