contractor rights - bullying

[DodgyAgent]

Go hang yourself. That really would be a service to society.

Hello loser, how are you today?

[Denny]

Crude to whom Fungas ? Take Enron for example - 6th largest company in the world - brought down by a few corrupt individuals ? Nonsense, Enron and others like it were brought down by the corporate system which is built on greed - implicit and complicit. Laws are there to be twisted as long as those that matter benefit from it. The banks, the lawyers, the accountants were all part of this scandal - they all benefitted from the lies, they turned a blind eye. The corporate structure facilitates the guilt through devolvement of responsibility. We need to go back to smaller companies who are accountable for what they do and the effect they have on others.

No, if you work in IT there is no need to be blinkered by the greed and self-satisfied smugness around you. We need to be individually responsible for our actions and devolve wealth to make everyone more prosperous. If you exploit and manipulate people, and take away their dignity and freedom through economic starvation, they will just take the wealth from you. The capitalists on here don't seem to realise this - they want to a few to be rich, and the rest of the populace in the sweat house or in prision.

Well said. Someone with a brain at last...

[DodgyAgent]

Well said. Someone with a brain at last...

Only he just forgot to use it

[Rebecca Loos]

I am going to support here my new found hero, His Dodginess himself, DodgyAgent

Jabberthingy, the system that you'd like to put into place might be, on the theory of it, be fairer and more compassionate, but hey it would almost need to challenge the whole way our society works, and even eliminate the very concept of money

Realistically, if we accept that we all earn money, and that different skills and trades earn different amounts, then a logical and fair development from thereon is that some people will be better off than others. You can counterbalance this by a system of tax and wealth redistribution, but you cannot have a system where everyone ends up with the roughly the same amount.
Hence private companies have to make money. As Dodgy said, a way for the public sector to get involved in this is to invest in those private companies, and get some wealth redistribution by getting returns on this investment. Much better than heavy taxes, don't you think? But it also means that it is in the interest of these investors as well to see the private company being quite aggressive in pursuing profit.

OK we need rules and regulations as regards to the environment, employment etc, but the capitalist system we've got in place already provides those.

So I can't see what is your problem with the concept. Maybe you don't like the details of the system we've got at the moment, and that's fair enough - we can always improve things here and there (like remove GB for instance), but in broad terms, we've got it right

[Jabberwocky]

Beccy, I am not talking about abandoning the free market - it is just that the free market is not free - it has to be regulated - and every corporate in their efforts to make profits push at that regulation. Rather than really innovate and do research they prefer to litigate and patent. The things IT contractors complain about are the symptoms of the problem: the corporate bollocks, the HR red-tape, the agents, the outsourcing. Corporates are not human, they are profit seeking machines.

We need to break up large corporates, and make the smaller companies responsible for what they do - Microsoft are the most successful corporate on the planet, but few people see them as great innovators - they just buy up the small companies with the good ideas. Contractors are good - they sells their skills and take individual reponsibility for what they do - large corporates hire teams of lawyers to bend the rules, exploit low-paid workers and take wealth away from small countries. The great achievements of the last few decades have not come from large corporates, but individuals: take the WWW for example.

[Rebecca Loos]

OK, but how are you going to break up large corporates?
You'll need a set of laws that prevent companies from being too big - i.e. after a point, they have to break up. This kind of thing is already applied when companies buy each other - sometimes they can buy another company on the condition they sell some of its operations. Both the US and the EU already look into positions of dominance and act if it gets too much (Microsoft has already been the target of the EU for this)
I still think what we are debating is a point of detail as opposed to my interpretation of your general statement "shareholding is bad"

[DodgyAgent]

Beccy, I am not talking about abandoning the free market - it is just that the free market is not free - it has to be regulated - and every corporate in their efforts to make profits push at that regulation. Rather than really innovate and do research they prefer to litigate and patent. The things IT contractors complain about are the symptoms of the problem: the corporate bollocks, the HR red-tape, the agents, the outsourcing. Corporates are not human, they are profit seeking machines.

We need to break up large corporates, and make the smaller companies responsible for what they do - Microsoft are the most successful corporate on the planet, but few people see them as great innovators - they just buy up the small companies with the good ideas. Contractors are good - they sells their skills and take individual reponsibility for what they do - large corporates hire teams of lawyers to bend the rules, exploit low-paid workers and take wealth away from small countries. The great achievements of the last few decades have not come from large corporates, but individuals: take the WWW for example.

cliche after cliche after cliche. For a start corporates are the main providers of wealth, secondly they are subject to far stricter financial and accounting rules than the public sector. Because the corporate sector is under the spotlight far more corruption goes on in the public services than in the private sector.

Although there are some perfectly legitimate arguments (which you dont bother to explore, presumably because you are too bigoted stupid or lazy) for the breakup of large corporates, you dont seem to be willing or able to argue these through. Tesco for example; where does it go? what is going to happen to small shopkeepers? does it matter? There are also things that large corporates do to make lives better; taking businesses for instance to higher levels, having the funds to research new drugs, new products etc etc.

another difference between the corporate and public sector is that because shareholders have stakes in businesses the markets have a habit of correcting themselves in the wake of Enron for example. Basel2 Sarbanes Oxley etc etc have sprung up in order to convince the likes of us all that investing in shares in corporates is to be encouraged.

You may resent the concept of free capitalism, but I think that you will find that the worst damage done to societies is by governments and not corporations.

[Xenophon]

Do I hear wedding bells for Rebecca and Dodgy?

[Francko]

cliche after cliche after cliche. For a start corporates are the main providers of wealth [...]

Are you cliches better? This one is priceless.

[DodgyAgent]

Are you cliches better? This one is priceless.

My cliches are better than his