Letter to New York Times public editor
I wish writers would more carefully use the terms “conservative” and “free market”.
Those labeled with these terms, by self or others, are too often neither.
Are “conservatives” thoughtful and cautious about change, or are they rigid in whatever their views? For example, “conservative” religious sects are more often throwing the first stone rather than feeding the poor. Do “conservatives" really follow the Constitution as it currently exists, or are they “activists” interpreting it to suit their own views? “Persons” are corporations? “People” in the Second Amendment are now persons. “Regulate Commerce” is totally ignored.
As to “free market”, it is too often meant to mean corporations should be free to do what they please without government interference. Adam Smith must be spinning in his grave as those who live by profit (not to be trusted) buy so many politicians with money or a barrage of misleading statements.
A true free market
Has many buyers and sellers
Both buyers and sellers are free to enter or leave the market
Both buyers and sellers have all the information they need to make a decision
All costs are paid for in the transaction, that is, there are no externalities.
Too many “free marketers” want as few sellers as possible, do their best to lock buyers into the market, find out as much as possible about buyers but hide or provide false information to the buyers, and ignore all the externalities like pollution and bad diets.
See “The Invisible Adam Smith”, http://magree.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-invisible-adam-smith.html
Showing posts with label persons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label persons. Show all posts
Sunday, November 20, 2016
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Freedom to do what?
Many people and corporations complain that their freedoms are being taken away by this law or that law which restricts certain behavior. Are these smoke screens or do they have a point? Let’s look at a few cases.
Vermont has passed a law that GMO foods should be labelled as such. Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association filed suit that this was a violation of their right of free speech. Is their right of free speech being taken away by requiring a list of ingredients? If you were on a limited salt diet, wouldn’t you want to compare products for their salt content? If you had had cancer and should avoid soy lecithin, wouldn’t you want to seek products without soy lecithin?
Admittedly, the First Amendment contains “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the freedom of speech…”; that phrase has no qualifier like “persons” or “people”. But the Constitution also includes Congress has the power “to regulate Commerce…among the several States…”
I wouldn’t be surprised if these companies also used the “free market” argument. But “free market” doesn’t mean sellers get to do what they please; it also means that the buyers have all the information they need to make an informed decision. Jews and Muslims want to know if products contain pork; shouldn’t those who have an aversion to other ingredients also know if products contain those ingredients?
In other words, if food manufacturers are free to deceive us then don’t they take away our freedom to know what we eat?
The First Amendment also contains “people have the right to peaceably assemble”. Does that give them the right block other people’s right to move about? I’m sure that meant that people could meet in some hall and discuss whatever was on their minds. Maybe it also meant that people could assemble at the entrance of a government building, but only if they left room for others to go in and out of the building. I doubt that the writers of the Bill of Rights considered peaceably assembling as filling the streets for whatever cause.
The gun manufacturers have been working for decades to erode the Second Amendment from the “right of the people to bear arms” (meaning in militias) to the “right of persons to bear arms”. As late as 1939, a conservative Supreme Court Justice wrote the majority opinion that an individual did not have the right to carry a rifle in a parade, only those in a state-sanctioned militia.
But what is lost in many of the arguments for the individual right to bear arms is where is the argument for the right to not be shot?
Concerning “freedom of religion”, one has to be careful reading some of the stories concerning people’s or corporation’s “freedom of religion”. Some of these stories have been blown out of proportion; others show that one person’s “freedom of religion” is impinging on another person’s freedom of religion.
If a Christian-owned company required that female Muslim employees not wear head scarves, then does a Muslim-owned company have a right to have all female employees wear head scarves?
In the context of the times of the writing of the Constitution, I think the “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion was more meant if you want to go to a Baptist Church fine, if you want to go to a Methodist Church fine. I doubt that they would countenance those who believed in virgin sacrifice having free exercise.
If for security reasons banks ask that customers not wear hoods or sunglasses, then should not they ask that women not have their faces covered? Many a man has escaped from other men by wearing a burqa. Are the banks violating some customers “freedom of religion” or are they protecting their right not to be robbed?
The Congress that has been so adamant about Second Amendment rights seems equally adamant about walking all over Fourth Amendment rights. “The right of be people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects…” What is the “probable cause” of gathering information on who calls whom? Isn’t a phone call by extension a “paper”? Thanks, Ron Paul, for your efforts.
Many individuals claim a right to do what pleases them without any consideration on how those actions impinge on other people’s rights.
