WS,
I have stayed within the context of the OP - “Personal responsibility or avoiding personal responsibility” - the purpose of the corporate form is to avoid personal responsibility.
Since I’ve pledged to avoid a minimum wage hijack, I’ve started a related thread in IMHO.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21772560&postcount=1
If you’re uninterested in this side thread, I have no objection to the moderators closing it.
The issue posed by the OP is:
“…“personal responsibility” as a value cannot be disconnected from the racist history of a society. It’s very clear that a moral wrong was committed;… and that many residents who benefited and continue to benefit from that moral wrong feel that they didn’t inherit any responsibility in correcting that moral wrong under the guise of personal responsibility.”
So, the OP asks if the term ‘personal responsibility’ as used by conservatives is just a trope to avoid a civic responsibility to an underclass that was created by a racist history that benefits us all?
Yes - in my view avoiding personal responsibility is basic to the Conservative political philosophy.
Yes, that’s true, but please explain why in terms of funding ship voyages, or any other economic enterprise that involves distribution of risk, how the positives of limiting risk and encouraging investment is a negative. Also, note that if you’re requiring personal liability for an investment, you’re acting as a huge brake on investment. I might be happy to invest £1000 in a ship’s voyage, knowing that if the voyage fails, I’ve lost my £1000. However, if I have to ensure I’m covered for voyage failure, crew injuries, etc., I’m going to be much less likely to take that risk. Under the corporate model, the responsibility for risky decisions hits the people actually making the decisions - in other words the people who have actual personal liability. Granted, they may not actually be able to pay for their bad decisions. But if I’m facing unlimited liabilities for my £1000 investment, then me and every other investor are having to assess the risk of unlimited liability, and there’s a very reduced amount of investment going on. Again, 400+ years of history has shown the value of being able to make investments where the investors liability is limited to the value of the investment.
Incorporation is perfectly in line with personal responsibility. When an individual transacts with a corporation, the liability status of individuals in the corporation is implicit in the transaction. Nobody expects Colonel Sanders to hand them the chicken. When Colonel Sanders pays someone to cook a chicken, he is transferring much of that responsibility to the worker, just as I could transfer the responsibility to mow my grass to someone else without violating the principle of personal responsibility.
“Accountable” to whom? Stockholders are not held accountable for investing in bad companies?
WS, you keep arguing that shielding individuals from liability is a good and even necessary thing in some circumstances but you haven’t explained why it isn’t contrary to the idea of personal responsibility. Is your argument that personal responsibility is still a conservative value despite this exception that’s made for good cause, or are you trying to say corporations are somehow still about personal responsibility?
Financially unsuccessful companies, to some extent yes. Morally bad companies? Can you give an example of stockholders being held accountable for that?
With regards to ownership, corporations are not about personal responsibility. The owners are at risk of losing their investment, but unless they are involved in the decision making of the corporation, they aren’t liable for the bad actions of the corporation. I think this is a necessary feature of capitalism. It’s definitely a structure that protects the wealthy. But society as a whole benefits when investment is enabled. However, limiting the risk of owners is different from protecting decision makers within a corporation, which includes the board of directors. Those people should be personally responsible for their actions, and shouldn’t be allowed to blame the corporation or society for their bad acts.
For a recent example, look at the Volkswagen emissions scandal. Volkswagen shareholders shouldn’t be subject to lawsuit because Volkswagen engineers and leadership rigged their cars’ exhaust systems. If shareholders were liable, you’d have fewer people investing in car companies. Maybe that’s not so bad for diesel, electric cars aren’t risk free either. I want there to be investment in the next generation of electrical cars. If a collection of executives knowingly release a battery with a hazardous flaw, then absolutely hold each of them responsible, both civilly and criminally. If the consequences cause the company to go bankrupt, then the investors lose the money they put into the corporation, which isn’t a small thing.
but the same conservatives do not apply “personal responsibility” when banks default due to their bad decisions, then it’s okay for “welfare” for businesses
You’re referencing the 2007-2008 Financial Crisis, correct? You are aware that many banks did go bankrupt, and many others were partially taken over by governments in exchange for funds to provide liquidity? That thousands of people lost their jobs and millions of investors lost their investment? Pretty much everyone that was involved with the troubled banks suffered financial consequences. On top of that, the US government fined banks $150 billion. (Ten years on: The financial crisis in numbers | The Week) What do you want - blood?
Your “welfare for businesses” was worldwide government interventions to save the banking systems that are a lynchpin of the modern economy. Those interventions, and the actions necessary to restore liquidity, cost the banks and their owners huge amounts. You can make the argument that banks were inadequately regulated before the crash and should have had tighter lending policies. Of course if that had happened, you’d be complaining about conservative-led banks refusing to lend to the poor.
WS,
Of course there is an argument in favor of the financial benefits of the corporate form. But, that is not the issue under discussion. Can you argue that incorporation does not shield participants from personal responsibility?
