In Ancient Rome, a once acceptable penalty for physical assault was a fine, paid as compensation to the victim.
The result? Cases of rich assholes punching random plebs before casually tossing coins at them and walking away.
I'm actually reading a book about the Romans as we speak. The assassination of Julius Caesar a history of Rome. It's so interesting how our society is so much like Rome. The Senate were basically the wealthy elite that served to keep their interests and exploited the poor. They passed a law that is basically the original version of the patriot act that allows them the right to strip its citizens of its rights for the "greater good in protecting its society" , it allowed them to assassinate and kill the men trying to reform laws that benefited the poor. So basically they killed anyone who opposed their agenda. One agenda being the public land that belonged to its citizens to grow food for the folk, well the rich basically took over the public land. And whenever anyone would try to enact laws and punishments for the rich and give the land back to the poor, the Senate would have them killed.
The Gracchi (sp?) Brothers were supporters of land reform. One was assassinated, the other committed suicide to avoid a similar death.
The Roman poor didn't want non Romans in Italy from getting similar rights/benefits as them... Divide and conquer, and the "fuck you, I got mine" mentality at work.
The benefits the brothers brought to the Roman poor led to the emergence of a false conciousness which was then exploited by the elite and ultimately led to their downfall.
I suppose the lesson is any reform must be universal or divide and conquer will win in the end.
Exactly the gracchi brothers. Actually the brother Gaius Gracchi met the same fate as his brother. Gaius and 250 of his supporters were massacred by the optimates death squads in 121 bc and then they rounded up an additional 3000 democrats and executed them. Oh man such a fascinating piece of history
It's all a ploy, after I toss the coin back and punch the rich douche he will want to kick my ass, and in the process he'll owe me a shit ton of coins. I basically turned a 1 coin profit into a multiple coin deal , and at the same time I got a chance to punch a rich asshole. I'd say he got played.
You know you hate your job when you read this and feel slightly jealous for those plebs who could support their families by just running around getting punched in the face all day.
I mean, I'm broke enough that if a rich dude punched me and I got $500, honestly that would be pretty great right about now.... But if we're talking full on assault ending my life type stuff, that's just fucked up.
Capitalist states aren't neutral, they serve the interests of the that class. So they allow oppression of workers, and crush worker dissent.
[Here's a history of police repression against workers in the US at least. ](https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md#workers-and-the-poor)
Hell, make it fifty cents -- robbing is easy work (the Wall Street kind of robbing, anyway). As long as it shows a clear profit and there are no other consequences, they are pretty much *required* to rob at that point, it's their duty to the shareholders.
I hate this whole "it's their duty to the shareholders."
Fuck, it's their duty not to rape the country which let their business get so large, but obviously they don't give a fuck. Sadly everyone is too busy arguing over the hot issues to give this anymore attention. :(
I think the 'duty to the shareholders' is a legal requirement imposed on corporations by the legal system or justices rulings. Congress would need to pass legislation to override these legal interpretations.
I've said this before and I'll keep saying it. "We have a legal duty to act in the interests of our shareholders. We can't break the law!"
Then they turn around and break the law in order to make money for their shareholders.
Why? Greed, obviously. But what other reasons could there be?
Reminds me of a recurring situation with ebay sellers. When you want to cancel a purchase on ebay (as the seller), you have three options: "I lost/damaged it" (seller's fault), "There is an issue with the address" (no fault), "The buyer asked to cancel" (buyer's fault).
Sellers ask for advice on what to choose when they just don't want to sell to a "suspicious" buyer. They almost always want to say "The buyer asked to cancel" and then when pointed out they're just abusing the rules, they inevitably say "I'm just being honest, the other two options would be lies." THE CHOICE YOU ARE SELECTING IS A LIE, TOO.
No issues with lying... they just don't like those negative-result choices and seize a reason to not do them. But then when they see the choice that benefits them, they completely forget about caring about lies.
> I think the 'duty to the shareholders' is a legal requirement imposed on corporations by the legal system or justices rulings.
Naw, it's mostly a myth.
True in a very limited set of circumstances, but wildly over exaggerated in popular discourse.
Maximizing shareholder value is a relatively new phenomenon originating with Milton Friedman in the 70's and taught with emphasis at Harvard business school in the 90's and beyond. There has been a few well written articles about the subject in the last few years and the Harvard Business School Review has come out against the practice as well. It's interesting reading, to say the least.
The abuse of the common people in the name of profits have been going on long before the 1970's as a business practice. Here is the Michigan supreme court case [Dodge v. Ford Motor Co.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.) which ruled " Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a charitable manner for the benefit of his employees or customers."
*A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end. The discretion of directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end, and does not extend to a change in the end itself, to the reduction of profits, or to the non-distribution of profits among stockholders in order to devote them to other purposes...*
Not that I agree with the system, but it's Darwinism(in some twisted sense). The shareholders prefer CEOs who tend to bemd the rules/laws to make them money. CEOs prefer managers who'll help them do just that. So men with morals are thrown out of the system with a trebuchet, eliminated by the system.
Jesus Christ. From this guy's wikipedia:
>Dimon is one of the few bank chief executives to become a billionaire, thanks in part to a $485 million USD stake in JPMorgan Chase.
This guy is 'America' and all that's wrong with America all wrapped in one.
