The Gaming Den

In another thread, I had this exchange with Frank:

FrankTrollman wrote:

Lich-Loved wrote:What constitutes a "working person", I wonder?

That's an answerable question as regards fascism. Fascism divides the economy into the following groups:

• Heroic Capitalists (yes, this is their actual name)
• Super Capitalists
• The People
• The Leaders
• The Enemy

Heroic Capitalists are small businessmen and corporations that are still expanding. Owners of the means of production. And just like in Ayn Rand, they are "heroes" because they hire people to make things and they have vision and shit. Super Capitalists are people who own sizable portions of the economy and extract wealth from society. They are bad, unless they purchase their way into the government in which case they are reclassified as "Leaders" and then they are good and beyond question. And yes, there's an explicit position in the government for corporate lobbyists.

The People is basically everyone who fights in the army, has children, or works for a wage. Everyone else is the Enemy.

Fascism stresses an end to class struggle and cooperation between capitalists and the People. However since the capitalists get to be leaders and other people don't, this really boils down to anyone who attempts to unionize or bargain on behalf of anyone who doesn't own the means of production being reclassified as an Enemy and killed.

-Username17

@Frank and everyone else: This is a fine definition, but what do you define 'working people' as? Who are the 'working people' in your personal view?

Now on to my larger question:

The term "fascism" comes up on this board more than I would expect. For example, I didn't expect the answer to my question to be expressed in relation to this political philosophy. I understand the general feeling is that corporations are far too cozy with the government in the US, leading to a sort of corporate nationalism and that this is either technically, philosophically or close enough to fascist ideology to make the term applicable in most cases. I am not disputing this use of the term, but it does beg a few questions.

First, given that we do have an unhealthy relationship between corporations and government in the US, why do people here believe that the corporations are the ones to blame? It appears that the rallying cry is "dismantle the corporations!" Why isn't the rallying cry "dismantle the government!"? Surely the government's corruption is ultimately the responsibility of the government, right?

Furthermore, if those in the government are corrupt, then whether they get their money from Big Inc., Jackass Joe, MoveOn.org or ACORN, they are going to take money for preferential treatment. You can change the face of the money supply, but you aren't really solving the problem. Governments are corrupt where there are no corporations and have been corrupt throughout history regardless of the plight of the individual, from serf to...uh... working person... to super capitalist and regardless of whether the government is far left, far right or somewhere in between. How will squashing corporations stop governmental corruption?

Lich-Loved wrote:Why isn't the rallying cry "dismantle the government!"? Surely the government's corruption is ultimately the responsibility of the government, right?

Living without government is not an option. Living without big corporations certainly is.

Lich-Loved wrote:How will squashing corporations stop governmental corruption?

The bigger the entity the more they have to gain from bribes. A big corporation can drop a billion dollars on legislation and come out ahead. A small corporation can not.

Lich-Loved wrote: First, given that we do have an unhealthy relationship between corporations and government in the US, why do people here believe that the corporations are the ones to blame? It appears that the rallying cry is "dismantle the corporations!" Why isn't the rallying cry "dismantle the government!"? Surely the government's corruption is ultimately the responsibility of the government, right?

It's a hell of a lot easier and safer to alter the existing government to show less favor to (some) corporations than it is to dismantle the existing government (leaving the corporations in place), and then assemble a new government from scratch that doesn't suffer from the same problems of corruption.

Take the example of a corporation that owns a country's water supply. If you disassemble the corrupt government that let that company gain its position of power and leave the corporation as it is, you now have a country where the biggest power structure is a corporation controlling the water supply. At that point you have two possibilities: overthrow the corporation too and build a new government, or allow the corporation to build a new government which will be even more corrupt.

Regardless of how corrupt the government is, the water monopoly's goal is to make things as bad as possible for the people. Getting rid of the government won't change that.

It's important to note that the Fascist division of economies and people is not actually universally accepted. Like, not by a long shot. Indeed, in many circles if you said "But Hitler and Mussolini said it worked like this..." it's just sort of assumed to work in some other way.

