Creative Destruction

[Michael Bailey]

David quoted:
> "Herein lies the paradox of progress. A society cannot reap the
> rewards of creative destruction without accepting that some
> individuals might be worse off


that's just so wrong.  "some individuals" sacrificed to a common good
is a blurry non-concept...
what really happens is that a particular somebody decides to sacrifice
a particular somebody

there is nothing about improving production or business practices that
requires harm be done to anyone!

those are choices people make (and other people choose to enforce,
which is also bad) (and still other people, then and later, claim to
see as inevitable, which is also bad!)



ob quote - from Salon.com description of the Stevens objection to
Citizens United:

While Stevens is reading the portion of his concurrence about the
"cautious view of corporate power" held by the framers, I see Justice
Thomas chuckle softly. (Scalia takes on this argument in his
concurrence.) Stevens hammers, more than once this morning from the
bench on the principle that corporations "are not human beings" and
"corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no
thoughts, no desires." He insists that "they are not themselves
members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was
established."

But you can plainly see the weariness in Stevens eyes and hear it in
his voice today as he is forced to contend with a legal fiction that
has come to life today, a sort of constitutional Frankenstein moment
when corporate speech becomes even more compelling than the "voices of
the real people" who will be drowned out. Even former Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist once warned that treating corporate spending as
the First Amendment equivalent of individual free speech is "to
confuse metaphor with reality." Today that metaphor won a very real
victory at the Supreme Court. And as a consequence some very real
corporations are feeling very, very good.


--- heehee -- corporations don't have feelings, so that even the
presumably Stevens-sympathizing Salon writer has internalized the
metaphor...

Corporations don't have feelings!!!!!  The people who make the various
decisions in different corporations do -- some of them were probably
as dismayed as I am...since they will now have to compete against the
villainous rats who brought the suit and their ilk, who do feel good
about it...for now (wait until they are burning in Hell though...)