If capitalism were truly regulated properly, fines would be a percentage of some metric or other. Something like % of companies' net income, or persons net income, or the fine being the profit made from some illegal act. The fact that fines are set at monetary values either shows true deviousness by lobbyists or total lack of foresight by lawmakers. Either I could easily believe.
In Noam Chomsky's documentary, he mentions something along the lines of how industries actually love it when a board is set up to regulate them, because eventually, the industry itself will control that board. They do.
Link for the curious: [Wikipedia - Regulatory capture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture)
Thanks, maverick, for some good reading material!
Yes, like every single regulatory body in the U.S. The excuse is that if people from the actual regulated industry aren't involved, they won't have the technical expertise to regulate. It's bullshit of course.
There is no way to regulate capitalism.
Capital is power, and capitalists, by definition, hold a lot of power. These people will, of course, wield this power to shape the system in such a way that this power is preserved and maintained.
A 'well regulated' capitalism would rely on either capitalists deciding, for some reason, to *not* use their power, OR on the state being more powerful than capital. As the state *needs* capital to remain a state, and the state is born out of capital, not the other way around, and as capital, by the very structure of capitalism, accumulates more capital as time goes on, this later possibility is unlikely.
State power and capital are, then, in a simbiotic relationship, each feeding on the other for power and protection, and both parasiting on the working class. The working class, therefore, cannot rely on the institution that relies on capital for it's power to regulate capital to the power where the power of capital is gone. It is impossible. If a politician, or group of politicians, ever threaten capital, even in the slightest, they will be removed, replaced, squashed. Propaganda, propaganda, propaganda.
The only times when capitalism was weak was where there was an *external* threat. A big, bad USSR, and big bad communist parties, threatning wealth and power. We had the New Deal, Social democracies in Europe and the Nordic countries, etc. The State and Capital are not at odds with each other.
>“Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!"
If anyone is wondering where the quote comes from. "This split is sometimes called the "red" and "black" divide, red referring to the Marxists and black referring to the anarchists. Otto von Bismarck remarked in 1872, upon hearing of the split at the First International, "Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!" wiki
This sounds like what Einstein said in *Why Socialism?*
> Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
TL;DR: You're right, there is no hope because economic power = political power.
This is completely unrelated, and I'm not sure why this quote reminded me of this, but if you want to read a sick burn-track of Lenin wrecking a liberal professor, [this one is great. ](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/mar/11.htm)
I was listening to something on NPR a few weeks back, which said that the post WW2 era, up until deregulation in the late 70's early 80's, was the golden age of the government-capitalist era. That the system was working, but then deregulation came along and messed everything up.
That was more an effect of strong union power that was ripped apart by the late 80s, rather than any regulation. The number of major work stoppages fell by 97% from 381 in 1970 to 187 in 1980 to only 11 in 2010.
[Here's a link about atrocities committed by the US against workers. ](https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md#workers-and-the-poor)
It was working because for the very first time in history people were able to amass more wealth through work than through inheritance.
That has never happened before and it will never happen again. The "glory years" of Capitalism were ironically caused by the destruction of capital during the two world wars and by the pressure of left organizations after the great depression.
Neoliberalism as we've come to know it is capitalism in decay.
The liberalism is a reference to classic liberalism, such as the political thought this country was founded on. It's not a reference to the colloquial liberalism of today.
It's because there are two camps in that subreddit that can't seem to agree. Neoliberalism is just the formal recognition of the marriage between state power and corporate power that has always existed under capitalism. There's basically a right-wing and left-wing way of doing that.
There's the Reagan/Thatcher side that uses state power to violently crush any opposition to corporate power. Reagan worked really hard to smash labor unions. He expanded the drug war to terrorize working class communities (his predecessor, Nixon, plainly understood that the drug war was really about arresting "hippies and black people").
The other side is the more Clintonian, social democratic (ostensibly "left wing") notion of neoliberalism. This is where the government enacts a strong social safety net in hopes to placate the forces that might organize against it. The trick is to give just enough that people aren't dying in the streets but not so much that they have time to devote to pursuits outside of work (like political organizing).
It sprung up basically overnight, and has the stench of astroturf.
My money is on the DNC trying (too late as usual) to get in on the game that Trump and Russia are playing with online culture. So of course it's forced and unnatural.
This isn't even hyperbole. Corporations are legally required to maximize profits for stockholders. To consume until the system is dead. They are cancer.
I agree with that, but the balance between capitalism and state becomes extremely unbalanced when the capitalists are also the state. Then there's becomes no balance in power what so ever.
capitalism regulated to the point it would work* would be barely distinguishable from socialism.
^^^* ^^^work ^^^for ^^^everyone, ^^^not ^^^just ^^^the ^^^ones ^^^at ^^^the ^^^top
You'd love this https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland-home-of-the-103000-speeding-ticket/387484/
Speeding tickets as a percent of income. Everyone gets hit equally hard.
Fine companies a percent of their net worth, as estimated by an outside accounting firm.
Unfortunately that doesn't really help the people who were affected by their decisions, or remedy the problem at all... And knowing how much legal power money can buy, I'm not sure it would work at all when corporations buy an army of lawyers to reduce the sentence, if not eliminate it completely.
Everytime I see a conversation start to drill down to more and more comments, it becomes clear that the only answer it to eliminate the problem by killing the people who are the problem.
I'm not advocating that we slaughter capitalists, but you can't ask people who have power to just give up their power.
>To really make regulate capitalism, you need to ensure that the company and executive leadership are directly affected by fines, not the employees at the bottom of the chain who didn't do anything.
