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pkay wrote:I still don't get why the people of this forum think this is such a terrible notion. Do you think the level of control we give to corporations is a healthy trade off for the comforts they provide us ? You guys have to acknowledge they have far too much control right? Do you not think it's about time we gave up some of our spoiled lifestyle accessories for a bit more freedom?

I don't know why you equate altering the situation with destroying corporations. Corporations provide necessary and desireable products/services - that's why they become successful. There's no reason to stand in the way of profit makers providing what the people want.

The change must come in the ways we encourage people (and agree ourselves) to consume with wealth we don't have. Although corporations not paying their fair share of tax is more than a fair target, the real emphasis here is on Banking and Finance... the credit situation must be resolved. Small businesses NEED credit that they can't get, families with no hope of paying back are being OFFERED credit so tempting they find it hard to decline.. it's all backwards at the moment.

Change that and it really doesn't matter what the corporations are doing. Have a great idea, implement it well and satisfy your customers = be rich. There's nothing wrong with entrepreneurs.... you've just got to clean up the battlefield they operate in.

You're consuming from corporations in order to create a demand for labor, increasing the job market, widening the monetary base, putting more people into financially stable lives, continuing the ever flowing cycle of economic growth. Someone built those iPads, another person marketed them, another person shipped them out to your local store, yet another person sells them to you over the counter, and all the people involved are given a secure place in society through our culture of comfortable consumption...

Over the next few years, things will become increasingly uncomfortable, but we won't have to worry whether we'll drive over a landmine on our way to work, or that our water will be contaminated with poison, or that our president will skip the country with the treasury packed into duffel bags. If we were unlucky enough to be born elsewhere we would have those worries. We should be grateful and proud for that, not act like it's something to be ashamed of.

Magma said it better than I could. I can't get technical without rambling.

stop the credit and you`ll stop over spending.
surely it`s that cut and dry

My solution is ANARCHY,
When the oil runs out, and that 1% is hovering over us in their spaceships, you'll see where all that HOPE and CHANGE went.
Back in the pockets of the oppressors. I have never had any faith in any government, or society.
How can anyone be free when others are oppressed. All is one, there is no better, and no worse, no right, no wrong, only different.

magma wrote:
I don't know why you equate altering the situation with destroying corporations. Corporations provide necessary and desireable products/services - that's why they become successful. There's no reason to stand in the way of profit makers providing what the people want.

I believe, as consumers, we need to limit the size and scope of corporations as many have become more powerful than the governments of our nations.

I believe we could do with less 'toys' as people and focus on more 'needs' and likely help balance the playing field a noticeable amount. However, I do not believe we as consumers are willing to do anything close to that (your comments pretty much confirm that).

Once again, as stated before, you have a different opinion that I.

I believe we could do with less 'toys' as people and focus on more 'needs' and likely help balance the playing field a noticeable amount. However, I do not believe we as consumers are willing to do anything close to that (your comments pretty much confirm that).

Why do my comments confirm that?

I acknowledge the ability of people to become rich - invent something that hundreds of millions of people want to buy and you should become rich. But the system shouldn't encourage people to buy what they can't afford like it currently does... balance is what's needed, not a wholesale scrapping. It's not a black and white situation... capitalism isn't doomed, but it is pretty broken. I don't have a big problem with companies like WallMart providing cheap and convenient food to hundreds of millions of people and employing millions more (though they should close the gap between shareholder profits and employee wages a lot)... I have a HUGE problem with billionaire hedge fund owners pumping billions of dollars into offering difficult-to-refuse loans to under-educated people on the breadline.

Once again, as stated before, you have a different opinion that I.

This is no reason to stop trying to convince each other.

Soiree wrote:My solution is ANARCHY,
When the oil runs out, and that 1% is hovering over us in their spaceships, you'll see where all that HOPE and CHANGE went.

You've got a point, and oil is one of my biggest concerns for the future...
What do we have..about 50 years til it's all gone? That's well into our lifetime..
It's gonna be absolute chaos, we haven't even made a proper transition into alternative fuel methods due to corporate and government interests. And how the hell are we going to be able to manage travel without going back to the stone ages? Are planes able to run on electricity? Ethanol? Or are they just waiting until the clock strikes twelve to introduce new methods? I don't know but might I suggest..

LACE wrote:

Soiree wrote:My solution is ANARCHY,
When the oil runs out, and that 1% is hovering over us in their spaceships, you'll see where all that HOPE and CHANGE went.

You've got a point, and oil is one of my biggest concerns for the future...
What do we have..about 50 years til it's all gone? That's well into our lifetime..
It's gonna be absolute chaos, we haven't even made a proper transition into alternative fuel methods due to corporate and government interests. And how the hell are we going to be able to manage travel without going back to the stone ages? Are planes able to run on electricity? Ethanol? Or are they just waiting until the clock strikes twelve to introduce new methods? I don't know but might I suggest..

if it truly was 50 years till ALL the oil runs out we'd be completely fucked and i reckon the world would be looking very different

as it is, from speaking to a few people involved in oil the estimate from inside is about 150-200years

my guess is also that most oil companies are privately throwing heaps of cash into idea's for green energy, simply so they have back up plans for once the oil really does run out

if you were a business no matter how cold and calculating you are it doesn't mean you're stupid, its in multi-national oil corporations future interests to both invest in and ensure the the future of the next generation of energy supplies

it'd be like a farmer harvesting his crops to sell for a fortune and deciding its bad business practice to plant any more seeds...

The big names are just investing in the future money making scheme.

i got a big diick

round 2: Pkay again makes broad assertions about large groups of people. This time he thinks he is the reincarnation of Henry David Thoreau.

pkay wrote: I believe we could do with less 'toys' as people and focus on more 'needs' and likely help balance the playing field a noticeable amount. However, I do not believe we as consumers are willing to do anything close to that (your comments pretty much confirm that).