The big thing is that most people don't call small-scale or expanding capitalists "heroes." Many people don't even make a distinction between small business and large business. Personally, I do. But it would never occur to me to draw the line where Mussolini and Franco did.

---

Small business functions in many ways similarly to working for a wage. So even though a restaurant owner employs people, he still is making the same kind of choices of leisure time versus take-home pay that any of their employees do. This is distinct from venture capitalists, who do not expend labor for their share of profits, they just move money around.

-Username17

Murtak wrote:Living without government is not an option. Living without big corporations certainly is.

Living without a corrupt government is also an option, isn't it? Now that we have democracies, the people have the power to influence government in ways they never could before. For example, we could demand a constitutional change to force term limits to be one term in federal office, one in state. This is the sort of dismantling I was talking about, not destruction (which weighs in a close second - the meteor cannot come soon enough. :>)

Actually, big corporations do things that no small corporation can do because of economies of scale. Tearing down big corporations will make reduce the profitability of those businesses, which will hurt a great many people.

Murtak wrote:The bigger the entity the more they have to gain from bribes. A big corporation can drop a billion dollars on legislation and come out ahead. A small corporation can not.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king

Make all corporations the same and any advantage, even a small one, is more than your competition will have. This means bribery and buying votes/offices will continue. Also, reform campaign finance and this sort of bribery will be greatly diminished.

Alternately, are you suggesting that it would be better to have smaller corporations paying smaller bribes?

FrankTrollman wrote:Small business functions in many ways similarly to working for a wage. So even though a restaurant owner employs people, he still is making the same kind of choices of leisure time versus take-home pay that any of their employees do.

Very true.

Frank Trollman wrote:This is distinct from venture capitalists, who do not expend labor for their share of profits, they just move money around.

This I am not so sure about. Having worked in in a company that was backed by both private and corporate venture capital (and having been a private backer myself), and having seen what the venture guys do, I wouldn't say they expend no labor. Specifically, their work product is:

(1) assumption of risk
(2) managerial and fiscal oversight
(3) brokering relationships in the marketplace to expand the business' horizons
(4) direct management of day to day issues up to and including rolling up their sleeves and working with the guys making the product to get it done right

For all of this, they lose money; a lot of money. The internet startup I was in almost went nova during the .com craze and we went through about 25 million in VC. I came this close to never having to work a day in my life again after pouring in 90-110 hours a week for 4 years (and this was radically under-compensated time as well, all of the cash beyond existence money was centered around my stock options) . Then the dotbomb bubble burst and we lost everything; 18 months later someone bought our IP for pennies on the dollar. It is not like they got their money out, they didn't just move money around.

When things work out, they get big payouts sure, but those payouts are a requirement to be in the business, otherwise it would just be all downside. And you can't be all downside and stay a company.

Is it weird that my brain saw the misspelled title and thought "Fasci Sim: The cutesy Nazi simulator game!"?

(Imagine a little Japanese chibi style dude in an SS uniform on a big map and when you click him and tell him to go to the Bureau of Truth and "fix" some documents, he makes a little high pitched "pankun pankun" and salutes as best his hideous malformed chibi body can)

...Sorry.

Lich-Loved wrote:Make all corporations the same and any advantage, even a small one, is more than your competition will have. This means bribery and buying votes/offices will continue. Also, reform campaign finance and this sort of bribery will be greatly diminished.

Alternately, are you suggesting that it would be better to have smaller corporations paying smaller bribes?

If the expected utility of accepting a bribe is negative, politicians will be unlikely to accept them. A small monetary amount is less likely to outweigh the cost of being caught.

Similarly, if the expected utility of bribing an official isn't worth the cost of the bribe, few corporations will even try.

Lich Loved, ADAM fucking SMITH says venture capitalists don't get their money from labor. Not that they don't "work" at all, but that while the small businessman's income is proportional to his labor, the venture capitalist's is proportional to his capital.

Wealth of Nations, seriously.