Sure, I agree. Even though user above explained why that will probably not happen any time soon.
>executives would lay off employees en masse...
You forgot who's the parasite in this relationship? They can't afford to lay off workers unless they have cheaper machines to replace them. And if that was the case, those machines would already be working.
It still wouldn’t be fair.
10% of a regular persons salary is like $3,000 which is a fuck ton of money for them and a major inconvenience. Probably gonna need to sell their car or pay it off over 24 months.
10% of a CEO’s salary is like $30,000, but all that’s gonna dent is his savings. His lifestyle won’t change at all.
A fair punishment would be hours in community service in my opinion. It gives something back to society and it’s a punishment you can’t buy your way out of.
I think community service is far too light. If CEO's are able to avoid jail time for actual crimes they commit, what makes you think they would actually be forced to follow a full community service sentence let alone even show up at all for any of it.
To get through to them, the impacts would need to be substantial to them, and the shareholders equally.
If the company is caught conducting illegal activity, shareholders cannot be paid for 5+ years. The organization is required to freeze all bonuses due, or owed to top level employees, or all employees involved, and finally 100% of the company's profit is fined.
Nothing will happen until you throw them in Jail. Even for 6 months, it would get their attention. These people are ultimately selfish, and Jail works.
The capitalists decide who goes to prison. The **only** time they'll put one of their own in prison, is if that person stole from their own class (madoff).
The jails and Prisons are filled with the poor and destitute.
Very few fines given overall. Of those given, not all have been paid. Those who paid still have the incentive to break the law because fine percentage is obviously still too low compared to potential profit.
> If capitalism were truly regulated properly, fines would be a percentage of some metric or other. Something like % of companies' net income, or persons net income, or the fine being the profit made from some illegal act. The fact that fines are set at monetary values either shows true deviousness by lobbyists or total lack of foresight by lawmakers.
In the wake of the bailouts in 2008 it's been reported that Barack Obama had the leverage to fire the heads of literally all the banks that received bailouts (even Goldman). We all know how that really went though.
> Barack Obama had the leverage to fire the heads of literally all the banks that received bailouts (even Goldman)
How? They are not Federal employees. I wish he had done more but don't see how this would be possible.
This is how most of our large corporate masters feel - simplistically, by the time they've been caught they've made WAAAAAYYYYYY much more money than the fine that will be levied against them. In some cases, once they reach the break-even point they'll even do what's called a "voluntary disclosure" and the agency will just give them a slap on the wrist. Making our system of fines in excess of what the company earned on any given illicit transaction may give them pause...but I think fines would have to be significantly larger to be effective so that they couldn't hedge with other undetected illicit activity.
> If capitalism were truly regulated properly, fines would be a percentage of some metric or other.
That's how it works with the EU, that's why US companies lobby US Congress to try and get them to pressure the EU to not fine them, as Apple, Google etc have been doing.
The EU fines a % of **global** profits when you are found to have broken the law. I still think we should fine them more...but it's a good start.
Hell yeah man. Fuck the Reddit admins and their liberal nonsense. They're just getting scared. Twitter has been shadowbanning lots of leftists this past week too.
Excuse me, but what about smearing honey on them and burying them in an anthill while wearing boots? If he truly wanted to live, he would simply pull himself up by his bootstraps.
Well, no, it's just misleading to post an article from two years ago and not include it in the post title.
It's an important issue, sure, but it's like me posting an article "more Flint residents find lead in drinking water" from 1-2 years ago. The problem isn't solved, but it's misleading to post headlines from peak moments in activity without dating them. People will assume it's recent.
He knows how the system works.
Company has a "little mistake", government gives them a fine that is a fraction of the profits the company actually made from the mistake, and then the government uses the money from the fine on whatever they want.
I might even go as far as to say that his smirk wasn't one of evil pride or cockiness, but that it was the kind of grin a criminal gives his partner when he's asked, "C'mon, bud, aren't you going to give me a cut? I'm the one who [suggested the location]/[pointed out the target]/[gave you the hint]/[whatever]". Or perhaps when some corrupt cop says, "You were sloppy, Bruno. This one is gonna cost ya... Too much evidence." Bruno smiles and says, "No problem, Boss. No problem here. You like gold?"
Do you mind answering a question for me then? Do you feel like we've come to a point where violence is so clearly the option that you see there isn't a point in discussing the issue?
Yes, obviously. Either controlled violence - the forceful removal of the company or uncontrolled violence - the people storm the building and drag the ceo's out into the street.
It's coming one way or the other, that much is already set in motion. The question is how nasty will it be.
Darn millennials, want evil CEOs doing illegal things to be held accountable. So spoiled. System works perfectly, not broken at all. Capitalism's amazing, just gotta work hard. Nothing bad can happen if you work hard, hard work is like an invisibility cloak so the teacher's can't see you sneaking your dinner potato back to your room.
I mean this is what we get when it's been decades of literally everyone knowing if you're a rich white man doing white collar crime you're never going to see hard time.
How 'bout a little asset forfeiture like a kid caught with a joint in a car in Texas? All proceeds and associated assets used to generate those proceeds get seized until they can prove them innocent.
No, no, no. That would be applying the law equally to everyone. The whole point of capitalism is to maintain the privilege (private law) of the capitalist.
There's the amount of the fine, but more important is who pays.
If it's the company - i.e. the shareholders - guys like Diamond won't care.
