Sounds About Right



  •  

    Conversation on the office floor.

     

    [received Out of Office reply from the general mail address of an entire department]

    CO 1:  Maybe it's just one guy with a multiple personality disorder.

    CO 2:  Or the other way around. Multiple people thinking they're one person. What do you call that?

    ME:  Communism.



  • In soviet russia, communism makes fun of you!

    (sorry, i just had to try it :-D )



  • Multiple people thinking they're the same person may also be the chans channeling (no pun intended) Anon, or a case of Stand Alone Complex.



  • Sounds like your average multinational company too (Corporatism?)



  • @xiox said:

    Sounds like your average multinational company too (Corporatism?)

    Sounds about right. Far-right types like to scare everyone with talk of evil commies, but when you actually look at it and analyze it, the megacorporation is the most collectivist societal structure humankind has ever managed to come up with.  Heck, Soviet Russia said they were communist, but analyze their organization and behavior a little. The only real difference between the USSR and a (hypothetical) corporation of comparable size was the Red Army.



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    @xiox said:
    Sounds like your average multinational company too (Corporatism?)

    Sounds about right. Far-right types like to scare everyone with talk of evil commies, but when you actually look at it and analyze it, the megacorporation is the most collectivist societal structure humankind has ever managed to come up with.  Heck, Soviet Russia said they were communist, but analyze their organization and behavior a little. The only real difference between the USSR and a (hypothetical) corporation of comparable size was the Red Army.

    SUMMON THE MORBIUS and grab some popcorn!



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    @xiox said:

    Sounds like your average multinational company too (Corporatism?)

    Sounds about right. Far-right types like to scare everyone with talk of evil commies, but when you actually look at it and analyze it, the megacorporation is the most collectivist societal structure humankind has ever managed to come up with.  Heck, Soviet Russia said they were communist, but analyze their organization and behavior a little. The only real difference between the USSR and a (hypothetical) corporation of comparable size was the Red Army.

    Ha ha ha ha ha ha... ha ha ha..ahhhhh.. (grasp for air)

    HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA (ha)

    Yes you are right (cleans tears with handkerchief).
    They are almost the same. The only real differences between USSR and MegaEvilCorp are
    1 - the Red Army (not counting KGB because EvilCorps have their own evil inte- torture squads).
    2- And that MegaEvilCorp is more profit oriented thus in order to control our lives, they need us to have money to spend, while USSR was more politically oriented, thus they needed people to not have any money at all tocontroll their lives with their monthly rations.

    ..or something like that. I too am talking out of my ass here



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    The only real difference between the USSR and a (hypothetical) corporation of comparable size was the Red Army.

    Do you often have trouble after buying things, remembering whether you were starving in a hovel when the company who made the product hauled you out and forced you to buy it with a rifle to your back?

    I'm glad I'm not the only one..



  • @fatdog said:

    2- And that MegaEvilCorp is more profit oriented thus in order to control our lives, they need us to have money to spend, while USSR was more politically oriented, thus they needed people to not have any money at all tocontroll their lives with their monthly rations.

    Profit and politics are simply two ways to accomplish the same goal: power over others.  Money for money's sake is worthless; the only reason people care about money is for what it can be exchanged for.  And besides, I was referring to the people who are part of the corporate structure, not to external consumers.  And many corporations have been known to do exactly that to their workers: do a bit of research on "company scrip."  Among the most guilty parties are the mining and logging industries, and everyone's favorite All-American retailer, Wal-Mart.

    @Joeyg said:

    @Mason Wheeler said:
    The only real difference between the USSR and a (hypothetical) corporation of comparable size was the Red Army.

    Do you often have trouble after buying things, remembering whether you were starving in a hovel when the company who made the product hauled you out and forced you to buy it with a rifle to your back?

    I'm glad I'm not the only one..

    Very funny.  But for a serious example, look at US health care reform.  What the majority of the people (and the vast majority of doctors) wanted when the whole thing got started was a single-payer system like virtually every other civilized country in the world has.  Then the corporations and their lobbyists got involved, and what we ended up with is a system in which everyone is required by law to purchase corporate-issued health insurance, and if you do not do so you're guilty of a crime.



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    Profit and politics are simply two ways to accomplish the same goal: power over others. .

