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Kochs Plan to Spend $900 Million on 2016 Campaign

ocean515 said:
....It's not for business to exist for the pleasure of it's employees. It is a fantasy to think that is true. It is a fantasy to think that kind of employment environment can be created. ....
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Businesses exist for the pleasure (or necessity) of the owners. If the owners are the employees, then the business exists for the pleasure of the employees. That is the case with many very small businesses and cooperatives. Forming worker-owned cooperatives is a way we can balance the need for adequate profit with the welfare of the workers. The difficult part is developing good processes for selecting the members and for making policy decisions.

One example: Photography company Lifetouch is 100% employee owned, has 25,000 employees and has been in business since 1977. (38 years)
The Employee Ownership 100: America's Largest Majority Employee-Owned Companies
 
Excon said:
You go right on ahead. No such right exists.
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I think you're missing that clean air is just another property right, and if rights to property exist, then so do rights to clean air. The only issue is defining where that right begins and ends.

You certainly can't set up shop next to my house and start burning items that produce poisonous gases. When you do that, you're infringing on the property rights of everyone downwind of you. But in most places you can burn wood in your fireplace....
 
Hard Truth said:
Yes, we should continue doing that and start requiring those standards (adjusted for differing costs of living of course) from those who import goods into the country. That has never been tried. Requiring adequate pay and safe conditions for all workers will reduce runaway shops, improve the quality of life for exploited workers around the world, and eliminate cheap labor as a competitive advantage for those who compete with the USA. We should also require meeting environmental standards to import goods into the USA.

Yes, we need to keep in mind that overly restrictive rules will result in more smuggling and a black market, so the regulations need to be realistic and phased in over time. To acheive this will require both legislation (which will be extremely difficult to acheive due to corporate dominance over our government) as well as an engaged public willing and able to use boycotts to motivate the profiteers to act like decent humans.
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What do you think the cost of living is in Thailand? What do you think it is in other countries where manufacturing is taking place? There will never be parity, no matter what is tried. How about domestically?

It's interesting you sliced out just one point you thought you could address.
 
Hard Truth said:
Businesses exist for the pleasure (or necessity) of the owners. If the owners are the employees, then the business exists for the pleasure of the employees. That is the case with many very small businesses and cooperatives. Forming worker-owned cooperatives is a way we can balance the need for adequate profit with the welfare of the workers. The difficult part is developing good processes for selecting the members and for making policy decisions.

One example: Photography company Lifetouch is 100% employee owned, has 25,000 employees and has been in business since 1977. (38 years)
The Employee Ownership 100: America's Largest Majority Employee-Owned Companies
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As your link illustrated, stock holders are owners too. And in many cases, they are also employees. Cooperatives exist, and have had limited success, but have failed in the majority of cases to carry on to a larger scale due to division of effort and vision conflicts.

ESOP's have been around a long time, so I'm not sure the point you're trying to make.
 
JasperL said:
I think you're missing that clean air is just another property right, and if rights to property exist, then so do rights to clean air. The only issue is defining where that right begins and ends.

You certainly can't set up shop next to my house and start burning items that produce poisonous gases. When you do that, you're infringing on the property rights of everyone downwind of you. But in most places you can burn wood in your fireplace....
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You are speaking to law. Not a "right".

Again.
No such "right" exists.
 
Excon said:
I see you fail to follow as has been said.
Figures.
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No, what I "follow" is that you're misstating the whole premise of property rights and how the air we breathe is a part of them.

If I have no "right" to breath clean air, you have an alternative right to pollute the air all you want. Of course that's not true, so the role of society is to balance our individual right to clean air (property) against the societal gains enjoyed when we allow some (changing) levels of air pollution.
 
JasperL said:
No, what I "follow" is that you're misstating the whole premise of property rights and how the air we breathe is a part of them.

If I have no "right" to breath clean air, you have an alternative right to pollute the air all you want. Of course that's not true, so the role of society is to balance our individual right to clean air (property) against the societal gains enjoyed when we allow some (changing) levels of air pollution.
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Wrong.

