Thread Tools
Old November 29, 2003, 15:01   #91
MrFun
Emperor
 
MrFun's Avatar
 
Local Time: 08:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Illinois
Posts: 8,595
Everytime I thought I have seen the strangest thread, someone comes up with something else . . . .



__________________
STFU and then GTFO!
MrFun is offline  
Old November 29, 2003, 16:40   #92
The Mad Monk
Emperor
 
The Mad Monk's Avatar
 
Local Time: 08:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: Flyover Country
Posts: 4,659
If you really want to include what harm might happen, I'll glady point you towards our still exiting stockpiles of VX gas, anthrax, and nukes.

If you want to stay "rooted in reality", I'll point you to the syphilis studies carried out in military hospitals in the 50s, the radiological release experiments carried out by the AEC on entire populations over on the west coast in the 60s, and whatever the hell's going on in all those little secure labs all over the continent today.
__________________
"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work...After eight years of this Administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started... And an enormous debt to boot!" — Henry Morgenthau, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Treasury secretary, 1941.
The Mad Monk is offline  
Old November 29, 2003, 16:58   #93
Theben
Deity
 
Theben's Avatar
 
Local Time: 09:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Dec 1969
Location: Dance Dance for the Revolution!
Posts: 15,132
What a dumb idea.

Any policeman will tell you, "ask yourself: can you kill a person? If the answer is no, you shouldn't own a gun. It's more likely to kill you."
__________________
I'm consitently stupid- Japher
I think that opinion in the United States is decidedly different from the rest of the world because we have a free press -- by free, I mean a virgorously presented right wing point of view on the air and available to all.- Ned
Theben is offline  
Old November 29, 2003, 17:04   #94
JohnT
lifer
Apolytoners Hall of Fame
Emperor
 
JohnT's Avatar
 
Local Time: 09:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Mar 1999
Location: San Antonio, TX
Posts: 4,264
Quote:
Originally posted by The Mad Monk
If you really want to include what harm might happen, I'll glady point you towards our still exiting stockpiles of VX gas, anthrax, and nukes.

If you want to stay "rooted in reality", I'll point you to the syphilis studies carried out in military hospitals in the 50s, the radiological release experiments carried out by the AEC on entire populations over on the west coast in the 60s, and whatever the hell's going on in all those little secure labs all over the continent today.
Atomic Energy Commission: Government.
Military: Government.

Are you arguing my side? Thanks!
JohnT is offline  
Old November 29, 2003, 17:07   #95
JohnT
lifer
Apolytoners Hall of Fame
Emperor
 
JohnT's Avatar
 
Local Time: 09:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Mar 1999
Location: San Antonio, TX
Posts: 4,264
Again you're dissembling Ramo.

Quote:
Thats just too bad your sick of these "Hypothetical" talks for we may never know how bad these corporate decisions to improperly dispose of waste or byproducts turn out to be on mankind!
Therefore, you have no evidence, no statistics, nothing, and are appealing to the prejudices of the uninformed.
JohnT is offline  
Old November 29, 2003, 17:23   #96
Spiffor
Civilization III Democracy GamePtWDG LegolandApolytoners Hall of Fame
 
Spiffor's Avatar
 
Local Time: 15:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: jihadding against Danish Feta
Posts: 6,182
Quote:
Originally posted by JohnT
Therefore, you have no evidence, no statistics, nothing, and are appealing to the prejudices of the uninformed.
...since all informed people just know the corporations always dispose of their dump in the most responsible way.
__________________
"I have been reading up on the universe and have come to the conclusion that the universe is a good thing." -- Dissident
"I never had the need to have a boner." -- Dissident
"I have never cut off my penis when I was upset over a girl." -- Dis
Spiffor is offline  
Old November 29, 2003, 17:37   #97
Theben
Deity
 
Theben's Avatar
 
Local Time: 09:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Dec 1969
Location: Dance Dance for the Revolution!
Posts: 15,132
Quote:
Originally posted by JohnT
I just don't understand how people can spend their lives worrying about Coca-Cola and US Steel when governments, Right and Left, have shown a far superior ability to control, destroy, and kill than even the most rapacious and greedy corporation. Even more bizarre is how these people turn to government, despite its thousand(s) year history of brutality, to "save" them from the corporations.
Maybe because people feel connected to the govt, and not to corporations? We* have no ability to influence corporations; there is no vote, no publicly elected officials, and no corporate mindset equivalent to nationalism. You could argue that we vote with our purchasing power, but that lasts only as far as the particular product is not monopolized, which all corporations eventually lean towards.

*-the non-shareholding public, which is most people.
__________________
I'm consitently stupid- Japher
I think that opinion in the United States is decidedly different from the rest of the world because we have a free press -- by free, I mean a virgorously presented right wing point of view on the air and available to all.- Ned
Theben is offline  
Old November 29, 2003, 17:47   #98
Oerdin
Deity
 
Oerdin's Avatar
 
Local Time: 06:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: In a bamboo forest hiding from Dale.
Posts: 17,436
People influence corporations all the time. Everytime they buy a product or don't buy a product or when they take part in a media pressure campaign. I haven't even brought up that something like 50% of Americans (the figure is lower in Europe but still fairly high) own stock in corporations and are routinely asked to vote on parts of corporate policy.
__________________
Christianity is the belief in a cosmic Jewish zombie who can give us eternal life if we symbolically eat his flesh and blood and telepathically tell him that we accept him as our lord and master so he can remove an evil force present in all humanity because a woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from an apple tree.
Oerdin is offline  
Old November 29, 2003, 18:08   #99
DinoDoc
Civilization II Democracy GameApolytoners Hall of Fame
Deity
 
DinoDoc's Avatar
 
Local Time: 08:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Sep 1999
Location: Underwater no one can hear sharks scream
Posts: 11,096
You people are wierd.
__________________
Rosbifs are destructive scum- Spiffor
I make no bones about my moral support for [terrorist] organizations. - chegitz guevara
If government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is also big enough to take everything you have. - Gerald Ford
Blackwidow24 and FemmeAdonis fan club
DinoDoc is offline  
Old November 29, 2003, 20:53   #100
MrFun
Emperor
 
MrFun's Avatar
 
Local Time: 08:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Illinois
Posts: 8,595
Quote:
Originally posted by DinoDoc
You people are wierd.
You win first prize for saying something that rings true.
__________________
STFU and then GTFO!
MrFun is offline  
Old November 29, 2003, 22:13   #101
JohnT
lifer
Apolytoners Hall of Fame
Emperor
 
JohnT's Avatar
 
Local Time: 09:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Mar 1999
Location: San Antonio, TX
Posts: 4,264
Quote:
Originally posted by Spiffor

...since all informed people just know the corporations always dispose of their dump in the most responsible way.
Again you put words in my mouth. Having never debated you before, methinks this is likely a common occurance given that you have done it no less than three times in this one thread.

I didn't say that corporations "dispose of their dump in the most responsible way", not even close. What I said was that I was interested in numbers, facts, statistics that help buttress an argument, not hypotheticals nor extrapolations involving taking actual events, multiplying by 10, and saying "See!"

Had anyone bothered to do a couple of minutes of googling, they would've found plenty of data to support their arguments.

Endgame.org, hopefully a sufficiently anti-corporate site for the likes my opponents, claims the following:

Quote:
In the U.S. alone, it is estimated that 10,000 deaths occur each year due to routine industrial accidents; another 100,000 deaths occur due to occupational disease; and 30,000 deaths and 20,000,000 serious injuries due to unsafe consumer products.
Other sites have wildly differing figures - one of Naders sites claims 66,497 industrial deaths in 1992, another (a lot more loopy (lots of rants about Bildebergers, the Tri-Lateral commission, and LETTERS IN ALL CAPS)) claimed 5,000/year, but the most common figures in the anti-corporate sites were roughly equal to that above.

However I should note that the US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics states that the number of people killed on the job ("routine industrial accidents" in the above quote) averaged around 6,000 for the past 7 years - of which, nearly 20% are the result of non "industry-caused" traffic accidents and 16% are the result of homicides and violent assaults by persons on persons (here are the year 2000 stats if you care to check my math.) So 1/3 of all "occupational" deaths in the US have nothing to do with the occupation. Please note that these figures include deaths from long term injuries and afflictions, including "occupational disease."

Thie above holds true for the few years that I checked, so I can (almost) safely say that the 10,000 figure quoted above from endgame.org can be discounted by 1/3 for the simple reason that the peoples jobs or their employers were not the primary cause of death. (Yes, I know: if they weren't on the job, they wouldn't have gotten into an accident. ).

Their other statistics don't hold up either. 30,000 deaths from unsafe consumer products is what they claim, but the US Consumer Products Safety Commission National Electronic Injury Surveillance System states that an average of 7,000 people a year die from consumer products - and no, I didn't bother to check how many of them were attributable to user error, but I'm sure that a large portion of them are.

OK, so we have 13,000 deaths a year directly attributed to corporations here in the US, regardless of fault. Now how about the government?

