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Originally Posted by alansmithee
You don't seem to understand the purpose of a corporation. It is to make money-nothing more...capitalism relies on everyone working in their own self interest, even if that's at the expense of society...It isn't enough to just brand companies as evil and just say they should be better, you have to give them incentive.
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Obviously you didn't understand what I've said. I do understand capitalism and I don't claim to call a single corporation evil. I haven't called BP evil or any of the oil companies evil, and I hate that people always boil things down into polar opposites. It's not a world of black and white, there is gray in every crack, so try not to boil this down to good and evil. I believe the first thing I said was that social capitalism probably would never be accepted; however your argument that the people should "through government" control these corporations rather than the corporations controlling themselves smacks of social capitalism.
Social capitalism is the need for an active government role in business development and operations. What social capitalism argues is that government is not invisible, as in the free market form of capitalism, nor is government all intrusive. Instead, government must be active and protect society from the inherent flaws of a free market capitalism.
So...you pretty much said social capitalism was an oxymoron, and then lobbied for it in your closing sentence.
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Originally Posted by alansmithee
It is up to the people (through the gov't) to take strides to make sure that what is most profitable to corporations also coincides with society's interests.
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That there is no consideration whatsoever for society in the boardroom is ludicrous. It seems even from this thread that companies like BP who invest even a small share of their profits into R&D that helps our society are rewarded with media exposure and praise on most fronts (that includes you)...So wouldn't it be in a companies best interest to understand how it affects soicety and its consumers lives. It seems you're forgetting some basic rules of business: know your customer and keep the customer happy. So being socially conscious, while sometimes harmful to a corporation seems like it aught to be rather important to corporations. Hell look at Wal-Mart. Why spend tons of money fighting all these lawsuits over labor laws? Because PR is a damned big part of business and drives the sacred capitalist bottom line up or down in most cases.