Scylla,
If personal responsibility is limited to supporting ones self and family then is the society obligated to provide an environment in which it can be done?
How do you determine this? Are you looking only for people that can hit the ground running and help SpaceX get its next rocket into orbit, or are we talking about people with potential? Do children make a net positive contribution?
I would say that the overwhelming majority of those who want to come here and make a better life for themselves and their families will be net positive contributors, and in fact, immigrants tend to contribute to the economy more than native born. So, if your only desire is to get people in here who will be contributors, than your best bet is to outlaw reproduction of citizens and get as many immigrants here as you can.
That’s up in the air, but any legal immigration that he wants is based on racist ideals, not based on who would make a net positive contribution to our society.
This addresses nothing that I have said. I talked about helping those less fortunate, which includes, and in my statement was only referring to, your fellow citizens. I have no idea why you chose to throw in your stuff about non-citizens, and then without missing a beat, then conflate non-citizens with the soft slur of “illegals”.
Yep, unfortunately, those we need are currently sitting in a detention center wondering if they will ever see their children again.
This may surprise you, but people need a living wage in order to you know, live. Sure, I agree that not all jobs can or should, but jobs should be available that do. If there are no jobs that one can obtain that pay a living wage, then the job market has failed at its job.
If they have access to the resources to fully understand and implement their decisions, which they do not, which is why your theory here utterly fails in the real world.
Labor is not a service like any other good or service. In fact, labor is not considered by economists to be a good or a service, but rather, an input into goods and services. Do you also consider rent and capital to also be no different than other goods and services?
Tell you what, you said you had economics friends, you ask them your question of “People own their own labor and can sell it as they see fit. If it was not a living wage, wouldn’t they go elsewhere, thus limiting supply and driving up price?”. After the congratulate you on making a good joke, then explain that no, you are serious, and you do not understand why they do not go elsewhere in order to drive up the price.
They will start off by trying to explain terms like “fungibility” and “elasticity” to you, but if you then tell them that they need a refresher because they don’t agree with you that the labor market can be accurately modeled by a simple curve on a supply demand graph, they will use terms amongst themselves like “opportunity cost” and “dead loss”, then they will go out to lunch without inviting you along.
It is observed by the fact that I called you out on your simplistic notion that you can model the labor market with a single curve on a supply demand graph? That’s a pretty poor observation on your part.
Your post demonstrated a massive ignorance of the nuance of economics, and your followup posts have done nothing to show otherwise.
As your only basis for thinking that I need a refresher was in my pointing out of your simplistic post, it is you that everyone can observe to be severely lacking in this subject.
Okay, so how bad do you want to let things get? Keep in mind that whole food riots are one of the least efficient way of distributing resources, they are an inevitable effect of seeing how bad things can get.
Actually, as an employer, I kinda agree. It is hard to attract and retain good talent in the current labor market. Unfortunately, I cannot raise my pay much without raising my prices, and I can’t raise my prices unless there are more customers that are able to afford them.
I disagree. There were times in history that that was true. There were times when there wasn’t enough food to feed everyone, so there were those who went without. Now there is. Now we have houses sitting empty with homeless in the street. We have food being wasted with people suffering from malnourishment.
These are not a lack of resources needed to take care of people and alleviate their suffering, these are artificially created scarcities that serve only to enrich the already wealthy at the expense of others.
Believe it or not, the Fortune 500 is actually not the only employers out there. There are many more smaller companies that are trying to grow, and need edcuated workers to do so.
I ask, since you are against retraining, are you also against training, as in publicly funded school systems? Do you complain that we spend public monies in order to train workers for the Fortune 500?
In order for me to be wrong, then there would be no high net worth person who payed no federal income tax. In order for Romney to be wrong, there only needs to be one high net worth person who didn’t pay federal income tax.
Is that the hill you are willing to die on here, that not a single one of Romney’s peers managed to avoid paying federal income tax?
Your question makes no sense, as a regressive tax does not mean that the wealthy pay less, but that they pay less proportionally to their income. Please rephrase your question into something that resembles reality and try again.
You straight up admitted that you were strawmanning in that last post. Are you taking that back?
You may consider them to be conservative values, but, when talking about the US, the party that claims to be conservative considers them to be an anathema.
Student loan debt is a problem for more than just the student. It is a problem for the economy, the job market, well for everyone. I personally have a bit of SLD, meaning that I give about $400 a month to some loan companies, rather than spending it in the economy. Now, if you understand debt, then you know that when you create debt, you create money, you grow the economy. When you retire debt, you destroy money, you shrink the economy.
There is 1.5 trillion in student debt, and that is 1.5 trillion dollars that will not be contributing to the economy.
It’s a double sided problem. Not only does the debt hold back students from becoming productive members of society, but the apprehension of taking on the debt will dissuade many from pursuing a degree. The ability to take on debt to finance education is one of the factors that allowed tuition costs to explode as they have.
So, student loan debt makes students less able and/or willing to go to college, it burdens those students and prevents them from moving on with their life, and it drains money out of the economy that all these 20-30 college graduates should be spending.
[quote]
I apologize, at the time, I thought that Shodan was admitting that that line was an example of a strawman, and so I was responding to the fictional poster that would hypothetically make such a bad faith statement.
Now that he has changed his mind, and claimed the statement as one of his own, I can see how my comments would be seen as directed at him.
Quick question, was your observation of my posting style an actual mod instruction, or just a chance to get a dig in while wearing the mod hat?
I’ll admit to the fisking(even though it makes it sound dirty), as that is not an inaccurate description of how I make sure that I respond to the things that other posters say, but I find the style of declaring “So, you’re wrong” in response to any question you can’t answer or point you cannot refute to be far more tedious.
I’ll agree that shareholders shouldn’t be liable for the actions of a company that they invested in, but directors and CEO’s absolutely should be. I see corporations as sociopaths with superhuman powers*. You can tell a superhuman sociopath to make widgets, to provide customer services, or to rob a bank. It has no morals or conscience, and so will do anything within its power with equally lacking sense of pride or guilt. Their CEO’s and directors are the guardians of this entity, and should be wholly responsible for the harms caused. I have rarely seen the people in charge of a corporation to be held to nearly the same account as if a average citizen had caused the same amount of damage.
People do sometimes claim that it is not fair to the investors that their investment itself is at risk if the company is held liable for the damage it causes.
I’d also like to point out that an LLC does not entirely absolve the owner from liability of debts. Landlords and banks are not stupid, and will require an actual person to sign a personal guarantee on the debt, meaning that if the LLC goes belly up, the owner may well be stuck with debts incurred by it.
*superhuman, not supernatural. They can do things that individual humans cannot.
Morally bad companies become financially unsuccessful. It may take awhile.
In any case, to suggest someone should be held directly responsible for someone they didn’t personally hire, don’t know, and do not supervise or manage is not what most people would consider personal responsibility.
I mentioned several different part-timers besides teenagers. You know there is data on this? About 1 in 5 workers is a part time worker? Contrary to your opinion, the part time labor force is pretty big. Do you know that we have a whole government agency that does nothing but complete labor statistics? If you can’t get into statists, you might check out bus.gov and take a look at some actual data.
Big whoop. It’s not going to. You are just going to some businesses suffer, others close, and a bunch of workers who need the job getting fired.’
Maybe you could do that. I don’t have that kind of cash laying around.
Oh my fucking God, what a disaster!!! You mean they bought a house for 60k a long time ago and now it’s Worth millions? Those poor bastards!
Quantitatively, that is exactly what I said, only pessimistically phrasesd.
No, that’s not the unfortunate reality we must recognize. You’ve entirely missed possibility 4:
So, you want the government to compete with private industry? You are aware that these types of industries already exist, yes? What are you going to do with all the workers you’ve displaced by training miners to do their jobs? Invest in retraining build new plants and destroy another industry? What if good locations for solar and wind aren’t near where the miners are?
Yes. You said this beforehand and I explained to you that not everybody who is working needs or is willing to commit to a job that provides a living wage, and that forcing all jobs to pay a certain amount tends to make jobs below that threshold of value disappear, removing the marginal utility that those jobs and paychecks and services provide to the economy. You are just doing damage. Good intentions combined with ignorance tend to do that.
No. I gave that to you as an example to show how flawed that kind of thinking was. Virtually all the shit you buy and everything you do causes harm.
No.
I’d that’s your response, you completely don’t understand what I am talking about.
It does, but that is the point. That it is abused is the problem, not that it exists. That those in power push to increase the loopholes in which i is abused is also a problem, but once again, this is not a disparagement against the basic idea limiting the potential losses of an investor to that of the investment.
To your example of the home builders, I am having trouble finding any particular cited research on the topic, but I will agree that it is a very common complaint among home buyers that their less than 5 year old home is falling apart, and the contractor that built it has flown the coop. The way that that works out exactly, I do not know, but I do personally know several homeowners stuck with tens of thousands of dollars in repairs that should have been taken care of by the original builder. Yes, there is (or at least was) absolutely a loophole that allowed these home builders to escape the responsibility of building a sound home and standing behind their work.
Of course not. The truly responsible family builds its own cabin, builds its own road, educated its own children and those who work for them, produces its own safe water, disposes of its own sewage… They owe nothing back to society.
As the post that line’s from is your response, you completely don’t understand what I am talking about.
Just got back from doing a market on four hours’ sleep. I may go into more detail tomorrow or the next day, if I decide that it might be worth it if only for other readers.
You know, people can have other responsibilities and ethics besides Personal responsibility, right?
Your second question is nonsensical. Society can’t give or take away the ability.