Top Mud Sites Forum Return to TopMudSites.com
Go Back   Top Mud Sites Forum > MUD Players and General Discussion > Tavern of the Blue Hand
Click here to Register

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 10-30-2004, 12:20 PM   #21
John
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 252
John is on a distinguished road
John is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2004, 02:42 PM   #22
shadowfyr
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 310
shadowfyr will become famous soon enough
Yep. Exactly the problem. You can't simply agree or disagree with many of them. At least not unless you are someone that does have an absolute view and doesn't want to see the bigger picture. There are people like that sadly, you find them among any group advocating some cause and are the ones that quite happily pick a few lines out of a book to emphasize their point, probably because they didn't understand the rest of the book and the fact that it contradicts their basic premise simply goes over their heads. At least one hopes so, since the alternative is that they are so deluded by their own fantasies that they will intentionally lie and misrepresent other peoples views for the cause. Of course, some are just dumb and repeat the nonsense babbled by these types. In any case, in any crowd you get:

1. People whose opinions are formed from everyone else's opinion, since they don't bother to form one directly themselves.

2. People that form opinions about the world, then bend twist and distort reality to fit that image.

3. People whose opinions change every five minutes, the moment something more impressive gets presented to them.

4. People who try their best to learn the fact and track down the sources behind their own sources, so they can form an opinion based on reality, instead of just endlessly repeating everyone else's views.

Of the four, the last is the most difficult, so guess what groups a lot of people end up in... Of course everyone likely falls to some extent into all those categories, just some more than others. As someone commenting on a handful of members of the scientific community once said, more or less, "It doesn't matter how smart or educated you are, if you decide to believe in nonsense, then all the careful and considered rules nad standards you apply to the rest of your life are automatically ignored when judging the validity of the basic idea behind the nonsense you have chosen to believe." In other words, human nature only demands proof of things we are uncertain of. This is why you get otherwise briliant people, who work on say quantum physics, who never the less ignore all contrary evidence or experiments that fail to prove it, but insist on believing the Loch Ness Monster actually exists. When we are convinced we are right, we can't even see the smaller picture clearly, let alone the big one. This is why people that actually can aswer yes or no to some of these questions without some moment of uncertainty tend to scare me a little.

Oh.. And I tend to think leaving companies alone to do what they want is a good idea, *but* when they where allowed to do so they often ignored safety, stoled from each other, produced stuff that was even poorer quality than they do already, became involved with anti-competitive practices, etc. The music and movie industries have, with the minor exception of ratings, been more or less allowed to do anything they like. Now they are in the position of trying to pass laws like the DMCA and Induce that let them tell other companies what product they should be allowed to make, based on their own complete self interest. They claim that they would never use this sort of legislation to prevent other companies from making things like iPods, etc., but Lexmark has already tried to use the DMCA to prevent another company from making ink catridges that work in Lexmrk printers. Some interference is 100% needed, even if we would prefer that it wasn't. Basic psychology - People in a group can convince each other to do things that are irrational, dangerous and immoral, even if they would be horrified by the idea by themselves or condemn it if done by another group. Guess what corporations are? Yep, a group of people convinced that what it best for them financially is automatically a good idea and who when discussing the business are about 0.0000001% likely to be thinking about other companies or individuals. When more than one person becomes involved it isn't about the greater good anymore, it becomes one of territory held by the group. Most companies don't encourage anyone to think outside the cave, if you get my meaning.

So, even if the question had been stated as, "Do you believe the government should interfere with business or they should be allowed to do what they want?", the right answer can only be one of the following: "neither", "both" or "it depends", none of which is a satisfactory answer, since it can't tell you why the person chose the answer or where their actual limits are.
shadowfyr is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2004, 06:10 PM   #23
Andhrimner
New Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Posts: 3
Andhrimner is on a distinguished road
Ok, I think I understand what you are thinking of now. Might have been a little to quick to draw conclusions.
But in these cases, i would say that its not the answer options that are wrong but the questions. And to be honest, didnt really look at those questions in the way that I should have so i kind of overlooked that (read sorry).

And the question you asked earlier, say if one did beat-up someone, would one then answer that one on a questionare? Well, in most cases one would say that one would answer N/A if given the chance.