Yeah I agree with this. I was talking with my friends dad last night (over thanksgiving dinner), and he's a loans manager. He hasn't really dealt with personal loans to the average person for a few years, but he had this to say: back like 15 years ago, when everybody had a Suburban, there was 2 types of people, at a 50/50 split: the "how long will it take to pay it off" and the "whats the monthly payment/can I afford it" people. The split is now closer to 30/70, if not 10% higher. People are spending damn near 80% of their income to pay the bills, with at least half of that going towards payments of things they can't afford. The consumers are fucking themselves just as badly as the corporations are.

kidshuffle wrote:

pkay wrote: I believe we could do with less 'toys' as people and focus on more 'needs' and likely help balance the playing field a noticeable amount. However, I do not believe we as consumers are willing to do anything close to that (your comments pretty much confirm that).

Yeah I agree with this. I was talking with my friends dad last night (over thanksgiving dinner), and he's a loans manager. He hasn't really dealt with personal loans to the average person for a few years, but he had this to say: back like 15 years ago, when everybody had a Suburban, there was 2 types of people, at a 50/50 split: the "how long will it take to pay it off" and the "whats the monthly payment/can I afford it" people. The split is now closer to 30/70, if not 10% higher. People are spending damn near 80% of their income to pay the bills, with at least half of that going towards payments of things they can't afford. The consumers are fucking themselves just as badly as the corporations are.

Credit is addictive. This is why it shouldn't be offered as freely to consumers as it currently is. Not all (in fact not many) consumers have any training in economics and are at the mercy of the "Financial Advisor" (who sounds like he should be acting in the customer's interest, but isn't)... in the same way we try and restrict the availability of crack cocaine, opium and AK47s, we should legally restrict the way credit is sold to households.

I fully agree that the people make up half of the problem - I just don't think sitting back and hoping everyone acts right is ever going to work - for any kind of effective resolution, you have to regulate from the business side. People will make profits wherever they're allowed so you have to outlaw the immoral means... people clearly can't trusted to do it by themselves and haven't been able to for decades... it's time to stop fantasising that they ever could. Regulate, regulate, regulate.

I am also down to regulate the business side

magma wrote: I fully agree that the people make up half of the problem - I just don't think sitting back and hoping everyone acts right is ever going to work -

you think it's going to work on the wall street side of things though? Sitting back and hoping they act right? Let's say the government regulates the holy shit out of the stock markets and enforces the tax code outright.... do you not believe that wall street is going to do everything in their power to find a new exploit in the system? I believe it will be their primary focus. "how do we make up for the money we lost"


I'm just saying that it's silly to rely on wall street to do all the change when the only thing you and i can 100% control is how we personally act. We have 100% control over how we spend our money.

LACE wrote:

Soiree wrote:My solution is ANARCHY,
When the oil runs out, and that 1% is hovering over us in their spaceships, you'll see where all that HOPE and CHANGE went.

You've got a point, and oil is one of my biggest concerns for the future...
What do we have..about 50 years til it's all gone? That's well into our lifetime..
It's gonna be absolute chaos, we haven't even made a proper transition into alternative fuel methods due to corporate and government interests. And how the hell are we going to be able to manage travel without going back to the stone ages? Are planes able to run on electricity? Ethanol? Or are they just waiting until the clock strikes twelve to introduce new methods? I don't know but might I suggest..

I'm preparing for the world of the future in the same way that I'm preparing for a zombie apocalypse. They're very similar in my visions.

in my mind using tax code to encourage investment in health care, medicine, environmental science while discouraging investment in entertainment and media could solve the 'toy' problem...

of course they will try to find some sort of loophole.... just like certain people will always try to find a loophole in the "don't murder and rob" laws.

pkay wrote:

magma wrote: I fully agree that the people make up half of the problem - I just don't think sitting back and hoping everyone acts right is ever going to work -

you think it's going to work on the wall street side of things though? Sitting back and hoping they act right? Let's say the government regulates the holy shit out of the stock markets and enforces the tax code outright.... do you not believe that wall street is going to do everything in their power to find a new exploit in the system? I believe it will be their primary focus. "how do we make up for the money we lost"


I'm just saying that it's silly to rely on wall street to do all the change when the only thing you and i can 100% control is how we personally act. We have 100% control over how we spend our money.

You've got to change their ability to act in new ways. In the domestic banking market the code of conduct is very much "You are allowed to do this, this and this. Nothing else.". The Investment Banking/Futures/Derivs markets are regulated like "You're NOT allowed to do this, this and this... the rest is up to you."

This was something they showed off about when I first joined the industry... "Here's the secret to why we make so much more than normal banks! We make up our own rules!"

That's what needs changing. The remit of Investment Banks should be much more rigidly defined as it is with the rest of the financial services industry. You don't hear about pension funds destroying national economies (occasionally they fold like any company, sure), yet their job is largely the same. The IBs make sure their markets are so "complicated" that people think it can't be regulated... it most assuredly can. I see how every day...

But these morally corrupt people, the IB's, do you not feel if you block one avenue they will simply try and find a new one? Or are you hoping they'll give up out of frustration? Or have a change of heart?

When the money is there people will do anything. The parallel is often drawn between them and the cartels. The money is so high that no matter what, it's worth the personal risk to them. It's worth hurting other people, it's worth risking jail time, the money is just too good. And as long as the demand exists these types of individuals will find a way to exploit the demand of their consumers at any cost.

if youre talking about drug cartels... couldn't changing laws eliminate the incentives for cartels?