Boolean wrote:Lich Loved, ADAM fucking SMITH says venture capitalists don't get their money from labor. Not that they don't "work" at all, but that while the small businessman's income is proportional to his labor, the venture capitalist's is proportional to his capital.

That is only relevant if you assume LL was using Adam Smith's definition of labor, which I can only imagine he wasn't since no one uses Adam Smith's definition of labor anymore. I mean, I remember that passage, where he basically describes anyone who doesn't produce a final, physical product as "nonproductive". Which doesn't mean anything except that there's no physical product. So what? Labor in modern economics is whatever effort people put into their jobs. I'm pretty sure that's what we're talking here.

Lich-Loved wrote:

Murtak wrote:Living without government is not an option. Living without big corporations certainly is.

Living without a corrupt government is also an option, isn't it?

No, it bloody well isn't. I'll cheerfully take the chinese government over total anarchy.

But I am willing to not have any new cars for a decade while all big automobile builders die and small ones slowly enter the market. I am willing to make do without big banks and use my small local banks instead. And most importantly I would donate substantial parts of my own personal money to see venture capitalists abolished.

Lich-Loved wrote:Actually, big corporations do things that no small corporation can do because of economies of scale. Tearing down big corporations will make reduce the profitability of those businesses, which will hurt a great many people.

Bullshit. If anyone gets hurt it is because less is produced overall, not because of "profitability" going down. And given how enormously wasteful any big organisation tends to be I am not even sure that would happen.

Lich-Loved wrote:

Murtak wrote:The bigger the entity the more they have to gain from bribes. A big corporation can drop a billion dollars on legislation and come out ahead. A small corporation can not.

Make all corporations the same and any advantage, even a small one, is more than your competition will have. This means bribery and buying votes/offices will continue.

Let me repeat my point. A small corporation can not. How would a small corporation even afford a hundred thousand dollars in bribes, much less hide them in their budget plan? How do you even reroute a single highway with that kind of budget? I am sure the likes of Haliburton spent billions in bribes to ensure their no-bid-contracts. How many corporations do you think have this kind of money to throw around?

Lich-Loved wrote:Alternately, are you suggesting that it would be better to have smaller corporations paying smaller bribes?

Yes, a thousand times yes. Seriously, have you ever heard of a bif bribe scandal involving little businesses? Just once? Me neither. This is because little businesses do not have enough money to have bribes be worth it. Bribes are only worth it if you spend a tiny amount of your overall money to get a percentual benefit to a very large amount of money.

I am sure you will still get bribes, but they will be in correspondingly lower offices, say somewhere you can bribe a single person with 10K in cash to have them sign your forms. That still stinks, but I will take that kind of crap over what is happening right now and consider myself blessed.

Gelare wrote:I mean, I remember that passage, where he basically describes anyone who doesn't produce a final, physical product as "nonproductive". Which doesn't mean anything except that there's no physical product. So what? Labor in modern economics is whatever effort people put into their jobs. I'm pretty sure that's what we're talking here.

I am not so sure actually. Things get hazy when you consider software development (is software a physical product?), but I think this is spot on when you look at venture capitalism, stock market and the likes. Selling, buying, repackaging and rebranding the same physical product a dozen times does not exactly add value to society, does it?

Murtak wrote:No, it bloody well isn't. I'll cheerfully take the chinese government over total anarchy.

I think you misread me. I am proposing barriers to corruption in government, not the destruction of the government (except in a cynical sense).

Murtak wrote:But I am willing to not have any new cars for a decade while all big automobile builders die and small ones slowly enter the market. I am willing to make do without big banks and use my small local banks instead. And most importantly I would donate substantial parts of my own personal money to see venture capitalists abolished.

Agree on the car makers, I am for big banks if they are actually banks and not brokerage houses and I wouldn't do away with venture capital at all. Some one has to be around to take the risks banks won't and individuals can't afford.

Murtak wrote:Bullshit. If anyone gets hurt it is because less is produced overall, not because of "profitability" going down. And given how enormously wasteful any big organisation tends to be I am not even sure that would happen.