And what Im trying to say is that, if you have an middle answer, then you will get an unproportionate freqvency on that option. (and for the record, i did check in a book of mine, and in that one there is a "uncertain" option so i guess im going to withdraw on this subject (Graziano, 2000, p.142))

Graziano, A.M., Raulin, M.L. (2000). Research methods. A process of inquiry, 4th ed. Allyn and bacon. USA
Andhrimner is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2004, 06:30 PM   #24
Yui Unifex
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Florida
Posts: 323
Yui Unifex is on a distinguished road
Send a message via ICQ to Yui Unifex Send a message via AIM to Yui Unifex
Question

I don't think intereference is justified at all. The fact that people in general are easily convinced to do stupid things does not justify the moral bankruptcy of hypocritical nanny states.
Yui Unifex is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-31-2004, 03:09 AM   #25
the_logos
Legend
 
the_logos's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Mill Valley, California
Posts: 2,305
the_logos will become famous soon enough
Hey, that sounds a lot like all governments to me. They can do what they want for the most part, often ignore safety (and, unlike most corporations, actively seek to slaughter many many people sometimes), steal from their citizens, are incompetent at just about everything, generally -mandate- (by threat of physical violence) that no competition is allowed to exist within a geographical area (ie competing governments are not allowed...only subservient ones in the form of subservient goverments like state or city governments). Heck, even Enron doesn't look too bad to me compared to most governments. At least Enron didn't cause the Holocaust or murder 25-50 million Russians during Stalin's purges.
the_logos is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-31-2004, 05:02 PM   #26
shadowfyr
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 310
shadowfyr will become famous soon enough
Actually.. Ironically that is my point. Yes, companies have a board of directors, yes they usually have some system in place to determine course and direction. But unless you are living in China or some other non-democratic system, there are rules that even the government must follow. Businesses can create some internal rules of the sort, but they will only create the ones they think they need. Government intervention is all too often needed because the companies don't have checks and balances. There is no rule that says the board of directors can't fire someone that loses them money, even if that person did it to prevent the serious injury of other people. There is no checks and balances, no system to make sure people make the right decisions or act in a non-destructive way. No rules mandating internal organization that are dedicated to even making sure that what the board of directors are hearing is the truth. You need someone outside of the company to examine records and determine that, yes someone 20 levels below them has been lying and actually saved money by dumping toxic waste illegally, instead of paying for legitimate disposal. Democracies don't trust 'anyone' to do their job without someone looking over their shoulder. Companies often can't or won't look far enough over the shoulder of the people below the top that they can see what is really going on and the people at the top are completely unchecked, except when the shareholders notice them losing money. If they make money, most of the shareholders are never even going to question where it is coming from or what the board is doing. There are no true checks an balances within many companies, so it falls to the government to protect the interests of society in general to provide those. The idea that the thousands of cases where regulations get passed, precisely because companies fail to police themselves, can be ignored in favor of some delusion that everything will all just work out in the end it just that - delusional.

Put simply, we tried it your way and people got hurt and even killed because companies refused to consider society over their own pocket books. They lost any right to go unchecked when they made that choice, so now we don't trust them any more than we trust the government without proper oversight. Yes, in some cases the oversight may be unreasonable, but you only have to look at how many times Microsoft has gotten sued and lost or the tactics of SCO to try to steal something they still can't prove they ever owned, by simply claiming they do own it, to see that in some areas it is also not good enough.
shadowfyr is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-31-2004, 09:16 PM   #27
Yui Unifex
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Florida
Posts: 323
Yui Unifex is on a distinguished road
Send a message via ICQ to Yui Unifex Send a message via AIM to Yui Unifex
Question

Let me first state that I'm not against laws that make infringing the rights of others a crime.

And there shouldn't ever be such a rule. Your goals which seemingly require the creation of a nanny state can be reached by penalizing those that infringe upon the rights of others such that it is enough of a deterrence not to do it. If your complaint is that the penalty is not high enough, you don't need to create such a broken system to patch it. Fix the real problem instead of making even more of a mess with a morally bankrupt system.

