<font color = lightgreen>I never said it was. [img]graemlins/petard.gif[/img] I was simply stating that this appears to be the route that capitalism is taking--the trend towards larger corporations wielding a lot of economic power and how that parallels the old monarchies/aristocracies of Europe.
If a really large company allocated $100 million to hire and train a company of mercenaries they could effectively field their own small army. For $5 billion or $10 billion they could almost buy their own small country.
Anyway, capitalism, or capitalist theory, can be abused just like Stalin and China abuse communist theory. When wrongly combined with capitalism (free-market theory), representative democracy (the republic) may also be abused by becoming a forum for selling votes to the highest bidder. As far as I know this illegal but, of course, it goes on anyway.

Anyway, the spread of communism was an evolution away from monarchy. The Cold War was always about paranoia and suspicion and I still agree with this book's premise that Russia never wanted to control the world, just prevent us from controlling it.</font>

Great thoughts! My opinion exactly. Take away the carrot of economic advancement and the mule of the populus quits moving. Another problem is with a central government so powerful, it's bound to be abused. It would eventually degenerate into a "Rich and powerful nobility vs. Poor working peasant populus" system. Power is almost ALWAYS abused in one way or another. Even in the US you see a lot of rich staying that way by leeching off the poorer common citizen. It's economics. That's the way it works. When you have control of what you pay the work force and what you charge for goods, it's easy to control the flow of money. The only deterrent to abuse is competition. Large corporations and unchecked monopolies pose problems to this system though as they undermine the spirit of competition.</font>[/QUOTE]Excellent points, Sir K! Re your last, we appear to be heading for some serious problems on this front.

Mergers and acquisition activity by the largest companies, some of whom are gargantuan, mean that competition in some sectors is dwindling fast. Media, f'rinstance. Financial services - where the big five just turned into the big four... and so on. I see a future where one day, we're fed, dressed, entertained and so on by the same huge entity. Or maybe not. But how can small business compete when the giants can undercut almost any price a small business sets? Oh brave new world where Wal-mart rules!!!</font>[/QUOTE]Cheetah! :D I havn't seen you in a while. What have you been up to?

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depnding on your point of view. Corporations are the natural evolution of the business world. As efficiency increases, so do profit margins. Efficiency is usually enhanced by having a centralized controlling element. Control invariably leads to power. Power seems to always lead to abuse and greed. This usually leads to the tearing down of that entity in some way, shape, or form. Then the whole process starts over again. It's pretty interesting to see how the flow of money works. How growth leads to recession. Businesses try to tweak profits by reducing the buying power of the population. They slowly pay the workforce less relationally by slowing raises and upping prices. Once the buying power of the workforce degrades to the point where it affects business substantially, prices drop due to competetiveness and the desire to raise sales. The government also gets involved by cutting interest rates, upping minimum wages, etc. This ups the relational buying power of the workforce and helps stimulate the economy. Since the number of dollars paid to the workforce doesn't really change, just the buying power of them, you get inflation. Rapid inflation is usually a sign of an unhealthy economy. It shows lots of fluctuation.

well we don't see any one from the eu stampeding for the moral high ground silver cheetah.WE keep taking the MORAL HIGH GROUND be cause we know it to be right.so many of you people over on the other side of the atlantic have to be dragged kicking and screaming.
and what about rwanda?you people didn't do a god damned thing about it either.hell,look how long it took for anyone to do any thing about the idiots in the balkins murdering each other.and that is in YOUR backyard not ours.
alexander,why should i care if you don't like him?he's OUR president not yours.i view your leaders as weak men and women who don't have the courage to make a stand for what is right.look at germany.their top dog is more worried about people accusing him of coloring his hair than any thing else.and if you discount the massive democratic vote fraud bush probably won by a nice margin.

What post were you reading? Don't try to put words into my mouth... it may be big enough but I've got exclusive use of it for the time being. Where in the aforementioned post did I even come close to a word that looked like "morality"? Morality has no place in world politics, EVERY country acts in its own self interest - to do otherwise would lead to a brief existance.

