From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris  sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,talk.politics.misc,sci.med.pharmacy,sci.med,
	alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: . 2.7 Million Morons
Date: 26 Nov 2003 20:26:29 -0800
Message-ID: <79cf0a8.0311262026.273e8bf4@posting.google.com>

nulldev00@aol.com (Edward Green) wrote in message
news:<2a0cceff.0311261534.159ebaf3@posting.google.com>...

> Large corporations like General Motors and Citibank, laden with layers
> of management and palace infighting and all the other inescapable
> benefits of being a large corporation _still_ manage to hang on and
> produce obscene amounts of value every year (well, most years).  Now,
> just think if we could provide some miraculous new model of mass
> economic activity which was able to focus all the wasted energy into
> value -- _then_ think how obscenely much value we could produce!
>
> No, I don't have a model in mind.

COMMENT:

Me, either, but I can tell you that democracy, as presently practised,
isn't helping much.

Surely for every given economic activity in a free market, at any
given level of communications and transportations technology, there is
a certain corporate size which best balances the natural advantages of
unified vision and planning and natural economics of scale, against
the natural disadvantages of bureaucratic inefficiency and megalithic
inertia. And surely we've long passed that with GM and Citibank
(nowadays a wholy-owned subsidiary of Citigroup-- no, I'm not kidding.
You want horror, google Citigroup).

So why do these corporate dinosaurs exist? I suppose for the same
reason that critters with shells and armor exist. They're a response
to critters with teeth. In the case of megacorporations, the teeth
being not so much belonging to others of their kind, but rather the
all-devouring political machine which attempts to regulate and tax all
corporate entities maximally. The regulatory burden for a business
that has 25 people on the payroll is not much less than one with 250
or 2500, so that that small businesses are at a disadvantage like
never before. It's a wonder that any of them not hiding behind some
artificial political shield (tax breaks for woman or minority
ownership, etc) even survive. As communications command and control
improve, and as Washington lobbying by large corporations becomes more
and more effective, I suppose it's only a matter of time before there
are no small businesses left. Except, of course, for the
afore-mentioned fake ones.

And consider the irony of that. The very lovers of the regulation and
taxation that ultimately force the self-defensive creation of
overlarge corporations, are the people who hate big corporations the
most. Such people love the idea of democracy countering corporate
"greed", but they want the elections which control democracy to be
uninfluenced by the money which corporate activity generates. Which is
like wanting the tides to be uninfluenced by the moon and sun. It
would have been better to keep goverment interference with business to
a minimum, for as soon as you allow government to control business in
a democracy, then only those businesses will thrive that can bribe,
buy, or otherwise fend or fight off the government. Which is to say,
the really, really big ones.

And consider the tall tales that these government-loving people will
tell to show it isn't so-- that in a free market businesses grow like
Topsy into megalopolies, all by themselves. For example, if I want to
get rich and compete with Big Pharma by developing my own cure for
cancer or allergies, I am made to understand by The Left that I won't
succeed. Probably because big pharmacies will find out about my secret
process and maybe send the Pinkertons in the middle of the night to
break my office windows with clubs and steal my files! But the truth
is far more prosaic. In the real world I don't have the $800 million
it takes to get a drug past the FDA, and so I won't be competing with
the pharm industry because I can't raise $800 million to get a new
drug to market, until I have a track record of already doing it a few
times already. So it's chicken and egg.  And the FDA is the government
agency empowered by the Left to protect them from Big Pharmacy, don't
you know...

SBH

From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: misc.kids.health,sci.med,misc.health.alternative,misc.kids,
	uk.people.health
Subject: Re: 8 Medical Lies and Why I Abandoned Medicine
Date: 4 Sep 2005 15:35:30 -0700
Message-ID: <1125873330.006298.131960@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>

jdeere2312@yahoo.com wrote:
> A company is not a person.  As such, it has no business
> playing with democracy.  It can't vote.  Therefore it
> shouldn't be allowed to play any politics.  The only
> corporations that should be allowed to interfere
> with politics are those that were formed explicitly
> for that purpose -- and therefore that represent some part
> of the public.
>
> Otherwise, companies, which represent more wealth
> than individuals, will naturally subvert a democracy
> for their own purposes.



COMMENT:

I can make the opposite observation that if you prevent corporations
from participating in politics, you merely allow them (and their
owners/shareholders) to be simply robbed by the voters, since they have
no numerical way of defending themselves. Democracy can be 3 wolves and
2 sheep voting on what to have for lunch. Corporations are sheered all
the time as it is. Some are actually killed. This causes the voters to
whine to the government because they can't find jobs.

The answer is not for everybody to become a federal employee. The feds
have no money of their own-- they take it from you, and from your
bosses (which means you don't get the payraise).

I can't teach you leftists about capitalism by talking about it. You
need to learn about it by doing it. Start your own business, and see in
how many ways the "voter" is sucking away  at you, starting with your
state business encorporation fee, you state business license, all the
taxes from City Hall, and moving up through the highest levels of
government to your corporate income tax.  Deal with the stupid
regulations. Worry about the stupid insurance. Wrestle with the legal
liability issues. See if you can meet a payroll. Savor the joys of the
Work Comp system, which you get to pay into.

Or at the very least, if you can't do any of that, invest in the stock
market. Get a good feel for the idea that capital is risk, and risk
means you sometimes lose. Then enjoy the capital gains tax even when
you do win....

SBH