scotartt on 13 Sep 2000 08:27:51 -0000 |
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Re: <nettime> draft article on WTO |
> corporations will simply never behave like humans, in > the interests of humankind, or on the basis of human > values. from their very inception, they are created > with the specific goal of defying/manipulating these > values for profit. Just a point of order here David. Corporations are created with the specific goal of "profit" -- its illegal to run a public company for any other (primary) motive. Human values don't enter into the equation. They are just a set of factors that affect profitability. So if defying these values (I have to point out, legally defying, because corps must obey the relevant laws as much as we as indivisuals do) produces better profit .. so be it, the corporations act that way. What 'leftists', or governments, or policymakers, or lawmakers, in fact all of the above, have to see is that the way you make a corporation pay attention to these 'human values' is to make being ATTENTIVE (or conversely, inattentive) of them radically affect the 'bottom line' (and of course, at this point, the difficult argument begins as to which ones of the human values you want to enforce). I don't mean consumer boycotts, because I'm not so optimistic about the mass consciousness required. I mean by LAWS. (and not John Laws either you fellow aussies). Just as I believe the way to stop pollution, for example, is to make corporations pay for it, which will lead them to place a monetary value upon it and thus, factor it into their balance sheets, will over the long term, reduce pollution because it will finally be seen as a *cost* in the strictly corporate accounting sense -- the only way to really make a corp pay attention to something. regs scot. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net