Debate: With great power comes great responsability

[lord of flies]

It's so great they never have layoffs in a communist country. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091113/ap_on_..._famine_diaries

As starvation and cannibalism spread across Ukraine, Soviet authorities exported more than a million tons of grain to the West, using the money to build factories and arm its military.

Yes, there was a famine in the Ukraine. The Ukraine was the Soviet breadbasket, and if the Soviets had not moved that food out of the Ukraine, the soldiers and workers would have starved instead. You know as well as I do that without a functional military and strong industries, the Soviet Union would probably have collapsed before the Nazi tide.

[Walsingham]

You're genuinely saying that the Soviet Army's performance in Finland was down to their peaceful history since the revolution? That's actually cute. I really mean it. Like a kid with Santa. I'm actually smiling despite myself. Bless your tiny red heart you actually believe it, don't you? I actually feel more christmassy.

 

I'm not going to spoil my good mood by arguing the point. I'm off out into this gale for a run, with my warm tingly feelings.

[lord of flies]

You're genuinely saying that the Soviet Army's performance in Finland was down to their peaceful history since the revolution? That's actually cute. I really mean it. Like a kid with Santa. I'm actually smiling despite myself. Bless your tiny red heart you actually believe it, don't you? I actually feel more christmassy.

 

I'm not going to spoil my good mood by arguing the point. I'm off out into this gale for a run, with my warm tingly feelings.

Well, their lack of any offensive wars definitely was a contributing factor. I suppose the experience of the RCW itself, where most of the "old" officer corps who had inherited generations of proper training were killed for being violent reactionaries, was also a contributor. I can't think of any other reason, unless you're arguing that they failed because they didn't come up with mobile armor strategies at the right time.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Yes, there was a famine in the Ukraine. The Ukraine was the Soviet breadbasket, and if the Soviets had not moved that food out of the Ukraine, the soldiers and workers would have starved instead. You know as well as I do that without a functional military and strong industries, the Soviet Union would probably have collapsed before the Nazi tide.

That's really hilarious in light of this statement:

 

You speak of corporations in defensive terms, justifying their vice and greed with itself. Yes, in order to make money they have to be a ****. That's not a justification, you merry bunch of capitalist apologists. Allow me to explain the flaws with modern capitalism.

[lord of flies]

Yes, there was a famine in the Ukraine. The Ukraine was the Soviet breadbasket, and if the Soviets had not moved that food out of the Ukraine, the soldiers and workers would have starved instead. You know as well as I do that without a functional military and strong industries, the Soviet Union would probably have collapsed before the Nazi tide.

That's really hilarious in light of this statement:

 

You speak of corporations in defensive terms, justifying their vice and greed with itself. Yes, in order to make money they have to be a ****. That's not a justification, you merry bunch of capitalist apologists. Allow me to explain the flaws with modern capitalism.

Those statements don't actually contradict each other at all, and you know it.

[Zoraptor]

Those would presumably be the anarchist militias which proved totally incapable of a single offensive operation?

That's flat out wrong. Even leaving aside storming the army barracks in Barcelona against opposition from genuine (albeit also genuinely inept) 'real' soldiers various anarchist columns seized much of SW Spain in the first few weeks of the war. It's hardly their fault that the main republican government spent most of the rest of the war starving them of resources and trying to assimilate them into their (almost always genuinely inept) military ranks, or outright trying to suppress them. There's also fairly decent evidence of the communists tipping the nationalists off to attacks involving anarchist formations.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Yes, there was a famine in the Ukraine. The Ukraine was the Soviet breadbasket, and if the Soviets had not moved that food out of the Ukraine, the soldiers and workers would have starved instead. You know as well as I do that without a functional military and strong industries, the Soviet Union would probably have collapsed before the Nazi tide.

That's really hilarious in light of this statement:

 

You speak of corporations in defensive terms, justifying their vice and greed with itself. Yes, in order to make money they have to be a ****. That's not a justification, you merry bunch of capitalist apologists. Allow me to explain the flaws with modern capitalism.

Those statements don't actually contradict each other at all, and you know it.

I didn't say they contradict each other, I meant it's hilarious that you're calling others "apologists".

[Walsingham]

Those would presumably be the anarchist militias which proved totally incapable of a single offensive operation?

That's flat out wrong. Even leaving aside storming the army barracks in Barcelona against opposition from genuine (albeit also genuinely inept) 'real' soldiers various anarchist columns seized much of SW Spain in the first few weeks of the war. It's hardly their fault that the main republican government spent most of the rest of the war starving them of resources and trying to assimilate them into their (almost always genuinely inept) military ranks, or outright trying to suppress them. There's also fairly decent evidence of the communists tipping the nationalists off to attacks involving anarchist formations.

 

Nice to have another voice on the matter.

 

1. I do not regard the initial seizures as offensive actions becauyse they were simply cases of imposing control on a local area already inhabited by the actors.

2. The government's attempts make sense to me because they wanted an operationally and strategically useful military. Their view was the same as mine - the orthodoxy in military science - which is that concentration of force and tempo of operations define success. And that a force comprising a multiplicity of self-elected commands lacks the organisation to be either.

 

I do not defend that orthodoxy because it is established beyond reasonable doubt by scholars and generals far superior to me and widely available for your review.

 

3. On the back of this I would ask LoF if he believes that the Ukrainians would have voted to starve themselves to death for the greater good? He has already stated that he would have used democracy in the Soviet Union, and that the starvation was imperative.

 

4. In fact it was Marshal Tukhachevskii who invented the true offensive armoured operation. A fact which Russian military scholars are justly proud, and of which British military scholars are justly envious. the tanks which fought in Finland were designed specifically to consist of heavy breakthrough (proryv) tanks like the KV series and the fast upsetting/overturning (obkhod) tanks like the T26 and BT series.

 

5. All analyses I've read on the Finnish debacle attribute Finnish success to Soviet emphasis on political reliability and political control combined with callous disregard for casualties. The upshot of which was bullheaded operational foolishness, coupled with an ichor-stained evaporation of tactical morale and skill amid the snows and pine forests. Of course as you helpfully already pointed out, the Soviet system depended on harshly controlling the armed forces... because IT WAS ****ING INSANE, and the slightest relaxation of control might have resulted in the armed forces turning against it.

[Kaftan Barlast]

To get the thread back on its rails again:

 

Going back to the initial question I put it to a chap I mett today over lunch and his response was to point out:

 

If you fail to post a sufficiently healthy profit, people dump your stocks and then EVERYONE loses their jobs. So well done, Kaft, instead of 1500 redundancies you've got a nabjillion.

 

First of all; A sustained and constant increase in profits is impossible, so any system that has that as a prerequisite to function is inherently broken. So thats another thing we need to fix before we're killed by our own economy. But even so, I doubt a decrease in profit or even a loss causes people to dump your stocks. That occurs when people believe your company is about to crash and burn, which is the direct opposite of how EA and the rest of the games industry is doing even in this severe recession.

 

 

What I was saying here in the first post was that large companies should be held accountable for the economic damages they cause society, and that we should make it alot harder for them to wreak havoc by behaving irresponsably by, for instance, laying off workers when the company isnt losing money. It seems like common sense to me. And the main reason to why we havent made steps in this direction yet, is that big bussiness have and will spend billions to remain unaccountable.

 

A recent survey http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbc2009_berlin_wall/ shows that Im far from the only one who is sceptical towards free-market capitalism and pro regulations. We are actually in the majority, even in the US only 25% of the people asked agreed that the system was working well. 23% of all the people worldwide even went as far as to say capitalism is a fatally flawed system.

[Gorgon]

First of all; A sustained and constant increase in profits is impossible, so any system that has that as a prerequisite to function is inherently broken

 

It's not a function of the system, the system goes through boom and bust cycles, what is unsustainable is the expectation to continually post bigger earnings. In the long term when the economy has undergone a long and sustained boom every so often theorists wonder if we have turned a new leaf, but another depression inevitably comes along anyway.

 

What I was saying here in the first post was that large companies should be held accountable for the economic damages they cause society, and that we should make it alot harder for them to wreak havoc by behaving irresponsably by, for instance, laying off workers when the company isnt losing money. It seems like common sense to me

 

If one did that the companies, all those that could, would simply move production to somewhere where they could have a higher degree of control. Enough of them have already. The basic operation of competition is dog eat dog, we try through legislation to get everyone to behave nice and follow a set of rules to the game, but one can only do so much, after which new investors would simply stay away.

[Rostere]

Who were initially so inept they almost allowed Germany to do the impossible, because their command structure had been devastated by Stalin's purges.

 

There are several important facts here:

 

1. The Soviet army was told specifically by Stalin that they should not answer any provocation from the German side with any reinforcements of manpower or strategic redeployment. Also, look at the Soviet Navy (which was not under the same orders) and the Black Sea operations (the Siege of Sevastopol and the Siege of Odessa, for example).

 

2. Remember how the Allies fared in France against the Germans? Germany had, until some time after the turn of the war, by far the most efficient military on earth. I would not blame the SU for not winning against them from the start.

 

The purges, even though they robbed the SU of Tukhachevsky (who was probably the greatest Russian commander in modern times) did not leave them entirely without other capable military minds. The Russian military establishment was at the time (even after the revolution) much more backwards than their German counterpart.

 

Now, I'm not defending Stalin, I'm just saying that the SU made a bad start in WW2 because of reasons other than the purges.

[lord of flies]

1. The Soviet army was told specifically by Stalin that they should not answer any provocation from the German side with any reinforcements of manpower or strategic redeployment. Also, look at the Soviet Navy (which was not under the same orders) and the Black Sea operations (the Siege of Sevastopol and the Siege of Odessa, for example).

I'd just like to add here that this was motivated by the Western capitalists' attempts to get the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany into a war. It's worth remembering that, among his contemporaries, Chamberlain was viewed as a strong statesman. France and Britain were both pushing for a "big showdown" between the USSR and the GGR, and Stalin wanted none of that. The reason that the West was willing to tolerate Hitler for so long was because they hated communism much more than they hated fascism. There were plenty of intelligence operations by the British intended to start a war between the USSR and GGR, and Stalin, being the peaceful man that he was, didn't want to start a war.

[Wrath of Dagon]

A recent survey http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbc2009_berlin_wall/ shows that Im far from the only one who is sceptical towards free-market capitalism and pro regulations. We are actually in the majority, even in the US only 25% of the people asked agreed that the system was working well. 23% of all the people worldwide even went as far as to say capitalism is a fatally flawed system.

So are you saying Sweden isn't socialist enought for you? Do you actually have an alternative system that's been shown historically to work? When even the Chinese and Russian communists accept that capitalism is the only way forward, you've got to start questioning your assumptions.

[lord of flies]

So are you saying Sweden isn't socialist enought for you? Do you actually have an alternative system that's been shown historically to work? When even the Chinese and Russian communists accept that capitalism is the only way forward, you've got to start questioning your assumptions.

If you asked a Marxist in Germany, France or Britain in 1900 if Russia or China could be communist - or even functionally socialist - without "the West" going down that road first, they would tell you "of course not." Those nations did not have the kind of proletariat that Germany did, for example, and it showed through in their approaches to socialism (vastly increase state authority rather than simply kill all the capitalists).

[alanschu]

What I was saying here in the first post was that large companies should be held accountable for the economic damages they cause society, and that we should make it alot harder for them to wreak havoc by behaving irresponsably by, for instance, laying off workers when the company isnt losing money. It seems like common sense to me. And the main reason to why we havent made steps in this direction yet, is that big bussiness have and will spend billions to remain unaccountable.

 

The economic damages they cause society?

What about the economic benefits they provide?

 

Had EA not hired those 1500 people, where would they have gone? Because you seem to think that the layoffs results in 1500 unemployed people that don't go on to find other (potentially better) jobs.

[Gorgon]

Well we don't need to legislate against the desirable effects now do we.

[alanschu]

Do you think that those same benefits will remain if we legislate against "the bad?"

[Gorgon]

We have to legislate against the bad, knowing where to stop that's the question.

[Lare Kikkeli]

First of all I'm not an economist nor a politician so all factual errors come from lack of knowledge. I am however interested in this sort of stuff and have read a lot about politics.

 

I'd like to hear all you right wing nuts defending the big corporations moving out of 1st world countries to poor 3rd world and basically use up all their resources, break or change enviromental laws with bribes and employ people in sweatshops.

 

Most big american firms have been proven to use these kinds of tactics in search of more profits over the years, as well as smaller corporations everywhere (we Finns have proved ourselves very talented in this). How is this right?