If there is a right to smoke, isn’t there also a right to breathe clean air? Although smoking has declined dramatically, there are still too many people that smoke very close to signs “No smoking within 15 feet”. If someone were to ask them to move away, it is more likely they will get angry rather than apologize and move away.
If there is a right to listen to music, isn’t there also a right to have quiet? Many people have their car radios turned up so loud that other drivers can barely hear the music on their own radios. Many people have their earphones turned up so loud that others can’t hear the music on their own earphones. If you have the right to blast hip-hop up to twenty feet away, do I also have a right to blast Beethoven’s Ninth up to twenty feet away?
I think the thought attributed to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. that “Your right to move your fist ends where my nose begins” is apt for almost all of the above cases. A manufacturer’s “right” to withhold information ends where people’s health begins. A person’s right to bear arms ends where other people’s safety begins. A person’s right to freedom of religion ends where it restricts other people’s freedom of religion. A person’s freedom of assembly ends where it impedes other people’s freedom of movement.
What is lost in all the talk about freedoms is that the basic freedom is the freedom to govern ourselves and not be governed by some foreign power. And to govern ourselves we elect people to make rules to make society work. You do vote in every election, don’t you?
Vermont has passed a law that GMO foods should be labelled as such. Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association filed suit that this was a violation of their right of free speech. Is their right of free speech being taken away by requiring a list of ingredients? If you were on a limited salt diet, wouldn’t you want to compare products for their salt content? If you had had cancer and should avoid soy lecithin, wouldn’t you want to seek products without soy lecithin?
Admittedly, the First Amendment contains “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the freedom of speech…”; that phrase has no qualifier like “persons” or “people”. But the Constitution also includes Congress has the power “to regulate Commerce…among the several States…”
I wouldn’t be surprised if these companies also used the “free market” argument. But “free market” doesn’t mean sellers get to do what they please; it also means that the buyers have all the information they need to make an informed decision. Jews and Muslims want to know if products contain pork; shouldn’t those who have an aversion to other ingredients also know if products contain those ingredients?
In other words, if food manufacturers are free to deceive us then don’t they take away our freedom to know what we eat?
The First Amendment also contains “people have the right to peaceably assemble”. Does that give them the right block other people’s right to move about? I’m sure that meant that people could meet in some hall and discuss whatever was on their minds. Maybe it also meant that people could assemble at the entrance of a government building, but only if they left room for others to go in and out of the building. I doubt that the writers of the Bill of Rights considered peaceably assembling as filling the streets for whatever cause.
The gun manufacturers have been working for decades to erode the Second Amendment from the “right of the people to bear arms” (meaning in militias) to the “right of persons to bear arms”. As late as 1939, a conservative Supreme Court Justice wrote the majority opinion that an individual did not have the right to carry a rifle in a parade, only those in a state-sanctioned militia.
But what is lost in many of the arguments for the individual right to bear arms is where is the argument for the right to not be shot?
Concerning “freedom of religion”, one has to be careful reading some of the stories concerning people’s or corporation’s “freedom of religion”. Some of these stories have been blown out of proportion; others show that one person’s “freedom of religion” is impinging on another person’s freedom of religion.
If a Christian-owned company required that female Muslim employees not wear head scarves, then does a Muslim-owned company have a right to have all female employees wear head scarves?
In the context of the times of the writing of the Constitution, I think the “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion was more meant if you want to go to a Baptist Church fine, if you want to go to a Methodist Church fine. I doubt that they would countenance those who believed in virgin sacrifice having free exercise.
If for security reasons banks ask that customers not wear hoods or sunglasses, then should not they ask that women not have their faces covered? Many a man has escaped from other men by wearing a burqa. Are the banks violating some customers “freedom of religion” or are they protecting their right not to be robbed?
The Congress that has been so adamant about Second Amendment rights seems equally adamant about walking all over Fourth Amendment rights. “The right of be people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects…” What is the “probable cause” of gathering information on who calls whom? Isn’t a phone call by extension a “paper”? Thanks, Ron Paul, for your efforts.
Many individuals claim a right to do what pleases them without any consideration on how those actions impinge on other people’s rights.
If there is a right to smoke, isn’t there also a right to breathe clean air? Although smoking has declined dramatically, there are still too many people that smoke very close to signs “No smoking within 15 feet”. If someone were to ask them to move away, it is more likely they will get angry rather than apologize and move away.
If there is a right to listen to music, isn’t there also a right to have quiet? Many people have their car radios turned up so loud that other drivers can barely hear the music on their own radios. Many people have their earphones turned up so loud that others can’t hear the music on their own earphones. If you have the right to blast hip-hop up to twenty feet away, do I also have a right to blast Beethoven’s Ninth up to twenty feet away?
I think the thought attributed to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. that “Your right to move your fist ends where my nose begins” is apt for almost all of the above cases. A manufacturer’s “right” to withhold information ends where people’s health begins. A person’s right to bear arms ends where other people’s safety begins. A person’s right to freedom of religion ends where it restricts other people’s freedom of religion. A person’s freedom of assembly ends where it impedes other people’s freedom of movement.
What is lost in all the talk about freedoms is that the basic freedom is the freedom to govern ourselves and not be governed by some foreign power. And to govern ourselves we elect people to make rules to make society work. You do vote in every election, don’t you?
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Three persons needed for a good marriage
Doesn’t a marriage only need two persons? Do I mean that the support of an in-law is required?
No, what I mean is that three personalities are required for a good marriage: you, me, and us.
Consider a couple living in a small apartment. One likes to read, one likes to watch TV, and both like symphony concerts. So sometimes the TV watcher should turn off the TV. Sometimes the reader should ignore the TV. And sometimes they both go to the concert together.
In other words, a good marriage needs recognition of separate interests and needs fulfillment of shared interests.
No, what I mean is that three personalities are required for a good marriage: you, me, and us.
Consider a couple living in a small apartment. One likes to read, one likes to watch TV, and both like symphony concerts. So sometimes the TV watcher should turn off the TV. Sometimes the reader should ignore the TV. And sometimes they both go to the concert together.
In other words, a good marriage needs recognition of separate interests and needs fulfillment of shared interests.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Corporations, persons, tools, and fools
Corporations are persons? Someone said that you know a corporation is a person when Texas executes one.
How did we get to this situation that corporations have “freedom of speech” and many other freedoms granted to actual living individual persons?
Corporations were originally created to give monarchs and other nobility a piece of the economic action. As the merchant class rose in the cities, the monarch couldn’t tax them because they had no land. By creating a corporation of a given business, the monarch could insist on a few shares of a corporation and rake in more in profits than he would have in taxes. Also, by giving a monopoly to a corporation, he protected it from competition.
These monopolies soon expanded far outside the monarch’s country with colonization of other parts of the world. An example is how British law forbade the American colonies from producing a long list of items or importing goods through any other organization than the British East India Company. Was the British East India Company composed of Adam Smith’s “order of men” who “were not to be trusted” with proposing legislation? The Boston Tea Party was an act of defiance against the corporate monopoly enjoyed by the British East India Company.
Is today’s Tea Party a tool of corporations who want to extract minerals without paying the full cost of such extraction? These corporations are waging legislative, administrative, and public relations campaigns to allow them to operate on corporate terms. Are these corporations composed of Adam Smith’s “order of men” who “were not to be trusted” with proposing legislation? Also as the British East India Company was a “foreign” entity, many of the extractors of today are entities from out of state or even out of the country.
Does “Open for Business” or “Business-friendly” apply to locally-owned companies or to large corporations that will move elsewhere whenever they think an area is not bending to their wishes? Does it mean that large corporations will be given subsidies, including reduced taxes, that aren’t given to locally-owned businesses? If we want truth in government, maybe we should insist that states and localities that claim to be “Business-friendly” should admit being “Corporation-friendly”.
Can you find “corporation” in the U.S. Constitution? That was deliberate. Many of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention remembered well the dominance of a corporation over Colonial affairs and did not want a repeat of that stranglehold. Many of the national politicians of the time had a vision of craftsman and farmers plying their goods in local markets.
But with advances in transportation, the economic situation changed drastically. To build canals required capital. To gather capital, groups of people had to organize to buy shares and/or borrow money. If the enterprise failed, the shareholders didn’t want to be held individually responsible for the losses of the company beyond their own financial contribution. Wouldn’t you? Thus, the limited liability corporation came to the United States.
With the coming of the railroads came ever larger corporations. The Illinois Central Railroad hired a lawyer to get special privileges for it like breaking unions, hiring foreign workers, and gaining privileges not held by people. Yep, that lawyer was the “of the people, by the people, and for the people” guy. Apparently, the Civil War opened his eyes to many things. This excerpt from one of his letters shows this rather strongly:
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
My, how political parties morph over the generations! I think only two Republican Presidents have had similar misgivings.