According to this site, the US governments (State and Federal) have killed from 282,000 people to 1,634,000 people, with the mid-range estimate being 575,000 (over 88 years). This comes to an average of 6,534 people, slightly over 1/2 of the 13,000 figure above*.

However, let's again note that a significant percentage of occupational (36%) and consumer product (?%) deaths are not the result of a malevolent corporation, but are either common accidents that can occur regardless of whether you're on a job or not, or are the result of negligence by the user. If you discount the figures you come to the conclusion that here in the US, corporations are, at worst, only slightly more dangerous than our governments.

*For democratic governments (France, the UK, the US, etc) in total the average shoots way up to 65,377 (though I admit the man might've skewed his statistics against the democracies by including the last two years of WW2 and stopping at the end of the Vietnam war).
JohnT is offline  
Old November 29, 2003, 22:29   #102
DinoDoc
Civilization II Democracy GameApolytoners Hall of Fame
Deity
 
DinoDoc's Avatar
 
Local Time: 08:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Sep 1999
Location: Underwater no one can hear sharks scream
Posts: 11,096
Quote:
Originally posted by MrFun


You win first prize for saying something that rings true.
Seriously though. I can not imagine a sane reason to try and rationalize one of St Leo's stupid posts or how we got to the point where people can honestly argue against JohnT on this point.
__________________
Rosbifs are destructive scum- Spiffor
I make no bones about my moral support for [terrorist] organizations. - chegitz guevara
If government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is also big enough to take everything you have. - Gerald Ford
Blackwidow24 and FemmeAdonis fan club
DinoDoc is offline  
Old November 29, 2003, 22:33   #103
Dr Strangelove
Apolytoners Hall of Fame
Emperor
 
Dr Strangelove's Avatar
 
Local Time: 09:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Dec 1969
Location: USA
Posts: 3,197
IIRC in Africa in the 19th centuries corporations did indeed kill hundreds of thousands. The mines of the Belgian Congo were particularily notorious. The would send gangs out to Africa villages to forcibly "hire" laborers, then cart them off to the mine where they were worked to death. Resisters were shot. The situation in Angola was nearly as bad. In east Africa the ivory traders of Zanzibar were reputed to have killed up to one million Africans in order to sustain the ivory trade. Oh, and don't forget about the slave trade. Infact it was the scandal of these corporate excesses that became the cause-or excuse- for the gigantic land grab by the major European colonial powers in the 1880s.
__________________
"I say shoot'em all and let God sort it out in the end!
Dr Strangelove is offline  
Old November 29, 2003, 22:43   #104
JohnT
lifer
Apolytoners Hall of Fame
Emperor
 
JohnT's Avatar
 
Local Time: 09:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Mar 1999
Location: San Antonio, TX
Posts: 4,264
Quote:
IIRC in Africa in the 19th centuries corporations did indeed kill hundreds of thousands. The mines of the Belgian Congo were particularily notorious. The would send gangs out to Africa villages to forcibly "hire" laborers, then cart them off to the mine where they were worked to death. Resisters were shot. The situation in Angola was nearly as bad. In east Africa the ivory traders of Zanzibar were reputed to have killed up to one million Africans in order to sustain the ivory trade. Oh, and don't forget about the slave trade. Infact it was the scandal of these corporate excesses that became the cause-or excuse- for the gigantic land grab by the major European colonial powers in the 1880s.
Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT! I had a very nice history of the slave trade (nice as in informative, lots of pages (about 700, iirc) charts, graphs, data, stuff like that) that actually had statistics for "type of entity" (for want of a better phrase) who purchased slaves. Anyway, from what I remember well over 1/2 of all African slaves were purchased or captured by representatives of their various governments, including government-chartered corporations - especially those of Portugal and England (who was the largest slave trader of all). About the only government that didn't profit from directly trading slaves was the Spanish - but even they granted monopolies (asiento's) to favored interests to participate in the trade as long as the traders were sure to pay their slave-tax.

If I find the book, I'll get the numbers. My apologies for asking people to take me at my word.

