From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Apr 08 2002 - 23:04:18 MDT
Forrest Bishop wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Kai Becker <kmb@kai-m-becker.de>
> To: <extropians@extropy.org>
> Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 12:03 PM
> Subject: Re: Terror Kids With Bombs - Clash of Civilization ...
>
>
>
>>Am Montag, 8. April 2002 11:03 schrieb Forrest Bishop:
>>
>
> Companies, megacorps, and so on do not engage in cognitive processes, such as profit-seeking, this is solely the realm of individual
> human beings.
Interesting. Then why exactly are corporations treated as a
legal entity, a separate extra-biological being with intent and
liability as such? Corporations are collections of human beings
and thus exhibit collective cognitive processes. And yet they
are considered an entity in their own right beyond the
individuals that are at any time employees or investors.
> The primary concern of a shareholder, as part-owner, is return _of_ principle (the protection of their private property), not
> return _on_ prinicple. Without preservation of capital (the physical resources of the company), there is no need to entertain
> profit-maximizing schemes. The owners of capital, whether they are associated with private groups or a State, most assuredly do have
> to realize a profit to be able to continue to operate their enterprise. Without a profit, there is no surplus of goods to exchange
> for the other things the people involved value, hence no motivation to continue. (I think profit would revert to the originary
> interest rate in a noiseless information exchange regime.)
If the overriding concernin is simply ROI then by definition
corporations are at best amoral entitites. It is certainly not
generally true that any all things are kosher if they maximize
profits. As a person likely to start a new company eventually,
I certainly am not interested only or foremost in how much
profit it makes. I am first of all interested in what kind of
difference it can make in the world.
>
> I would guess that most of the people associated with the collection of time-evolving relationships referred to as DaimlerChrysler
> often have their attentional spotlights focused on how to build and sell a car. Possibly a large percentage of them went into their
> fields because they found that kind of work interesting. An employee that is not a part-owner may or may not think he is adaquately
>
>>And do you really think, that any Time-Warner branch would feature critical
>>reports about AOL? Would Microsoft ever sponsor Linux?
Dunno. IBM and now HP certainly did. Time will tell.
>>
>
> Uh, no, nor did I write such. Monopolist outfits such as the aforementioned three would cease to exist in a violence-free market.
> They are the spawn of regulatory agencies, old-boy networks, etc. Labling it crony socialism is just as useful as calling it
> fascism, neo-mercantilism or crony capatalism.
So you are claiming that an absolutely unfettered, unregulated
market would produce nothing but good? On what evidence? I
know the theory but theory wears thin by itself. If the purpose
of business enterprises is fundamentally ROI then the theory
amounts to saying that unregulated pursuit-of-profit will always
lead to a good outcome.
- samantha
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