Here is an image making the rounds. I would credit the source but I do not know it.
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/18658/down-with-wall-street/
Down with Wall Street!
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These protests are just history repeating itself, as Mises said himself. This may be of interest.
Anti-capitalist protests spread as predicted by Austrian school
Oct 17, 2011 (LBO) – Anti-capitalist protests have spread to several European capitals from the US, with protestors converging on financial districts, in a text book style consequence of excessive state interference, long predicted by Austrian economists.
http://www.lbo.lk/fullstory.php?nid=1881574515
http://www.lbo.lk/fullstory.php?nid=1881574515
This picture is a complete straw-man argument. Very few are deluded enough to say “down with all corporations”.
It’s not really an argument. It’s a joke. Like any other political cartoon out there.
I agree. The caption reads exactly the way it should: “Down with EVIL corporations”. I don’t think anyone in the Occupy movement is against GOOD corporations.
yes they are
I think the argument is against the greed of the CEOs and other upper-management for money, while the rest of the nation is being impoverished. Not so much against the corporations themselves or their products or services.
Nobody’s for ripping down all corporations, as this extremist cartoon (which wasn’t thought out very well) would have people believe. The point is to show some kind of foolish “irony” by pointing out the corporation-produced consumer goods being used by the protestors. That’s a double-edged sword: Maybe the irony is the protesters are in some small part using corporate-produced tools to rein in the corporations? Just sayin’…
^That.
I’m mad. Let’s find someone to be mad at. I know, rich people. I’ll be mad at people that are richer than me.
I’m sick of being their puppet.
*starts acting like someone else’s puppet*
There, now I’m doing something.
hahah so true
Another rich white man/woman’s attempt at diverting the issue of corporate GREED
It is always another man that is greedy – we are never greedy. Would you rather earn more or less? Would you rather drive around in ferrari or commute by bus? Everyone is greedy. The problem is how to organize society so it is not a problem. Greed is constant you can’t change.
@boniek: “Everyone is greedy.”
greed:
[n] reprehensible acquisitiveness; insatiable desire for wealth
[n] excessive desire to acquire or possess more (esp material wealth) than one needs or deserves
You are wrong, not everyone is _greedy_ … and corporate greed does exist: it aggregates, magnifies and greatly empowers individual greed; and it is a problem; and it must be changed.
Personally, I’m convinced that a true free market, were one to ever become actualized, would naturally deflate then suppress corporate, political _and_ capitalist greed.
If you blame greed, you remove your argument from the realm of rational discourse. It is an intellectual dead end. Either an action is ethical or it is not. Motivation is irrelevant.
@Scott D: “If you blame greed, [...]”
However I wasn’t blaming greed, I was disagreeing with @boniek that “everyone is greedy”.
I blame the social-political-economic systems that tend to aggregate, magnify and greatly empower greed.
@Scott D: “Motivation is irrelevant.”
The definitions I provided for the word ‘greed’ did not supply motives, and I made no attempt to take motivation into account.
“The definitions I provided for the word ‘greed’ did not supply motive”
On the contrary, greed itself is the motive
“reprehensible {b}acquisitiveness{/b}; insatiable {b}desire{/b} for wealth
excessive {b}desire{/b} to acquire or possess more (esp material wealth) {b}than one needs or deserves{/b}”
As I said, you are decrying motivation, ie. “desire” for something. It is an emotional and moralistic argument, especially when you consider the last phrase I highlighted in your definitions. You aren’t being rational when you make such an argument. You would be much better served to examine actions than emotions when making a judgment about other people.
I only target you on this because I see this argument so often, and it leads people very quickly into even more fallacies. Try criticizing what a person’s actions, not what is in his heart.
Virtue ethics. That is all.
I’m sure a true free market would solve this issue. Just like the laissez faire approach the US gov’t took to business in the the late 1800s early 1900s where political corruption ran rampant and corporations turned into monopolies. Worker safety and well being was also put at the forefront of business concern as children worked in factories and coal mines in wildly unsafe conditions.
