From: "=?iso-8859-1?q?Cian=20O'Connor?=" <cian_oconnor at yahoo.co.uk>
> CB: Right , capitalism is a corruption of the
> command system. This seems to the credit of the
> "command system" that it is antagonistic to
> capitalism.
<cian:Well so's nuclear war, the plague and the total disintegration of society. Dunno that makes them good things, though.
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Charles: Lets see, you are saying that nuclear war, the plague and total disintegration of society, like capitalism, are antagonistic to the command system. And then you seem to think by analogy that would mean that I am implying that nuc war, plague etc are GOOD. But if they are like capitalism in being antaongistic to the command system, since I am saying capitalism is bad, I would be saying nuc war, et al are bad in the analogy you set up , right ?
And I do say nuc war et al, like capitalism, are bad.
Anyway, I'd have to go back over the exchange with dlawbailey, but I was trying to point to a logical implication in what he said that I think he didn't intend.
The straight forward point is that corporate corruption is not greater in China than in the U.S. as all the WSJ and NYT articles and headlines on corruption in Chinese corporations subtley propagandize Americans to think. One would think that the whole Enron scandal and related cases would make people skeptical about that. The command system does not beget more corruption than the state-monopoly finance capitalist system. It does prosecute corruption more. But that is to the credit of the command system, not the American system.
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> ^^^^^
>
> As Russia and now China give over to a more free
> enterprise system, the
> fixers and the scroungers are unleashed without the
> legal infrastructure to
> regulate their behavior, and thus corruption grows.
> In Russia, it destroyed
> the economy.
>
> ^^^^^^^
>
> CB: Again, this implies that corruption is integral
> to free enterprise, and it is. Enron is more
> typical of the cutthroat competition of free
> enterprise that has not had to come out of any
> command system.
Its integral to totally unregulated free enterprise.
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CB: Seriously. Do you think that when capitalism had its maximum regulated regime that there was not corruption integral to it ?
On the other hand, wouldn't a command system be the maximum of regulation, and so the opposite of what dlawbailey said: the command system probably minimizes corruption, not that corruption is caused or endemic to a command system. Corruption would be, as you say, integral to an unregulated or non-command system.
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Enron is just an example of the lengths companies have to go through to achieve the same means in a heavily regulated economy.
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CB: But can't we agree that Enron was operating in a heavily UN-regulated economy. With Clinton , Bush and Reagan, we just went through DE-regulation. Enron was operating n a highly UN-regulated economy, no ?
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Its a lot rarer, because its a lot harder. You wouldn't need to created multiple offshore companies, play games with derrivatives, etc in China - - you just pay the right people off. Or, if your western, your consultant/lawyer does.
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CB: Surely, China, with its history of a heavily command economy, is still more regulated than the U.S. 2000 in which Enron was.
You make it sound like it is so easy in China. Even the Western reports on China say that tens of corrupt corporate officials are being arrested and tried. Almost none are so treated in the U.S. It seeems obvious that China is tougher on corruption than the U.S. Not only do they prosecute it more, but more things are considered corrupt.
The NYT and WSJ strive to demogogically give the opposite impression of this by using the word corruption more to describe China. The monopoly media pulls the trick of just reporting on China's greater regulation and crackdown on corruption to imply that there is more corruption than in the U.S. Actually there is just more regulation and prosecution of corruption, not more corruption.