Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All
Friday, November 14, 2008
Buy Don't Bail, Share Don't Destroy
Enterprises failing but "too big to fail"? Okay, fine. So, rather than bailing out these crooks and incompetents with taxpayer money and thereby nonsensically rewarding bad behavior at our expense, why not buy these enterprises with the money instead at their present bargain basement prices and then distribute the shares to their actual workers across the board? I'm sure that must be a crazy idea but I can't understand why because I lack the special genius that enables my betters of the "investor class" to see Ayn Rand novels as more than just crappy hybrids of Harold Robbins and Amway promotional brochures and stuff like that.
Hold on here, Dale, am I sensing that you want some share with that stake?
ReplyDeleteWhat, is UCB in need of a bailout now?
ReplyDelete> Enterprises failing but "too big to fail"? Okay, fine.
ReplyDeleteYou gotta think that just about now Toyota/Japan, Inc. is
at least mulling over the feasibility of acquiring GM.
There wouldn't be anything particularly new about the
arrangement (we already went through worse wounded pride/
angst/security concerns when the Chinese bought IBM's
personal computer division). The car I've been driving
for the past 18 years (still running fine, though I'm
never quite sure what's going to need service next --
I had to get a new radiator while on a visit to Boston
this past summer; fortunately, the crisis occurred at
an opportune moment and location) was a product of NUMMI --
the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc., a joint
venture between Toyota and GM. My Geo Prizm was shipped
as a parts kit from Japan and assembled by US workers
in Fremont, California. A lot of the writing under the
hood is in Japanese, though I bought it from a Chevrolet dealer,
and the make is listed on the registration as "Chevy".
I think BP already took care of that.
ReplyDeleteGood point.
ReplyDelete> . . .rather than bailing out these crooks and incompetents
ReplyDelete> with taxpayer money and thereby nonsensically rewarding
> bad behavior at our expense, why not. . .
> but I can't understand why because I lack the special
> genius that enables my betters of the "investor class" to
> see. . .
Yes, well, you know how George Lakoff explains this in
_Moral Politics_
( http://books.google.com/books?id=6vVL5GquDOUC ,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM ).
Being a member of the investor class **ipso facto**
makes you one of the deserving members of the human
race. Temporary setbacks are just that -- temporary --
while the undeserving poor are **chronic**
losers.
So naturally, when they're down on their luck, the
Horatio Algers, the Tom Swifts, (and yes, the
John Galts and the Howard Rourkes) deserve the
largesse of all responsible and right-thinking
people.
What're you, a Commie or something?
The wingnuts loudly and incessantly assured us that Obama was a Commie so I'm assuming his victory must have been a Commie mandate and that his endorsement of my Commie proposal will be swiftly forthcoming. Oh, wait.
ReplyDelete