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Originally Posted by roachboy
first, the analogy to the babysitter is false (again).
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If you say it is wrong without giving a reason, I guess I am supposed to take your word for it?
Paying a person for a service, is paying a person for a service. You say that is wrong????
You think there is a difference based on scale, responsibility, education, what? Bill Gates might be paying his babysitter more than some CEO's get paid, should Bush comment on that? Do you have an interest in that? Perhaps if tax dollars are involved I can see your point. For example foster parents (similar to a baby sitter) getting money from the government, should be paid based on some common formula and made public. Perhaps we have a right as the public to have input in the CEO slaries of corporations receiving government contracts, but if it is a private sector company (even if it is publically traded) doing business in the private sector, the public has no interest in the CEO salary. The public has a right to buy or not buy from that company. And, the public has a right to buy or not buy the shares. If fraud is involved or criminal activity, that different, but we are not talking about that.
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second, corporations do not operate in some econ 101 fantasyland of abstract markets impacted by abstract variables like supply and demand to the exclusion of all other social and political factors.
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You call variables like supply and demand "abstract"?
I agree econ 101 does not apply directly to corporations in the context of this discussion. Econ 101 covers macroeconomics. Econ 102 is more applicable to this discussion - microeconomics.
Social and political factors do impact corporate behavior. Managers get paid to manage or manipulate (pick your own word depending on how you feel about what corporations are doing) these factors. As a part of managing these factors occationally you get guys like John Chambers of Cisco who take $1 in salary (while still making millions)
but trust me when it is made public the information is going to be managed as to present the company in the most favorable way.
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so they manage complex relationships with stakeholders
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When Walmart wants to build a store in your town, they will use words like "stakeholder", that is a part of "managing" social and political factors. It makes people feel good to be a "stakeholder", but try taking that to a bank, or see if they call the next day. If they are true gentlemen, they will send flowers however.
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the set of social actors whose interests are directly or indirectly affected by corporate activities) that tip into political questions once stakeholder groups mobilize, frame a debate, make that debate public, etc.. so any subset of corporate activity is potentially political. if a corporation is paying say 15 cents a piece for a shirt, selling it for 80 dollars retail and the ceo is making say 10 mil a year (what not?) then the ceo salary can obviously be made into a political matter simply by linking the variables together (e.g. it is politically, socially, ethically unacceptable that a corporation can pay its ceo x dollars/year when it pays the workers whose labor creates the objects get paid dick.) in a world where demand is to a significant extent maintained via branding, this (or any) type of political argument/action can be quite damaging--witness nike for example--and the corporation will have to respond to it--or generate a convincing appearance of having responded.
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O.k. but how much did you pay for popcorn the last time you went to see a movie? How much did the farmer get? Why aren't you concerned about that?
How about class action lawsuits. Where the lawyers get millions representing the class, and each person in the class gets pennies on the dollar for the real damages incurred. Why aren't you concerned about that?
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babysitters just arent in anything like that position.
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I am more interested in who cares for my son, than I am in the CEO's of the companies I invest in. I care about both, but I figure I could alway sell the stock or make more money.
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my claim at bottom is that there is no a priori divide that separates private from public, private from political.
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I agree. The government is involved in everything. They even have a say in who you have sex with. As an adult if you offered to pay another adult for sex, you could go to jail. Government is out of control.
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there are fluid boundaries that are being continually renegociated. this is a simple statement of empirical fact (again, look at nike--they are something of a textbook example).
your position is geared around an arbitrary a priori. it leads to a simple refusal to see what is in front of you. i would imagine that were you ceo of a tnc that found itself inside the political flashpoint on a given issue, that attitude would render you dysfunctional in a hurry.
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I beg to differ. My view of the world allows me to easily do what needs to be done, because I understand the "game". I would suggest that your views are the ones that would lead to indecisiveness, chaos, and eventual failure. It seems you would try to hard to make too many "stakeholders" happy, and we already know that desiganting someone a "stakeholder" is "managing".
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there are tncs that have tried--and try--to work the way you (implicitly) suggest: walmart is one example. they seem to figure that their scale gives them impunity.
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Wrong. Walmart does what needs to be done. They bend to make "stakeholders" happy. They simply piss off the competition and the unions.
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obviously, this is a risky position to occupy, and to some extent walmart is paying for it in pr at least.
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"Everyone hates Walmart", the biggest retailer in the world by a margin of 2 or 3 based on sales. I want to pay that PR price some day, don't you?
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another exception in monsanto, but they are privately held, so the rules of the game are a bit different for them. but they too have paid a heavy price for their stonewalling. watch "the future of food".
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I will check it out.