Ah, no. Big corporations really can do things smaller ones cannot do. I don't think that issue is even debatable. And regardless of how inefficient they are or seem, they still turn out a profit for their shareholders, in the long term , that meets or even exceeds the going rate for capital in the market. If they didn't do this, then they would fail. Some don't do it very well (auto makers for example) but overall big companies mean steady profit in the long term.

Profitability is what drives a company to exist. Reduce the profitability of a business operating at steady-state (not a startup for example), and someone is going to pay. And here is a clue for ya, it isn't going to be the guys with the money invested. It means a lower working wage for those at the bottom. It means poorer benefits for the employees, it means higher prices at the point of sale (and correspondingly higher sales tax for the consumer). If you tear down Lowes and Home Depot and put up Joe's Hardware, the economy overall suffers because people are only willing to pay so much for a bolt and Joe is going to be buying them for more, which further constrains his profitability. Now Joe isn't going to eat that cost because if he did he'd have no fucking reason to open a hardware store in the first place. So, his workers are going to be working there for less and his prices are going to be higher. Not to mention, Joe doesn't need people to drive forklifts because his operation is too small to support it, so the forklift guy that used to shelp boxes at Lowes is back on the government dole.

25 hardware stores in an area does not equal Lowes. Not even close.

Murtak wrote:The bigger the entity the more they have to gain from bribes. A big corporation can drop a billion dollars on legislation and come out ahead. A small corporation can not.

So big corporations can do things little ones cannot.

Murtak wrote: I am sure the likes of Haliburton spent billions in bribes to ensure their no-bid-contracts. How many corporations do you think have this kind of money to throw around?

Why would you think that? What is your experience with government prime or sub-prime contracting? Do you know what the criteria are for sole-source government contracts? Do you have any idea what you are talking about?

Murtak wrote:Seriously, have you ever heard of a bif bribe scandal involving little businesses? Just once? Me neither. This is because little businesses do not have enough money to have bribes be worth it.

Absence of occurrence does not demonstrate your point. I could say that the underwear I wear prevents elephant attacks because I have never been attacked by an elephant while wearing it. Seriously, though, there are a couple reasons for this. One is that you hear about the bribes without knowing anything about the size of the company involved. The construction company that added on to that Alaskan senator's house wasn't a multi-national conglomerate. ABSCAM showed Senators stuffing stacks of bills into their pockets for speedier passage for the buyer through the US visa process, again hardly an earth-shattering bribe. Other reasons that you don't hear about the bribes is because the people never get caught, or the bribes are donations for re-election which are perfectly legal or the companies band together to act through lobbyists to bribe in sufficient amounts. I concede it is harder for a smaller company to compete with the lobbyists and big businesses right now, but if you remove big business from the picture, then the bribing will just continue unabated because that will be the only game in town.

Murtak wrote:Bribes are only worth it if you spend a tiny amount of your overall money to get a percentual benefit to a very large amount of money.

You clearly do not own your own business.

- Do you seriously suggest Haliburton got their no-bid contracts in Iraq and evaded lawsuits over willfully poisoning US soldiers without bribing left, right and center?

- You state "if a company's profit goes down the employees pay the price". What happens if profits go up? Do wages rise accordingly? If not, your argument is moot.

- Why is companies earning their shareholders a profit somehow better than just paying higher wages? Why do companies even have to make a profit at all? Isn't it enough to just stay at +/- zero (with some kind of reserve)?

- No, I don't own a company. Apparently you do and have experience bribing people. Please tell me where my analysis is wrong. To me it looks like bribes get you some sort of basic condition - a different law, a permit you get to fill in yourself, a no-bid-contract, something like that. All of these pretty much mean you get more for each dollar you put in than if you had not bribed anyone - an investment multiplier if you will. The size of the bribe on the other hand seems fixed for any given condition. If those conditions are true my point stands. Bribes make more sense the more money you have.

