We've achieved meta-capitalism, folks

[chris]

It boggles the mind:

www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/technology/09gaming.html

[mj]

You've got to be kidding. Online gaming factories? What is wrong with people? Who is too impatient and/or lazy to f*cking play a game themselves? What's the point?

[Thanin]

I've always wondered that too. In EQ some of the funnest levels are the lower ones. Also your skills suck if you don't go through the beginning. The only real reasons I can think of is to be able to play with your higher level friends quickly or if you lost your account you could basically have the same character at the same level as your other one. But I know those two factors aren't enough to explain such a booming business.

[Jeff]

Sort of off topic: But I was thinking this week about whether capitalism is itself changing in fundamental ways. I wonder what sort of economic research one could do with this meta-capitalism stuff. Here is another Slate link: www.slate.com/id/2131897/ for an article called It's Not Your Grandpa's Moral Hazard Anymore: The problem goes corporate. It argues that unchecked corporate greed is now the biggest threat to some of our most pressing social problems, and that this fact makes much of what we thought we knew about how to solve economic problems less relevant.

[chris]

Very interesting article. The health-care problem in this country is so hard to get one's mind around, but once you do, you realize that there is one thing that is going to subvert whatever you try to do: corporations are never going to fit into a collective good model because they're soulless entities that work only for their own good.

I haven't seen the film "The Corporation," (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/) but I really want to. At the same time, I feel it will just piss me off and make me despair over what America has allowed itself to become.

[Thanin]

admin said:

It argues that unchecked corporate greed is now the biggest threat to some of our most pressing social problems...

Now? Corporate greed has been a problem for social concerns since the 1800 yeah?

[Jeff]

Chris: I wrote something about that film here a while back. It's in the Corporate Greed for Dummies thread under Interests/Film.

David: Corporations have changed a lot since the 1800s. Even as late as that they were (mostly) still seen as obedient to the aims and interests of the governments that allowed them to exist. But their ties to the common good have nearly completely eroded now. It may not be new, but it is a development that has really intensified over the last several hundred years.

[Thanin]

I would say their methodology has changed, but their intent has always been greed first, people never. Look back to the impoverished coal mining towns the corporations created. They may have been perceived as being socially responsible at the time, but now we know they were just as evil then as now.

[Jeff]

Greed was not the original goal. Some things require more hands and/or more resources than any one person has. The original aim of the corporation was to allow projects that require collective effort some sort of legal standing. That way risk and rewards can be shared in an equitable way. It's a good idea. The problem is that these legal structures were quickly seen to be exploitable resources in themselves. The protections meant to shield the collective from risk, were used to shield it from legitimate responsibility. And so on... Incorporation, embodiment really, is not so different a goal than ours. We seek a kind of unity here on the board--and achieve it sometimes. Anyway, there is a collective effort here. I suppose the difference is that we have no legal status, no protections other than what goodwill affords.

Some links and quotes:

1. www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/Corporate_watch.html

“The two hundred or so corporations operating in the US by the year 1800 were each kept on fairly short leashes. They weren't allowed to participate in the political process. They couldn't buy stock in other corporations. And if one of them acted improperly, the consequences were severe. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson vetoed a motion to extend the charter of the corrupt and tyrannical Second Bank of the United States, and was widely applauded for doing so. That same year the state of Pennsylvania revoked the charters of ten banks for operating contrary to the public interest. Even the enormous industry trusts, formed to protect member corporations from external competitors and provide barriers to entry, eventually proved no match for the state. By the mid-1800s, antitrust legislation was widely in place.

In the early history of America, the corporation played an important but subordinate role. The people -- not the corporations -- were in control.”

2. www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/history_corporations_us.html

“Initially, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively to enable activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end.”

3. www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/corporations.html

"Much of the literature of the revolutionaries was filled with denunciations of the "long train of abuses" of the Crown and its instruments of dominance, the corporations. As the yoke of the Crown corporations was being thrown off, Thomas Jefferson railed against "the general prey of the rich on the poor". Later, he warned the new nation against the creation of "immortal persons" in the form of corporations. The American revolutionaries resolved that the authority to charter corporations should lie not with governors, judges or generals, but only with elected legislatures."

4. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation

[Betterout]

admin said:

We seek a kind of unity here on the board--and achieve it sometimes. Anyway, there is a collective effort here. I suppose the difference is that we have no legal status, no protections other than what goodwill affords.

By fate alone. If you recall, we had long planned on incorporating Indigenous. Rick and I attended a lengthy (paid) training on small businesses, Dave and I went to the Small Business Center in downtown OKC at least once, and someone took the time to draft a weighty business plan. Tyler, then stationed in Florida, made a donation of money for equipment purchases. And we had meetings in which we discussed ways of generating startup capital. But for some reason, this never came to fruition.

Incidentally, I had planned on writing up a synopsis of our business aspirations both for inclusion in the Font and also to use at a big planning meeting wherein we were going to take a vote on how best to incorporate, and also to talk about what exactly constituted our board. That piece was called "Nutshells II: Pleasures Doing Business." We talked about the meeting several times, but a date never materialized. Coincidentally, I only got a few paragraphs into the meat of the piece (I had the outline) before I dropped it for good. I wish I still had it, because it really might have been a good document of how far we had planned on taking the group. And, yes, it petered out like so many other

[Thanin]

Jeff,

History has always been white-washed. The high-minded ideals always sounded good on paper, but they were never the real intent. Remember this was a world devoted to the white male slave owner. Trying to find nobility here is sketchy at best. Greed = capitalism. Don't you think its more likely that people who attempted physical and cultural genocide, would have laughed at the word 'date rape', and drank fine wine being served to them by their black servants had less than selfish intents? Now I know that was all a bunch of sophistry, but damnit sometimes that shit works.

...Whos the bitterest man in the neighborhood? The bitterest man for a neighbor. Won't you please? Please won't you be my bitterest neighbor? Hi bitterest neighbor!

And by the way, jackson was going against the second back of the united states because the chairman of it was going to back (or did back, I forget) his opponent for his incumbent race for presidency. In fact he had to fire like 4 or 5 cabinet members to go after them because they all refused, and for good reason. He had no real plan once he destroyed the bank. There was a big financial fiasco because of his personal vendetta against the bank’s chairman, which ended up totally screwing Van Buren's presidency up and caused the eighth president his re-election bid.

EDIT: Gah I think I was drunk when I first wrote this. They had less than selfish intent? Why don't I just argue for Jeff? Second BACK of the united states? What the hell is that? And it COST his re-election bid, not caused it. Duh.