Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to re: Our Constitution Enshrines Individual Rights, not Democracy

A Basic Business Principle You Seem To Have Missed
Mark Eby — (archived)

It's not the board of directors money or the CEO's money either. It is the stockholders money. They are not approving these packages and many are getting quite angry about them. It is comments by shareholder rights groups that initiated my irritation as a stockholder with CEO pay. And it is my money since I have worked for a company that has not folded and raided my 401K which has grown by a factor of 27 over the past 10 years. It is only in the last 5 years that I have become outraged as a worker seeing people in similar positions at other companies ripped off so badly. The fact that CEOs continue these high pay packages despite stockholder protests indicates that our system is not working the way it is supposed to.

Your quibling of representative versus direct democracy is nothing but obfuscation Tom. It is still democracy with government ultimately having to answer to majority opinion. The bill of rights was not part of the original constitution so it was not considered as fundamental to our union as democracy ipso facto. George Washington levied taxes so the idea that our founding fathers were against taxes has no basis in fact.

I was claiming our system does have a sense of fair play in it Tom making it superior to others. I was merely pointing out that even it still has failures so it is not perfect. The point was that pure capitalism is not so great without these principles added as they are in the US and that ours still has room for improvement. You idealize capitalism as if the purer the better and that is historically false. Just as the principle of appeasement has been shown to be an utter failure with tyrants. Apply history in all cases Tom, not just the ones you like.

Tom what you don't know about how big business really works for someone generally so well read sometimes amazes me. It does not amaze me however that so many of these space venture startups have failed considering the ignorance of basic investment principles so many seem to have. High risk requires high potential payback for most investors and even that is usually on a fairly short timescale of a few years. It's just not there in the minds of most people for space. You better have all the money you need lined up at the start from truly visionary and commited people or forget it. The normal capital markets are not going to be jumping at a chance to join.

Regards,
Mark

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