- As to big companies being needed: Yes, up to a point. That point being the absolute minimum size for any given kind of production or operation. And this point is steadily going down. And we already have tons of companies which are way way past that point. Heck, there are tons of companies which sport a yearly profit similar to the revenue of Lowe's (Wal-Mart, Philips, BP, Gazprom for example). But even that isn't needed. I am sure you could run stores like Lowe's or Ikea as franchises with a couple of big warehouses in each country and small stores in the cities. Heck, I live in small city in Germany and there are literally dozens of small 20-employee-home stores within easy driving distance and the only thing that keeps me coming back to Ikea is their online shop. I did buy a couple of very nice pieces from here though and the local store is tiny, say 15 by 30 metres. My kitchen appliances are from a specialized shop nearby and they too are damn small.

Forget Lowes, think of the companies that OWN those companies, the supermassive international corporations that have GDPs higher than Norway.

Those things aren't companies, they're massive wealth-hoarding totalitarian empires. Arguing that this has anything to do with the amount of resources needed to produce a product is just stupid. It's all about waste, exploitation, and profit without production. These "companies" exist to funnel 40% of the world's entire wealth into less than 1% of the population, maximize short-term profits (waste) to the people *not* actually producing the products (be it physical or intellectual), and have nothing to do whatsoever with actually producing more or better products. In fact, effective resource management is directly against the interests and incentives of these corporations. Manufactured scarcity and monopolistic control is the name of the game.

However, merely limiting the size of companies does not insulate the country from risk. It doesn't matter if you have thousands of banks or dozens - if the industry is outsized, it will crash and take out a percentage of the GDP with it. And the bribes and lobbying will be based upon the size of the industry, not the individual size of the pockets.

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:However, merely limiting the size of companies does not insulate the country from risk. It doesn't matter if you have thousands of banks or dozens - if the industry is outsized, it will crash and take out a percentage of the GDP with it. And the bribes and lobbying will be based upon the size of the industry, not the individual size of the pockets.

I'm not sure about that. Lobbying will get pooled, sure. Outright bribing, less so, hopefully. Whats more important though, no single bank will be "too big to fail", meaning you can hopefully let the first bank or five crash and burn as an example to the others.

Murtak wrote:Do you seriously suggest Haliburton got their no-bid contracts in Iraq and evaded lawsuits over willfully poisoning US soldiers without bribing left, right and center?

I am saying that there isn't a shred of proof for this and that you are unaware of how sole-source and government contracting in general work, so you are in no position to do anything but wildly speculate. I am calling you on that. As for willfully poisoning US soldiers, I have not seen any concrete evidence of this. Have you?

Murtak wrote:You state "if a company's profit goes down the employees pay the price". What happens if profits go up? Do wages rise accordingly? If not, your argument is moot.

No, not moot. If profits rise then the investors make the money. Want to know why? Because, though it is a hard and sad fact, people are only paid what they are worth. If anyone can do the job, then wages will remain low. And people at the bottom can be readily replaced. However, if said company is overly profiting from their worker's labor, then another company will come in and pay their workers the same wage (because the work value they produce is the same regardless who they work for) and offer a lower price to the end customer. In the long run, this keeps workers wages where they should be and corporate profits where they should be.

Murtak wrote:Why is companies earning their shareholders a profit somehow better than just paying higher wages? Why do companies even have to make a profit at all? Isn't it enough to just stay at +/- zero (with some kind of reserve)?

This is a fair question and has been asked and answered elsewhere here. I will answer it again though. Let's say you have 100,000 DM and want to open a business. You need to work 60 hours a week to run your business and you make no profit. Why are you working? You could simply stay at home and invest that 100,000 DM in the market and make at least some return while doing nothing. So, a business is in effect a gamble. The owner believes he can beat the market's average rate of return on his investment. If he didn't think he could net out 8-10% profit (about the long term gain one expects in the US market over 20 years with relatively low risk), then he shouldn't open his business at all. Furthermore, for the risk and effort he is putting out, he had better be making more than 10% profit because he is placing his capital at more risk then if he invested in stable long term securities.

But there is another reason. Businesses operate on debt. Yep debt. Basically, if I manufacture something for sale (like an appliance), the way that works is I buy all the raw materials I need, pay my workers and pay for shipping of the finished good to the distributor. I get paid 90 or 180 days after delivery of my goods. That means for 90 or 180 days, I have no money coming in. Banks come to the rescue here, loaning out money based on the financial strengths of the company. A company turning no net profit is a huge risk in that they will not be able to pay their debts. It is seen as a badly managed company because well managed one's make a profit. And if a bank can't make a good return loaning money to a business, they would simply put their money in the market in as well instead of funding the business.

I hope this explains why a company cannot run at no profit.

Murtak wrote:No, I don't own a company. Apparently you do and have experience bribing people.

I have never bribed anyone in my life. I have been offered a number of bribes, however, over my career. Decision makers are occasionally offered these things and they can be wrapped and packaged in such a way to make you feel ok about taking them. And I can absolutely say I never took one - ever. Most people really do not take bribes to the best of my knowledge. If you have any ethics at all, it is a surprisingly difficult thing to do. I wouldn't have been caught, there was no way and that never entered into the decision making process. It boils down to being able to shave in the morning, looking n the mirror every day and knowing I made a bad decision for my employees or company for short term personal gain. I find it reprehensible that corporations and politicians engage in this behavior, knowing how it feels to be in that position and knowing that those asshats accepted or offered the bribe.

Murtak wrote:Please tell me where my analysis is wrong. To me it looks like bribes get you some sort of basic condition - a different law, a permit you get to fill in yourself, a no-bid-contract, something like that. All of these pretty much mean you get more for each dollar you put in than if you had not bribed anyone - an investment multiplier if you will. The size of the bribe on the other hand seems fixed for any given condition. If those conditions are true my point stands. Bribes make more sense the more money you have.

Oh I am not saying you are wrong here. But bribes are far more subtle than maor munny woot! How about being forced to bribe to not suffer prosecution or litigation for some thing for which you are not guilty of but proving the issue is far too costly? How about being forced to bribe foreign governments or officials to even conduct lawful business in the host country? And surely it occurs to you that the only reason certain bills are started by your governing body of choice is so that the committee chairs overseeing those bills can be bribed to be certain they never see the light of day. Watch the US news sometime when you see everyone jockeying for a committee chairmanship. What is so important about being a committee chair, hmm?

Murtak wrote:I am sure you could run stores like Lowe's or Ikea as franchises with a couple of big warehouses in each country and small stores in the cities.

Agreed. I do not know enough about how these businesses run to comment further on which way is better or why things are the way they are.

Murtak wrote:Heck, I live in small city in Germany and there are literally dozens of small 20-employee-home stores within easy driving distance

Germany has an 8% unemployment rate (and that is good compared to its history), a debt to GDP ratio that exceeds that of the US, and a debt to GDP ratio that has grown at about twice that of the US's since 1980 or so. And this is Europe's strongest economy. This is hardly a ringing endorsement of business and economic management. Now I am not saying the US hasn't any black eyes in this area (we clearly do) but so far, the current US model has its advantages.

LL wrote:I am saying that there isn't a shred of proof for this and that you are unaware of how sole-source and government contracting in general work, so you are in no position to do anything but wildly speculate. I am calling you on that. As for willfully poisoning US soldiers, I have not seen any concrete evidence of this. Have you?

That I actually will go to bat on. The Bush Administration has been up many times for accidentally leaving around evidence of the fact that they were taking huge amounts of bribes to provide no-bid contracts. The most hilarious one was the one where The Department of the Interior gave away our gas reserves in exchange for coke parties with oil companies. But you know, that shit was fucking rampant. However, since the Bush administration was also in charge of investigating these events, they mostly just ignored it and let things burn.

As for poisoning our soldiers, no one is suggesting that evil Haliburton scientists snuck into barracks and dropped arsenic into people. People are saying that Haliburton took money to provide clean water to troops, and then when they had water that happened to not be clean (and in fact, was tainted with shrapnel), that they gave it to American troops anyway and billed the US government for clean water. And this is in fact on tape.