This was such a good idea that we now have silly government regulations and agencies that regulate and try to prevent this type of activity. But if you insist, a free market would totally alleviate this issue.
I think you are right. Very well put.
Greed is not an issue. If you don’t like a companies product, don’t buy it. If you don’t like how employees are paid or treated, don’t work there. If your government is giving them money, power, or an exemption from law, overthrow your government.
And yet another jerk pulls the race card off the bottom of the deck. Let’s see – how about those in the entertainment business and professiional sports who make millions – where do they fit? Should they be required to participate in the wealth re-distribution every one is clammoring for??? How many jobs are they creating with their millions? Is it OK that they keep their money since they are not corporations? Ask them and let’s see what the answer is. Give me a break!!!!!!
What is this trying to say?
Is it: “Without major corporations, people can’t create clothes, cameras, paper, or networks”? If so, that statement comes from a very narrow point of view.
Maybe: “Look at these silly people relying on the very ones they are rebelling against.” Well this gets more to the point THEY are trying to make. If it weren’t for cut-throat business practices and outsourced labor, there would be more locally-created goods. Then you wouldn’t see people having to rely on giant corporations to produce things inexpensive enough to afford.
So, which is it? Finding humans totally incompetent, or defeating your own point?
I bet you wrote this at Starbucks, right?
Or……let me guess….you get to pick and huge which GIANT corporations you are pissed at based on your personal shopping preferences.
lol
You don’t HAVE to buy things from giant corporations. All of these things are made by tiny cottage industries. You go to corporations because they have the products you want at the price you want to pay. There are plenty of Americans who will produce these products, but not at the prices you’re willing to pay.
@Scott D: “As I said, you are decrying motivation, ie. “desire” for something.”
The _systems_ are the target of my blame, not greed itself – it says so right there in the sentence; I respectfully urge you to parse my statement again:
I blame the social-political-economic systems that tend to aggregate, magnify and greatly empower greed.
concern -> “aggregated, magnified _empowerment_ of greed”
blame -> “social-political-economic systems”
unspoken solution -> a true free market ( which theoretically should counteract the object of blame )
Additionally, it’s not greed itself, but the empowerment _of_ greed… aggregated and magnified… which I identified as a concern.
em·pow·er
1. To invest with power, especially legal power or official authority.
2. To equip or supply with an ability; enable.
Are you asserting that in all cases even the mere presence of the word ‘greed’ within the context of a socio-political-economic critique is irrational?
@Scott D: “I only target you on this because I see this argument so often, and it leads people very quickly into even more fallacies.”
Understood, and (generally) agreed – however as I attempted to clarify again above, I’m just not seeing how you’re interpreting me as being guilty of blaming greed.
@Scott D: “Try criticizing what a person’s actions, not what is in his heart.”
Scott, I wasn’t even criticizing a person, I was criticizing a system.
If you wouldn’t mind – because perhaps I’m just missing some nuance or another – could you go ahead and reformulate my sentence (as closely to the original as possible) so that it ceases to offend your sensibilities?:
‘I blame the social-political-economic systems that tend to aggregate, magnify and greatly empower greed.’
Kind regards!
No kidding, corporations make ‘everything’. Duh. Corporations as organizations of people to efficiently produce things have a place. Corporations as organizations that exist to pump money up to the top and then use that money to make sure gov’t works for their benefit to the exclusion of everyone else – that is a problem.
If the Founders could have imagined the damaging influence of corporations on the republic they hoped to provide us they would have put them inside the system of checks and balances like the rest of us. Corporations are not evil – nor are their upper management / boards of directors, etc. they just have insufficient restraints on their behavior – you ever hear of the expression – “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’? – well corporations have too much power and now (after being encouraged by the ‘too-big-to-fail’ bailouts , etc. in 2008) they are going for the rest of it – with rampant union busting, starving gov’t, holding profits hostage.
Well, they’ve finally gone too far. So far that normally complacent folks have had it. They’ve actually forced people to start marching in the streets. They’re finally aware that they have been treated like second class citizens – all “99%” of them.
