7/31    I was having dinner with a former 6th grade teacher and a
        classmate last night (haven't seen both in years). I was dragged
        into a political discussion I didn't really want to get into.
        The result was the usual left-wing/bleeding-heart-liberal
        diatribe against corporations, money, etc. So from what I
        gather the reasoning is something like this:
        Greed is bad, therefore corporations are bad because they
        exploit workers by underpaying them. Corporations should be
        avoided and heavily restricted.
        Now, this is the part I don't get. If there were no corporations
        in the first place, wouldn't people be unemployed? And if
        people are unemployed, wouldn't that be a "bad thing?"
        Also, corporations pay a lot of taxes in the form of employment
        and income, so doesn't the government greatly benefit from
        having business and trade around?
        Just a caveat, the former teacher and classmate have never held
        a "real" job before. The classmate was stuck in a jungle for
        2 years doing peace core shit and recently came back. I don't
        know about you, but I think the education system is pretty fucked
        if we have people like this running our schools.
        \_ Go vouchers!!! Oh wait teacher's unions control the schools and
           Dem. Party....
        \_ As anyone who worked for a corporation will tell you, corporations
           _do_ suck, for the most part.  But avoiding or restricting
           corporations treats the symptom, not the disease.  I don't think
           anyone knows how to treat the disease (which, btw, has nothing to
           do with corporations themselves, it's apparent in the public sector
           too). -- ilyas
           \_ Seems to me the common factor is concentrated wealth and power.
              "Soulless bureaucracies" are manifestations of power that can
              generally be traced to a few large stockholders or government
              officials.  What do we mean by "restricting corporations"?
              Regulating human employment, monopolies, and corporate actions
              affecting health, safety, and the environment all seem to be
              desirable to me, in this capitalist system, to protect against
              the abuses inherently possible with these massive differences
              in wealth and power. The government itself is *supposed* to
              manifest the power of the "people" but obviously this too needs
              watching. But corps. generally represent the power of very few.
                 --motd moderate
              \_ '... needs watching.'  Yes indeed.  The problem is, even with
                 government watchdog groups, it's much harder to get the
                 government to change.  Anyways, I am not really holding my
                 breath for an improvement until the world has achieved
                 americanization/globalization/localization.  I think when that
                 happens a lot of problems will go away.
                 (By 'a/g/l' I mean the country's gvt systems and economies
                 will come to resemble the US, while at the same time there
                 will be a huge push to decentralize most aspects of the
                 government, start cultural preservation movements, and so on.
                 So both a localization and a globalization will happen at once)
                   -- ilyas