re: #594 BryanS

I like the line from Romney’s recent speech at the NAACP:

I happen to think he’s right about how free enterprise benefits us all, even when a company fails. I’m pretty sure Romney believes this as he says. You may disagree that free enterprise serves this role, but if Romney is correct, he is helping those who worked in companies he managed. He succeeded more than he failed, but there will always be failures in private equity. Not all businesses can succeed or be saved.

the first responsibility of a corporation, according to u.s. law, is to make a profit for its shareholders. a ceo can be taken to court if it can be reasonably suspected that they have failed to put this priority first

“free enterprise” can mean many things, not always a large corporation. if this were really “a nation of shopkeepers”, that would be one kind of “free enterprise”, and i could agree that it benefits us all

but large scale corporatism, multinational corporations, companies that make money by manipulating money, no, i will not agree that this kind of “free enterprise” benefits us all. it is not designed to benefit us all, and if a ceo ran a corporation to benefit the community that it operated in, to the neglect of corporate profits, he/she could be sued over it

it’s all to easy to believe that some giant generalization that you can name “free enterprise” is beneficial to human society, but reality is infinitely more complicated than that

“free enterprise” may be the best system we have, but the way it is practiced these days it is too often a giant heartless machine that makes mincemeat out of the lives of millions of people