-Username17

LL, long ago the US stopped counting many people in its unemployment labels. People no longer receiving unemployment? No longer unemployed - out of the job market. People without homes? No longer unemployed - out of the job market. People taking retraining courses? No longer unemployed - out of the job market. People under employed, part time, temp workers, day workers, on non-optional furlough or unpaid leave, or seasonally employed? No longer unemployed - out of the job market.

If we counted unemployed the same as we did in 1929, our unemployment in the US would be higher now than in 1930.

-Crissa

FrankTrollman wrote:That I actually will go to bat on. The Bush Administration has been up many times for accidentally leaving around evidence of the fact that they were taking huge amounts of bribes to provide no-bid contracts. The most hilarious one was the one where The Department of the Interior gave away our gas reserves in exchange for coke parties with oil companies. But you know, that shit was fucking rampant. However, since the Bush administration was also in charge of investigating these events, they mostly just ignored it and let things burn.

Yeah, this link is perfect for why we need to change fundamental aspects of our government. I know I am not defending those asshats and I am sure you will concede that the issue of bribery is not isolated to Bush's term in office or to either party. They are all fucking crooks at the moment and cleaning the lot of them out and firing them is least thing we can do. Problem is, under the current system, doing that is hard to do. I am not saying that governments don't take bribes for sole-source work, but just because work is sole-source or not otherwise bid competitively is no indication of bribery and that was the claim that was being made.

That said, what is the turnover rate in agencies when a new president comes in? I honestly don't know, but since people retire after working full careers in the State or whatever department, they're sure as hell in their offices long enough to outlast a double presidential term. You have automatically assumed that the people involved in this scandal had something to do with Bush because it fits your narrow world view of "Republicans badevil!" when in reality the entire government on both sides of the aisle is full of thieves and has been full of thieves for a hundred of years or perhaps since its founding . Hell, the movie 'Mr Smith Goes to Washington' was made on the "novel" idea that an honest man enters the senate and doesn't become a crook - and that movie was made in 1939. In the link you provide, the top executive in the scandal retired before this came to light, so she was what - 55? 65? She had enough years as a bureaucrat to retire, so hell that means Clinton could have hired that thieving bitch. Face it man, they are all fucking criminals and the only thing they are interested in is getting rich. The guy at the top is merely the Don and his job is to look respectable and give his family/party the chance to get their hands on the stacks of money floating around for as long as he can. Presidents like Bush and Bill Clinton couldn't even get that job right. This is true enough without promulgating conspiracy theories or gnashing teeth and beating your breasts over a "I heard that he said that some blogger wrote that there was a bribe" kind of bullshit that fills what passes for the Web these days.

FrankTrollman wrote:People are saying that Haliburton took money to provide clean water to troops, and then when they had water that happened to not be clean (and in fact, was tainted with shrapnel), that they gave it to American troops anyway and billed the US government for clean water. And this is in fact on tape.

Uhh we must use different definitions of the word 'fact', then. I know some guy released a tape about a Haliburton subsidiary not putting chlorine into the water. There is some credibility issues there, methinks. I will assume that this guy did work for the Haliburton subsidiary for a moment (and this is a big assumption, but roll with it). Mmmk, so where are these diseased troops that must have been terribly affected by the un-chlorinated water?According to his tape, we should see typhoid and malaria and all other kinds of things in our veterans (not to mention in the Iraqi population as a whole). But... we don't. Google returns no meaningful Iraq + veterans + "infectious disease" and the only hits it returns for Iraq + veterans + typhoid or Iraq + veterans + malaria are links back to the same article/video making the claims in the first place. Hell, even the Iraqi population, which is far larger than the US troop presence and arguably living in worse conditions isn't even suffering from these things. Atop all of this, the video you linked (a better link is here) is sponsored by IraqForSale.org, that fucking sells a DVD full of sensationalist bullshit just like this in a hope that conspiracy theorists don't mind paying for "all the proof they need". It's like a Michael Moore movie without a lumpy and self serving fat ass selling you ideas you already had.

