The comparison between the government and the CEO makes no sense. Government can only redistribute/destroy wealth, while the CEO, heading a private company, creates wealth. The government is essentially guaranteed to be funded by taxpayers while businesses depend on demonstrating their efficiency to private investors; therefore, government would naturally be a place where waste and inefficiency would gather. And in practical terms, power is not completely centralized in the CEO---the board has influence, and the CEO is advised by numerous departments, in which case you could easily say authority is decentralized to separate departments for purpose of efficiency.

Well I said Steve Jobs "was rich," so I wasn't wrong factually or grammatically. And I personally thought that was the best example, because he was rich and productive, and his influence is seen everywhere we go.

No comment

'Government can only redistribute/destroy wealth, while the CEO, heading a private company, creates wealth. '

wow, what kind of brain-washing have you gone through.

The comparison is entirely accurate. Without a CEO the company can still be profitable, but the CEO can help shape and direct the company's activities, this MAY bring more profit is the CEO makes good decisions OR it may do the opposite.

The Government likewise can mange or direct the activities of the population to help them become more productive, investing in things like roads and providing startup capital for industries so they can try, and maybe fail.

The fact that both can fail because of lack of knowledge, and because their authority is centralized is just one reason the comparison is so apt.

You could easily imagine a company with no CEO where everything suddenly goes to shit because there is no guiding hand, and similarily you can imagine a country with no government (actually no need to imagine, just look at some examples, Somalia, or until recently Belguim... two fairly different examples, but i think the difference highlights the range of possible ways a system can exist...)

The fact that a CEO can be informed by many division heads is just like saying a government can be advised by many department heads... This doesn't make a corporation and a country look any less comparable.

Large, centralized government bureaucracies really can't be held accountable, and fundamentally their primary reason for existence is not profit. I'm pretty sure that's an enormous difference right there. And a CEO doing a shitty job can be replaced directly by a board of directors, unlike the failure to replace the fall of Somalia's regime in 1991 with a new government. The proper goal of government is to protect rights of individuals, the proper role of corporations is to earn profit for the shareholders of the corporation. That one fact completely changes how each would go about operating. The government redistributing money from some people to subsidize businesses or, in your terms, to provide "startup capital" is taking away wealth from some people to provide other people with wealth. Corporations provide desired products or results and distribute the profit to the staff and then to the shareholders who make the operations of the corporation possible.

but the point remains, just as the individual citizen may be better able to judge from his own circumstances what is appropriate than a centralized Environmental Protection Agency, an individual employee may be better off deciding how to do his job than and centralized board/CEO.

You can't have one rule for one organisation and then completely discard it for another.

And besides, you can consider the government as an employer, it pay it's citizens in rights and freedoms, it provides them with minimum health standards so they can live their lives as the want etc., etc. And they contribute to their side of the social contract by taking a percentage of their earnings and giving it to the government...

The only major difference is you are required to be a citizen of your state whether you like it or not (actually you are free to emigrate if you don't like paying your taxes...)

Oh and just like the CEO doing a shitty job, we have these things called 'elections' which are supposed to be used to replace politicians who are doing shitty jobs...

Fundamentally government bureaucracies reason for existance is to profit the people who use the services they provide. Ok, so it's not a monetary profit, it is still a tangible benefit to the people.

Where Orathaic has the government made people "more productive" than they were without government.

Talk about brain washing.

Please give a concrete example from the real world and not some fantasy from the delusions of socialists.

"And I guess this coterie of reality celebrities who have done little more than say outrageous **** and act like buffoons are more examples of rich people who are rewarded base on their "productivity". What is it that the Kardashians "produce" again?"
And yet those people are some of the more progressive people out there.