If they're already doing something illegal, what makes you think they won't just disregard the new laws you pull out of your magic hat?
Yui Unifex is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-01-2004, 12:09 PM   #28
the_logos
Legend
 
the_logos's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Mill Valley, California
Posts: 2,305
the_logos will become famous soon enough
the_logos is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-01-2004, 02:50 PM   #29
shadowfyr
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 310
shadowfyr will become famous soon enough
shadowfyr is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-01-2004, 05:22 PM   #30
Yui Unifex
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Florida
Posts: 323
Yui Unifex is on a distinguished road
Send a message via ICQ to Yui Unifex Send a message via AIM to Yui Unifex
I'm outright saying that your arguments were bad and do not or inadequately address the problem. Your only reaction was to reiterate that historically certain problems were present. You never actually make the connection that my argument is just as applicable to those times as it is now with your proposed non-solutions.

If you're just going to repeat the same tripe without actually addressing my arguments, we're through.
Yui Unifex is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-02-2004, 04:22 PM   #31
shadowfyr
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 310
shadowfyr will become famous soon enough
What arguements? The only things you have said is: "I don't think interference is justified" and you said no company should have to have a rule that says you can't fire someone for no good reason.

The first in unsupportable. The second is.... questionable, since I was trying to compare the kind of power and influence held by companies with governments, which unless you are appointed like a presidential cabinet member, requires a trial of some sort to determine if what was done was actually inappropriate. All I am saying is that companies have no internal checks and balances, not that some of the more idiotic ones imposed from the outside are not questionable.

As for real issue I would like to see fixed, lets start with patents... They where originally come up with as a way to protect small companies from losing profit off and idea, due to someone else stealing it. Now you can patent stuff without even having a product that works or even anything remotely tangible. All you need is an idea and a lawyer that can make it sound convincingly limited enough that it isn't immediately obvious how many people are probably going to get sued for accidentally infringing (or just never go into business for fear of having it happen). It has become a tool for big companies to shove everyone else out of the way instead.

If you mean we don't need more laws then I maybe agree, but we need to repair the mess we do have, without shooting ourselves in the foot in the process. Right now if you are big enough, you can operate with almost total impunity in the business world, even when you do infringe on everyone else, because all you have to do is agree to pay out a bunch of pocket change (and do it in a way that gives you free advertising), not actually stop doing whatever you got sued for.
shadowfyr is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-02-2004, 04:40 PM   #32
Yui Unifex
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Florida
Posts: 323
Yui Unifex is on a distinguished road
Send a message via ICQ to Yui Unifex Send a message via AIM to Yui Unifex
You missed a few, let's review:
So you've clearly missed a great deal of what I've said. Now let's get into the meat of your response:
Hey, the ball's in your court. Why isn't it supportable?

And yet you don't provide any questions. You do provide a piece of supporting evidence but do not draw any conclusions or invalidate my argument with it:
No, this is completely wrong. How do you know they don't have internal checks and balances? Do you really think your blanket statements affect everybody in the US? Do you think that you could possibly create a blanket law that would make it so everyone is treated fairly without favoring large corporations and armies of lawyers that are knowledgable enough to sift through the ton of laws and ambiguous wording that you might propose to rectify the situation? Do you think that this considerable loss of freedom is outweighed by the benefit of the consequence? Do you think this even though a great deal of the people effected do not have utilitarian moral philosophies? You never even provide a motiviation for your desired consequences, and yet you want to impose this loss of freedom on those of us who enjoy it and purposely avoid your shackles?
Yui Unifex is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-03-2004, 09:19 PM   #33
shadowfyr
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 310
shadowfyr will become famous soon enough
Ok. Not to be picky or anything, but you can't claim that it is acceptable to interfere in any way if a company infringes on someone else's rights, then claim that interference is not justified. That is why it isn't a supportable position. If this isn't what you meant, then try to do what politicians constanly fail at and mare clear statements, instead of blanket statementst that contradict themselves.