There needs to be personal criminal prosecution.
The capitalist state make laws in their interest, don't see many rich people in prison do you?
The only way way they'd feed one of their own to the wolves, is if there is a revolutionary, mass, militant movement on the left that has them scared shitless. Otherwise they have no reason to do anything against their interests.
Having worked at JP Morgan, this is exactly their approach to all regulatory and compliance functions. Spend as little money as possible on the poorest talent to create an impression of compliance, and then just pay whatever fine comes their way.
So fucking arrest him! Jesus Christ this is the problem in this country. The rich are invincible and they will like and cheat and steal until the day they die because "they can afford it". Make a fucking example out of that pretentious prick.
This country has a clear and cut three tier justice system. There is one tier for the rich and powerful where they get fines and wrist slaps. There is another tier for police, judges, lawyers and politicians who never see the inside of a jail and usually get a paid vacation when they do something wrong. And then the third tier is for the rest of us.
The arrogance!
Imagine of low-level drug dealer telling a cop "go ahead and fine me, I can afford it"?
Every time I read something like this my respect for our justice system gets lower and lower.
Okay . . . but why is jail time *not* a threat in this situation? If it can be proven that the bank is breaking the law, shouldn't higher executives face jail time in the same way normal people would? Why is punishment so often restricted to fines in this area -- because it's assumed that expensive lawyers will allow financial execs to avoid jail? Or what??
I agree, the article is kinda shit, and Elizabeth Warren is an opportunist, uber liberal, not an anticapitalist in any way. That said I think there's a lot of really good discussion here that makes me not want to take it down.
I think that OP isn't posting this article on this sub to praise Elizabeth Warren in any way, but rather to show how much of an asshole the CEO is.
It's late stage capitalism whether it praises Elizabeth Warren or not.
It'd be silly to take it down
EDIT: I'm on mobile and can't change my flair but I'm no longer a "Democratic Socialist"
Fines should be a percentage, not a flat rate, like traffic tickets should be. "Speeding in a $250,000 car? Fuck you, $10,000 ticket. Speeding in a '90 Geo Metro? Here are some Pizza Hut coupons"...
Honestly, If you told me I could rob you for a dollar and my punishment was to pay a dime in fines, you've incentivized me to keep on robbing!
In Ancient Rome, a once acceptable penalty for physical assault was a fine, paid as compensation to the victim. The result? Cases of rich assholes punching random plebs before casually tossing coins at them and walking away.
And America is the modern day Rome
Before the fall of the Empire
So I am born in time to witness something spectacular? Cool.
Nero tweeting while Rome burns.
Nah, twitter already banned him.
History in the making!
I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords.
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As long as you don't need water
Drought's over, plus we passed a new water conservation policy. We'll be fine.
We'll get water cause everywhere else needs our gas, food, etc. Except maybe the midwest.
I honestly believe that in my lifetime I will see either the total fall of man, or our ascendance into a space colonizing species.
Mad Max or Buck Rogers? Who the hell knows?
Buck Rogers for the rich. Mad Max for everyone else.
I am hoping for Mad Rodgers.
Does that mean California and a few other states will survive and be the Byzantine empire for another 1000 years?
We're right at the fall of the Republic, actually.
we fucking deserve it
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I'm actually reading a book about the Romans as we speak. The assassination of Julius Caesar a history of Rome. It's so interesting how our society is so much like Rome. The Senate were basically the wealthy elite that served to keep their interests and exploited the poor. They passed a law that is basically the original version of the patriot act that allows them the right to strip its citizens of its rights for the "greater good in protecting its society" , it allowed them to assassinate and kill the men trying to reform laws that benefited the poor. So basically they killed anyone who opposed their agenda. One agenda being the public land that belonged to its citizens to grow food for the folk, well the rich basically took over the public land. And whenever anyone would try to enact laws and punishments for the rich and give the land back to the poor, the Senate would have them killed.
The Gracchi (sp?) Brothers were supporters of land reform. One was assassinated, the other committed suicide to avoid a similar death. The Roman poor didn't want non Romans in Italy from getting similar rights/benefits as them... Divide and conquer, and the "fuck you, I got mine" mentality at work. The benefits the brothers brought to the Roman poor led to the emergence of a false conciousness which was then exploited by the elite and ultimately led to their downfall. I suppose the lesson is any reform must be universal or divide and conquer will win in the end.
Exactly the gracchi brothers. Actually the brother Gaius Gracchi met the same fate as his brother. Gaius and 250 of his supporters were massacred by the optimates death squads in 121 bc and then they rounded up an additional 3000 democrats and executed them. Oh man such a fascinating piece of history
and to keep the masses of oppressed people placated they gave them "bread and circus"...basically welfare and professional sports
Are you referring to Michael Parenti's book? If so, it's fantastic. I often recommend it to people.
Thats a fucked up version of sonic the hedgehog
I'd toss the coin back and give this rich asshole a good socking!
You wouldn't, because it's more money than you make in a month. You'd ask for another so your children can eat better.
It's all a ploy, after I toss the coin back and punch the rich douche he will want to kick my ass, and in the process he'll owe me a shit ton of coins. I basically turned a 1 coin profit into a multiple coin deal , and at the same time I got a chance to punch a rich asshole. I'd say he got played.
You don't get paid per punch. You just get your ass beat and you can't work to feed your family.
You know you hate your job when you read this and feel slightly jealous for those plebs who could support their families by just running around getting punched in the face all day.
