ILLEGAL TO BE HUMAN

Corporations started out as a way for a municipality to get a needed infrastructure improvement it couldn’t afford by itself and for which no state or federal dollars were forthcoming. The strictest social and environmental due diligence was required of the investor, and often escrow funds covered any unforeseen repercussions.

As time went by, licensing standards were more than relaxed, they were reversed; the public had to provide incentives and guarantees to corporations. In a court case once, a clerk wrote into the record his opinion that corporations had all the rights of a citizen. Though it was not a judge’s opinion, and legally invalid, once later cases used this opinion, it had the authority of precedent. Courts later decided that CEOs are required to consider ONLY shareholder profit; it was AGAINST THE LAW to consider social or environmental consequences in making corporate decisions.

If a CEO drops employee health coverage, saving the company, say, $200 million a year, the board of directors may very well give the entire $200 million to the CEO as a bonus for “saving” this much. Of course, nothing is saved, and the social harm is so great, this practice is absurd and destructive.

An old-style business, that provided jobs and health insurance and pensions for generations of families, is often the target of a corporate raider. This scourge buys up the company, pockets the pension fund money, fires half the workforce, offers the remainder half their old wages, and no benefits at all. The materials and processes used in making the company’s products are cheapened. The company is then sold as an “efficient” business.

Well, of course it costs less to run a business if you don’t pay your workers. That’s not efficiency, that’s theft, pure and simple, and abuse of the workers and the community. The raider claims that, since he bought the company, the pension fund belongs to him. But pensions are part of employee compensation. Pocketing the pension fund is the same as taking back wages from pre-takeover times. But that’s not how the law sees it. And so a community collapses, families are driven into debt and poverty, but everything’s hunky-dory in corporate-land, because a company’s been saved from inefficiency.

This is the psychotic mindset that gets laws passed forbidding peasants in poor countries from COLLECTING RAINFALL; these desperately poor people must buy all their water from private companies. Laws are passed forbidding the used of saved seed from locally adapted crops; the desperately poor must buy expensive seed from agribusiness giants, seed that requires expensive fertilizer and insecticides. In India, some 150,000 formerly prosperous farmers have drunk their expensive insecticides in ultimate protest at being driven into crushing debt, not by an act of God, but by acts of sociopaths.

The insane used to be cared for in asylums, to protect society. Now the insane are given yearly bonuses larger than the GNP of some countries. Today the insane are given unfettered control of our economy, our government, our military. Oh, brave new world!

...or it will end with us burning in mass graves beneath a blasted sky on a blighted planet.

But it will end.

When solar power catches on, they'll charge you for a fucking sunbeam. :grr:

Fortunately, they were too obvious in their grab and hadn't done their homework on the people they were trying to steal from. For those of you who don't know, Bechtel ended up abandoning their plan in Bolivia after country-wide demonstrations that barely broke in the MSM. However, that's not the only instance of water privatization. Several U.S. cities and other countries have gone private and it's just a matter of time until their systems collapse from profit-taking and a lack of investment.

No less important is the fact that both the World Bank and the International Monetary fund made the privatization of Bolivia's water a condition of aid and loans. Any claim that either of these imperialist tools exists for the benefit of poor countries and their citizens has been negated time and again over the past three decades by their predatory actions and cozy relationships with the corrupt politicians who benefit directly from their largesse.

CO?

but there are restrictions on how it can be used EVERYWHERE, almost always with legitimate public health concerns at their heart. Remember, just because it falls from the sky and rolls off your roof doesn't mean you'd want to drink it.

Naa, dudes. This was about groundwater. Maybe some one of you yung'uns a little closer than I can pull it up. I noted it but didn't mentally or digitally "save" the details. It's YOUR thang. And if you don't think your water supply is threatened by "privatization," I got this bridge in Dubai that connects to the BIG palm to sell. :rofl:

If it is then they can just pry the rainwater collector from my cold, dead hands.

Are there any states that make rainwater collection illegal?

Nash started this blessed blight. Now mqbush adds to the momentum of the moment. These kinds of considerations are why we are here! This is the psychotic mindset that gets laws passed forbidding peasants in poor countries from COLLECTING RAINFALL! Yes, that sort of stuff really happens and we are inches from seeing that sort of unfettered psychosis in full bloom, up close and personal right here in the USA.

K&R'ed with pleasure.

:applause:

... is because of the social benefit that is derived.

If a corporation is not benefiting society, it should get the death penalty - revocation of their corporate charter.

adopt the corporate mindset. That's why you see so many LTTEs that are against the interests of the majority.

Recently I had a conversation with someone who earned in MBA in a previous life. He said that one of his first semester courses was about how to read an annual report. It consisted of the professor showing the students how to spot fudging, disinformation, greenwashing, and other nefarious activities glossed over in publicly released materials.

However, as he continued through the MBA course, he realized that much of the material consisted of instruction in how to fudge, plant disinformation, greenwash, and do nefarious activities to maximize profits at the expense of everything else.

Thanks for the thread, mqbush.

There is a clear distinction between personality disorders (for example psychopathy, narcissism and attention seeking) and mental illness (for example schizophrenia and paranoia). The biggest distinction is that the person with a personality disorder will not admit that he has a problem, while those with mental illness will usually voluntarily seek help.


Insanity implies that the person does not know the harm they do due to an emotional or trauma based disorder in their thinking that has gotten out of hand.
This means they are not functioning,they are sick. So therapy and sometimes medication can help them regain clarity.Being mentally ill does not mean you lose your conscience or forget how to care.


Psychopathy is a personality disorder: an unchanging, trait-based condition, not a mental disease or illness.
A psychopath knows what they do is wrong and does not care.The problem with a psychopath is not a mental illness at all. The problem is in WHO they ARE.A person with retardation with an IQ of 45 will have an IQ of 45 all their life because it is a trait that does not change..Psychopathy cannot be cured or helped with therapy either.

Please STOP calling psychopaths sociopaths authoritarians and narcissists mentally ill or insane !! Because it lumps people who suffer mental illness with people that are EVIL.Psychopaths are NOT sick or insane at all..They KNOW they are abusing others and they do not care who gets hurt by their choices.

PLEASE RESPECT THIS DISTINCTION!

It's hard for me to get my head around the destructiveness of a psychopath not being caused by a chemical imbalance or organic lesion, but instead being the result of...evil. This must be why the right is what it is; they believe in evil, are evil, and are sure everyone else is evil. Hence Rove's comment after 9/11. What a nasty world it is that has evil everywhere. I'll have to think about this.

My next research topic is going to be the neurology of psychopathy.

I have read about studies that show differences in how their brains work - like certain parts of a normal human's brain will light up when shown an emotionally loaded word or image, but when you show the same word or image to a psychopath nothing happens.

Plus there are some people who aren't genetic psychopaths but got that way by being abused as kids. Or by adjusting to a society like ours where being a psychopath is good and helps you succeed.

:kick: