Threads, Cars, Ships, Planes, Companies and Countries

[Xerographica]

I posted a reply to this thread... Semi-Socialist Corporations. Csbrown28 replied to my reply with the following...

The problem with your theory is that different people value their money differently.

Let's say there was a billionaire on board of the Titanic, who thought more of his knowledge then he really possessed. Given his volume of money, what's $50K? But to the expert, who might be a teacher making a modest salary, he may be willing to bet his life, but not be willing or even capable of parting with more than a few hundred dollars. To make matters worse, many people who know the billionaire are offered certain favors if they use their money to vote in his favor or assume that given his money he could be an expert and follow his lead.

Yours is an interesting theory, but like most of the stuff you come up with it makes too many assumptions about the way the world is in order to get predictable results. It might have worked if each person was of equal knowledge, equal money and even valued their lives equally.

I felt that my reply to his reply might hijack the thread... so I decided to start a new thread.

The Titanic wasn't hijacked... but if it had been then the outcome might have been the same. The planes that flew into the World Trade center were hijacked. What about Nazi Germany? Would it be reasonable to argue that Hitler hijacked Germany?

If countries can be hijacked... then I'm sure that companies can be hijacked as well. Can anybody think of any companies that have been hijacked?

Personally... the closest that I've ever come to being seriously hijacked happened many years ago when I was in a van returning to campus. The van had around 10 other college students and it was driven by a student worker. We were driving down a residential street when the van started to pick up speed. Which didn't make sense because we were heading straight for a T-section with a red light. On the other side of the red light was a curb, the sidewalk, a relatively short stretch of grass and the school library. People in the van started shouting to the driver to slow down but he kept speeding up. The van went faster and faster until it flew through the intersection... went over the curb and onto the grass. Fortunately... the van didn't flip... and it stopped before hitting the library. We were all thoroughly shaken but nobody was seriously injured. Nothing seemed obviously wrong with the driver... and I don't remember exactly what the official explanation was.

The driver's judgement quickly went from moderately decent to extremely poor. If there had been some emergency brake that I could have pulled or pushed then I definitely would have done so with all my might. And I'm sure that the other passengers would have done the same thing.

From your perspective... our country already has an emergency brake... voting. If enough people are scared that their leaders are showing extremely poor judgement... then they can simply vote for new leaders. But from my perspective... voting isn't nearly adequate at taking control away from leaders with extremely poor judgement.

1. You have to wait to vote. In the van it really wouldn't have made sense to wait a year... or a month... or a week... or a day... or even an hour... to vote for a new driver.

2. You have to depend on the majority agreeing with your judgement. If, for whatever reasons, some people on the van hadn't agreed that something was terribly wrong... then it wouldn't make sense to prevent those who did agree from doing something about it.

I think all of us would agree that the Jews should have been completely free to leave Germany as soon as they suspected that something was wrong. It definitely would have been detrimental if the Jews had been forced to reach any sort of consensus before any of them could leave.

But where we disagree is whether the Jews should have had the freedom to directly allocate their taxes as soon as they suspected that something was wrong. You agree that Jews should have had the freedom to remove all their money from Germany... but you disagree that Jews should have had the freedom to remove all their money from the parts of Germany that scared them the most.

If Jews did have the freedom to directly allocate their taxes then this would have given them more control over Germany's direction. The more control that the Jews had over Germany's direction... the less control that the Nazis would have had over Germany's direction. From my perspective... if German taxpayers had been free to directly allocate their taxes before the point of no return... then this would have averted WWII and the Holocaust.