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[Truean]

I may be alone in this, but I really think the answer is record keeping and writing everything out for government and corporate things, and forcing people not to use meaningless "organization speak" phrases.

a.) It pins people down and forces them to get their story straight before people question it.
b.) Because of "a" it makes it impossible for them to change said story later.
c.) It gives people evidence to use in a lawsuit for misconduct or other proceeding for a remedy to wrongs.
d.) It really deals with waste and corruption, as well as incompetence.

[Nadaka]

Soooo....

Down with Capitalism? Cause that's starting to look more and like the only answer.

Down with crony capitalism and the deification of the free market.

Capitalism is a damn good economic system. But it isn't perfect. It needs to be improved by increased transparency and appropriate regulation.

[Angle]

I may be alone in this, but I really think the answer is record keeping and writing everything out for government and corporate things, and forcing people not to use meaningless "organization speak" phrases.

a.) It pins people down and forces them to get their story straight before people question it.
b.) Because of "a" it makes it impossible for them to change said story later.
c.) It gives people evidence to use in a lawsuit for misconduct or other proceeding for a remedy to wrongs.
d.) It really deals with waste and corruption, as well as incompetence.

But do you actually think you can get this to stick? If it inconveniences them, they'll find a way around it, or just get rid of it. I don't think theres any solution to this problem short of massively changing the system.

Soooo....

Down with Capitalism? Cause that's starting to look more and like the only answer.

Down with crony capitalism and the deification of the free market.

Capitalism is a damn good economic system. But it isn't perfect. It needs to be improved by increased transparency and appropriate regulation.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But the problem here is that, when you tell people that the goal in life is to gain as much money and power and influence and to keep it as long as they can, they will. They'll find a way around any barriers you put in their way, subvert anything they need to, and voila. here we are again. Transparency and regulation are easy obstacles to circumvent.

Transparency:

a) Lie
b) Make things so complicated most few people can't understand them anyway
c) convince people not to care.

Regulation

a) Lie
b) subvert the agency responsible for regulation and either 1) convince them to change the regulations, or 2) convince them not to enforce the regulations - for you, anyway.

These are all very common strategies.

[Frumple]

Make the penalty for getting caught in any of those death. Perhaps maiming.

I'm only half joking. Shit that plays with peoples lives should have g'damn huge consequences for not playing straight. Screwing up is understandable, sure, but trying to cheat the system... consequence needs to be something more than fines (not an issue for rich buggers) or jail (temporary). Losing a limb sounds about right. Five strikes and you're out.

[Angle]

But who do you punish? The shareholders? The CEO? some random office drone? This just invites scapegoating. And still only matters if they get caught AND get punished. Also you have to have a clause to distinguish innocent failure from malevolent intent, and any such clause is going to be open to abuse.

[Frumple]

Start from the top, work your way down. Shareholders and CEOs get punished equally for any screwups further down. Reward means risk, and if you're not keeping appropriate tabs on your employees, you damn sure better be ready to deal with the consequences if they screw something up.

Catching things is a bit more of an issue, but I think that'd mostly remove the scapegoat issue. Edit to the edit: For cases where it's questionable, do a X strikes then maiming. Screwing up that much unintentionally might as well be malevolent.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You could impose a system in which any corporation caught violating transparency, anti-corruption, or regulation laws has 10% of it's annual income taken by the government that year. And this percentage is cumulative, up to and including 100% profit loss.

I think corporations would probably clean up their acts very fast in light of that.

[Phmcw]

The problem with planes, is that they are full of fuel. And Fuel BURN.
But we made pretty good planes.


The problem with capitalism is that (insert lot of things here) and we must find a way to fix them.
Social-democracy (yeah I mean European style socialism) have some answers, and is the best working system right now (soc dem countries work really well) but it fail to take a few things into account. Maker movement and free software have some responses (crowd sourcing/funding/politics for instance) but it let the annoying problem of ecology...

There is a lot of things that may lead to a system that work, but right now we must fight to avoid the end of democracy.

[Truean]

Sarbanes-Oxley directly throws the top executives in jail if there are accounting irregularities and requires the executive to sign off on every report. There is NO excuse. If the report is wrong, then jail. Corporations are pissed about this because they have to hire accountants and attorneys to make good and sure they don't directly lie on statements like this or it's the executives themself in jail without defense.... This is the result of Enron....

You can impose criminal liability directly on directors and executives....

[scriver]

@Angle - so what do you propose should be risen once capitalism is brought down? I mean, I'm an outspoken socialist and pretty far out on that wing, but I still see a heavily legislated "capitalism" as a foundation in my system of choice. For me, it's not "down with" as much as it is "Rein in capitalism!"

