4 ms·

The article leaves me with an impression of trying to defend socialism and attack capitalism. Yet when I read the text - it says that certain right-wing corner

The article leaves me with an impression of trying to defend socialism and attack capitalism. Yet when I read the text - it says that certain right-wing corners portray socialism as leading to authoritarianism, while at the same time being blind to the authoritarianism in corporations. But if authoritarianism in corps is bad, it's even worse at the scale of whole nations. So the final message seems to be "capitalism is bad, but not as bad as socialism"? Weird take.

lapcat 4y ago
> So the final message seems to be "capitalism is bad, but not as bad as socialism"? The message is that the power of individual corporations needs to be reined in. First sentence of the article: "Some multinational corporations are now larger and more powerful than individual nation-states." Later: "You could argue that in the earliest days of capitalism, something like the concept of free enterprise actually existed: firms of various sizes competed, with even the largest dwarfed in both size and influence by most nation states." Also: "Unions can act as counterweights to the sometimes terrifying power held by management." "an increasingly small number of ever-expanding corporate conglomerates dominate the labor market"
- iForgotMyPW 4y ago
  don't the big unions have some of the same power/control issues because of capitalism? a rich CEO of a union corp on a private jet seems almost worse than a rich tech monopoly CEO?
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > don't the big unions have some of the same power/control issues There's a potential for corruption in any human organization, even democratic organizations. Witness corruption in politics, for example. That's mostly unavoidable, humans being what they are. The difference is that union leaders are still elected by the union members, whereas corporate CEOs are elected by the stockholders, not by employees. So even given some corruption, union leaders still represent the interests of labor better than CEOs do.
    - iForgotMyPW 4y ago
      ah, i didn't know that thanks

lapcat 4y ago

> So the final message seems to be "capitalism is bad, but not as bad as socialism"? The message is that the power of individual corporations needs to be reined in. First sentence of the article: "Some multinational corporations are now larger and more powerful than individual nation-states." Later: "You could argue that in the earliest days of capitalism, something like the concept of free enterprise actually existed: firms of various sizes competed, with even the largest dwarfed in both size and influence by most nation states." Also: "Unions can act as counterweights to the sometimes terrifying power held by management." "an increasingly small number of ever-expanding corporate conglomerates dominate the labor market"

iForgotMyPW 4y ago
don't the big unions have some of the same power/control issues because of capitalism? a rich CEO of a union corp on a private jet seems almost worse than a rich tech monopoly CEO?
- lapcat 4y ago
  > don't the big unions have some of the same power/control issues There's a potential for corruption in any human organization, even democratic organizations. Witness corruption in politics, for example. That's mostly unavoidable, humans being what they are. The difference is that union leaders are still elected by the union members, whereas corporate CEOs are elected by the stockholders, not by employees. So even given some corruption, union leaders still represent the interests of labor better than CEOs do.
  - iForgotMyPW 4y ago
    ah, i didn't know that thanks