I think the second is questionable because it implies the ability to act arbitrarilly. You want questions - What if the money lost would have been 50 times as much if they didn't do it, but the board doesn't want to hear that? What if the problem avoided was morally reprehensible, but the board didn't even know it was happening and the person that informs them lies, so they refuse to even hear the explainations? And so on. People that are completely focused on their own cause rarely if ever pay attention to people telling them things they don't want to hear and the customers, even if they find out, don't have a way to vote the board out of office, or necessarilly have other options. What for example do you do as a customer if the local phone company lies to you or acts inappropriately, but you are not living in some big city where you can simply switch over to someone else? Cable companies are a bit like that already. You 'may' have an option for someone else or you might not, but most options cut you off from the local programs you didn't want to lose and the cable companies have fought tooth and nail to prevent that option from ever being available through anyone else.

And yeah, companies problem have internal checks and balances in many cases. Maybe I ma just unlucky and have worked at -

1. One that I got fired because they believed one lady that hated my mother, but didn't bother to actually talk to my supervisor. Didn't find this out until months later and this was a K-Mart, so you would 'think' it would have some decent corporate policies.

2. One whose owner's own kids stoled millions from (and nearly bankrupted), lost their only computer tech by ****ing him off (he left with all the passwords and source code, so the system couldn't even boot) and had no internal policies for doing anything in a rational fashion, let alone wit thought for cost or actual expertise. After firing the entire staff in the weld shop, to save money, the one guy still there used up all the materials available (much of it for his own personal profit), didn't reorder and now they are spending 2-3 times as much to contract out to the same people they fired to save them money.

3. One whose attitude about workers was, "We can replace you, so don't even complain about anything. And by the way, I want you to load that trailer over there that was last shipping pesticides, even though it isn't washed out, I am going to go have a $500 lunch now, have fun." It took ten minutes for someone to explain to the idiot that it wasn't legal to have someone load the trailer.

4. There is the one someone else worked at, who thought it was a great idea to call in two employees on their day off and have them pull all the funiture out of the store to save it from the sprinkler system. This was without overtime or any pay *and* they where told, "Do this or else you are fired."

Maybe I just have horribly bad luck, but I hae yet to work anyplace that the managers didn't care more about their own asses than the employees (or even sometimes the customers) and in some cases, like the third one I mentioned, the problem went all the way up the ladder to the guy that owned the entire company and its subsidiaries. This leaves me a tad biased about just how much worse some of these palces would be if some external rules didn't exist to provide at least minimum protections for the employees. As with most things, if you never experience the level of greed, incompetence and stupidity shown by some businesses, it is a bit hard to comment on how little or much regulation is reasonable.
shadowfyr is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-03-2004, 10:02 PM   #34
Yui Unifex
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Florida
Posts: 323
Yui Unifex is on a distinguished road
Send a message via ICQ to Yui Unifex Send a message via AIM to Yui Unifex
Question

Sure I can. I think you are confused by my simplified statement about non-interference. It does not mean non-interference in all cases without exception, as that would allow anyone to murder anyone else without interference. My point is that by infringing upon someone else's rights, the company is performing some interference that justifies some amount of interference in return.

There is no right to be given a reason when a company no longer requires the services of an employee, therefore nothing was infringed and no interference is justified.

Sorry, I don't waste my time qualifying unless there's a dispute over meaning. Usually this takes the form of some fool assuming something and running with a ridiculous argument instead of requesting clarification on the contested point.

Uh, OK. Who cares if people act arbitrarily or not? Are horoscopes arbitrary? Definitely, and people believe them and follow their advice every day. Does that mean we can question their freedom to follow the advice of horoscopes? Absolutely not. I find your premise for argument to be extremely silly.

They can do whatever they want. If they want to make more or less money, it's none of my or your business unless it infringes upon our rights.

It's not against the law to be morally reprehensible, nor is it the function of the law to set standards on morality. But if you want to set standards on morality, I suppose you agree with the US ban on homosexual marriage and the continued war on drugs. If you think that your standards on morality are the only ones that should apply, I'd like to inform you that it doesn't quite work that way in the real world. As soon as you start legistlating my morality, you leave yourself completely open to others doing the same to you.

Now we're talking government-legislated monopolies (or the idiotic attempts at deregulation.) The same rules do not apply because they are mandated by the government. The public gives the government that mandate, and therefore the public is who they should answer to.

In the case of a private business, things are obviously different.