Make the penalty for getting caught in any of those death. Perhaps maiming.

I'm only half joking. Shit that plays with peoples lives should have g'damn huge consequences for not playing straight. Screwing up is understandable, sure, but trying to cheat the system... consequence needs to be something more than fines (not an issue for rich buggers) or jail (temporary). Losing a limb sounds about right. Five strikes and you're out.

Fines are only a non-issue for rich people if they aren't large enough. No barbarism needed.

Also company decision makers needs to be able to be held personally responsible so they can't hide behind an organisation whichs fate they don't care about.

Meh. Ninja'd.

[Phmcw]

Note that corporation do anything they can get away with and that's their job. It's the corruption of government officials that is dangerous because it's them who say what corporations (and individuals) can get away with.

[Truean]

Note that corporation do anything they can get away with and that's their job. It's the corruption of government officials that is dangerous because it's them who say what corporations (and individuals) can get away with.

So actually fund the Justice Department. Give them some teeth and a license to bite....

[Angle]

You could impose a system in which any corporation caught violating transparency, anti-corruption, or regulation laws has 10% of it's annual income taken by the government that year. And this percentage is cumulative, up to and including 100% profit loss.

I think corporations would probably clean up their acts very fast in light of that.

But you still have to be able to be able to actually stick an accusation to them. And don't forget, what's keeping them from simply "persuading" some congressmen to change the laws?

The problem with planes, is that they are full of fuel. And Fuel BURN.
But we made pretty good planes.


The problem with capitalism is that (insert lot of things here) and we must find a way to fix them.
Social-democracy (yeah I mean European style socialism) have some answers, and is the best working system right now (soc dem countries work really well) but it fail to take a few things into account. Maker movement and free software have some responses (crowd sourcing/funding/politics for instance) but it let the annoying problem of ecology...

There is a lot of things that may lead to a system that work, but right now we must fight to avoid the end of democracy.

The problem with planes is that there are lots and lots of problems with planes, and no good ways to fix them, so we should use trains instead. Trains have their own problems, but those problems are smaller and much more easily fixed.

Socialism is a step up, but not a very large one. It's basically capitalism propped up to avoid the worst effects. It still has a lot of the same problems, though, and introduces new ones to boot.

Sarbanes-Oxley directly throws the top executives in jail if there are accounting irregularities and requires the executive to sign off on every report. There is NO excuse. If the report is wrong, then jail. Corporations are pissed about this because they have to hire accountants and attorneys to make good and sure they don't directly lie on statements like this or it's the executives themself in jail without defense.... This is the result of Enron....

You can impose criminal liability directly on directors and executives....

But how long until they find a way around it? or have it repealed? or find a new way to screw things up?

@Angle - so what do you propose should be risen once capitalism is brought down? I mean, I'm an outspoken socialist and pretty far out on that wing, but I still see a heavily legislated "capitalism" as a foundation in my system of choice. For me, it's not "down with" as much as it is "Rein in capitalism!"

Now that's the million dollar question, Ain't it?
 hold on a sec and I'll write my reply.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You could impose a system in which any corporation caught violating transparency, anti-corruption, or regulation laws has 10% of it's annual income taken by the government that year. And this percentage is cumulative, up to and including 100% profit loss.

I think corporations would probably clean up their acts very fast in light of that.

But you still have to be able to be able to actually stick an accusation to them. And don't forget, what's keeping them from simply "persuading" some congressmen to change the laws?

Okay, you're right, we shouldn't try to do anything against the omniscient corporate overlords. My bad.

Preventing them from persuading congress to change the laws is the whole objective of Occupy. To make the displeasure of the public known loud and clear. Congressmen are, without any exception that I can see, greedy and corrupt beyond any hope of recovery. But they aren't stupid. They want to be reelected more than anything else, and being reelected relies upon keeping the public happy.

The public is not happy, and I say we need to be more unhappy. Only when there are millions in the streets demanding justice will Congress get the message that they are not being believed or trusted by anyone anymore.

[Frumple]

Fines are only a non-issue for rich people if they aren't large enough. No barbarism needed.

I'd settle for their personal fortune reduced to the point of the poorest person their actions impact and their crime tattooed on their forehead. Along with fines for the company. Barbarism isn't needed, no, but a little bit can go a long damn way in making people act civilly¹.

Actually, freaking huge fines would be good, too, but it doesn't address the skillset the bastards used to do the deed in the first place. They can build back up after getting knocked down and then go and do it again.

¹Civility is respect for other people's ability to kill you. Not the dictionary definition, of course, but that's how I like to think about it.