Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for June 25, 2010

Ain’t it the truth?

It”s only true for corporations that are propped up by the government because they are “too big to fail”.

Oh, yes, and also true for the government itself.

When GW Bush said he would run the country like a corporation, this is pretty much what he did.

DD, thanks for the laugh. Clueless as always but still good for a laugh.

DD is exactly right. What he is missing is that all corporations are propped up by the government. They are government-chartered collectivities, not real people subject to personal responsibility. Not all corporations behave irresponsibly, of course, but the tendency is in that direction. For-profit corporations have a state-enforced fiduciary duty to maximise the bottom line, which pushes them to behave irresponsibly whenever this is legal. (And, yes, the government usually acts irresponsibly too, for different reasons).

Further reading on the relationship between corporations and the state: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/11/10/roderick-long/corporations-versus-the-market-or-whip-conflation-now/

Exactly how it works. CEOs fail miserably, leave a ton of wreckage in their wake, and just move on to the next job - with millions in tow. I’d love to see one of these Nate cartoons end with Nate being severely punished, but that would be a fantasy too extreme for any cartoon.

ONly problem is that there are individuals who act just like this and corporations that don’t. The only difference is the personal responsibility for corporate leaders that commit crimes.

Localized dangers like an oil spill are nothing compared to our culture’s widespread and growing hatred of corporations, big business, and capitalism. That hatred is a danger to America’s prosperity and freedom.

Of course, that trend has existed for over a century. What surprised me here is the attack from Toby. How can pro-capitalists defend economic (and hence ALL) freedoms when even libertarians (like Toby seems to be) let their contempt for government bleed over into an attack on corporations?

Corporations are NOT legal fictions but rather just one of many kinds of voluntary associations whose rights should be defended as extensions of individual rights (which, much to my surprise and pleasure, the Supreme Court recently did).

pschearer said:

“Localized dangers like an oil spill are nothing compared to our culture’s widespread and growing hatred of corporations, big business, and capitalism. That hatred is a danger to America’s prosperity and freedom.”

No, wrong. Unfettered capitalism is the greatest danger our country faces, and - unfortunately - continues to face. Astonishingly, you turn reality on its head and complain that anti-corporate sentiment is to blame. Of course, the recent near collapse of our country was only staved off by taxpayer dollars, else the US would have likely gone the way of the USSR. Those are the facts.

The best thing that could happen to the US and the world is stopping the corporate infestation of our government in its tracks, followed by a strong rebuke of corporate control of our lives. A more collectivist system will be healthier for all, just not the few who benefit now.

Corporations are the greatest scourge in human history, and will be responsible for the destruction of the ecosystem when it’s all over. Corporations alone will have driven the planet to a state of uninhabitability.

Exkio: Perhaps you’d be less quick to disagree with me about corporations if you heard a fuller account of my political and economic views (summarized here too much but there is little choice).

The only moral purpose of government is the defense of individual rights. Essentially there is no government role in voluntary dealings between individuals, alone or in groups, that do not involve force or fraud. Briefly put, I am for the separation of the economy and the government.

This means that government and the private economy are deprived of motives to corrupt each other. Politicians and bureaucrats will be deprived of their power over the lives and incomes of others, and businesses will have no reason to lobby, whether for unearned favors or self-defense (although there will always be some attempt by the criminally-minded to bribe a cop to look the other way).

I don’t know what you think “unfettered capitalism” would mean, but to me it means freedom. As for a collectivist system, between the United States as the only country founded on individual rights versus all the collectivist nations in history, the overwhelming mass of evidence is that individualism wins, collectivism loses. So why do you advocate collectivism?

And as for the claim that “corporations would drive the planet to a state of uninhabitability”, nothing has raised more people out of poverty and improved life and life-spans more than corporations and the entire capitalist system.

I agree 100% with exkiodexian. Unregulated capitalism is the greatest danger to the citizens of the U.S. than any external force. From totally irresponsible actions of BP to Coal Companies killing miners and polluting the environment to businesses that hire illegal aliens and skirt Labor laws to the financial corporations that almost destroyed the economy. It is the totally unfettered greed of capitalism that presents a danger just like cancer. Rotting the U.S. from the inside out and just like in the comic above they plan to just move to a new country like Nate moved on to a new family. But they are already getting a rude awakening from China when they think that China will allow them to play their games. The Chinese government will kill their citcizens for any reason they see fit. But they will lock in prison or execute the wealthest executive on a whim.

Pschearer’s views are vintage Ayn Rand and represent an idealized impractical world view. Rand developed her views as an anti-thesis to the oppressive communist society she grew up in, and only as such are they valid.

She saw capitalists as benevolent philantropists who created jobs and prosperity and the government as bloodsucking leeches. Undoubtedly that is how it was in Russia and her disgust for government infringement is understandable.

But she could never predict what unregulated capitalism would lead to. She could never imagine what corporations like Monsanto and McDonalds would do to the food industry for example. Supported by the State, Corporations outsmarted, out-spent, out-lobbied all regulatory offices to the point where we are today, -where Nate can act as he likes.

Pschearer and his idealistic like need only look at the current state of affairs to recognize that unregulated capitalism failed miserably, just as communism.

Drop the image of the business gentleman with the silk tophat, greatcoat and long cigar and take a good look at a scowling Dick Cheney. HE’s your guy.

As a friend of mine put it, on the way up executives face a glass ceiling; once above, it becomes a cement floor.

Someone I know became somewhat obsessed with one of these golden parachute execs that destroyed our company and followed his career. Given the companies that same exec went on to trash, the estimate was that he’d lost investors well over a billion dollars - yet he keeps landing multi-million dollar pay packages and parachutes.

The problem is not with the govt propping up the huge companies; the problem is with the board system of corporate governance amounting to a back-scratching kleptocracy

I was most unhappy with Tarp and Stimulus, Government should not interfere with free enterprise. However, Tarp is being paid back ahead of schedule, The insurance companies are doing wonderfully. When the government sold the shares of The Hartford, they made 34% on the taxpayer money. The banks got on their feet and are soon to be free of federal debt.

There are all kinds of regulations. There is a ton of gun regulation that would go a long way towards diminishing gun violence, if it were enforced. Likewise, the financial markets are under extremely tight laws, Enforce them.. OSHA is basically a unfunded mandate from Congress. Pay for the regulation. Do you really think the CEO of a corporation wakes up thinking, “I wonder how many workers we can kill and main today.”? Enforce the law. Did BP management want the financial burden of a spill? Why were not laws enforced?

I do not believe that companies are heavenly angel, but I cannot believe they are the spawn of hell. They employ. They provide goods and services. They provide tools for investment in America. America wants them. America needs them.

I admit a few CEO acted badly. Of course our trusted public servants don’t. Do you want the government to run business. Think of it, the DMV trying to contain an oil spill?The military making life saving medical equipment? Don’t they do that in Cuba. Didn’t the Soviet Union give it up as a bad bet? People starve in N Korea. China and Vietnam, though claiming communism are the biggest capitalists in the East.. Better to tweak a system that is the envy of the world than to tear it down and try state control.

I am glad to read someone else has the same opinion of Ayn Rand that I do. In pschearer world a business could move next to your house install a toxic waste dump throughly pollute the land and when it was so toxic or filled up that the dump can no longer be used just move on. That exact scenerio has happened hundreds of times across this country with chemical plants, coal mines, coal power plants, tire recyclers, oil refineries ect. That is exactly why I find no difference between Communism and unregulated Capitalism. These two social constructs are just the two sides of the same coin. It is still just power in the hands of a few individuals controlling the lives on the general population for their own personal betterment with no regard for the consequences. The fact that with Communism you use the Political Party to advance and with Capitalism you use financial weath to advance makes no difference to general population. Now with regulation Capitalism is by far the best system. Since it allows for the needs of the general population to be met by any member enterprising member of the general population in a way that is controlled to prevent greed from producing harmful side effects.

..I think it funnier than ‘hell’ that some of you blame our evil consumer culture instead of the ‘we must personify the capitalistic industries that spends billions of dollars to encourage/trick us into spending tens times even more billions on their worthless crap’….just like Wall Street to not take their medicine..they can give it out,but sure can’t take it.

America was founded on both democratic/republican principles..nowhere in any of our founding literature do they speak about capitalism.

sure,when there was pruely American products did it make,at least,some scence to let the corporations run free,but as we are seeing with the BP oil spill,their leaders do not understand the crisis nor care about the foreign American coast as much as they could/should.

Perhaps,it is not their fault,but just a misunderstanding of cultures.

That just proves my theory,American soil should be protected from outside enfluences.Our shores should not be open to outsider intrusions.Our governments job should be to protect America and Americans!

Not foreign oil company’s interests.This spill could become worse then the 9/11 attacks in total costs to America and Americans.