You should try small business or self-employment. You don't tend to worry about your boss when you are your boss.
Yui Unifex is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-03-2004, 11:17 PM   #35
Traithe
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Name: Kite
Posts: 131
Traithe is on a distinguished road
Traithe is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2004, 07:25 AM   #36
Yui Unifex
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Florida
Posts: 323
Yui Unifex is on a distinguished road
Send a message via ICQ to Yui Unifex Send a message via AIM to Yui Unifex
Question

I know very well that the legal system currently legislates morality. That's how we get into the deepest legal messes. My point is that it shouldn't legislate morality. Sorry for the confusion.

Of course they're based on a moralistic framework. Any non-arbitrary system dealing with this sort of thing must be. But I believe it shouldn't dictate those morals back onto its populace, and it should recognize that each individual has their own moral system for making decisions and not play favors. There are plenty of moral philosophies that adequately provide for just this end. Absolutist systems such as the one we're currently founded upon do not: They leave us open to the examples I mentioned above precisely because the moral foundation is so poor when dealing with a heterogeneous society.

I would agree, but raise you other general rights such as property as well. It fits very well with the philosophy I've expounded about because the basis for criminal law is completely justified due to the initiation of force from the criminal party.
Yui Unifex is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2004, 04:36 PM   #37
Lanthum
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Suburbs of Chicago
Posts: 138
Lanthum is on a distinguished road
Send a message via MSN to Lanthum
I'll preface what I'm about to say with:

Economic Left/Right: -3.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.74


You can't have laws without enforcing a set of morals
You can't have justice without enforcing a set of laws
You can't have peace without complete justice

Like it or not, any other system is doomed to fail eventually.
Lanthum is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-04-2004, 08:12 PM   #38
shadowfyr
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 310
shadowfyr will become famous soon enough
Well, I guess when I hear non-interference I tend to think it it a bit more literal and complete than what you implied. Sorry about that.

As for the statement about moral reprehensibility. Take a good look at the law books some time, near everything in them is about morals. Even the idea that you should not be allowed to kill or harm someone else is a moral issue and not 100% supported by simple biology. In fact, we often act more on that biologic basis than on the moral one, finding it acceptable to hurt or even kill someone sufficiently different than us than treat them as equal. Though, more often it is to hurt them, call them names or discredit them in the eyes of other people we already know agree with us. Most of the changes in our society has been a result of the simple statement that this is pointless, stupid and we have no innate greater value than someone else. However, the fact is we are still territorial, even if we now define that territory more in terms of our beliefs and reality we personally think we are living in. For some that reality is one in which a magic book tells them right and wrong and naturalists are immoral monsters, ready to suddenly grow fangs and pounce on the innocent at a moments notice. Heck, half the people running for office in this election babbled that kind of idiocy as one of the main points why we should trust Republicans more than those horrible liberals and all the naturalist lurking among them. lol

Frankly, I don't actually think that if we both sat down and went over all the BS companies have to deal with that we would totally disagree. I do think regulation is only really necessary in some cases where the result of waiting for someone to do something wrong, before punishing them, is meaningless if you don't have some method to know when they have or are planning to do so "before" people get hurt Who cares if the company that builds a five story building is punished so bad it goes banrupt when it falls down if there was no requirement in place to inspect it and make sure it didn't collapse and kill 500 people in the first place.

Should we have more say in what get mandated, yes (and not the kind of say that apparently mandates the current president to push the very ideas you mention above). Should we wait around for obvious things we can predict to go wrong, then fix it? No way. Should the courts make that judgement.... The don't usually, a jury does, but I find it disturbing that you can be found in contempt if you try to make sure the jury knows it has the right to decide if the law itself is even just or appropriately applied, instead of just returning a result based on the evidence. It is a bloody complicated mess, more so since Congress and our other 'elected' officials often act on their own interests and ignore the public. This of course causes the public to not pay as much attention and after a while they ignore us all together, since 90% of their mail comes from the nuts on the fringe. And so you have an even bigger mess. Businesses and how much autonomy they do or should have is only the often most noticable part of the morass of conflicting goals that make the system what it is.
shadowfyr is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 02:47 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Style based on a design by Essilor
Copyright Top Mud Sites.com 2022