Gautam Mukunda wrote:
> {snip} strengthens my belief that it is not environmental
> progress that drives these things - it is the desire on the part of
> certain parts of society to seize control of the government and run it
> in the way they want to, while eliminating opposing voices from
> politics.
A viewpoint which - if I accepted it - would strengthen my reflexive
skepticism of corporations. If they are acting with the desire to
"seize control of the government and run it in the way they want to,
while eliminating opposing voices from politics." then they are
actively a threat to 'me and mine' and not just following what they
perceive to be their own interests in directions that I don't approve
of. Since my perceiving corporations as actively hostile reduces - in
my opinion - my opportunities for 'finding common ground' with them I
reject such an analysis.
> {snip} If the government is going to pass laws that harm
> corporations and (more importantly) their stockholders for doing what
> they had a legal right to do previously, then not only can it
> compensate them, it _should_.
How far would you want to extend this principle? I would certainly
agree with it if the matter is being compensated for land that a
public road is built on - but I would think it ludicrous to suggest
that the U.S. government should have compensated former slaveowners
for the loss of their property at the end of the Civil War. The
difference I perceive between those two examples is that slavery is
intrinsically immoral, while not building a road is not intrinsically
immoral. I suggest that environmental devastation is closer to the
'slavery' end of the spectrum than it is to the other end. (I can
think of cases where compensation is not 'morally justified', but is
politically expedient - and would approve it because it is
politically expedient, as long as I'm not labeled with having claimed
that it was 'morally justified. People can have widely differing
motives in voting for particular legislation, and the perceived
reason is not always the real reason.)
> Your desire to have corporations uncompensated suggests to
> me that its harming corporations that is the goal of such laws - not
> protecting the environment.
That is no more a defensible statement than claiming that the real
intent behind freeing slaves was to harm the southern economy. That
you perceive 'harm to corporations' as a major problem with
environmental legislation is something that needs to be carefully
listened to - but what you perceive is not necessarily what actually
motivates advocates of environmental legislation.
> other evidence for this
> as well, of course, principally most environmentalist's aversion to
> market-oriented solutions.
That is no more proof than stating that 'corporate opposition to
this legislation proves that corporations want to exploit people'. we
all have different methods that we favor - for both good reasons and
bad reasons. The more that we actually listen to each others
positions - and to why those positions are held - the more that we
can come up with good solutions to the real problems that we do
face.
> Corporate interests are exceptionally important.
Given that they have a lot of power - yes. (However 'Corporations'
are not necessarily the only way that we can organize things. And
there is a large difference between the employee/family owned
corporation that runs the local corner store and a corporation whose
operations span the globe and whose owners have no idea how to do the
work they hire people to do.)
> If corporations are hurt too much, the
> economy goes into recession or worse, unemployment goes up, and a
> virtually infinite number of things start to go wrong in society. If
> they are happy, then things go very well for the country in general.
Maybe. and maybe not. 'corporations', 'hurt', 'recession',
'unemployment', 'go wrong', 'happy', and 'very well' all need to be
defined - and the definitions I would use might not be the
definitions you would use. As an example I feel that a 'family farm'
is an ecologically more responsible approach to food production and
that it is also a more socially/culturally responsible approach and I
would cheerfully pass laws which 'hurt' large corporate farms and
which help small family farms. (Many family farms are actually family
owned corporations - so in one sense I would be advocating helping
corporations at the 'expense' of other corporations.... definitions
can be tricky.) There would be a variety of consequences to such
legislation - and some of them would be negative - but in my current
view there would be more positive consequences. Various of the large
corporate farms would disagree.
> Protecting corporate interests is one of the roles of the government,
> just as protecting the environment is too. The first is at least as
> important as the second. So I repeat, what's the problem here?
The appearance (and in my view the actuality) that various Large
Corporations (Microsoft, Archer-Daniels-Midland, Monsanto, etc.,
etc.) have too much power and that they are using that power in ways
that are not in the interests of 'the rest of us'. You may not agree
that 'the actuality' of that is a problem, but to the extent that
'the appearance' of that misuse prevents constructive dialog and
resolution of the problems that really do exist I am sure that you
would agree that 'the appearance' of the misuse of power is a
problem. Perhaps if we look at how to productively deal with that
'appearance' we can also find ways to productively deal with 'the
actuality' - regardless of whether there is agreement on what 'the
actuality' actually is.
cheers,
christopher
--
Christopher Gwyn
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