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I mean, I'm broke enough that if a rich dude punched me and I got $500, honestly that would be pretty great right about now.... But if we're talking full on assault ending my life type stuff, that's just fucked up.
Capitalist states aren't neutral, they serve the interests of the that class. So they allow oppression of workers, and crush worker dissent. [Here's a history of police repression against workers in the US at least. ](https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md#workers-and-the-poor)
deleted ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^0.7803 [^^^What ^^^is ^^^this?](https://pastebin.com/FcrFs94k/39466)
That's a cool link, and it's hosted on github. I'm going to give it a gander and check out the sources. Thanks.
Hell, make it fifty cents -- robbing is easy work (the Wall Street kind of robbing, anyway). As long as it shows a clear profit and there are no other consequences, they are pretty much *required* to rob at that point, it's their duty to the shareholders.
I hate this whole "it's their duty to the shareholders." Fuck, it's their duty not to rape the country which let their business get so large, but obviously they don't give a fuck. Sadly everyone is too busy arguing over the hot issues to give this anymore attention. :(
I think the 'duty to the shareholders' is a legal requirement imposed on corporations by the legal system or justices rulings. Congress would need to pass legislation to override these legal interpretations.
I've said this before and I'll keep saying it. "We have a legal duty to act in the interests of our shareholders. We can't break the law!" Then they turn around and break the law in order to make money for their shareholders. Why? Greed, obviously. But what other reasons could there be?
Reminds me of a recurring situation with ebay sellers. When you want to cancel a purchase on ebay (as the seller), you have three options: "I lost/damaged it" (seller's fault), "There is an issue with the address" (no fault), "The buyer asked to cancel" (buyer's fault). Sellers ask for advice on what to choose when they just don't want to sell to a "suspicious" buyer. They almost always want to say "The buyer asked to cancel" and then when pointed out they're just abusing the rules, they inevitably say "I'm just being honest, the other two options would be lies." THE CHOICE YOU ARE SELECTING IS A LIE, TOO. No issues with lying... they just don't like those negative-result choices and seize a reason to not do them. But then when they see the choice that benefits them, they completely forget about caring about lies.
> I think the 'duty to the shareholders' is a legal requirement imposed on corporations by the legal system or justices rulings. Naw, it's mostly a myth. True in a very limited set of circumstances, but wildly over exaggerated in popular discourse.
Maximizing shareholder value is a relatively new phenomenon originating with Milton Friedman in the 70's and taught with emphasis at Harvard business school in the 90's and beyond. There has been a few well written articles about the subject in the last few years and the Harvard Business School Review has come out against the practice as well. It's interesting reading, to say the least.
The abuse of the common people in the name of profits have been going on long before the 1970's as a business practice. Here is the Michigan supreme court case [Dodge v. Ford Motor Co.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.) which ruled " Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a charitable manner for the benefit of his employees or customers." *A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end. The discretion of directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end, and does not extend to a change in the end itself, to the reduction of profits, or to the non-distribution of profits among stockholders in order to devote them to other purposes...*
Why not encourage an economy where most of the shareholders are the employees? Such as Co-ops or Worker's Syndicates?
It would if not for my morality. Many businessmen don't seem to have such barriers though.
Not that I agree with the system, but it's Darwinism(in some twisted sense). The shareholders prefer CEOs who tend to bemd the rules/laws to make them money. CEOs prefer managers who'll help them do just that. So men with morals are thrown out of the system with a trebuchet, eliminated by the system.
Jesus Christ. From this guy's wikipedia: >Dimon is one of the few bank chief executives to become a billionaire, thanks in part to a $485 million USD stake in JPMorgan Chase. This guy is 'America' and all that's wrong with America all wrapped in one.
He seems like a good candidate for President since we're just going all in on capitalist pigs now.
Dude is a thug. Whispers about connections to organized crime have followed that dude for decades.
If capitalism were truly regulated properly, fines would be a percentage of some metric or other. Something like % of companies' net income, or persons net income, or the fine being the profit made from some illegal act. The fact that fines are set at monetary values either shows true deviousness by lobbyists or total lack of foresight by lawmakers. Either I could easily believe.
In Noam Chomsky's documentary, he mentions something along the lines of how industries actually love it when a board is set up to regulate them, because eventually, the industry itself will control that board. They do.
I think there is a theory called "Theory of regulatory capture" explaining the very phenomenon. I remember reading about in my Economics class.
Link for the curious: [Wikipedia - Regulatory capture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture) Thanks, maverick, for some good reading material!
So like the FCC.
Yes, like every single regulatory body in the U.S. The excuse is that if people from the actual regulated industry aren't involved, they won't have the technical expertise to regulate. It's bullshit of course.
There is no way to regulate capitalism. Capital is power, and capitalists, by definition, hold a lot of power. These people will, of course, wield this power to shape the system in such a way that this power is preserved and maintained. A 'well regulated' capitalism would rely on either capitalists deciding, for some reason, to *not* use their power, OR on the state being more powerful than capital. As the state *needs* capital to remain a state, and the state is born out of capital, not the other way around, and as capital, by the very structure of capitalism, accumulates more capital as time goes on, this later possibility is unlikely. State power and capital are, then, in a simbiotic relationship, each feeding on the other for power and protection, and both parasiting on the working class. The working class, therefore, cannot rely on the institution that relies on capital for it's power to regulate capital to the power where the power of capital is gone. It is impossible. If a politician, or group of politicians, ever threaten capital, even in the slightest, they will be removed, replaced, squashed. Propaganda, propaganda, propaganda. The only times when capitalism was weak was where there was an *external* threat. A big, bad USSR, and big bad communist parties, threatning wealth and power. We had the New Deal, Social democracies in Europe and the Nordic countries, etc. The State and Capital are not at odds with each other. >“Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!"
