Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

[macdoc]

Hehe

[Brian Peacock]

There was a sharp intake of breath last month when the pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca cemented chief executive Pascal Soriot’s position as the best-paid FTSE 100 boss with a £17m pay package, up from £15.3m a year earlier. The latest award brings to £137m the amount he has earned since joining in 2012.

While it drew the anger of corporate governance experts, Soriot’s generous payout was just a fraction of the sums his counterparts at the biggest US companies take home. Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, stands as the highest-earning boss on the US-based S&P 500, with a $226m pay packet in 2022.

That gulf has fuelled fears over London’s ability to attract and retain global talent, and been used to strengthen boardroom calls to boost executive pay to compete with Wall Street-level salaries...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... lions-more

[Strontium Dog]

So Pascal Soriot gets paid half as much for running a $100bn company as Steph Curry gets for paddling a basketball around a court.

[macdoc]

Steve Jobs got paid a salary of $1 a year and remains the only person to make a billion in stock options in two different industries.
Great risk, great reward.....CEOs earning big bucks in salary don't deserve praise IMNSHO...

[macdoc]

One area that capitalism as a methodology has no place.

England’s ludicrous experiment in privatised water is coming to a messy end
Adam Almeida

If Thames Water collapses in the weeks ahead, there is only one smart, long-term response: public ownership

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -ownership

[Brian Peacock]

What other things do you think should be nationalised mac? Energy? Telecoms? Rail? Mail? Health? Education? Housing? Food?

[JimC]

What other things do you think should be nationalised mac? Energy? Telecoms? Rail? Mail? Health? Education? Housing? Food?

Sometimes there are hybrid arrangements rather than complete nationalisation or complete privately owned. Rail is an example - the network could be government owned, with tenders for companies to run a particular rail service (something like that happens here). Mail should of course be government run, though there is still room for parcel delivery companies. There should always be robust and well funded national health and education services, but there is room for private versions to operate on the side. Housing again would be a mixture. Telecoms and food are probably not good examples for nationalisation.

[macdoc]

What he said.
There are a number of categories that paired social structure and private structure co-exist and can compliment each other.
Healthcare in Oz is mixed and seems to work, same in Switzerland.
Education can only work in my view if the private systems are not parasites on the public system and MUST adhere to the core curriculum
Water is obvious.
I do think nationalizing energy resources has worked well for most nations .
Postal service ....yeah because it's never cost effective to reach the outer edges but it is a social cohesion needed for the nation.
I'd almost add in mandatory bus service for remote communities ....you want the fat routes...you have to take the lean ones too.
I'd be fine with nationalized banks and insurance companies....fuckers are leeches and don't deserve the legislative protections they get.
Airwaves/licences should be and are nationalized.

Mixed economies are just that with social and private opportunities.

Canada had the chance nationalize energy in the 70s as Norway did ....Canada fucked up ...Norway did not.
Now Canada is left with billions of dollars in clean up costs and not much in Alberta to show for the give away.

Even things like publishing and food requires oversight with teeth to prevent concentration in a sector.

Parks and roads are generally better with government ownership.'

Military should NOT be privately owned.

For some nations permanent ownership of ocean, beach, river front is very beneficial with long term leases to allow private development.

I do view England as the worst of predatory capitalism exploiting both the gov funding AND the people they serve.
Ireland and Scotland should secede.

[JimC]

Wow, mac, you think more areas should be nationalised than I thought you would!

I thoroughly agree with this:

Education can only work in my view if the private systems are not parasites on the public system and MUST adhere to the core curriculum

Too many wealthy non-government schools (often religious) on Oz are given government money, and the hard-core religious schools have science-denying curricula.

Perhaps the key areas that probably work better without being nationalising (although they need robust legislative controls in places) are farming, the manufacturing industry, retail and all the varieties of service industries.

But nationalising the banks and insurance companies?

We'll have to call you Red mac!

[macdoc]

In Canada we have several provinces with publicly own insurance for vehicles..they invariably have lower premiums and better coverage.
The insurance business is covered by extensive legislation that they regularly ignore.

As for banking ...the evidence of malfeasance is long and dire - Australia had that commission exposing them and it was just a woefully litany of criminal and/or unethical treatment of Australians.
This might be an interesting read for you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_bank

In the May 1949 issue of the Monthly Review titled "Why Socialism?", Albert Einstein wrote of a broad definition involving economic planning:[29]
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate [the] grave evils [of capitalism], namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.
Others have proposed cooperatives as a specific solution of socialization in both command economies[30] and market economies.[31][32]

some reading here as well
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_ownership

notable

Public ownership can exist both within the framework of a market economy and within the framework of a non-market planned economy.

My biggest beef with anything on a massive scale is to protect individual rights and in that regard Ayn Rand and I agree.

Have you read it??

Intellectual property belongs to the creator and can only be assigned away ( as in the case of insulin) by that inventor

[pErvinalia]

Communist! Ahh I mean libertarian!

[macdoc]

Yep - not a commie but a mix of libertarian and socialist.
Don't think communism is viable at all tho some Indian states have embraced it.
The Nordics get it mostly correct.

[L'Emmerdeur]

US-centric video-- I don't know that any other countries have adopted 'corporate personhood' as a principle of their jurisprudence. As the video explains, 'corporate personhood' almost always applies only when it's advantageous for the actual people behind the corporation.

[macdoc]

Artful dodge ...part of the abuse

[Brian Peacock]

Another candidate for nationalisation imo is Pharma - at least for essential medical supplies, like fluids, dressings, analgesia and anaesthetics, diagnostic and monitoring equipment, and off licence drugs production. Medical IP laws needs to be re-prioritised away from corporate bottom line and towards the social good. Adult social care and early-years care are also vital socially-cohering services, along with waste management and recycling, and the production of basic food stuffs.