The major criticism is that creating a corporation is a way to gain personal enrichment without personal liability.

I'll not claim he made good posts, for I think that's a judgment for each reader to make and not for me to pontificate, but I will say you gave him lots of room to make the replies that he made. That's as fairly as I know how to describe what happened there.

If you think that's cheating, how about this nice fact: for at least the last 50 years, worker productivity has steadily increased and continues to do so. Meanwhile, wages (when accounting for inflation etc) have remained stagnant.

That's a masterwork of negotiation and shrewdness on the part of corporations, to be sure. Yet if by "cheating" you mean "doing something unfair/inequitable/unethical" then you must admit this fits the description. Unless, of course, you wish to argue that someone who produces more should not also be compensated more, in which case I'd be interested to hear your reasoning. I suppose while you're at it you could explain why a luxury sports car should cost the same as a rusty jalopy.

The D's tend to attract immature people who use emotion (which is easily manipulated) when they should use reason, and believe that the intensity of the emotion makes this okay. The R's tend to attract materialist business interests (which are easily manipulated) and old people who think that leaving their children and grandchildren with more debt than they could ever hope to repay is excellent parenting.

Neither represents me and I would be shocked if either represented you.

I really can't fathom how so many people don't understand what's going on. Thomas Jefferson explicitly warned against a two-party system because he knew what it would turn into. The idea is, you play "good cop, bad cop" and for maximum effectiveness, you swap roles every now and then. The result is that you play the voters in the middle. If you think that couldn't possibly be going on, it's because the parties understand strategy and you don't. Both parties benefit by doing this, just as all cell phone companies (competitors now) benefitted by overcharging for texting. It's an informal collusion that doesn't require a written arrangement. All it requires is that each entity promote their own self-interests.

It gives the illusion of choice because it de-emphasizes one critical fact of American politics: it is not a competition for the best ideas that puts a candidate into office. It is the campaign donors who do that. Now then, isn't it odd the way so many corporations donate to BOTH parties? It's as though they get their influence no matter who wins. Hmm.

Meanwhile the only differences between the parties are about useless (from the standpoint of sustaining a collapsing nation) issues like abortion and gay marriage. Both parties intend to grow the size and power and pervasiveness of the federal government. Both parties view the Bill of Rights as something to find clever ways around, usually in the name of safety or fighting terrorism. Both parties fight pointless overseas wars against foreign nations that are not a threat to the USA because the military-industrial interests demand it and because the economy would have collapsed long ago without it.

For your own sake, take a hard look at what's going on.

What you describe is true in an ideal employment environment.

The problem is, when criminal bankers knowingly make unsound loans and employ bad financial instruments like credit default swaps, and do it on a scale that it grossly harms the global economy, then jobs become more scarce and workers become more desperate. In this kind of scenario, the employer is at a clear advantage and the worker is at a clear disadvantage. This is especially true with a (multiple) state-sponsored organization that does not even have to make a profit such as this one. The usual market forces apply less and maybe don't apply at all.

This will cause people to take jobs they don't want and otherwise wouldn't take because they have families to feed and mortgages to pay and consider themselves fortunate to have work at all. The workers aren't bad negotiators or incompetent or doing a disservice to other candidate workers like you suggest. They're doing what they have to do to survive, not what they want to do in an ideal scenario.

Whether I own a controlling share in a Fortune 500 corporation or whether I have never run a business of any kind doesn't let you escape a basic fact of life: if you believe I am wrong, the only way to correct me is to explain to me why I am wrong and why your point of view is closer to reality than mine.

Sometimes on this site I encounter someone with the intellectual honesty and the emotional maturity to do so. When that happens, I admit I was mistaken, I change my mind, and you don't hear the old viewpoint from me again. I have no problem doing that because I don't entertain some silly fantasy about always being right and always knowing everything. When I encounter someone who clearly has more knowledge than I do, I listen and learn for my own edification. It's called humility and it must be consciously practiced if you wish to develop it and enjoy its virtues.

The only real losers here are those who are clearly wrong but are too prideful to admit it, so they bicker and quibble, usually try to make it personal, and pretend like they're fooling anyone. It's childish behavior that harms the signal-to-noise ratio of the site and makes adult conversation more difficult to enjoy. I say if you really like being right so much, then you have an obligation to correct your wrongs.

You're getting all excited and you appear a bit frustrated because you are choosing to bicker about which of us owns a business and which of us has a deeper grasp and other PERSONAL MATTERS rather than fulfill the criteria in the first paragraph of this post. There is a difference between stubborn and tenacious.

It's a transparent attempt to change an abstract discussion about labor relations into a personal matter. This is the kind of tactic used by someone who dislikes the point that was made but acknowledges that he has no real counter-point. It is strongly indicative of a weak position on your part. That you are at least being polite about it does not change this.

There is a reason you're catching flak for it in several other comments. Rhywden explained it succinctly.

So then, do you have a solid reason why you disagree with what I said?

The idea sadly is like this: when government and corporations exercise market power, that's the free market. When workers or average customers exercise market power, it's hippy pinko communism.

The fact is, an employer and an employee inherently have competing interests. Negotiating is a perfectly valid way to resolve competing interests by seeking a middle ground acceptable to both.

The flip side is that without unions and the real threat of losses caused by strikes, the next employer in that line of work will merely do the exact same thing. Consider the way that the major cell networks all charge similar rates (including overcharging in many cases for texting) when they are ostensibly competing with each other for customers. If it's not actual collusion it's similar in effect because it's based on a "market rate" which is merely a look at what everyone else is doing.

Now maybe other employers should do the same thing, I'm not giving an opinion there (for those reactive types who can't plainly see that I didn't), just that such an effect is something to consider.

Actually listening to what other people are saying and trying to comprehend what they do and (and most importantly) don't mean just isn't a valued part of American culture.

When you were younger, did you ever work an entry-level customer service type of job? Then you know all about it. You see this behavior even in people who are actively seeking and truly do need your advice. I think it's a form of puerile impatience (that ends up costing more time ironically enough). It could also be an attempt to show a false superiority and independence, since it is most often seen in helpless people who are unable to perform even the most basic observation and problem-solving (think Freudian projection).

If you really think so, it's because you don't appreciate the (massive) distinction between cleverness and wisdom.

The way I like to explain it: if you take a childish, annoying, malicious, aggressive asshole and give him greater intelligence, do you know what happens? He becomes more effective at being a childish, annoying, malicious, aggressive asshole.

The problem with having them involved in government is that I can't decide not to sit in the pews of, or do business with, or adhere to the government. Government is founded on two related things: force and threat of force. You can't just ignore those.

Thank you. One definition of "psychotic" is "out of contact with reality". There are many psychotic people. In fact, I would venture that the majority of people in Western societies are psychotic. I believe forced ("public") schooling and mass media to be the two primary causes, with an almost hypnotic reverence for authority as an enabling factor.

There is a funny thing about compulsory education. Since ancient times, particularly ancient Greece and Rome, compulsory training was only for slaves. In fact the word "pedagogy" comes from an ancient word for "slave".

No shit. If we are going to have a system designed to restrict the availability of drugs, one would think it would be used to prevent the over-use of antibiotics so we can stop creating these "superbugs". But no one can get high on antibiotics, and that's all government seems concerned with, so their overuse continues...

Although I can predict its moves and articulate its faults, I will never truly understand this Puritannical need to meddle in the affairs of other adults, tell them how to live, and especially to get power-hungry government into that business. It must come from completely empty, desperate lives devoid of all purpose and joy, trying so hard to fill the vacuum within themselves by feeling powerful since they couldn't do it by feeling compassion.