The founders were well aware of this fact. The East India tea company had disproportionate power in Parliament, and together the British monarchy and big corporation charged excessive fees on American colonists. Hence the tea party.
Hence, the tea party movement. It doesn’t matter if a company is evil. What matters is that it’s commerce is regulated by the consumer, not the government. The banks would have never made those bogus loans if the government hadn’t forced them to. The Wall Street investors wouldn’t have never been able to sell unsecured loans if the government hadn’t guaranteed tax payers would foot the bill for all fraudulent loans.
A free system corrects itself. Marching in the streets and demanding even more government meddling is only going to worsen the situation. It is not the 1% that has made us second class citizens, it is our elected officials.
These items were not created by corporations but rather they were created by people who work for corporations. Just because a product that people need or use is made under a broken system does not make it a good system. Corporations in their current form devalue culture, slow advancement and create an unstable burden to those that buy stock. Essentially companies go public as a source of free funding leaving the bag with the people……imo lol
Some posters on here claim that they don’t have a choice between choosing to buy from a corporation or a small business because most products are created by corporations. I generally agree, but let’s suppose this: If we eliminated the legal status of corporations, is there any way these products could be produced by exclusively small businesses?
This utopian vision in which all goods and services are produced by smaller or medium-size businesses is simply unrealistic. It’s based on the assumption that all corporations initially formed as corporations. Therefore, if we removed corporate status, we would never have them. This is certainly not true. Many corporations began as smaller businesses, but based on desires to reach a wider audience and increase profits, chose to expand their operations. An above poster stated that he would rather give to indie coffee shops than Starbucks. Well how do you think Starbucks began? It is consumers, not the workers or even the inventors, that create value.
The main distinction between a corporation and other businesses is that corporations are financed by income from those who do not actually make the business decisions. When businesses want to grow, they often need to seek other sources of financing other than cash flows or business loans. This holds true even for start-ups, or businesses that begin with a few shareholders. Take the iPod for instance. There is no conceivable way this product could be produced by a small business unless the inventor intended to sell his product to only a smaller group of people (I don’t think you will ever find such an inventor). He would need funding for research, marketing, and building a factory to produce the iPod.
Corporations merely represent a series of contracts that would be formed among investors and executive management if the state didn’t recognize corporations as a legal entity. It is absolutely naïve to say that “we like the products but we want a different process” because no other process would produce them.
If you really want to shrink the size and influence of corporations, the only way to do this would be to shrink the size of government, which means abolishing all intellectual property protection, which I support.
I don’t think posters are arguing for corporations to cease to exist altogether. Rather, they are simply saying, or intend to say, “End corporate personhood”. Corporate personhood should be abolished because corporations do not behave like most actual physical persons, that is, they have no conscience, cannot tell the difference between right and wrong, are only concerned with making as much profit as they legally can, and seek to eliminate any and all obstacles to that ultimate goal. In fact, when you remove regulations, they behave exactly and predictably like a sociopath would, as evidenced by the sad state of affairs we are all in. Further, the executives at the top care only about making the bottom line as big as they can, and in the process they expect their compensation to be as large as it can. In this twisted system of unfettered capitalism, the only effective antidote to rein in greed is regulations, in the form of progressive taxation, clean water and air rules, a safe and clean workplace, child labor laws, transparency in accounting practices, and many others that escape me. Can we fault corporations for being what they are? Perhaps not, because anyone can argue that a corporation exists solely to make a profit for its shareholders, but it’s precisely because of that raisond’etre that government should play a role in keeping the rest of us, real persons, safe from corporate greed. Shrinking government does not translate to less corporate power, after all that’s exactly what’s been happening for years and continues to happen everyday — government keeps getting smaller, less and less regulations are being imposed on corporations, taxes are at an all time low while profits are at an all time high, and yet here we are with corporate power bigger than ever. The only answer is to begin winding the clock back to the era of stringent regulatory control.