    Yes you are right, that is the truth about profit and politics



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    Profit and politics are simply two ways to accomplish the same goal: power over others. 

    The difference is that politicians function by forcing their views on others - whereas profits can only be made through voluntary trade. ("All my other options are shittier" does [i]not[/i] make keeping your Wal-Mart job involuntary - it means that without Wal-Mart, you'd be in a shittier position than you are now.)

    Having said that, Wal-Mart (and pretty well any giant corporation) has a lot more friends in the government than you do. I'm certainly not defending them - only the principles of free trade.

    Very funny.  But for a serious example, look at US health care reform.  What the majority of the people (and the vast majority of doctors) wanted when the whole thing got started was a single-payer system like virtually every other civilized country in the world has.  Then the corporations and their lobbyists got involved, and what we ended up with is a system in which everyone is required by law to purchase corporate-issued health insurance, and if you do not do so you're guilty of a crime.

    Without touching the single-payer option (it's awful, but at least twice as efficient and far more humane than the quagmire the US has got now) (and I doubt it could scale to the population size and general unhealthiness of the US), the US health care system is far closer to communism than it is capitalism. As you say, you've got the government and its cronies (ie, lobbyists), forcing their system onto everyone else. And between the bizarre forced linkage of health insurance and employment (and now talk of forcing insurance, [i]period[/i]), and the fact that the government somehow spends more per capita on health care than any other, while still personally bankrupting everyone who becomes seriously ill, it's a pretty awful system.

    I'm not sure whose point I made there.



  • @Joeyg said:

    I'm certainly not defending them - only the principles of free trade.

    That's good. I just wish there were more corporations that believed in defending the principles of free trade.  We'd be a lot better off if there were.  To too many of them, "free market" seems to mean "we are free to do whaever we want to" and not "a market in which freedom of choice exists for the buyers."



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    Profit and politics are simply two ways to accomplish the same goal: power over others
    Ultimate moronic political analysis... The real question is : Where are your parents *doing* ? Leaving a 3-years-old child alone on the PC...

    Btw, congratulations for your excellent writing. At your age I wasn't even able to cough properly... ^^ ( even today I still fail at it sometimes...)

    I'm just bitter and angry today. Ignore me. I'll gooutside and break something aloud.



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    @fatdog said:

    2- And that MegaEvilCorp is more profit oriented thus in order to control our lives, they need us to have money to spend, while USSR was more politically oriented, thus they needed people to not have any money at all tocontroll their lives with their monthly rations.

    Profit and politics are simply two ways to accomplish the same goal: power over others.  Money for money's sake is worthless; the only reason people care about money is for what it can be exchanged for.  And besides, I was referring to the people who are part of the corporate structure, not to external consumers.  And many corporations have been known to do exactly that to their workers: do a bit of research on "company scrip."  Among the most guilty parties are the mining and logging industries, and everyone's favorite All-American retailer, Wal-Mart.

    @Joeyg said:

    @Mason Wheeler said:
    The only real difference between the USSR and a (hypothetical) corporation of comparable size was the Red Army.

    Do you often have trouble after buying things, remembering whether you were starving in a hovel when the company who made the product hauled you out and forced you to buy it with a rifle to your back?

    I'm glad I'm not the only one..

    Very funny.  But for a serious example, look at US health care reform.  What the majority of the people (and the vast majority of doctors) wanted when the whole thing got started was a single-payer system like virtually every other civilized country in the world has.  Then the corporations and their lobbyists got involved, and what we ended up with is a system in which everyone is required by law to purchase corporate-issued health insurance, and if you do not do so you're guilty of a crime.

    It's the middle-men that are driving the cost of health care up, and some of the gross health care cost calculations aren't taking that into account, thus skewing the cost estimates upwards.  I love some of the interviews I've seen/read/heard with Insurance company executives claiming they make little to no profit ( or the energy company executves claiming skyrocketing costs are pure supply and demand, not influenced by massive speculation -- and then the speculative bubble bursts.) 



  • To be fair, speculation [i]is[/i] a form of demand. The bigger question is, why was somebody printing money out his ass into the commodity, stocks, housing, automotive and financial markets, and why was [i]he[/i] denying anything wrong?

    Also, I'd blame malpractice laws before I blamed "middlemen" for healthcare costs.

    But what do I know? I've just been watching from Canada this whole time.


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