From: Forrest Bishop (forrestb@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Mon Apr 08 2002 - 21:31:26 MDT
----- 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:
> > > The problem is, that business entities only aim to maximize their
> > > monetary win.
> >
> > Money is the non-productive medium of *exchange*, therefore a means and
> > not and end in itself.
>
> I'm sorry, Sir, in the business world I live and work, the companies try
> everything to maximize the profit, because that is what their share holders
> demand from them. It is at least the [truth] for corporations like
> DaimlerChrysler (my personal experience). Your local drug store may still
> maintain an altruistic way of doing business; megacorps certainly don't.
Companies, megacorps, and so on do not engage in cognitive processes, such as profit-seeking, this is solely the realm of individual
human beings.
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.)
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
compensated for his labor/focus. This is a subjective value. In a deception and violence-free market the objective exchange value
(the money-price) of that labor is discovered through the time-evolving processes of billions of dyadic transactions- a massively
parallel search algorithm if you will. (Incidently, DaimlerChrysler is a case-in-point of mis-management causing a loss in capital
value. Picking up Chrysler appears to have been a poor business decision.)
The subjective value theory (called goal-directed behavior in some circles)- the basis of all human action- does not require
decompositional artifices such as:
altruistic/selfish
socialist/capitalist
right wing/left wing
friendly/unfriendly
rational/irrational
> > A business in a free market can only continue to exist if its clients
> > want what it has to offer.
>
> This would leave the social responsibility totally on the consumers side.
> Okay, but how will the consumers be correctly informed about safety,
> working conditions in far away countries, etc. without any official
> controls? This would be the same situation as Saddam and his bio weapons.
> And do you really think, that any Time-Warner branch would feature critical
> reports about AOL? Would Microsoft ever sponsor Linux?
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.
> > > without a self-regulation, i.e. a negative feedback-factor, will
> > > finally end in a catastrophy.
> >
> > Yes, and that is why socialist/statist empires and their fiat currencies
> > always collapse.
>
> The alleged "socialist" countries are perfect role models for megacorp
> driven economies, where individual entrepreneurship has no room to develop.
I had the American/Atlanticist Empire in mind.
-- Forrest Bishop Chairman, Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering www.iase.cc
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