"You're not producing anything. You're providing a service."
I'm working with bigger idiots than I thought. I do this and I love it. I know I am preforming a service that will be seen by mourning families at their darkest hour. I produce a cemetary that looks good and that people know we care about. Your crap about how I don't produce anything because it's a service is wrong and dreadfully corrupted. I can't help being angry, I'm sorry, but I'm tired of it. Putin, you constantly "don't care" and it "doesn't affect you" whenever I validly defend who I am and what I stand for. You sound a heck of a lot like a bully in 6th grade. Not saying you're a bully. I'm not running around in circles contradicting myself. You have no IDEA (spelled I-D-E-A) what I'm really doing, who I am. As far as you know I'm the son of a rich man who got everything he ever wanted. Your assumptions are WRONG. You sometimes rely on arguement while in others you rely on pettly insults. Grow up. I'm not completely right. I get it. Half the reason I even care to post is so I can learn what I'm up against, a fourth is to learn basic knowledge I won't ever get without bias from some professor, and the other fourth is to post messages and be on the computer. But you have to realize that you aren't right all the time and sometimes even I'M right. But you'd rather sit there and spit up the same crap up over and over again about how everyone rich is greedy and how socialism is soooooooo great and how you're so much better and how everyone should feel sorry for themselves because when they enter the world there are a whole bunch of rich guys that are going to take your money and how you can do nothing to stop it. Exaggerations are your stronghold, and you know it, but you won't admit it, maybe won't even think about it. As it happens,I can almost alway tell what you are going to say next. Aways able to see the little flaw that Putin and everybody are going to rip open and say how greed determined this and greed determined that. Then why is America the most giving nation in the world??? The same capitalist you seek to destroy are setting up schools overseas and funding massive disease research centers, but when I or some other capitalist tells you so you mereely exclude them from your arguement and critisize the rest. Ford raises wages and rest, progressives impose minimum wage etc ( not that i don't endorse mw to some extent) and jobs are sent overseas, and then you wonder where all the maufactuing jobs went! Some of the only opprotunities for corperations to have jobs in America must fit minimum wage, EPA regulations, workers comp, disability benifits, safety conditions, etc., and what are we left with? Finance psoitions. The "fat cats", while the real producing sections have run off to Ayn Rand's mountain valley.

I'm really pretty steamed, so read it like I'm angry, and if you didn't the first time, read it again. An then think about it for days like I will, like i was cursed to with my dad's genetics. And days upon days, think about it at night, about everything ive said.

Im really sorry i have to post this. i cant not post it, im that irrational.
Im sure ill get skunked because of this, but im ok with that because if i sleep tonight i probably wont be posting for a while. Putin, don't post. Jus tthink. Think about how you're wrong and you'll find how. I promice i will.
Good night everybody.

"You could easily imagine a company with no CEO?"

Again Orathaic please name a company without a CEO that is successful, and don't imagine it.

Name a real world example.

Orathic make a totally correct statement.

A portion of the wealth of Steven Jobs did pass to the government through inheritance taxation, and the government did not one thing to deserve it.

Now Mr Job's family on the other hand comforted him, sustained him, filled his life with love, and empowered him to climb to the professional and financial heights that he did.
The certainly earned every dime they received.

'minimum wage, EPA regulations, workers comp, disability benifits, safety conditions, etc., and what are we left with?'

you are left with a society which protects it's worker, citizens, and prevents them from being exploited by corporations. The kind of society i'm happy to live in.

You may not want to live in such a society, and that should be your choice. If you really think it is such a bad thing then feel free to move to a country where those protections are not afforded to the population.

Well, he's trying to live in one, orathaic. What's wrong with his fighting for _his_ country to be like that? Why does he have to move?

He doesn't have to move, i'm just reminding him he has that option.

It often seems very difficult to over-turn the system (unless you have many allies with lots of influence) and some would despair.

I happen to disagree with the demonization of a 'minimum wage' and other progressive measures. And i also think you should definitely live in a society without such things if you wish to truely appreciate them.

Eh, but that's not quite fair. Many modern-day nations that don't have those things aren't the economic powerhouses that America is (and was already before it had minimum wage). So it's not fair to say you wouldn't like America without minimum wage just because you wouldn't like some other country without it.

All you have to do to destroy Orathaic's invalid point about CEO's.
Every government around the world has a "CEO." Obama, Cameron, Merkel, etc. etc. etc.
We have seen government's in the past that rejected the CEO and split power among institutions or individuals.
Rome had the co-consuls during the Republic. See the Punic Wars for how well that worked against Hannibal.
Rome also had the Triumvirate. See the Roman Civil Wars that destroyed the Republic to see how that worked.
Human nature demands decisive leadership and that is supplied by an individual, aka a CEO.
Now you can ignore human nature all you want, socialism is built on a complete rejection of the facts related to human nature, but your fantasy don't change the facts.

Well I hadn't read orathaic's point, but it is, in fact, incredibly invalid.

Here's why. (I'm not sure if anybody has raised this. I'm too busy shilling my game to read carefully. You should join my live game. It is going to be great).

In a corporation, the employees are working with the corporation's money, property, and time. They are being given their own property (money) in return.