Nonsense. Government spending, taxation, and regulations are at an all time high. The government has spent $8,000,000,000,000 in the last three years, more than any time in American history. Taxes on the rich are higher than any wealthy nation on Earth, and regulations are driving our jobs overseas. That’s why Obama is building a solar plant in Europe, because they have much lower environmental regulations. They get the jobs, we foot the bill. Welcome to the era of “stringent regulatory control”.
Who ever wrote this does not understand what the demonstration is truly about
It’s corpporate greed and the monitary corruption of our democracy that these people are protesting; Corporations in the financial industry, who make billions without contributing any goods or services in return. They sell debt and slavery, and become adicted to power. Who will stop them?
It’s simple. Don’t buy their products if you don’t like them…
derp
I enjoy being in the top 1% and you would too if you were smart enough to get there. As far as im concerned you all are lower class citizens and dont really matter all that much
Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist, predicted in the early 1900′s that capitalism would reach its own demise because of its success. As a South African, I am excited to see what the outcome will be. Here, in this SA, with the income gap one of the biggest in the world and a previously disadvantaged class with a more than 50 year deficiency in good education, wouldn’t a more socialistic system be preferable? The dream will always be that an equal society can exist under a capitalistic economic structure… The question is why isn’t it if it were possible? Schumpeter might have hit the nail on the head a few decades ago… Let’s wait and see
We don’t have capitalism in the U.S., despite what you’ve been told.
I have to admit that I’ve never quite understood negative feelings towards profits. As long as everyone is free to shop for the products & services they want, where they want, then isn’t profit just feedback from society that a company or individual is providing what that society wants? Shouldn’t the companies with the biggest profits be celebrated for being the best at fulfilling social wants? I would expect companies that lose money would draw the ire for the wasted resources they consumed that obviously were either not what society wanted or not produced efficiently.
Most of you all are ignorant of whats really going on. I know it’s hard to imagine that our government is being used as demoralizing regime wanting to take away all of our rights. Can anyone here tell me the first amendment? Let me remind you.”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” There can be NO LAW prohibiting PEACEFUL PROTESTERS to assemble. What the fuck America. We are all on here blogging while the very fabric of our freedom is being taken away from us. Take down the FEDERAL RESERVE! Bankers are making money out of nothing becuase they own the FEDERAL RESERVE and the GOVERNMENT DOES NOT! This is what caused our financial collapse and the greed from politicians, corporations and the stupidity of people who watch FOX news and believe everything some moron says about the government, is why there is finally an uprising. This is our country and it’s sad that we sit back and let police stop peaceful protests and spray our students with pepperspray. It is our right to assemble and according to the CONSTITUTION there ain’t a god damn thing any official can do about it yet we let it happen, day after day after day after day. Our government is telling us lies and using propaganda to keep us, the people, down. The reason why tobacco and alcohol are legal and cannabis is not. The same reason why we haven’t progressed to FREE-ENERGY. The same reason they shot MLK, JFK, Robert Kennedy, any person that got in their way. The same reason that 50% of congressman are Millionaires and 1% of the country are Millionaires. You may think these are all fake conspiracies but someday the world will know the truth about this crooked America. This government is ran by the rich and they don’t want to give up their greed for the betterment of humanity. It’s sad to see our REPUBLIC turn into a sorry excuse for a ‘DEMOCRACY’ but that is what happens when you let sick disgusting immoral and unethical people run your government.
The point of the comic illustrates the entire problem with the occupy movement. The problem that we have today is not “greed,” in fact, the motive for profit is what steers scarce resources to their best use. The idea that corporations “owe” something to society for doing exactly what society asked them and paid them to do is ridiculous. The real problem is that we sacrifice freedom to give other people (who are of course greedy) power over us. Namely the government. We shouldn’t decry corporations; we should demand the end of corporatISM (rule by corporations). Business and politics have to be separate spheres, and the more power we give the government the more incentive businesses have to strike deals with them. It’s utterly ludicrous to think that the answer to that problem is giving MORE power to the government by regulating business.
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