
We All Work at Enron Now  - sinzone
http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2011/02/we_all_work_at_enron_now.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29
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zeteo
This article is rather crappy. Quick summary:

1\. Ten years ago, some people committed egregious accounting fraud.

2\. Let's imagine what would happen if everyone committed accounting fraud.
(Where we re-define accounting fraud in a very liberal manner.)

3\. Sprinkle in lots of non-sequitur. Oh look, this is an explanation for the
current state of the economy and Everything Else!

4\. Therefore, the environment is going down the drain and we're all screwed,
unless all principles of accounting are re-based upon environmental economics.

Come on Umair, you can do better than that!

~~~
Vivtek
Also:

5\. Fortunately, the Internet has Changed Everything and, like in
$CONTEMPORARY_REFERENCE, all bad things will be swept away. The End!

------
muhfuhkuh
Here's what I don't understand about Pure Capitalism (and the Pure Capitalists
who espouse it): The end goal of it is, in almost all non-theory cases
throughout the history of civilization, suffering in either quality or
quantity delivered to the customer or suffering of the well-being of the non-
owner personnel.

Whether it is by imperfect competition due to myriad reasons (information
asymmetry, {mono|duo|oligo}poly, "regulatory capture" or blatant corruption of
governments) or industry verticalization or horizontalization, the end result
is always one or a cabal of big ass companies runs everything, exploits its
workers in one or more industries, and the smaller competition gets squeezed
out to the point where the barriers to entry are impossible except through
regulation (and, often times, regulation is the reason it makes it hard to
compete).

How many more times can we say "Capitalism would be perfect, if it weren't for
humans" before we conclude that we need something different? And, why do we
continue to pursue it in practice if we know it doesn't work in almost any
situation?

In fact the only industry that is known to have "perfect competition", the one
taught about ad nauseum in econ classes, is fishermen in Southern US. And,
even then, governments and even the Ku Klux Klan were called in when hard-
working Vietnamese immigrants came in and fished harder and longer. There's no
win when Free Will is involved.

Pure capitalism doesn't work (or else we'd have done that already), communism
doesn't work. Something in between, but what?

~~~
nika
The US is far from a pure capitalist society. Between 1800-1900, despite a
civil war and the massive economic damage involved in such things, we went
from being a backwards third world country to being a world power in a nearly
pure-capitalist society. We were well on our way to eliminating poverty.

Starting in 1900 socialism in many forms started to take over the country,
resulting in the great depression, the new deal, etc. But still, between
1900-2000 despite inflation eroding the purchasing power of the dollar by
%90+, the standard of living for the lowest %20 of americans increased
drastically. We went from nobody having any electric utilities in 1900 (of
those in poverty, maybe lights and phone service) to it being fairly common
for the lower %20 to have computers and internet and TVs and electric
dishwashers, etc.

Too long of a time horizon? Look at india from 1980-2000. India is a socialist
country and did not embrace pure capitalism, but had reforms that greatly
reduced buracracy making starting small businesses much easier. The per-capita
income of India doubled in that time period. That is over a billion people.
Many of them are still poor, but their relations who are now living in first
world standards can send money back home and the quality of life of the poor
was improved dramatically-- just by lessening the burdends of socialism
slightly.

Seriously, if you study economics, and you look at history, you'll find that
where a country has a relatively free economy, the standard of living of the
poorest %20 improves. Where a country has a relatively unfree economy, ranging
from British socialism to German socialism to the USSR and North Korea, the
poor have much lower standards of living.

If socialism is very dominant, it is true that there is "less poverty", but
this is simply because everyone but the government is made to be poor. The
only economic equality historically comes from everyone being poor.

\--

Finally, I think that, given that the purpose of this site is to foster a
startup spirit, you really should question whether a startup is for you if you
reject capitalism.

I don't see how you can make good business deals, treat your employees right,
or be a success if you thin the very nature of what you're doing is bad or
evil.

Capitalism works because in a consentual exchange, both parties profit. When
we trade, we are trading something we value relatively less for something we
value relatively more. The apple farmer has so many apples, he'd rather have
money, while the cobbler has no apples and wants to buy some.

When you give government control over the economy you naturally create
centralized planning and inefficiencies that lead to shortages. Either they
price things too high or too low, because they aren't aware of the market
signals. Compulsion of force eliminates choice which eliminates the method by
which consumers give feedback to economic entities. This is why there was
scarcity in the USSR while there was abundance in the USA despite the USSR
having more resources overall.

Of course, it is also in governments interest to indoctrinate people with the
idea that they need government, which is why governments take over schools and
then proceed to teach children that socialism is necessary to for "equity"
while ignoring that it has failed everywhere (even the USA.)

Study economics. It isn't that difficult of a subject. The obfuscation and
handwaving is all about trying to make keynsianism seem viable. Economics in
one lesson, by henry hazlit is free online from various sites and gives very
succinct arguments for why various programs do or don't work, and how the
world works economically.

We're in a depression in the US caused by a distortion of the market from
government. Under clinton it was decreed that loaning money only to people who
could repay it was racist, and under Bush it was decreed that the rate of
interest should be below the rate of inflation. This caused the housing bubble
and the consequent bust. It is no wonder that the perpetrators of this crime
-- years after it turned out that there was no racial bias in the loaning
results-- blamed the wall street banks and "bailed them out", often forcing
solvent banks like wells fargo to take "Bailouts" even though they didn't need
them...and to try to push thru congress the power to arbitrarily force mergers
of banks at the federal reserve level.

Capitalism works. Freedom works. Let people be and they will make better
choices for themselves. Try to impose your whims on them and you will make
their lives worse.

You need to embrace this if you want to run a business.

~~~
joe_the_user
_The US is far from a pure capitalist society. Between 1800-1900, despite a
civil war and the massive economic damage involved in such things, we went
from being a backwards third world country to being a world power in a nearly
pure-capitalist society. We were well on our way to eliminating poverty._

Uh, US poverty in 1900 was immense. This was the era of the Wobblies, The
Jungle and the Robber Barons. Yes, a variety of radical ideas appeared about
then. Why?? Look at the conditions...

It seems like length abuse is creeping into HN...

~~~
stretchwithme
Poverty is the natural state of man. Its not until he could trade and keep the
results of his efforts that he was able to start accumulating capital.

Government limited to the enforcement of property rights allows each of us to
accumulate capital.

But some of us are smarter, work harder and defer consumption. They can
accumulate more than others. There is nothing wrong with that.

Then mass production and mass media came along, enabling some to sell what
they produced to millions of people and accumulating a lot more. Still no
crime committed.

In fact, the average person benefits when others are able to produce a lot
with little effort. Things become cheaper.

And those who save rather than consuming benefit us too. We can borrow their
money and invest in improving our own productive abilities.

Its true that those who commit crimes and get away with it also can accumulate
wealth, but that doesn't mean that those who've respected the rights of others
don't deserve what they've accumulated.

------
drstrangevibes
I think you'll find that economies have been doing this for centuries and
theyve been crashing because of it too.
[http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/fallromeeconomic/a/econof...](http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/fallromeeconomic/a/econoffall.htm)