If the best proof you can muster for Haliburton poisoning troops is these types of sites/methods, then I suppose the following are also true:

* There was no moon landing
* 9/11 was the result of of a government orchestrated conspiracy
* Kennedy was shot by CIA snipers in order to make Johnson president and get the US military into a much-wanted war in Vietnam

You disappoint me.

LL wrote:According to his tape, we should see typhoid and malaria and all other kinds of things in our veterans (not to mention in the Iraqi population as a whole). But... we don't.

Actually, you don't get malaria from drinking unchlorinated water. As for not seeing Cholera outbreaks in the Iraqi population, my flat mate was in Iraq this last summer and he dealt with a Cholera outbreak before he got shot.

So yes, disease outbreaks due to shitty water treatment are happening over there. You wouldn't really expect it to go out of control amongst the soldier population, because they also have access to medical care. Unchlorinated water for troops is a real risk, and it really is an example of Haliburton stealing American dollars while jeopardizing the welfare of American soldiers. But it is not by itself going to result in the mass destruction of America's army.

But yes, it is happening. The video goes all scare mongering about it, but it's actually a very simple thing. Haliburton is billing the United States government for services that they are not always getting around to actually providing, and some of those threaten health and welfare for Iraqi civilians, American soldiers, or both.

This isn't Moon Landing Exposed here. And it's insulting for you to claim otherwise.

-Username17

Yeah, it's actually very plausible, considering that it's just one of several examples of Halliburton being paid to provide something not shitty, and then providing something shitty and also dangerous. There really is a pattern there.

What news organization which hasn't been banned, dismissed, arrested, blown up and shot by our troops has the means and motive to report Iraqi misfortunes like disease outbreaks?

-Crissa

FrankTrollman wrote:Actually, you don't get malaria from drinking unchlorinated water. As for not seeing Cholera outbreaks in the Iraqi population, my flat mate was in Iraq this last summer and he dealt with a Cholera outbreak before he got shot.

Yeah I know malaria's vector, I was using that as an example of how misinformed the guy was on the video. Malaria was his word, not mine, and he is supposed to be an expert we are supposed to believe. Cholera - yeah I agree. Nasty stuff, there but suspiciously not mentioned in the video linked as proof of these claims. Was it in the troops or the civilian population? If it was in the troop population, that points to bad water supply (feces in it, for example).

FrankTrollman wrote:Unchlorinated water for troops is a real risk, and it really is an example of Haliburton stealing American dollars while jeopardizing the welfare of American soldiers.... But yes, it is happening. The video goes all scare mongering about it, but it's actually a very simple thing. Haliburton is billing the United States government for services that they are not always getting around to actually providing, and some of those threaten health and welfare for Iraqi civilians, American soldiers, or both.

If this claim is true, then it is reprehensible. However, the only expert anyone can site is the guy that doesn't know the disease vector for malaria. This "expert" also mentions typhus, which doesn't live long outside cells and is associated with filthy living conditions, not bad water so I am not buying it. Oh, should I mention that cryptospiridium (another pathogen he sited) isn't even affected by chlorine? The credibility of this "expert eyewitness" is highly suspect especially given that 3 out of 3 of the pathogens he mentions are either not transmitted by water or not affected by chlorine water treatment. And now that he isn't credible, I am not so sure that he really did all of the testing he said he did. His statement was obviously prepared, why didn't he catch such obvious mistakes? Why didn't anyone?

Frank wrote:This isn't Moon Landing Exposed here. And it's insulting for you to claim otherwise.

I am merely pointing out the lack of credible evidence here and comparing that lack of evidence to the similar lack of evidence related to other conspiracy theories out there that do not stand up to basic scientific inquiry. In truth, I heard him say malaria and typhus the first time I saw the video and I chuckled to myself. I didn't mention it because I wanted to conduct an experiment in rational thinking.

People believe what they want to believe. If you want to believe there was no chlorine in the water, then I wish you the best with that. But to me this dude is full of shit, this guy hurts the US with his misinformed fear mongering. Anyone that believes what they hear on the 'Net without doing some basic rational thinking is doing themselves and others that rely upon their judgment a terrible disservice.