In a country, the property, money, and time belong to the citizens, not the government.

This completely alters the incentive structures between the two, vis-a-vis efficiency, etc. So in a company, the board/CEO/management should be in control, as they have the best incentives to be efficient.

In a country, the people should be in control, as ditto.

Not that that's the only reason, but if you're analyzing things this way, that's the conclusion you'd draw. Completely non-parallel.

Orathaic, I'm glad to hear you are against Obamacare's individual mandate to force people to buy health insurance.
Anyone who posted "You may not want to live in such a society, and that should be your choice" could not embrace that statement and support Obamacare without embracing the exact definition of hypocrisy.

Social security should allow me to opt out as well.
If it isn't a government run ponzi scheme where money I pay in goes to someone else then what argument can a socialist provide for forcing me to allow the government to invest my retirement saving?
Of course this is a useless hypothetical because social security is a socialist ponzi scheme where the government not only steals money from one individual and gives it to another the United States government steals untold hundreds of billions from unborn generations to pay the baby boomers.

Ah, the rewards of socialism.

For the sake of argument lets put a face on the value-laden label "corporation" and call it Wal-Mart.

No one is forced to work for Wal-Mart in the United States. Every single employee actually sought out Wal-Mart to ask for the privilege of working for there.
You can't say the same thing about socialist-communist China where workers must have valid papers to work at any job and the socialist-communist government of China restricts the freedom of workers to move from one district to another to seek work.

No one is forced to buy anything from Wal-Mart.
You are totally free to buy shoes, clothing, food, sporting goods, etc. from Wal-Mart.
There is no law that forces you to even walk in the door.

Please tell me how Wal-Mart exploits its workforce?

The greatest flaw in socialism is allow any individual to reap benefits they did not earn for themselves.

Have you not heard of the lawsuits that have been brought up against Wal-Mart? It seems to be primarily for unfair pay between men and women but also for advancement opportunities and probably many other reasons I am unaware of.

wow, well done semck, you not only didn't read my point, you also failed to refute it. Not much of a surprise there considering... eh... you didn't read it.

The arguement was not that Government are inefficient because they don't have the right incentive scheme, it was that they are inefficient because they are centralized.

If you want to have a different conversation, feel free to post your own thread :)

Haha fine. I did skim _your_ post, just not the intervening ones. I guess I missed the context though, sorry. (The jpg quote you started with was not about centralization).

Doesn't matter now. You didn't join my game, punk.

"Yeah, CEOs don't produce anything."

What do they produce?

"ood job throwing out some failed companies and suddenly generalizing to say that all CEOs are worthless. "

You're the one who generalized by saying they're all these wonderful extraordinary people with unusual abilities and that I'm jealous. I can give you a longer list of horrible CEOs if you'd like. They don't produce any of the products they control the sale of. I ask again, if our CEOs are so great, why does our economy suck? Why have the past 10 years produced nothing but corporate scandal after scandal? But like every free market ideologue, you give credit to the market when things go well, then blame the government when they don't. That's "personal responsibility" for you.

You whine about me equating the rich with living off dividends & interest. The fact is many of them do just that, or at least most of their income comes from these sources. Which is why they're so in love with things like a flat-tax or other tax schemes which exempt unearned income. I love how you people preach about earned income and whine about handouts yet I don't see any condemnation of rich people who live like leeches.

"Steve Jobs was rich and he and his company gave the country macs, ipods, iphones, ipads, etc."

Did he produce any of them? Did he produce the GUI? No he ripped it off Xerox. Did he produce the personal computer? No, Steve Wozniak did (who incidentally loathed Steve Jobs). Most of these companies buy out other companies in order to take control of and market products with the patents these bought-out companies hold. For example, google's purchase of Motorola. Gates is an even worse example. He ripped off not only Windows from Apple but Dos from a Seattle company. He didn't create a damn thing. You really should use better examples.

But anyway the larger point is the CEOs aren't the ones doing the production, most if not all the time they're not involved at all with research & design. They hire people to do that. Do the hired people get credit? No. The company gets credit. Does anybody remember the names of the people who developed the GUI? No.

"And the only reason that people (in the private sector) have jobs is because of the CEOs and entrepreneurs who make those businesses possible in the first place."