I stated simple facts... the US DOES have the role of world cop, not out of a sense of morality but because it's in our best interest to have stable trading partners. But that doesn't change the fact that we do it, and that nobody else wants to do it (although a number of countries do contribute, we've got the bulls-eye painted on our forehead). It also doesn't change the fact that cops aren't popular guys... everything they do gets second guessed, and people have a natural tendency to resist anyone who they feel is in a position of "authority".

Yes you're ABSOLUTELY right... we didn't intervene in Rwanda when horrible things were happening there. It's a good thing that all those other countries who slam us not being there stepped up to the plate and saved all those Rwandan lives THEMSELVES... right?

[ 04-19-2002, 06:34 PM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

well we don't see any one from the eu stampeding for the moral high ground silver cheetah.WE keep taking the MORAL HIGH GROUND be cause we know it to be right.so many of you people over on the other side of the atlantic have to be dragged kicking and screaming.
and what about rwanda?you people didn't do a god damned thing about it either.hell,look how long it took for anyone to do any thing about the idiots in the balkins murdering each other.and that is in YOUR backyard not ours.

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Doesn't it mean something not only when Bushie is hated by the entire Western world, but on top of that, he didn't even win the popular vote in the United States?

alexander,why should i care if you don't like him?he's OUR president not yours.i view your leaders as weak men and women who don't have the courage to make a stand for what is right.look at germany.their top dog is more worried about people accusing him of coloring his hair than any thing else.and if you discount the massive democratic vote fraud bush probably won by a nice margin.</font>[/QUOTE]Ya gotta think that at worst he has at least HALF the voting public behind him..and the fact that his aproval rating is still hovering around the 80% range, indicates that he is in fact, liked by quite a few more than not. Now normally I don't believe the poll statistics..but this is from the same pollsters as did the polling for clinton..sooooooo I guess I can at least believe they are not just making it up. (and Clintons aproval rating wasnt too shabby either, despite the fact that I didnt like him or his politics)

You can't know it to be right, and it has occured sevral times where evrything went badly pear-shaped, and they thought they were doing fine.
Please feel free to ask if you want examples.

Morality shmorality... anytime you introduce such a subjective term you open the door to chaos. My morality can be significantly different from the guy who lives next door... much less someone who lives in a totally different country. I think if you ask Bin Laden about his moral stand on issues you'll get an enlightening response. SO... since it's obvious our frames of "moral" reference are all different, why do people continue to pull up such a useless framework with which to compare/contrast the actions of COUNTRIES. Just doesn't make sense to me.

Exactly Thoran, that's the problem, basically it seems, like SC said, to be America trying to take the moral high ground when it isn't there.
If that were possible, then one of the sides would have to know they were evil and doing the wrong thing, but I doubt you'd get that sort of response from Osama.

[ 04-19-2002, 07:15 PM: Message edited by: Talthyr Malkaviel ]

well we don't see any one from the eu stampeding for the moral high ground silver cheetah.WE keep taking the MORAL HIGH GROUND be cause we know it to be right.so many of you people over on the other side of the atlantic have to be dragged kicking and screaming.
and what about rwanda?you people didn't do a god damned thing about it either.hell,look how long it took for anyone to do any thing about the idiots in the balkins murdering each other.and that is in YOUR backyard not ours.</font>[/QUOTE]To pretend that Desert Storm was about anything but protecting our oil is naive. In fact, if I remember correctly, it's the Republican party's platform not to get involved in conflicts abroad unless it is in our national interests. To rephrase, Republican leaders will never go on a mercy mission, and they seem to be proud of it.

alexander,why should i care if you don't like him?he's OUR president not yours.[/qb][/quote]

What in God's holy name are you blathering about? He's not MY president? What, is Connecticut not part of the United States? I know you're from the South, but you can't be THAT ignorant.

Why are you bringing Germany into this? I don't live in Germany, and I don't live in Europe.

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and if you discount the massive democratic vote fraud bush probably won by a nice margin.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that - very easy to forget lies, you know. What about all those absentee military ballots that were no doubt sent after Election Day to help boost Bush's numbers?

I love it - the smartest guy with the most votes loses. Corruption at its best. Or should I say worst?