Yes.

You should read up on Capitalism as written by people such as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill.

A company ONLY purpose is to make money.

Take care of the people? That what the Goverment is supposed to do.



How do you make sure they are using their goverment-allocated resources wisely?

Eh? John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith were proponents of free market, laissez-faire economic policy. Granted, that kind of economic environment sets up nicely for capitalism, but the two are not mutually exclusive.

That, and how do you think a company makes money? By providing a service or good. If they treat their workers or their customers unfairly, or if their services/goods are substandard, then the market takes action against them, either through boycott of their goods, through whistleblowing and labor union action, or through direct government intervention if need be.

And besides, the corporations take care of you far than the government. They provide you with the food you eat, the water you drink, the roof over your head, the gas in your tank, the car that tank's attached to, etc. AND, on top of that, unless you are self-employed (in which case YOU ARE THE CORPORATION!) or work for the government, chances are you get your money and, therefore, your livelihood from the corporations.


The soul-less, heart-less corporation that ruthlessly oppresses its peoples are figments of imagination reserved for cyberpunk literature.



I... just said that. You require them to submit to the Government Performance and Results Act and you keep a federal advisor on their staff to oversee the project.

no, just the average sheltered middle class lolbertarian manchild roooooooonpaul08

Exactly, Free Market, where the only law is "Survival of the Fittest". Not the regulated market we have today where there exist anti-monopoly laws.



Didn't you just mentioned Free Market?

Anyway, those things are keeping the companies in check, that does not mean the companies are not "heartless machine that exists only to squeeze the money out of people."



The Goverment provides those sames things to poor people who has no money to pay for them, they have an obligation to do so. The corporations demand money for them, they have no obligation whatsoever, you push them too hard, they file bankrupcy and leave with their money.



Thank god its still just imagination, else the world would be boring.

But remember, just because a brat is behaving well now, does not mean that he has stopped being a brat. You just need to see him when his mother is not looking.



Submit..... more paperwork, hence Red Tape.

Keep Advisor.....another person's firm needed, more bureaucracy.

There will never be war between interstellar empires - only two choices, diplomacy and mutually assured destruction. An advanced interstellar empire will most probably have the technology required to nova a star. No fancy fleet battles, no cool planetary invasions with laser rifles, just system after system going *poof*.

And there goes what you were fighting over.

eventually what we will have to do. is put intersteller sats in orbit around the galaxy. Otherwise we go poof when a star goes poof on it's own. Maybe on an orbit that will eventually put them into inter galactic space.


We will become like the so called locust on independence day. Strip mine a system as we move by it.

Yes. And thus, as you have ably pointed out, Free Market economics are not capitalism and thus, not relevant.


Hey, you brought it up. Don't go pinning your choice in topics on me, MAAAN.



What I was trying to say was that a company can't afford to just go and maximize their profits as high as possible (squeezing all of the money out of you) because that would entail overstepping certain legal, moral boundaries. Corporations have another factor to keep in mind, and that is Public Relations.

When you start to gain brand recognition, people are going to attach all kinds of things to your brand based on what they hear. Take the example of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is infamous for its paper-thin profit margins and outsourcing cheaper foreign labor in order to undercut other businesses by giving the lowest price possible. Now, when people hear the Wal-Mart brand, they think of low prices, big stores and the negative stigma of its shady business tactics. They also attach to it the negative stigma of being operated and frequented by the "trash" of society (not to imply that everyone who shops or works there is garbage, but when one walks into a Wal-Mart...). These negative stigmas all affect Wal-Mart's business in that it makes it a less desirable place to shop.

If a company is not in good standing with its public because they've read that they beat their factory workers to death or because they exploit child labor and undercut local manufacturers or because they release pollutants into a city's drinking water, they're going to find that their profits are going down, not up.

If a corporation fails to take the comfort and security of its customers and laborers seriously in order to make a few more bucks, they're going to be finding themselves losing a lot more.


And where do those things come from? From welfare and food stamps, which comes out of your tax money, which is likely provided to you by a corporation, so, in effect, those poor people are receiving their necessities and livelihood from a corporation indirectly.


Well YOU remember that just because peanut butter and jelly go together well on toast doesn't mean you should bring a picnic lunch of nother but PB&J on toast. See, I can make non-sequitorial metaphors too.



That's some red tape but it really wouldn't be the huge hassle you're no doubt imagining it to be.

Well we'd already have NASA staff assisting them in the first place, right? Hardly a hindrance.

...and now that I've gone egregiously and totally off-topic, let me present my semi-realistic view of future politics:

Let's say that, in the future, mankind manages to overcome the many hundreds of massive obstacles to intersteallar travel and they do it: they build a relativistic colony ship and fire it off at Alpha Centauri and, wouldn' you know it, they get lucky and actually find a habitable planet to land on. Given that Earth is four lightyears away from the Big AC, meaningful communication of any kind would be impossible with the four years in between messages, and interstellar war between Earth and the Alphans would be equally impossible (for reasons I laid out a page or two ago) so there really wouldn't be anything stopping the Alphans from becoming their own unique entity.

Seeing as how the young Alphan colony could be torn apart by the actions of one individual, justice would be harsh and swift. Even minor crimes like theft could be met with the Alphans preferred method of execution (hopefully something brutal to dissuade other would-be criminals). Given the initially small number of citizens, government would be something like a democracy, everyone getting a say in the actions of the colony.

Aside from the occasional citizen going absolutely stir crazy, conflict would be minimal, as everyone would have to use their talents and abilities just to keep the colony going another day.

In an argument, if you have to explain what you were trying say.....

That usually mean you are loosing the argument.

For the first 10 to 20 years.

Not only that, but the second law of thermodynamics, otherwise known as the law of entropy, says that everything in the universe is winding downward from a state of order to a state of disorder. Without an outside force, nothing in the universe can become more complex. So how did we get a hydrogen atom from nothing? From where did DNA come? According to current scientific THEORY (not law), life came about from a state of disorder to a state of order. How is that possible?

It's not possible.

I forgot to tell you. You don't exist.

-Dr. B

www.eve-online.com

One of the most in depth and comprehensive space MMORPG ever created. Its political and technological aspects are extremely close to reality.

entropy is not necessarily disorder, the Earth is not a closed system, 2nd law only discusses net entropy and not individual systems. in the future, please keep your oh-so-subtle creationist talking point bullshit out of the thread, google (and talk.origins) exist for a reason.