How would you ever explain to your grandkids that you were on the side of corporations?

[grasswire]

While children were hungry in America?

While drones bombed children in the Middle East?

While thousands of young men and women died half-way 'round the world for a lie?

While millions of Americans were homeless?

While millions more lost their own homes?

While grandmas had to choose between food and medicine?

While the earth turned from green beauty to sludge and rot?

While developers stole lands from poor folks?

While clean water was increasingly privatized?

While the treasure of the land was transferred to the wealthiest?

While everything, nearly everything, went spiraling out of control and regulation came under attack?

The grandchildren may ask: "What did you do when the corporations took over America, Grandpa?"

Will they be ashamed for you?

[socialist_n_TN]

1. Yep. Whose side were you on?

And of course the question TODAY is who's side ARE you on?

The capitalists or the rest of us. There's NO middle ground.

[REP]

2. Nope, but I'd have to have children first before I could disappoint grandchildren

And that ain't happening.

Isn't it possible to be against something without invoking hypothetical children?

[WingDinger]

3. hOW WOULD YOU EXPLAIN TO gOD THAT YOU KILLED YOUR OWN COUNTRYMEN TO STOP

them not getting turned down forever on health insurance, having any input on job safety, or any other sign of dignity?

[mdmc]

4. It was society.. it was the easy thing to do..

I will have to explain to my nieces and nephew and their kids.. I can't afford my own..

[ZombieHorde]

5. They see it as defending freedom and Jesus.

They are not going to say they "fought" against the poor, they are going to say they "fought" for everyone's freedom and for Jesus.

[TBF]

6. Change that to "capitalism" and I'm with you. That is why I'm working

to encourage real change - a new economic system in which we have equality rather than just a few folks owning everything.

[Recursion]

7. Corporations are why our economy has so much less poverty and hunger than it ever did in the past

For all the harm they do it's simplistic to say the corporation per se is the problem; I'd much rather live now with the improvements developed by corporations than 200 years ago.

[Rex]

8. I blame the individuals behind corrupt corporations.

Blaming the organization will do nothing; putting a 24/7 spotlight on the owners can have a huge impact.

[Recursion]

9. And there are some screwed-up incentives currently

But as a tool for improving our standards of living corporations have pretty much been an unquestionable success.

[Rex]

13. Yes it really is the obscene amounts of 'benefits' and direct

conflict of interest (we later read about in the news) with certain CEOs/chairman, that pollute our nations form of capitalism. Like rigging the market to fail...that has caused wholesale misery for the general population and should be punished without any tolerance.

Sewer treatment plants and centralized plumbing have done more for our standard of living then anything a corporation has ever done (with the exception of Henry Ford) imo.

[Recursion]

15. Both of which were provisioned by corporations

The government has never shown much interest in provisioning the works it directs and pays for, and there's probably a good reason for that.

[Rex]

17. I would have to disagree with you on that in regards to the MIC.

The largest corporation on the planet. The American govt and corporations are very interested in working together in provisioning the works they direct and pay for (to). That is part of the problem...how do you (as a govt that respects the limits of capitalism) get control over 'out of control' costs and spending by the Military Industrial Complex? Throw in all the top brass that are now CEOs for mega defense contractors etc..

[Recursion]

24. I've worked for the MIC, in a shipyard

I can't speak for every part of the MIC but some of it works pretty well, employees union workers at a good wage, builds damn good ships and boats, and innovates naval architecture daily. Sure, there are cost overruns. I called them "overtime", and liked the extra money (though we tried not to have them).

[Rex]

30. I understand what you are saying, I am thinking more along the lines

of the MIC 'losing' billions of dollars here and there, you know the news articles from the years that place blame on the loss of billions on the MIC. That has to stop. You might save billions locally, only to lose all of that savings to 800 million dollars going 'missing' in Iraq. That has to stop.

[PufPuf23]

16. That is a Big Lie - current Global Corporations for private interests

are not sustainable in the ecology of the natural world.

Innovation can and did come from individuals independent of corporations.

Corporate charters should be issued and revoked regards to good of the people and planet and not private profit.

Global corporations and free trade (as opposed to fair trade) destroy local economic niches and drain capital from local economies.

Here is a mind experiment for you:

Contrast free education with private global corporations for profit.

[Rex]

19. It would depend on if we value profit more then the natural world.

I would say we do value money over everything else in the world. If one country revokes a corporate charters...then the company can just move to another country. We have to hold the owners/individuals feet over a fire; cut the head off and the rest of the body dies.

[PufPuf23]

22. If humans are rational and spiritual beings, we do value

the natural world over short term profit and power.

Unfortunately, the multitude of questiona are not black and white.

Maybe we would not have so many financial institutions incorporated in Deleware or off shore or credit card companies in South Dakota?

Money is an abstract map but the natural world and lives are tangible. Politics and models better serve society if based upon the tangible and holistic rather than maps that favor power by entrenched special interests.

Big picture efficiency too often leads to overall inefficency in today's complex human and degraded natural world.

[Rex]

28. I agree 100%.

[Recursion]

23. Name a school that is not built or supplied by several corporations

If you know a better way of organizing medium-scale economic activity I'm all ears; nobody seems to have found one. Yes, they shouldn't get too big or too powerful, and yes, they are now, but saying "corporations are the problem" is reductionist and simplistic.

[Rex]

29. We need to reenact regulations and enforce laws to prohibit

monopolies, cartels and oligarchies from forming...it is the catch 22 of capitalism, 'the company is so successful, it has no competition anymore' happens and we need to guard against it imo.

[PufPuf23]

31. How about corporations that do not maximize utility over time in economic terms?

Corporate charters morally and sanely whould be granted and withdrawn based upon recognition of the natural law and world and to the benefit of a majority of People of the society that grants the charter.

This justification was even the facade of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Dutch East India Company, etc.; the foundations of European colonization.

Anti-trust law works but has not been used.

Prosecution of financial criminals that design paths to arbitrage cashflow around laws and regulations and oversight are ammoral and self-entitled leaches.

Current laws and regulations and greed psychopaths magnify the problem that is killing regional and local economy niches.

One can engineer a logical and fair cyle of production to consumption but when a link is greedy or an outside entity sees something viable to plunder, people lose and the ecological economy is degraded.

I am not "reductionists nor simplistic" nor did I say "corporations are the problem" but that corporations that operate out \side the good of the People and natural law are a problem. There is a huge difference.

[donheld]

35. David Koch is that you?

[Dreamer Tatum]

10. Oh brother nt

[Taverner]

39. Aw was someone mean to your friends the Kochs?

[Proud Liberal Dem]

11. An apt question

for all of those pols out there endlessly fretting over the well being and security of their grandchildren/future generations yet advocating policies that don't do squat in terms of improving their well being and security (or, in some cases, make them worse). :eyes: :puke:

[Zorra]

12. If I don't die fighting in the revolution to overthrow them,

I'll try to explain to the grandkids how I really felt it about when the corporation plutarchal dictatorship ruled America.

And if my kids survive while fighting alongside me, and I don't, they can explain it.

[el_bryanto]

14. This is why I wisely decided not to have kids

And if that fails, I plan to go senile.

Bryant

[demosincebirth]

18. we are all the blame for something. A perfect world would be a very boring place.

[hack89]

20. My grandchildren

will hear how their grandfather and great-grandfather both worked for big corporations that provided excellent pay and benefits that not only provided a good living but a good retirement.

[Name removed]

34. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[senseandsensibility]

21. Someone unrec'd this

Went down to eight from nine. I put it back up, but....:eyes:

[fascisthunter]

26. I recced as well...

the same conservo trolls no doubt attacking the left on DU.

[MadHound]

25. By handing them the keys to the kingdom

After having raised them as the children of corporate royalty that they are.

C'mon now, there is little ethical navel gazing when it comes to resolving these questions among the wealthy elite. They feel that they are entitled, and pass that sense of entitlement along to their kids. By the time these kids get outside the bubble of their gated communities and gated minds, consideration of these questions is only viewed through the lenses of how much it will effect them.

Even the very few who actually do consider, and act to change these issues still tend to retain their trappings of wealth and power. After all, they feel entitled to ride in a first class private jet while heading off to their conference on global climate change, or charity event for hunger, or whatever other soul-salving charity they choose to get "involved" in.

[fascisthunter]

27. The Delluded Fascist/Conservative Losers

see corporations as a good thing because they themselves benefit from it. The others are just brainwashed pin heads who need a smack in the head to wake the fuck up.

But yeah, they will be remembered as traitors...

[MilesColtrane]

32. 1)I won't have grandkids, and 2) I'm not on the side of corporations.

Neither, do I believe, are the majority of DU posters on the side of corporations.

If this question was really meant for someone here, maybe you should have IMed it to them.

[kctim]

33. I don't know

I'm still trying to figure out, as my neighbor claims, how I was on the side of the evil government who took their individual rights away.

[LooseWilly]

36. If I were on the side of the corporations, I'd explain it with a FAT fucking check...

... a sportscar, a hand-computer with unlimited data-plan from a corporate satellite, a fucking mansion and 2 fucking yachts.

My grandchildren might curse my name while cruising around the North Pole in the summer... but their grudge would be as shallow as the rest of their interests and tastes... and they'd get along just swimmingly with Paris Hilton's half-wit children to come.

It's called the American Dream.

[HopeHoops]

37. Three words: "I hate you."

[theaocp]

38. Easy: they'd lie about it.

It comes as naturally as breathing.