Last edited by JohnT; November 29, 2003 at 22:48.
JohnT is offline  
Old November 30, 2003, 17:44   #105
Dis
ACDG3 SpartansC4DG Vox
Deity
 
Dis's Avatar
 
Local Time: 06:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: Las Vegas
Posts: 17,354
looks to be the smartest town to me
__________________
Focus, discipline
Barack Obama- the antichrist
Dis is offline  
Old November 30, 2003, 17:46   #106
Ramo
Apolytoners Hall of Fame
Emperor
 
Ramo's Avatar
 
Local Time: 08:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: of Fear and Oil
Posts: 5,892
Quote:
Again you're dissembling Ramo.
I have to wonder if you really know what the word means given that it doesn't apply to my posts.
__________________
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
-Bokonon
Ramo is offline  
Old November 30, 2003, 17:48   #107
Dr Strangelove
Apolytoners Hall of Fame
Emperor
 
Dr Strangelove's Avatar
 
Local Time: 09:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Dec 1969
Location: USA
Posts: 3,197
Quote:
Originally posted by JohnT
Anyway, from what I remember well over 1/2 of all African slaves were purchased or captured by representatives of their various governments, including government-chartered corporations - especially those of Portugal and England (who was the largest slave trader of all).
just because a corporation is government chartered doesn't mean it is an entity of a government.
__________________
"I say shoot'em all and let God sort it out in the end!
Dr Strangelove is offline  
Old November 30, 2003, 20:12   #108
JohnT
lifer
Apolytoners Hall of Fame
Emperor
 
JohnT's Avatar
 
Local Time: 09:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Mar 1999
Location: San Antonio, TX
Posts: 4,264
Just because a mercantile operation in the 16th century is called a "corporation" doesn't mean it is the same type of organization that we understand as corporations.

Oh, and Ramo - you're right. I just had to go with the flow, though. You know?

I'm a poet and don't I know it.
JohnT is offline  
Old November 30, 2003, 23:31   #109
Urban Ranger
NationStatesApolyton Storywriters' GuildNever Ending Stories
Deity
 
Urban Ranger's Avatar
 
Local Time: 21:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: May 1999
Location: The City State of Noosphere, CPA special envoy
Posts: 14,606
Quote:
Originally posted by JohnT
how does this even compare to the carnage and destruction that the "Democratic" US of A caused in Vietnam or the French caused in Algeria?

Answer: it doesn't. Not by a long shot.
Answer: why do you think they were there? Why the US of A is in Iraq but not North Korea and Congo?
__________________
(\__/) 07/07/1937 - Never forget
(='.'=) "Claims demand evidence; extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." -- Carl Sagan
(")_(") "Starting the fire from within."
Urban Ranger is offline  
Old November 30, 2003, 23:34   #110
Urban Ranger
NationStatesApolyton Storywriters' GuildNever Ending Stories
Deity
 
Urban Ranger's Avatar
 
Local Time: 21:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: May 1999
Location: The City State of Noosphere, CPA special envoy
Posts: 14,606
Quote:
Originally posted by JohnT
Just because a mercantile operation in the 16th century is called a "corporation" doesn't mean it is the same type of organization that we understand as corporations.
Hudson's Bay Company? Looks pretty much the same as a corporation. British East India Company? Same deal.
__________________
(\__/) 07/07/1937 - Never forget
(='.'=) "Claims demand evidence; extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." -- Carl Sagan
(")_(") "Starting the fire from within."
Urban Ranger is offline  
Old November 30, 2003, 23:48   #111
JohnT
lifer
Apolytoners Hall of Fame
Emperor
 
JohnT's Avatar
 
Local Time: 09:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Mar 1999
Location: San Antonio, TX
Posts: 4,264
Yes, and the National Socialists weren't really socialists. What's your point?
JohnT is offline  
Old December 1, 2003, 00:04   #112
Dis
ACDG3 SpartansC4DG Vox
Deity
 
Dis's Avatar
 
Local Time: 06:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: Las Vegas
Posts: 17,354
Quote:
Originally posted by Oerdin


We haven't stopped them but at least in California we've made it harder for these people looking for "freebies". Making them get a 2/3 majority instead of a simple majority sure does slow down the tax increases.
the 2/3 majority was passed in my state as well. But when we couldn't pass a budget this past year, the state supreme court overruled the 2/3 and said it only took a simple majority to pass new taxes.
__________________
Focus, discipline
Barack Obama- the antichrist
Dis is offline  
Old December 1, 2003, 00:31   #113
Dr Strangelove
Apolytoners Hall of Fame
Emperor
 
Dr Strangelove's Avatar
 
Local Time: 09:23
Local Date: November 2, 2010
Join Date: Dec 1969
Location: USA
Posts: 3,197
You know, it might be interesting for some locality to enact a law requiring persons to bear arms in public, I'd like to see what happens. In order to be significant it would have to be a whole state or a fairly large city. I just hope that it's nowhere near me.
__________________
"I say shoot'em all and let God sort it out in the end!
Dr Strangelove is offline  
 

Bookmarks

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 09:23.


Design by Vjacheslav Trushkin, color scheme by ColorizeIt!.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.2
Copyright ©2000 - 2010, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Apolyton Civilization Site | Copyright © The Apolyton Team