All they have is capital. They provide capital. That capital can be provided by anything or anyone. They provide the capital and hire people to do the work for them, since they apparently don't have the time or the interest to produce the products themselves. There is still a need for certain commodities whether the entrepreneur or capitalist exists or not. They don't "create jobs". Consumption creates jobs. Capitalists are a superfluous middle man. Labor or government could provide the capital to "create jobs", if empowered to do so.

"In that sense, they do produce entertainment for a substantial amount of people."

And of course that makes them super talented and better than the rest of us, because people have some natural inclination to watch trainwrecks and stupidity as entertainment. Heaven forbid they be lowly janitors, I mean, nothing a janitor does can compare to the trash the Kardashians put on television, right? Obviously that family deserves compensation that is a 1000x greater than the coal miner & the construction worker. To say otherwise is to engage in the "juvenile" politics of "envy", right?

"The comparison between the government and the CEO makes no sense. Government can only redistribute/destroy wealth, while the CEO, heading a private company, creates wealth."

What utter nonsense. Governments can produce goods & services just as the same as corporations can. Both are bureaucracies. I don't know why you think one is less bureaucratic than the other just because it is privatized. Nor do I get why you think a publicly owned enterprise doesn't produce goods & services or provide capital just because it is publicly owned. Then again, since when have free market fundamentalists ever made sense. If the government owned a coal mine, for example, the coal miners would still be paid. The coal would still be mined. The coal would still be sold. How the hell is that "destroying wealth"? The UPS still provides a service, just the same as Fed Ex does. The difference is UPS is forced to subsidize the government and prohibited from utilizing the same kind of business practices as the two private postal carriers. And once again the CEO doesn't do anything. The CEO is a bureaucrat. Functionally equivalent to a government minister who heads up a government department. You wouldn't say a government minister is physically providing the services that a government ministry provides? The minister manages the department.

"The government is essentially guaranteed to be funded by taxpayers while businesses depend on demonstrating their efficiency to private investors"

Not really. Government-run enterprises do not necessarily fund themselves via taxpayer money. Instead they fund themselves through money they earn from services or goods provided. And even if taxmoney did go to fund the service or business with no user fees that's essentially the same as consumers paying a private entity for the service. The payment is just not at the time of use. None of this is "wealth destroying" and if you think private-run entities are somehow more efficient then why does government-run Medicare have far less overhead than privately-run health insurance providers?

"nd in practical terms, power is not completely centralized in the CEO---the board has influence, and the CEO is advised by numerous departments, in which case you could easily say authority is decentralized to separate departments for purpose of efficiency."

In practical terms, authority is not centralized in the hands of the President, but decentralized with the President being advised by numerous departments. Apparently bureaucracies are only bureaucracies if they're public, huh.

"Large, centralized government bureaucracies really can't be held accountable"

They have elections, which is more than can be said for CEOs, who are "elected" by usually a handful of people. Much harder to oust a CEO than an elected official. I do enjoy how you have such contempt for democracy, though, when it suits you.

"And a CEO doing a shitty job can be replaced directly by a board of directors, unlike the failure to replace the fall of Somalia's regime in 1991 with a new government"

Seriously, you complain that I overgeneralize based on too few examples of corporate malfeasance, and your great example of government not being able to reconstitute itself is Somalia, which you think is a proper representative of government everywhere?

It is very very difficult, even in this era of "shareholder rights", for shareholders to oust management or hold them accountable. Look at the lawsuits between shareholders & managers, managers almost always win. The Supreme Court has made it virtually impossible for investors in companies to recover their losses due to management's improper conduct.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/business/worldbusiness/21iht-suit.4.6262236.html

"The government redistributing money from some people to subsidize businesses or, in your terms, to provide "startup capital" is taking away wealth from some people to provide other people with wealth."

The wealth of private owners of capital itself is stolen from the backs of the workers who produce their goods & services for their profit. And at any rate, most private owners of capital have been provided start-up up or other forms of capital assistance from the public troth. Businesses with huge start-up costs would never get off the ground without such help, like for example nuclear power.

"All they have is capital. They provide capital. That capital can be provided by anything or anyone."

This overlooks risk. If a capitalist tries and fails, only he is seriously hurt. If the capital belongs to everybody, on the other hand, then everybody is hurt. The altered incentives completely change the picture.

Capitalists thus provide a very nice balance of risk-taking and reward. Screw up the incentives and you screw up everything.

True, Jobs didn't invent most of what he did, at least early. Xerox did. But Xerox wasn't doing anything with it. What was with that?