Again.
You are speaking to law. Not a "right".​

Again.
No such "right" exists.​

Again.
No such "right" to unpolluted air exists, nor could it as all air is naturally polluted to some extent.​
 
JANFU said:
And they do this due to their love for their country. Thoughts are?

Kochs Plan to Spend $900 Million on 2016 Campaign

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/u...lumn-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

The political network overseen by the conservative billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch plans to spend close to $900 million on the 2016 campaign, an unparalelled effort by outside groups to shape a presidential election that is already on track to be the most expensive in history.

The goal, revealed Monday at the Kochs’ annual winter donor retreat near Palm Springs, Calif., would effectively allow their political organization to operate at the same financial scale as the Democratic and Republican parties. In the last presidential election, the Republican National Committee and the party’s two congressional campaign committees spent a total of $657 million.
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I have no problem with this. Maybe it will help in getting one libertarian elected to congress.
 
jonny5 said:
I have no problem with this. Maybe it will help in getting one libertarian elected to congress.
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And if we get ONE Libertarian elected to Congress what committee would that person serve on and what significant change could that person make being one out of 435?
 
Excon said:
Wrong.

Again.
You are speaking to law. Not a "right".​

Again.
No such "right" exists.​

Again.
No such "right" to unpolluted air exists, nor could it as all air is naturally polluted to some extent.​
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I have read your arguments, and they consist of you saying something over and over as if that's proving a point.

Explain why property rights do NOT include the air we breath. If I have no right to clean air, do you have a right to pollute as you wish? If not, why not?
 
Excon said:
:lamo:doh:lamo
You go right on ahead. No such right exists.
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....among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...

"among these" means that these don't constitute a definitive list.

Where does anyone get the right to take clean air away from the rest of us?
 
Dittohead not! said:
....among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...

"among these" means that these don't constitute a definitive list.

Where does anyone get the right to take clean air away from the rest of us?
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Please explain to me why we have a State EPA AND a Federal EPA? You think the state EPA wants dirty air to breath? Doubt that any Federal Bureaucrat in D.C. is breathing any dirty air from your state.
 
Conservative said:
And if we get ONE Libertarian elected to Congress what committee would that person serve on and what significant change could that person make being one out of 435?
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They could submit legislation, they could rally the troops. If its in the Senate they would have more power. My point however was that all that money spent by the Kochs is a waste. They cant actually pay people to vote so the best they can do is make sure people they like show up on the ballot.
 
Conservative said:
Please explain to me why we have a State EPA AND a Federal EPA? You think the state EPA wants dirty air to breath? Doubt that any Federal Bureaucrat in D.C. is breathing any dirty air from your state.
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I'm not sure why there has to be a duplication of effort, but the fact of the matter is air circulates around the world. My dirty air is your dirty air.
 
jonny5 said:
They could submit legislation, they could rally the troops. If its in the Senate they would have more power. My point however was that all that money spent by the Kochs is a waste. They cant actually pay people to vote so the best they can do is make sure people they like show up on the ballot.
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and money doesn't sway elections and affect legislation? Really? How wonderful! We no longer have an oligarchy! Time to celebrate!
 
Conservative said:
Please explain to me why we have a State EPA AND a Federal EPA? You think the state EPA wants dirty air to breath? Doubt that any Federal Bureaucrat in D.C. is breathing any dirty air from your state.
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The reason we have a Federal EPA is because states weren't regulating pollution in many cases. Too easy to buy off the legislature and the Governor.

It's an example of something we see all the time. We do have cleaner air and water, thanks to decades of work by people committed to making that happen, and some fairly wide reaching laws regulating pollution on a national level. And now that the air and water is fairly clean, conservatives can pretend that the laws that, e.g. eliminated lead from gasoline, are no longer needed because the markets that failed before we had big government intervene and regulate pollution will work better next time, or this time the states won't compete for almighty JOBS! by offering the lowest common denominator environmental destination for industry.
 
ocean515 said:
As your link illustrated, stock holders are owners too. And in many cases, they are also employees. Cooperatives exist, and have had limited success, but have failed in the majority of cases to carry on to a larger scale due to division of effort and vision conflicts.

ESOP's have been around a long time, so I'm not sure the point you're trying to make.
Click to expand...

The point is that worker owned businesses are one method to create a better balance between worker's rights and needs and owner's desire for profits. I disagree with the statement "It is a fantasy to think that kind of employment environment can be created."

The plutocrats and their conservative allies constantly try to convince us that individual initiative is the only way to achieve a rewarding work life and that we need to accept the ups and downs of the global economy and corporate/plutocrat decisions. My point is that workers and others can organize, take action to create alternative business models and implement regulations so that workers aren't divided and conquered by plutocrats trying to maximize profits by sacrificing their employee's quality of life.
 
ocean515 said:
What do you think the cost of living is in Thailand? What do you think it is in other countries where manufacturing is taking place? There will never be parity, no matter what is tried. How about domestically?

It's interesting you sliced out just one point you thought you could address.
Click to expand...

Why are you convinced that requiring importers of goods into the USA to meet standards for adequate pay and safe conditions for all workers will fail? It has never been tried. We already successfully prohibit goods from certain nations for political reasons, we can make worker welfare and safety another reason to ban or limit imports from a particular country. There are already several voluntary/consumer inspired measures that have had some success. One example:

"Two big groups of retailers and apparel brands have completed a major step toward advancing garment-factory safety in Bangladesh: They have finished inspecting nearly 1,700 factories in that country.

A European-dominated group — the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, with 189 corporate members, including H&M and Carrefour — said on Tuesday that it had found more than 80,000 safety problems in the 1,106 factories it inspected.

The other — an American-dominated group, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety — completed inspections in July of the 587 factories that its 26 members, including Walmart, Gap and Target, use in that country.

The groups are working with Bangladeshi factory owners to promote safety and finance improvements, like fireproof doors or fire-sprinkler systems, that are required for garment factories 75 feet or taller in Bangladesh...."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/b...-1700-bangladesh-garment-factories-.html?_r=0
 
Excon said:
You are speaking to law. Not a "right".

Again.
No such "right" exists.
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There is no right to damage a vital resource shared by everyone by contaminating it.
 
Dittohead not! said:
I'm not sure why there has to be a duplication of effort, but the fact of the matter is air circulates around the world. My dirty air is your dirty air.
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But the most dirty air is coming out of D.C. and there is nothing the Federal Govt. can do to stop it, only the electorate can stop it and as Gruber stated many aren't very smart
 
JasperL said:
The reason we have a Federal EPA is because states weren't regulating pollution in many cases. Too easy to buy off the legislature and the Governor.

It's an example of something we see all the time. We do have cleaner air and water, thanks to decades of work by people committed to making that happen, and some fairly wide reaching laws regulating pollution on a national level. And now that the air and water is fairly clean, conservatives can pretend that the laws that, e.g. eliminated lead from gasoline, are no longer needed because the markets that failed before we had big government intervene and regulate pollution will work better next time, or this time the states won't compete for almighty JOBS! by offering the lowest common denominator environmental destination for industry.
Click to expand...

You mean to Federal bureaucrat standards. You really think that a Federal bureaucrat cares about dirty air more than the people of the state that breathe it? If the states aren't regulating it, then why are the people of the state condoning it? What makes you think a Federal Bureaucrat gives a damn?
 
Hard Truth said:
The point is that worker owned businesses are one method to create a better balance between worker's rights and needs and owner's desire for profits. I disagree with the statement "It is a fantasy to think that kind of employment environment can be created."

The plutocrats and their conservative allies constantly try to convince us that individual initiative is the only way to achieve a rewarding work life and that we need to accept the ups and downs of the global economy and corporate/plutocrat decisions. My point is that workers and others can organize, take action to create alternative business models and implement regulations so that workers aren't divided and conquered by plutocrats trying to maximize profits by sacrificing their employee's quality of life.
Click to expand...

And in some magical way, these worker owned businesses are going to avoid the ups and downs of the economy? I can't imagine what type of regulations could be adopted and forced upon the economy that would protect this "model" you are describing. At no time in human history has such a thing taken place on any grand scale, and for any significant length of time, at least that I am aware of.
 
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