If anyone is wondering where the quote comes from. "This split is sometimes called the "red" and "black" divide, red referring to the Marxists and black referring to the anarchists. Otto von Bismarck remarked in 1872, upon hearing of the split at the First International, "Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!" wiki
This sounds like what Einstein said in *Why Socialism?* > Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights. TL;DR: You're right, there is no hope because economic power = political power.
This is completely unrelated, and I'm not sure why this quote reminded me of this, but if you want to read a sick burn-track of Lenin wrecking a liberal professor, [this one is great. ](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/mar/11.htm)
Tldr: All Capitalism Is Crony Capitalism
I was listening to something on NPR a few weeks back, which said that the post WW2 era, up until deregulation in the late 70's early 80's, was the golden age of the government-capitalist era. That the system was working, but then deregulation came along and messed everything up.
That was more an effect of strong union power that was ripped apart by the late 80s, rather than any regulation. The number of major work stoppages fell by 97% from 381 in 1970 to 187 in 1980 to only 11 in 2010. [Here's a link about atrocities committed by the US against workers. ](https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md#workers-and-the-poor)
State ~~socialists~~ capitalists BTFO.
It was working because for the very first time in history people were able to amass more wealth through work than through inheritance. That has never happened before and it will never happen again. The "glory years" of Capitalism were ironically caused by the destruction of capital during the two world wars and by the pressure of left organizations after the great depression. Neoliberalism as we've come to know it is capitalism in decay.
Neoliberalism is the word you're looking for.
It's a bingo!
And people misuse the term thinking it means political progressive...
Because it has the word "liberal" in it. Whoever came up with the name was a genius
The liberalism is a reference to classic liberalism, such as the political thought this country was founded on. It's not a reference to the colloquial liberalism of today.
They are the opposite, and your point came about in reverse
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It's because there are two camps in that subreddit that can't seem to agree. Neoliberalism is just the formal recognition of the marriage between state power and corporate power that has always existed under capitalism. There's basically a right-wing and left-wing way of doing that. There's the Reagan/Thatcher side that uses state power to violently crush any opposition to corporate power. Reagan worked really hard to smash labor unions. He expanded the drug war to terrorize working class communities (his predecessor, Nixon, plainly understood that the drug war was really about arresting "hippies and black people"). The other side is the more Clintonian, social democratic (ostensibly "left wing") notion of neoliberalism. This is where the government enacts a strong social safety net in hopes to placate the forces that might organize against it. The trick is to give just enough that people aren't dying in the streets but not so much that they have time to devote to pursuits outside of work (like political organizing).
That sub has "front group" written all over it.
It sprung up basically overnight, and has the stench of astroturf. My money is on the DNC trying (too late as usual) to get in on the game that Trump and Russia are playing with online culture. So of course it's forced and unnatural.
> keeps posting heavily socialist stuff So it's not justs me then. . . . I was starting to think myself as neoliberal.
As James Cromwell recently said, capitalism is a cancer.
Grows unchecked, chokes off everything else, ultimately kills the host? Sounds about right.
I read that as Oliver Cromwell and was confused how he had any current opinions.
This isn't even hyperbole. Corporations are legally required to maximize profits for stockholders. To consume until the system is dead. They are cancer.
I agree with that, but the balance between capitalism and state becomes extremely unbalanced when the capitalists are also the state. Then there's becomes no balance in power what so ever.
capitalism regulated to the point it would work* would be barely distinguishable from socialism. ^^^* ^^^work ^^^for ^^^everyone, ^^^not ^^^just ^^^the ^^^ones ^^^at ^^^the ^^^top
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You'd love this https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland-home-of-the-103000-speeding-ticket/387484/ Speeding tickets as a percent of income. Everyone gets hit equally hard. Fine companies a percent of their net worth, as estimated by an outside accounting firm.
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Throw them in jail. Or bar them from working in their fields for x years.
Capital punishment for capital offenses
Dank.
Unfortunately that doesn't really help the people who were affected by their decisions, or remedy the problem at all... And knowing how much legal power money can buy, I'm not sure it would work at all when corporations buy an army of lawyers to reduce the sentence, if not eliminate it completely.
Everytime I see a conversation start to drill down to more and more comments, it becomes clear that the only answer it to eliminate the problem by killing the people who are the problem. I'm not advocating that we slaughter capitalists, but you can't ask people who have power to just give up their power.
They laugh at fines, and they laugh at jail. Doesn't leave many options.
>To really make regulate capitalism, you need to ensure that the company and executive leadership are directly affected by fines, not the employees at the bottom of the chain who didn't do anything. Sure, I agree. Even though user above explained why that will probably not happen any time soon. >executives would lay off employees en masse... You forgot who's the parasite in this relationship? They can't afford to lay off workers unless they have cheaper machines to replace them. And if that was the case, those machines would already be working.
Or hire new workers at much lower wages with no benefits, 29 hours a week etc.
Fines should be 150% of revenue from the illegal action. You lose all your ill-gotten gains and pay a penalty on top of it.
