HAVE CAPITALIST and NEOLIB IDEAS COMBINED TO BECOME CANCEROUS?

[eniwetok]

27. the business of business is...

Managers at private companies are not in the business of maximizing society's welfare. They are there to satisfy the best they can their stakeholders, chiefly clients, employees and investors (which might have diverging interests on some issues, but that's not the point here). This is why you and I agree governments should place rules and regulations to ensure companies are not free to do things that could have a net negative effect on the whole of society.
In theory the purpose of the corporate form is to maximize benefit to their shareholders by satisfying customers. But if that's the purpose... it's largely been imposed on government by the courts which made this semi-official. Of course this raises the issue of whether this means maximizing profits... or stock value... and it's the latter that's led to even more sociopathic behavior as we've seen with Wells Fargo. But if in theory capitalism can be self-regulating... then ANY government interference can be seen as "anticapitalistic"... again in the more accurate use of that term... not your narrow usage that it just includes nationalization. Have you yet admitted that what Congress, Bush & Obama, and the FED did to stabilize the economy was anticapitalistic?


Now, you're talking about the Bush crash. It was brought about by the cowardice of politicians who were not willing to tell people with not enough financial prostpects (people who were "subprime&quot that they would not be lent money to. Politicians caved in, and the bubble grew.

There you go again... blaming politicians and absolving business. That does seem to be a consistent theme with you. Which brings us back to the issue that there's nothing inherent in mere deregulation that mandates irresponsible and reckless behavior for the private sector. Even if government is offering incentives for irresponsible behavior... it's still remains a choice for business. And indeed Bush was pushing his Ownership Society. But the problem was much bigger than any government policy.... everything from lenders not concerned about who they lent money to, to trust in new financial instruments that were to mitigate risk, to ratings agencies willing to put high ratings on shit... to pure greed. No one held a gun to the head of the private sector and demanded they act irresponsibility. Which brings us back to the subject of my thread.... has capitalism combined with neolib political ideology to trust business become cancerous and is destroying the host society and maybe soon the habitability of much of the earth?