What if the capital were all centrally controlled, and the decision maker thought like Xerox, instead of like Jobs? The mouse might be sitting off somewhere as something a scientist did, but that a committee decided was unfeasible for public consumption. Freedom and multiple capitalists provides much-needed diversity in opinion, increased willingness to take risks, and also, oddly, more motivation to succeed.

You'll call all this stupid, but the only really stupid thing is getting in an argument with you about socialism when I'm busy this week.

'Doesn't matter now. You didn't join my game, punk. '

sorry, i was having a shower... also, i could have joined another popular thread and said 'Now i haven't read Dune, but i know LotR is better because...'


but responding to what was said:

'In a corporation, the employees are working with the corporation's money, property, and time. They are being given their own property (money) in return.

In a country, the property, money, and time belong to the citizens, not the government.'

Yes, the citizens take on not just the position of employee, but also of shareholder. You are a shareholder in your State, you get a vote on how it is run.

You are given rights (like the right to hold your own property) in return for taking part in the state. If you do not take part you a liable to lose those rights, either in fines or giving up your right to liberty via imprisonment.

Just as an employee of a company is given money (which they can similarly use to hold property)

The government acts to the best of it's ability to manage the time, property, and money of it's shareholder (the citizen) just as the CEO manages the assets of a company of the shareholders.

Both are centralized forms of decision making, both can fail to the same kinds of decision making faults. (there is a significant difference in scale, and this means some problems will be bigger or smaller for bigger of smaller operations... that is, some problems get worse the bigger you are, and some become comparatively less.)

"And yet those people are some of the more progressive people out there."

How is this relevant? Try staying on topic for once. The point was about rich people somehow being extraordinarily capable people who are so much better than the rest of us. Are the Kardashians better than the rest of us?

"Your crap about how I don't produce anything because it's a service is wrong and dreadfully corrupted."

No, it's factual. You aren't making anything. I don't know why you're so upset by this. The rest of your rant doesn't make any sense. I didn't insult you. I was matter-of-factly saying that you're not producing anything, so you're not going to be paid based on you producing more. You do this all the time though. You use personal examples and put your age on your sleeve, then whenever anybody (namely me) disagrees with you about anything, you cry for special treatment based on your age and say I'm being mean. All I said was you're not engaged in production and you go off the deep end.

You're the one who was so desperate to pick a fight on this topic, even though multiple people told you it has been beaten to death. I don't know what your deal is. You're the one who brought up criticisms of socialism, and then you whine when there's any push back. What are we all supposed to do? Congratulate you for having read Fountainhead, agree with your every word and tell you how smart and insightful you are? Especially when you complain that the so-called "productive" capitalists are so oppressed and leaving America because of the horror of minor regulations that they manage to evade or overturn anyway, because they're of bunch of parasitic traitors with no loyalty to the country who gave them everything? Our effective tax rate on corporations is a joke. Many of the richest corporations pay zero taxes whatsoever. The fact that even bare minimum obligations to provide workers a safe workplace and adequate benefits to meet their basic needs is appalling to you says all I need to know about your values.

Capitalists are now busy privatizing our schools, believing education to be an untapped resource for massive profits. They have busied themselves making record profits in the pharmaseutical industry while depriving the sick and indigent of lifesaving drugs. Excuse me if I'm not stoked about their supposed building of schools overseas or their "medical research". Especially since evil socialist Cuba, sanctions and all, managed to develop a vaccine for lung cancer, and manage to export more doctors than anywhere without the need of your capitalist heroes.

'You'll call all this stupid, but the only really stupid thing is getting in an argument with you about socialism when I'm busy this week.'

to be clear, i've never said 'all of capitalism is stupid' it clearly has some advantages compared with other systems. It also happens to have some disadvantages. One of them being the tragedy of the commons, which for some reason was thought to be a socialist problem...

@orathaic "also, i could have joined another popular thread and said 'Now i haven't read Dune, but i know LotR is better because...'"

Not sure what your point is. I have read Dune.

Anyway, if we're talking just about centralization, then sure, I agree both government and corporations have some of the same strengths and flaws.

But this IS a thread about the distribution of property, and incentives are notably different between a corporation and a government in that respect. If the "citizens as shareholders" are supposed to be your answer, then the problem is actually the opposite of centralization. The government is too far removed from its shareholders, many orders of magnitude moreso than the people who run a corporation.

The incentives for a corporation are far more strongly felt.