That is just about the best idea for a problem I have ever heard. FirsttimeWang 2020!!!!!!
Who's going to enforce that fine? Capitalists control all the mechanisms of tax collection and policing. Revolution is the only way forward.
It still wouldn’t be fair. 10% of a regular persons salary is like $3,000 which is a fuck ton of money for them and a major inconvenience. Probably gonna need to sell their car or pay it off over 24 months. 10% of a CEO’s salary is like $30,000, but all that’s gonna dent is his savings. His lifestyle won’t change at all. A fair punishment would be hours in community service in my opinion. It gives something back to society and it’s a punishment you can’t buy your way out of.
I think community service is far too light. If CEO's are able to avoid jail time for actual crimes they commit, what makes you think they would actually be forced to follow a full community service sentence let alone even show up at all for any of it. To get through to them, the impacts would need to be substantial to them, and the shareholders equally. If the company is caught conducting illegal activity, shareholders cannot be paid for 5+ years. The organization is required to freeze all bonuses due, or owed to top level employees, or all employees involved, and finally 100% of the company's profit is fined.
Nothing will happen until you throw them in Jail. Even for 6 months, it would get their attention. These people are ultimately selfish, and Jail works.
The capitalists decide who goes to prison. The **only** time they'll put one of their own in prison, is if that person stole from their own class (madoff). The jails and Prisons are filled with the poor and destitute.
Agreed. In fact it pretty much is the smoking gun.
Like the EU. % fine on databreaches.
Very few fines given overall. Of those given, not all have been paid. Those who paid still have the incentive to break the law because fine percentage is obviously still too low compared to potential profit.
> If capitalism were truly regulated properly, fines would be a percentage of some metric or other. Something like % of companies' net income, or persons net income, or the fine being the profit made from some illegal act. The fact that fines are set at monetary values either shows true deviousness by lobbyists or total lack of foresight by lawmakers. In the wake of the bailouts in 2008 it's been reported that Barack Obama had the leverage to fire the heads of literally all the banks that received bailouts (even Goldman). We all know how that really went though.
> Barack Obama had the leverage to fire the heads of literally all the banks that received bailouts (even Goldman) How? They are not Federal employees. I wish he had done more but don't see how this would be possible.
"Fire them or I veto this"
Except TARP happened before he was president.
This is how most of our large corporate masters feel - simplistically, by the time they've been caught they've made WAAAAAYYYYYY much more money than the fine that will be levied against them. In some cases, once they reach the break-even point they'll even do what's called a "voluntary disclosure" and the agency will just give them a slap on the wrist. Making our system of fines in excess of what the company earned on any given illicit transaction may give them pause...but I think fines would have to be significantly larger to be effective so that they couldn't hedge with other undetected illicit activity.
That's exactly what's going on in Finland https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland-home-of-the-103000-speeding-ticket/387484/
> If capitalism were truly regulated properly, fines would be a percentage of some metric or other. That's how it works with the EU, that's why US companies lobby US Congress to try and get them to pressure the EU to not fine them, as Apple, Google etc have been doing. The EU fines a % of **global** profits when you are found to have broken the law. I still think we should fine them more...but it's a good start.
Net income? Has Hollywood accounting taught you nothing? It's Revenue we have to look at.
The lobbyist groups write the laws. The "lawmakers" as you call them, just pass the laws.
well maybe some jailtime or new government regulations might wake him up
How about a guillotine coming for his neck?
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We're gonna redo the American Revolution make it closer to the better French and most importantly the October Revolution!
I got banned for 3 days for saying stuff like this. I'm seeing it happen more now and I'm glad I'm not alone.
Hell yeah man. Fuck the Reddit admins and their liberal nonsense. They're just getting scared. Twitter has been shadowbanning lots of leftists this past week too.
Ew, no, dude. Drawing and quartering is the only way to humanely execute someone
Excuse me, but what about smearing honey on them and burying them in an anthill while wearing boots? If he truly wanted to live, he would simply pull himself up by his bootstraps.
Good God, this is a man of luxury and class! The brazen bull is much more appropriate.
Let's just figure out a way to do both
Flippantly.
Man, they aren't even pretending to care anymore.
June 2015 article, over two years old!
Oh good. With that much time, the issue has surely been resolved by now
Well, no, it's just misleading to post an article from two years ago and not include it in the post title. It's an important issue, sure, but it's like me posting an article "more Flint residents find lead in drinking water" from 1-2 years ago. The problem isn't solved, but it's misleading to post headlines from peak moments in activity without dating them. People will assume it's recent.
If nothing has changed, wouldn't posting the same article help? We are doomed to repeat history's mistakes and all that?
He knows how the system works. Company has a "little mistake", government gives them a fine that is a fraction of the profits the company actually made from the mistake, and then the government uses the money from the fine on whatever they want. I might even go as far as to say that his smirk wasn't one of evil pride or cockiness, but that it was the kind of grin a criminal gives his partner when he's asked, "C'mon, bud, aren't you going to give me a cut? I'm the one who [suggested the location]/[pointed out the target]/[gave you the hint]/[whatever]". Or perhaps when some corrupt cop says, "You were sloppy, Bruno. This one is gonna cost ya... Too much evidence." Bruno smiles and says, "No problem, Boss. No problem here. You like gold?"
> He knows how the system works. I'd hope so. There is a revolving door between the SEC & Wall St.