Many decades later another war-time leader worried about the “military-industrial” complex. But one of his predecessors pulled a corporate branding trick on the American people. The Department of War was now to be called the Department of Defense. Now corporations weren’t in the business of selling war machines but were fulfilling “defense contracts”.
One of the political ironies is the political party the claims the federal government can’t do anything right bends over backward to lavish more money on the military-industrial complex. Do they not know that snafu and fubar are terms coined by the guys in the foxholes?
So, are corporations the tools of the people or are the people the tools of corporations? If we let the latter happen then we are the fools.
For a lot more about the abuse of and by corporations, see “Life, Inc., How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back” by Douglas Rushkoff.
Mel owns shares in a few corporations and almost always votes against their overpaid executives and boards.
How did we get to this situation that corporations have “freedom of speech” and many other freedoms granted to actual living individual persons?
Corporations were originally created to give monarchs and other nobility a piece of the economic action. As the merchant class rose in the cities, the monarch couldn’t tax them because they had no land. By creating a corporation of a given business, the monarch could insist on a few shares of a corporation and rake in more in profits than he would have in taxes. Also, by giving a monopoly to a corporation, he protected it from competition.
These monopolies soon expanded far outside the monarch’s country with colonization of other parts of the world. An example is how British law forbade the American colonies from producing a long list of items or importing goods through any other organization than the British East India Company. Was the British East India Company composed of Adam Smith’s “order of men” who “were not to be trusted” with proposing legislation? The Boston Tea Party was an act of defiance against the corporate monopoly enjoyed by the British East India Company.
Is today’s Tea Party a tool of corporations who want to extract minerals without paying the full cost of such extraction? These corporations are waging legislative, administrative, and public relations campaigns to allow them to operate on corporate terms. Are these corporations composed of Adam Smith’s “order of men” who “were not to be trusted” with proposing legislation? Also as the British East India Company was a “foreign” entity, many of the extractors of today are entities from out of state or even out of the country.
Does “Open for Business” or “Business-friendly” apply to locally-owned companies or to large corporations that will move elsewhere whenever they think an area is not bending to their wishes? Does it mean that large corporations will be given subsidies, including reduced taxes, that aren’t given to locally-owned businesses? If we want truth in government, maybe we should insist that states and localities that claim to be “Business-friendly” should admit being “Corporation-friendly”.
Can you find “corporation” in the U.S. Constitution? That was deliberate. Many of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention remembered well the dominance of a corporation over Colonial affairs and did not want a repeat of that stranglehold. Many of the national politicians of the time had a vision of craftsman and farmers plying their goods in local markets.
But with advances in transportation, the economic situation changed drastically. To build canals required capital. To gather capital, groups of people had to organize to buy shares and/or borrow money. If the enterprise failed, the shareholders didn’t want to be held individually responsible for the losses of the company beyond their own financial contribution. Wouldn’t you? Thus, the limited liability corporation came to the United States.
With the coming of the railroads came ever larger corporations. The Illinois Central Railroad hired a lawyer to get special privileges for it like breaking unions, hiring foreign workers, and gaining privileges not held by people. Yep, that lawyer was the “of the people, by the people, and for the people” guy. Apparently, the Civil War opened his eyes to many things. This excerpt from one of his letters shows this rather strongly:
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
My, how political parties morph over the generations! I think only two Republican Presidents have had similar misgivings.
Many decades later another war-time leader worried about the “military-industrial” complex. But one of his predecessors pulled a corporate branding trick on the American people. The Department of War was now to be called the Department of Defense. Now corporations weren’t in the business of selling war machines but were fulfilling “defense contracts”.
One of the political ironies is the political party the claims the federal government can’t do anything right bends over backward to lavish more money on the military-industrial complex. Do they not know that snafu and fubar are terms coined by the guys in the foxholes?
So, are corporations the tools of the people or are the people the tools of corporations? If we let the latter happen then we are the fools.
For a lot more about the abuse of and by corporations, see “Life, Inc., How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back” by Douglas Rushkoff.
Mel owns shares in a few corporations and almost always votes against their overpaid executives and boards.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
If Republicans are for the people, then why…
Are they opposed to a consumer protection agency? Aren't consumers people and people consumers?
Could it be that Republicans are really for corporations and the people be damned except for their votes? Come on, Mel, isn't that a bit cynical? Oh, wait, corporations are now people with the right to make political contributions. Of course, let's follow the money.
Could it be that Republicans are really for corporations and the people be damned except for their votes? Come on, Mel, isn't that a bit cynical? Oh, wait, corporations are now people with the right to make political contributions. Of course, let's follow the money.
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