roachboy

not in this thread, fta, i haven't. in what i have put up in the context of this thread, the argument should be simple enough to draw out---the claim is that conservative framing of corporate activity as involving primarily the relation of private shareholders to private corporations is dysfunctional--both as a description of corporations (because it is only one relation amongst any number of relations--like (say) that which links and opposes labor to capital)---and because, taken as a way of thinking about neoliberalism, it had lead to disastroud consequences (think the history of structural adjustment programs of the results of capitalist shock therapy)...

i dont understand what you are saying here. the whole idea behind the stakeholder (a term that floats outward from the planet business ethics) is to empower a wider range of groups in the shaping of the factors that, say, a tnc would take into account in making bidness decisions. it was developed explicitly as a critique of the freidmanite view of bidness and its exclusive emphasis on shareholder profits. it is about the notion that corporate activity is political, is public simply because the effects of that activity run WAY beyond the question of whether shareholders make money or not--and that the public should be represented in various ways in the process of fashioning business strategy. whence stakeholder groups.

i take this claim to be self-evident, not in need of any particular defense.

neoliberalism is bad for business.
it is not bad in the same way for american political purposes, because no matter the problems its actual implementation have generated (and on this the evidence is easy to find and kinda overwhelming), neoliberal arguments nonetheless simplify the world--they minimize the space for political action for example.

both elements are featured in conservative ideology (depending on what sources you have in mind when you happen to generate statements, of course)...so while i am not sure that this line represents a straw man, it is more trivial than the other (about the privateness of corporations and their actions following from the exclusive emphasis on shareholder-corporate entity relations).


loquitor:

geez. (1) who is working with syllogisms? when did a 17th century mode of arguing from general principles to the Particular get to be part of the rules that shape the form of arguments?

(2) there is no general characterization of capitalism in the posts i have put up here. i dont know where you get that from. the claim that capitalism presupposes an infrastructure is self-evident. the correlate of this--that therefore capitalism is not anarchy--seems one of those moves that simply restates the premise and which doesnt move the argument.

the fiction of a social contract is nothing more than that: a projection backward in time of legal and institutional arrangements that obtain at a given moment. it doesnt work the other way around--there is no social contract that constititues the basis of any given legal arrangement, not in the literal sense. another way: you dont seriously believe that there were at some point "states of nature" do you?

i can see why you'd play that way, though: you want to attribute the basis of existing social arrangements to a contract that predates the state and various legal arrangements. that way, you can make a separation between that which obtains and the legal and institutional infrastructures that enable that which obtains to function. i dont buy it.

the simple fact of the matter is that markets are legal constructs. corporations are legal entities. economic activity is hedged round with law--it presupposes law (e.g. contracts) to operate at all.
law is a public institution, like it or not.
nothing about this changes if you resort to the fiction of a social contract. so there is a sense in which everything about capitalist activity is public.
there is also a sense in which much of that activity can also be understood as private.
the question in this thread is not which is more true, but rather about how conservative economic ideology frames capitalism and of the consequences that follow from that--and how this framing works at cross purposes with anything that george w bush might say about executive compensation.
so the nature of capitalism itself is an indirect referencepoint in this conversation--there is and has been no general theory of capitalism advanced here.
you act as though i did advance one.
that is wrong.

first, this is really funny. i am sure that the corpse of milton friedman blushed a little as this curious little handjob unfolded in your post.

of course you are correct: friedman won more nobel prizes than i have. he had a more prestigious chair than i have. cultural markets therefore are rational. given the absolute rationality of markets, i, like any good boy, really should just submit--and by submitting i mean that i, like any good boy, should recognize the superiority of arguments advanced by people who have won more nobel prizes than me and who occupy more heavily endowed chairs than i do. really, i do not know what i was thinking. i suppose that i should apply this rule to other areas as well: i should imagine dianetics a vital book for our time because it sells more than my books have. l. ron hubbard is a more powerful thinker than i am because capitalism sez so through demand levels. this past superbowl was a cultural event of epic proportions, only topped in overall significance by the last episode of mash, and this because the always-rational cultural markets within capitalism have determined as much via the level of demand/viewership. if i had a tv show, i would obviously have to recognize its inferiority to the super bowl. who wouldnt?

in music, christine aguilera is Important. she sells more records than i do. were i rational in the sense that you seem to argue for, i would stop doing what i do and start emulating her.
all this because what's real is rational.
everything works out for the best in this the best of all possible worlds.
it's true.
you're right.
i will definitely mend my ways.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite