OUR unemployment rate

[fr0d0]

A business owner will pay his employees the minimum he can get away with, and he will take everything he can personally from the business without limit and consider this completely fair.

Consumers want fairer trade and big companies will always want to appear as it's customers desire. Nestle have a fair trade label on kit kats now which is striking given their barbaric history. How did the American peanut industry prevail in the world nut market being such a weak contender? Severe political pressure to undermine it's competitors is how.

I can't believe you live in the same world that I do if you don't think business controls everything. Part of the motivation to have money is to also have power. At a local level the wealthy force the local authority to do what they want... privately to benefit their immediate environment and commercially to benefit their business interests. I've been involved in it closely enough to observe all this happening. It's sickening and wrong, but it's the way of the world.

Government serves the interest of business. It can't directly contribute but it makes laws to promote business interest.

[Tiberius]

A business owner will pay his employees the minimum he can get away with, and he will take everything he can personally from the business without limit and consider this completely fair.

Yeah, because it is fair. It's his business...he sets the rules. As I said before, if enough of his employ think he's being stingy, they can leave or complain. Many people ask for a raise, some people get them. A business is largely controlled by the satisfaction of the employees as well as the satisfaction of the consumer. If a business owner doesn't keep both happy, he'll end up without a business.

Consumers want fairer trade and big companies will always want to appear as it's customers desire. Nestle have a fair trade label on kit kats now which is striking given their barbaric history. How did the American peanut industry prevail in the world nut market being such a weak contender? Severe political pressure to undermine it's competitors is how.

I've already said how I'm against government involvement in business. Free market capitalism rejects such notions.

I can't believe you live in the same world that I do if you don't think business controls everything. Part of the motivation to have money is to also have power. At a local level the wealthy force the local authority to do what they want... privately to benefit their immediate environment and commercially to benefit their business interests. I've been involved in it closely enough to observe all this happening. It's sickening and wrong, but it's the way of the world.

I do think business controls everything, and I think it's fine as long as business sticks to business and not to government. Business should control the market, government should keep the fuck away. Governments should protect liberties of citizens, not infringe the rights of them and businesses.

Government serves the interest of business. It can't directly contribute but it makes laws to promote business interest.

And it shouldn't. It should back off and let the market grow on its own.

[theblindferrengi]

Governments have no reason to buy shares in large companies. It wouldn't the "free market" if government had control over business in such a way. Markets do not require regulation...it was regulation that got business in trouble in the first place. If governments didn't get involved so much, we'd have more small-scale businesses and better competition, rather than favoritism.

To use your food-web analogy, some species would disappear, but that only leaves room for other species to take their place.

It was in fact the govenrments deregulation of the markets passed by president Clinton that lead to the current economic recession. The regulations banning things like economic derivitaves (quite litterally betting on market values), and credit default swaps (a third party buying insurance against loans, effectively betting they will fail), were removed, and it became extremely profitable to engage in economicly detrimental enterprizes. A trend like this can only work to a point, just like only so many animals can be hunted before the ecosystem is damaged, and that point was crossed. Money that companies not only did not have, but that never existed in te first place was being used, and in turn, those transactions were being bet upon with more money that nobody ever had.

The government is now trying to clean up the mess as best it can without having the consequenses of this crisis effect the economy. What should be happening from the economic recession is severe inflation and devaluation of the USD, and the government is taking actions to stop it, as severe inflation would be economically harmful to absolutely everyone. Since this situation is thje governments fault to begin with, I hardly see why they should be exempt from cleaning up their mess.

[Violet]

Governments have no reason to buy shares in large companies. It wouldn't the "free market" if government had control over business in such a way. Markets do not require regulation...it was regulation that got business in trouble in the first place. If governments didn't get involved so much, we'd have more small-scale businesses and better competition, rather than favoritism.

To use your food-web analogy, some species would disappear, but that only leaves room for other species to take their place.

Actually... what you would get is monopolies.

Further... many businesses impact each other. Our fishing industry would be dead if our mining industry had no regulations. Our fishing industry itself would be dead if it had no regulations. If you have too many regulations, then you have restricted the business to only those capable of affording/meeting those regulations... and if you have too few regulations, then the business is controlled by monopolies, collusion, and practices that damage the industry over the long term and/or damage other industries to maximize profits.

[Tiberius]

There isn't anything wrong with monopolies if they work.

[tavarish]

There isn't anything wrong with monopolies if they work.

I hope you're joking.

They kill free enterprise. Laissez-faire economics do not work.

[Tiberius]

I'm not joking. I find it ironic that you say they "kill free enterprise" when the "solution" of regulation kills it even more. If a company is good at something; if it has a large market share, a lot of consumers, why should it be punished? It has those customers because it provides a good service. There isn't anything stopping another company from being formed with a competitor product, other than the regulation on business that scares off the people with ideas.

A case in point would be Microsoft. For years they provided an Operating System solution that 99% of people used. They had a monopoly because they were forward thinking, they were successful, and it worked for most of the people. However, in recent years they have been struck back slightly by the increase in Linux netbooks and laptops, the continuous advances of Apple, and of course Solaris. Monopolies are not permanent, and they can easily be crippled by a superior product (Firefox, Chrome, Opera vs Internet Explorer for another example).

I don't see any problem with Laissez-faire economics; all it requires is people to think about new approaches to government. I used to be a left-wing person, thinking the government should have a control over things, but then I realised that the "government" has no reason to demand such things when it fails so miserably so often. A smaller government that focuses on maintaining human rights and civil liberties is a path to true freedom. A market that runs itself (through Laissez-faire capitalism) is the natural solution to an economy not controlled by a government, but encouraged by one.

[theblindferrengi]

Monopolies are a bad idea for the same reasons that trusts, cartels and horizantal integration were banned nearly 100 years ago, and Microsoft is not a monopoly on operating systems, as it has always had competion that keeps microsoft in check. If Microsoft truly was a moonopoly, it would crush any new startups.

Yes, over-regulation kills free enterprise, but even more so does having absolutely no regulation. A balance is needed between public sector and private sector in order to keep the public sector sustainable. It would be nice to get rid of government regulation of buisness, as it can be a pain in the ass, but only in a utopian society would doing so be viable. In 19th century England, purchasing was considered a privilage, and things like child labour, long hours, and low pay were common; this is very efficient at generating things, but is not humane. Times have not changed because employers decided to be nice, but because the government stepped in and said that employees are people too.

[Violet]

I'm not joking. I find it ironic that you say they "kill free enterprise" when the "solution" of regulation kills it even more. If a company is good at something; if it has a large market share, a lot of consumers, why should it be punished? It has those customers because it provides a good service.

Say that a company has a monopoly upon the water market. They are the only company that can provide said resource, and they can choose to set the price however they want. They will thus attempt to maximize their profits... and they will sell only the worst "equal parts muck and water" to those in the worst financial situations (likely for prices that they will only be able to pay for by sacrificing their food, heating, shelter, property, etc), and the somewhat less 'dirty' (maybe toxins, maybe it runs in with the sewage, perhaps the water has become so overpriced that there is no longer an operating sewage for the middle-poor classes, thereby the smaller plumbing businesses have all been declared bankrupt) water is sold at exorbitant prices to the middle and poor classes... to the point where it may be simply more economical to drink the "mudwater" sold to the poorest of the poor.*

*(After all... it is more economical for Water Trust to keep people alive and paying than to let those bastard "maldoctors" from Happycare Incorporated bleed them dry of funds... so that if they run dry their last cents: the Morticians League can rob their families for a decent burial, or cremation, or as is more likely in these troubled times: the economical drop into the sea. So many corpses out in Seagull Cove these days... one might swear that the Morticians League struck a deal with the money grubbers at Fowl Food Delights. It would certainly explain why they are sometimes shooting and collecting the gulls in the cove and shipping them back to Fowl Food Delights. But then... perhaps that was only an economical side effect from the Morticians League's very novel way to extend their services to the poorest of the poor. Oh, but to obtain medical care at Happycare Inc... one must first sign over their body to the Morticians League in event of death... a deal made between the two companies that has made them both much richer over the course of these long days when Lady Liberty is forever shrouded in the smog of the city.) <--Moderately advanced example of what I am referring to.

It's like reading The Jungle... or perhaps more like watching Ferengie and Goblins trading with each other. A free market situation (where there is absolutely no control) is only a good situation if the situation is a utopia where everyone serves each other out of kindness and generosity. Such a condition does not exist... and anyone who believes otherwise can look at Rapture for how brief and insecure such an ideological system is.

There isn't anything stopping another company from being formed with a competitor product, other than the regulation on business that scares off the people with ideas.

What... except that the one with the monopoly controls all of the market already, and can afford to buyout all of the shares of your upstart company? Or perhaps the monopoly has already struck exclusive deals with suppliers who are also monopolies... and the price to beat them out is beyond that which you can afford?

A monopoly is the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service. If it is not exclusive... then it is not a monopoly, and sure other people can get into the market. However, with no regulation of businesses... one only needs to read The Jungle to get a faint idea of what that allows... and that was even with slavery being illegal. There is simply no way a fresh upstart can compete with a monopoly... not unless they are both able to capable of supplying all the things the now former monopoly is capable of supplying and able to compete with their prices and connections. Not to mention that if this is a truly free market... assassins and armies are services too...

[LEDO]

There is a problem with monopolies. They tend to price fix. Look at the drug industry. They patent a drug and charge outrageous prices for it. Once it goes generic and other people manufacture it, the price drops tremendously. ( American problem, not British.)