what are we talking about when we talk about Capitalism (not quite R.Carver)

[only_human]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

“Conscious Capitalism” Icon Whole Foods Exploits Prison Labor | Counterpunch

To be fair "Mackie the Knife" does specifically say "Conscious Capitalism", as opposed to "Conscientious Capitalism".

Monty Python - Four Yorkshiremen
http://youtu.be/Xe1a1wHxTyo

Added U.S. Code restriction on foreign indentured labor products

U.S. Code › Title 19 › Chapter 4 › Subtitle II › Part I › § 1307

All goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in any foreign country by convict labor or/and forced labor or/and indentured labor under penal sanctions shall not be entitled to entry at any of the ports of the United States, and the importation thereof is hereby prohibited, and the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized and directed to prescribe such regulations as may be necessary for the enforcement of this provision. The provisions of this section relating to goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured by forced labor or/and indentured labor, shall take effect on January 1, 1932; but in no case shall such provisions be applicable to goods, wares, articles, or merchandise so mined, produced, or manufactured which are not mined, produced, or manufactured in such quantities in the United States as to meet the consumptive demands of the United States.

“Forced labor”, as herein used, shall mean all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty for its nonperformance and for which the worker does not offer himself voluntarily. For purposes of this section, the term “forced labor or/and indentured labor” includes forced or indentured child labor.

Added recent Mitsubishi apology
Japan's Mitsubishi Apologizes For Using U.S. POWs As Forced Labor In WWII

Japan's Mitsubishi corporation is making a big apology. It's not for any recall or defect in its products, which include automobiles, but for its use of American prisoners of war as forced labor during World War II.

James Murphy, 94, traveled from his home in Santa Maria, Calif., to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, where a ceremony was held and Hikaru Kimura, a senior Mitsubishi executive, made the apology in person.

"Being one of the few surviving workers of that time," Murphy said in a statement, "I find it to be my duty and responsibility to accept Mr. Kimura's apology."

Murphy spent a year of forced labor, from 1944 to '45, at a copper mine owned by the company in Japan. He told the Associated Press this week that the experience was a complete horror, "slavery in every way."

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by only_human

Monty Python - Four Yorkshiremen
http://youtu.be/Xe1a1wHxTyo

Added U.S. Code restriction on foreign indentured labor products

Added recent Mitsubishi apology
Japan's Mitsubishi Apologizes For Using U.S. POWs As Forced Labor In WWII

Apologies are not good enough. If Mitsubishi were truly sorry they would track down survivors and compensate them
out of its own pocket.

[davar55]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

“Conscious Capitalism” Icon Whole Foods Exploits Prison Labor | Counterpunch

To be fair "Mackie the Knife" does specifically say "Conscious Capitalism", as opposed to "Conscientious Capitalism".

ANd when this was brought to attention, (1) Did his customers do anything different? (2) Did he?

[only_human]

Originally Posted by davar55

ANd when this was brought to attention, (1) Did his customers do anything different? (2) Did he?

The shareholder fallacy

“It is literally – literally – malfeasance for a corporation not to do everything it legally can to maximize its profits. That’s a corporation’s duty to its shareholders.”

The notion that the law imposes a duty to “maximize shareholder value” – a phrase capturing the notion that profits are mandatory and it is the shareholders who are entitled to them – is so readily accepted these days because it jibes perfectly with assumptions about economic life that constantly come down to us from business and political leaders, from academia, and from the preponderance of the media. It is unlikely to occur to anyone under the age of 40 to question this idea – or the idea that the highest, or even sole, purpose of a corporation is to make a profit – because they have rarely if ever been exposed to an alternative view. Those in middle age or beyond may have trouble remembering a time when the corporation’s focus on shareholders’ interests to the exclusion of all other constituencies –customers, employees, suppliers, creditors, the communities in which it operates, and the nation – did not seem second nature.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by davar55

ANd when this was brought to attention, (1) Did his customers do anything different? (2) Did he?

[1] Dunno - you'll have have to ask some WF customers that. I hardly ever shop there anymore, and on the rare occasions when I do - mostly to use the store as a fee-free ATM ($100 cashback limit as opposed to e.g. Target's $40) - I buy only loss-leaders items like organic bananas, which I figure costs Mackie & co. money.

[2] Doubtful - he's already shown in a myriad of ways that he is the prototypical amoral übercapitalist.

BTW, @only_human: IIRC the 'shareholder value maximization imperative' myth is one of the numerous toxic legacies of Milton Friedman and his 'Chicago School' of monetarist economics.

[davar55]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

[1] ...
BTW, @only_human: IIRC the 'shareholder value maximization imperative' myth is one of the numerous toxic legacies of Milton Friedman and his 'Chicago School' of monetarist economics.

"MAximization" may have been too strong a word; if it had been "attention", perhaps you wouldn't regard
perfect capitalism, which I support, as a "toxic" program.

[S485122]

Originally Posted by davar55

...
perfect capitalism, which I support

If it is perfect, it is, but then perfect communism, socialism, whatever, are perfect as well.

This induces a question : is something even remotely resembling "perfect capitalism" possible ? It has never existed, could it exist ?.

Jacob

[only_human]

Originally Posted by davar55

"MAximization" may have been too strong a word; if it had been "attention", perhaps you wouldn't regard
perfect capitalism, which I support, as a "toxic" program.

What is toxic is a snake bite in an imperfect system:

ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES 7/22/15
A $153,000 snake bite
The shockingly high hospital bill of a man who was bitten by a rattlesnake provides a window into the dysfunctional way the U.S. health care system prices drugs and services.

7:11 Video.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by davar55

perhaps you wouldn't regard perfect capitalism, which I support, as a "toxic" program.

I don't regard it at all since, being a human endeavor, it is inherently imperfect. Most reasonable people would be overjoyed to merely replace the current 'massively corrupt, sociopathic and leading the planet to ruin' version of so-called capitalism with an Adam Smithian 'deeply flawed in a myriad of ways, but nonetheless a net positive for humankind'.

Your 'support of perfect capitalism' is a self-admission that you live in a fantasy world - most of us here knew that a long time ago, but perhaps your explicitly admitting it represents some kind of progress, even if merely of the epistemological variety.

[davar55]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

I don't regard it at all since, being a human endeavor, it is inherently imperfect. Most reasonable people would be overjoyed to merely replace the current 'massively corrupt, sociopathic and leading the planet to ruin' version of so-called capitalism with an Adam Smithian 'deeply flawed in a myriad of ways, but nonetheless a net positive for humankind'.

Your 'support of perfect capitalism' is a self-admission that you live in a fantasy world - most of us here knew that a long time ago, but perhaps your explicitly admitting it represents some kind of progress, even if merely of the epistemological variety.

Nah, I support Capitalism over anything else, period. The future is not a fantasy.,

[only_human]

Originally Posted by davar55

Nah, I support Capitalism over anything else, period. The future is not a fantasy.,

ok, you are against fantasy sports brackets but how using a vivuzela?