Intentional?Not likely.But should we be judging this disaster as a lesser attack on our shores because it has been affected by supposed allies with friendly connections,then if it were taliban stlye caused?

I will not go so far as some as my friends that say,’With friends like this-who needs enemies?’ Because I believe that BP has good intentions,and no matter how long or howmuch $$$ it takes that BP will go above and beyond cleaning up the damage they are causing.

BP is not an American corporation.Should America have to depend on the good graces of companies-whether good intentioned or not-like BP?

No,America/Americans,when it comes to us and our land,should count only on ourselves.We vote in elected officials to represent us and our interests.If laws and regulations that protect us from outside forces is not in our best interests..just what is?

Lawreader tries to muddle up the debate by asking the usual rhetoric question: “do you want the government to run our businesses?”

No one said that, and asking for much needed regulation is not the same as dreaming of a communist state.

Neither did anyone say the CEOs were evil. Just that they have managed, with the help of the Bushes and their ilk, to put themselves in a situation that favors the few on behalf of the many.

Let go of the old dichotomy of communism versues unregulated capitalism. Both systems failed.

This comic strip is a magnet for trolls. The best response to trolls is to ignore them.

Great work Nate! Tomorrow is another day.

And that dollar-store bologna is the best! Very tasty indeed. Our local dollar-store carries the Rainbow Meats brand.

Note that when pschearer says ‘capitalism’, he means something different from what the other posters here mean by that term. (Which is why I avoid that term.)

Since pschearer likes Ayn Rand and I like Roderick Long, I will quote Long as he applies an idea of Rand’s to this term:

Rand used to identify certain terms and ideas as “anti-concepts,” that is, terms that actually function to obscure our understanding rather than facilitating it, [such as] the “package deal,” referring to any term whose meaning conceals an implicit presupposition that certain things go together that in actuality do not. […]

Libertarians sometimes debate whether the “real” or “authentic” meaning of a term like “capitalism” is (a) the free market, or (b) government favoritism toward business, or (c) the separation between labor and ownership, an arrangement neutral between the other two; Austrians tend to use the term in the first sense; individualist anarchists in the Tuckerite tradition tend to use it in the second or third. But in ordinary usage, I fear, it actually stands for an amalgamation of incompatible meanings.

[…] I think the word “capitalism,” if used with the meaning most people give it, is a package-deal term. By “capitalism” most people mean neither the free market simpliciter nor the prevailing neomercantilist system simpliciter. Rather, what most people mean by “capitalism” is this free-market system that currently prevails in the western world. In short, the term “capitalism” as generally used conceals an assumption that the prevailing system is a free market. And since the prevailing system is in fact one of government favoritism toward business, the ordinary use of the term carries with it the assumption that the free market is government favoritism toward business.

(from http://mises.org/daily/2099#6)

But for a full analysis of the term, I like an essay by Gary Chartier that can be found at http://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/chartier.anticapitalism.pdf

(By the way, I find all of these things from the Alliance of the Libertarian Left. That is not a very well organised web site, but it has lots of great stuff on it.)

Thanks, Exkio, for taking on some of Pschearer’s delusions. Unfortunately, he has deluded himself into thinking that he is a stalwart, liberty-protecting American, when he merely shills for Big Capitalism. I disagree that corporations are the greatest scourge in human history. I would nominate avarice & irrationality as the world’s two greatest scourges.

Thanks, Pschearer, for delineating your views. They are too simplistic. Our society spent most of its history denying liberty to two many of its people. Thus, our government isn’t merely protecting individual liberty—precious as that is—it is also guaranteeing equality for people oppressed for generations. In addition, our government works to perform functions too large for any individual: Our government builds roads; inspects food, brakes, & drugs; develops standards for safety of buildings; maintains the cleanliness of our air & water; and a myriad other tasks that we cannot perform as individuals. Unfettered capitalism would lead to—as it has over the centuries—widespread sickness & injury.

Your notion that the economy & the government can be separate is a terrible delusion, similar to James Watt’s idea that we need not protect the environment, because Jesus would soon return. It has never happened nor could it happen.

As for your reading of history, it is misguided: The United States was NOT founded on individual rights. It has always been a combination of rights & responsibilities of the individual & rights & responsibilities of the group. Most of the industrialized societies throughout the world work similarly.

As for capitalism, your worship of it is misguided, because the only places where you will find your “unfettered capitalism” is in some of the petroleum-rich countries of the Middle East & in some countries of the third world. In both these groups, we find a few with wealth & millions in poverty. Unfettered capitalism is a loser for most of the world’s people.