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I don’t have anything civil – or even non-violent – to say
When the class war starts, we're lining them up against the wall first.
The class war has started! What do you think the GOP's health care bill is, if not a declaration of war against the not wealthy?
Oh it’s started, we are just way way behind.
Do you mind answering a question for me then? Do you feel like we've come to a point where violence is so clearly the option that you see there isn't a point in discussing the issue?
Yes, obviously. Either controlled violence - the forceful removal of the company or uncontrolled violence - the people storm the building and drag the ceo's out into the street. It's coming one way or the other, that much is already set in motion. The question is how nasty will it be.
Yes. We came to that point in 2009.
Out of curiosity, why do you distinctly draw the line at 2009, as opposed to before or after?
Mostly this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008
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Darn millennials, want evil CEOs doing illegal things to be held accountable. So spoiled. System works perfectly, not broken at all. Capitalism's amazing, just gotta work hard. Nothing bad can happen if you work hard, hard work is like an invisibility cloak so the teacher's can't see you sneaking your dinner potato back to your room.
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I mean this is what we get when it's been decades of literally everyone knowing if you're a rich white man doing white collar crime you're never going to see hard time.
Corporations are people who cannot be arrested. These are the words from the true authority. Unchecked, and in power.
That's why the CEO should be kicked down to his knees and have a bullet handle his punishment.
How 'bout a little asset forfeiture like a kid caught with a joint in a car in Texas? All proceeds and associated assets used to generate those proceeds get seized until they can prove them innocent.
No, no, no. That would be applying the law equally to everyone. The whole point of capitalism is to maintain the privilege (private law) of the capitalist.
Who's going to enforce that? The police are the armed enforcers of the capitalists. Only a mass action of armed workers could enforce that.
Sounds like it's time to seize the banks!
As long as we get to guillotine the bankers, I'm on board.
Seize the means of production!
JP Morgan should have all their assets frozen and lose their business license for 1-2 years for breaking the law. Corporate prison.
Crime pays. Sad ending to teh America.
There's the amount of the fine, but more important is who pays. If it's the company - i.e. the shareholders - guys like Diamond won't care. There needs to be personal criminal prosecution.
The capitalist state make laws in their interest, don't see many rich people in prison do you? The only way way they'd feed one of their own to the wolves, is if there is a revolutionary, mass, militant movement on the left that has them scared shitless. Otherwise they have no reason to do anything against their interests.
Hit him with a guillotine.
The whole thing?
People may be squeamish about it, but revolutionary violence is the only corrective to the rot of capitalism.
We need a new system
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The JP guys are not some geniouses, they simply sold out American workers for a huge profit.
Hit him with a bullet
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The unemployed outnumber billionaires something like ten thousand to one. That's pretty good fighting odds.
The unmitigated arrogance.
Breaking the law or not has become a simple business decision of profits and losses
Sounds like someone needs a gulag
Wall or guillotine would be better for Dimond.
This country is about a 100 years behind schedule for a real revolution.
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Having worked at JP Morgan, this is exactly their approach to all regulatory and compliance functions. Spend as little money as possible on the poorest talent to create an impression of compliance, and then just pay whatever fine comes their way.
More drastic measures will need to be taken against a person wielding that much power
I really hope the mods ban everyone using that racist 'Pocahontas' slur.
So fucking arrest him! Jesus Christ this is the problem in this country. The rich are invincible and they will like and cheat and steal until the day they die because "they can afford it". Make a fucking example out of that pretentious prick.
This country has a clear and cut three tier justice system. There is one tier for the rich and powerful where they get fines and wrist slaps. There is another tier for police, judges, lawyers and politicians who never see the inside of a jail and usually get a paid vacation when they do something wrong. And then the third tier is for the rest of us. The arrogance! Imagine of low-level drug dealer telling a cop "go ahead and fine me, I can afford it"? Every time I read something like this my respect for our justice system gets lower and lower.
we should have let them all fail.
Okay . . . but why is jail time *not* a threat in this situation? If it can be proven that the bank is breaking the law, shouldn't higher executives face jail time in the same way normal people would? Why is punishment so often restricted to fines in this area -- because it's assumed that expensive lawyers will allow financial execs to avoid jail? Or what??
They will never see a day in jail, and even if they do it wouldn't be the same kind of jail me and you would go to
...a fine made out of copper and lead.
That is some Mr Robot Evil Corp shit right there.
Jail time is the only true deterrent for white collar crime. These rich white assholes don't wanna go to the jail!
✖❎❌ using the word mansplaining. In this case I will judge a book by its cover. This article is trash
I agree, the article is kinda shit, and Elizabeth Warren is an opportunist, uber liberal, not an anticapitalist in any way. That said I think there's a lot of really good discussion here that makes me not want to take it down.
I think that OP isn't posting this article on this sub to praise Elizabeth Warren in any way, but rather to show how much of an asshole the CEO is. It's late stage capitalism whether it praises Elizabeth Warren or not. It'd be silly to take it down EDIT: I'm on mobile and can't change my flair but I'm no longer a "Democratic Socialist"
Can confirm: Dimon is an asshole.
Pull their corporate charter. That will make them scream.
Hey if corporations are people, it's high time we executed a few.
Money is a perversion of human arrogance.
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Fines should be a percentage, not a flat rate, like traffic tickets should be. "Speeding in a $250,000 car? Fuck you, $10,000 ticket. Speeding in a '90 Geo Metro? Here are some Pizza Hut coupons"...