Dan & Lori problems with the big 3?

[JaysonWeber 0]

Whats so bad about Capitalism Do you mean Businesses that are Corrupt? I haven't heard or seen much bout this film, sorry for asking.

[cemvardar 0]

Hey Jayson, it is not easy to explain the basic point of the movie in a forum post but anyways I'll try.The corporation by legal definition is a 'person' who can only care about the benefit of its stock holders and nothing else. Executives of a corporation are legally bound to make decisions thinking only about the EV of their corporation (like a poker player:) and should not care (legally) if he/she is doing a moral thing or he/she is harming others or the environment).So the executives of a corporation cannot say things like "Oh we are exploiting the hell out of poor starving sweat shop child workers let's increase their wages" or "we are f...ing the environment up with our factory in Nigeria. Although there are no regulations about environment in Nigeria I am going to invest $500M for an environmentally friendly cleaning system this will be better for the earth and public good". The movie is full of examples of such wrong doings of the corporations. I don't know if you've seen the movie "Fight Club". In one scene main character explains his job to someone else like this."I'm a recall coordinator. My job was to apply the formula. It's simple arithmetic. It's a story problem. A new car built by my company leaves Boston traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now: Do we initiate a recall? You take the number of vehicles in the field (A) and multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement ©. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." (This is incidentally the basic EV calculation we do for every bet we make at the poker table:)The corporations are legally bound to be like this. It is not about if the people who are managing the corporations "good or bad" or "moral or immoral". The selfishness and "do anything for profit" idea is right there in the definition of this mechanism. What the makers of the movie suggest is that the corporations are these powerful (legal) persons who have no moral values and incapable (by definition in law) of thinking about others and the earth. So they say that, the popular idea of deregulating the corporations more will be +EV for the corporations and owners of the corporations and it will be a huge -EV value for the common man and our children. Of course, the movie explains this idea in a much better way than me. Jayson hope this helps, If you watched Michael Moore's films till the end, either loving or hating them, you'll be interested to see this one too.link to the trailer: http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&...&id=1808565671+

[Farnan 0]

Great post cemvardar. And thanks for the recommendation--i'm going to check this movie out asap.

"I'm a recall coordinator. My job was to apply the formula. It's simple arithmetic. It's a story problem. A new car built by my company leaves Boston traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now: Do we initiate a recall? You take the number of vehicles in the field (A) and multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement ©. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." (This is incidentally the basic EV calculation we do for every bet we make at the poker table:)

This Fight Club scene perfectly illustrates why caps on litigation awards are extremely dangerous. When companies cannot accurately predict the cost of potential litigation--be it pain and suffering, punitive damages, etc.--we risk potentially dangerous products leaking into our market due to a cost-benefit analysis. When a cost cannot be calculated accurately, the cost-benefit analysis isn't accurate and requires the company to act in a manner that reduces the possibility of injuring others. This is not to say that other curbs shouldn't be put in place--there are a number of other methods that can help reduce the ligitgation costs/medical costs/medical insurance/etc. But unfortunately neither side are willing to discuss those options at the risk of alienating their financial supporters. They just proffer one "fix all solution" that isn't really a solution and only benefits their financial supporters. Oh well...