I am glad to agree, mostly, with Lew: Eight years of Bush-Dick’s not regulating oil drilling led to the worst oil disaster in history. I also agree that the private & public sectors have more in common than they have in contrast: we will find corruption & incompetence in both; we will find honesty & talent in both. Lew gets off the rails, though, when he pretends that private business works mostly without the government. Many of our favorite technology originated in public-private partnerships. The cellphone beside you is one simple example; the internet through which we communicate, another. One of our major risks in the U.S. is too many favors for Big Business w/out allowing more room for Small Business: Look at the giveaway of the airwaves for an example of that.

More to say, but I have spent too long on this this morning already.

Having responded to pschearer before, now I’d like to respond to BrianCrook.

When you write

the only places where you will find your “unfettered capitalism” is in some of the petroleum-rich countries of the Middle East & in some countries of the third world. In both these groups, we find a few with wealth & millions in poverty.

I’m happy to agree, but you if you want to talk to some other people, then you have to understand that this is absolutely not what pschearer means by ‘capitalism’. In the terms of the article by Gary Chartier that I linked above, you mean capitalism-3, but pschearer means capitalism-1. These are very different things, which most leftists (and most non-leftists, for that matter) do not understand (although it is not really their fault, since people have been trying to fool us for years). You may believe that unfettered capitalism-1 must lead to capitalism-3, but it is still true that unfettered capitalism-1 does not exist anywhere in the world today, least of all in the Middle East and the Third World (whereas unfettered capitalism-3 does exist and has been a disaster).

But I really want to respond to this:

Our government builds roads; inspects food, brakes, & drugs; develops standards for safety of buildings; maintains the cleanliness of our air & water; and a myriad other tasks that we cannot perform as individuals.

Just as people conflate capitalism-1 (mostly a kind of freedom, the freedom of traders in markets) with capitalism-3 (a kind of domination, the domination of society by the rich), so people also conflate collective action (which may be voluntary, and is usually helpful) with government action (which is coerced and, in my opinion, on balance harmful). Just because something is too big to be done by one person doesn’t mean that it has to be done by a government (or a corporation, for that matter), and in fact all of the useful items in your list have been done by non-governmental organisations at some times in some places, even though they are usually done by governments in the countries that we all probably live in.

Now here is another list of things that our government and the other governments of the world do: they bomb people, they raid people’s homes, they kidnap and imprison people (usually after a trial in the countries that we all probably live in, but still they do it, for such ‘crimes’ as growing cannabis for one’s personal use), sometimes they even kill people. From small to large, they tell us what to do, backed up by the threat of force if we refuse.

And, yes, they charter multinational corporations, run a monetary system that we must all use, and run a legal system in which we are personally liable for our actions (and may be sued for money if we harm a corporation) but the people who run the corporations are not liable for their actions. (Often it is helpful to sue the corporation, but as the cartoon reminds us, the responsible person, Nate, is not liable.) Anti-corporatism and anti-statism go hand in hand.

And you look to this organisation for help? I don’t!

Many thanks, Toby, for the paper by Gary Chartier: interesting & clear, though easier to read once printed out. I like keeping the three capitalisms aside as I read the rest of the paper.

If Pschearer means capitalism-1 when he promotes capitalism, then he has no complaint. American society practices capitalism-1 & can continue to do so even w/in the capitalism-socialism mix that is America. Americans have property rights and a voluntary exchange of goods & services, and, within the bounds of reasonable societal comity & equity, we are unfettered on our property & w/in our exchanges.

Unfortunately, American society also has too much capitalism-2 & -3, particularly after so many years of regressive presidencies & congresses. The virtually unfettered oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is courtesy of Big Oil running the Bush-Dick presidency in an example of cap-3.

As for services the government provides, I am happy to see them done by any responsible organization, but one of the nice things about a government (and I write this as a philosophical anarchist) is that it is—or can be—responsible to ALL. To have our food inspected by community-minded volunteers might work beautifully at some times and lead to serious ptomaine at other times. I have worked with volunteers, and I am a volunteer (& a Volunteer: I live in Tennessee): I would not count on them for my chicken.

I will be first in line to agree that governments do many bad things. Look at how difficult it is for President Obama to clean up the myriad messes of Bush-Dick and how slowly & conservatively Obama moves, also. We must wrest government away from corporate interests & puritanical interests. We will not find that platform, though, in the Libertarian Party, which wants greater cap-3, so that the oil will spread over the seas & the lands.