 

This is kind of relevant because firms, not sure if it's possible in the business EA is in, have been moving most of their production to countries with loose or non-existant labour laws. Are the firms right, should we abolish our labour laws and basically all welfare in favour of big profits for big corporations? That would basically mean a return to the days before democracy. All money and power would be in the hands of a tiny elite and there would be a huge underclass basically in the position of slaves. Is that desirable to you? Do you see yourself as a ruler or a slave?

[Wrath of Dagon]

First of all I'm not an economist nor a politician so all factual errors come from lack of knowledge. I am however interested in this sort of stuff and have read a lot about politics.

 

I'd like to hear all you right wing nuts defending the big corporations moving out of 1st world countries to poor 3rd world and basically use up all their resources, break or change enviromental laws with bribes and employ people in sweatshops.

 

Most big american firms have been proven to use these kinds of tactics in search of more profits over the years, as well as smaller corporations everywhere (we Finns have proved ourselves very talented in this). How is this right?

 

This is kind of relevant because firms, not sure if it's possible in the business EA is in, have been moving most of their production to countries with loose or non-existant labour laws. Are the firms right, should we abolish our labour laws and basically all welfare in favour of big profits for big corporations? That would basically mean a return to the days before democracy. All money and power would be in the hands of a tiny elite and there would be a huge underclass basically in the position of slaves. Is that desirable to you? Do you see yourself as a ruler or a slave?

Western corporations moving to third world countries have vastly improved the standard of living there. Would you rather all those people were unemployed and/or starving? As far as pollution, etc, that's the result of corrupt governments in those countries, governments which will probably improve once the higher living standard allows more education and greater sense of social responsibilty.

[Walsingham]

WoD foreign corporations don't always make things better where they end. Partly because they quite cheerfully relocate at the drop of a hat. So as soon as loacl expectations ARE raised they go elsewhere rather than pay better wages. Look at Botswana.

 

It occurs to me that modern corporations act like nomadic warriors like Attila the Hun. They ride around hoofing off with anything that isn't nailed to anything made of rock. If that analogy is true then we need us peasant farmers to invest in some serious firepower and nail the nomads.

 

But that still doesn't mean that EA firing people is evil.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Botswana was one of the most impoverished countries in Africa when it became independent in 1966. Today, it is home to a relatively stable political system and a rapidly developing market economy. Being closely tied with the economy of South Africa, the country's economy is one of the most successful in Africa and is dominated by the fast-growing service sector, world-renowned diamond industry, tourism, and manufacturing.

 

About 60% of the population live above the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day.[3] Botswana's economic growth rate has outpaced the economic growth of even the Asian Tigers, and the World Bank cites Botswana as one of the world's great development success stories.[4]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botswana

 

You were saying?

[Lare Kikkeli]

Western corporations moving to third world countries have vastly improved the standard of living there. Would you rather all those people were unemployed and/or starving? As far as pollution, etc, that's the result of corrupt governments in those countries, governments which will probably improve once the higher living standard allows more education and greater sense of social responsibilty.

 

Heh, your first claim is so ridiculous I'm not even gonna bother addressing that.

 

Second of all why do you put the blame on the goverments, not the corporations that very much support these goverments because of the benefits they get? Or do corporations have no responsobility in anything over making money for their shareholders, and it's everyone elses fault that we make their bending the rules and robbing poor nations possible? You surely see how ridiculous that is. That's like saying killing someone isn't the murderers fault because no one stopped him.

[Wrath of Dagon]

People will do immoral things unless the government enforces the laws against those things, that's just how it is. I'm not defending anyone who does immoral things, least of all corporations. Laying off people isn't immoral though, that's just part of running a business.

[Lare Kikkeli]

People will do immoral things unless the government enforces the laws against those things, that's just how it is. I'm not defending anyone who does immoral things, least of all corporations. Laying off people isn't immoral though, that's just part of running a business.

 

Corporations are made of people, as are goverments.

 

Also I didn't say laying off people is immoral, it can be though. It depends on what the reasons behind the lay offs are. I don't necessarily think EA is evil in this case. They're obviously bleeding money and the current economic situation is making a lot of companies to do the same. However some of the posts in this thread have said that companies should have all and every right to lay off anyone they want whenever they want and if an employee doesn't like it he can walk off. Basically that big corporations have the right to do whatever they want and it's the goverments job to make this easier. This is disagree with.