From: au329@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ronda Hauben)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.amateur-comp,sci.econ,soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: why won't companies . . .
Date: 10 Oct 1992 15:42:40 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: au329@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ronda Hauben)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, kd1hz@anomaly.sbs.risc.net (Michael P. Deignan) says:

>stvjas@meteor.wisc.edu (Stephen Jascourt) writes:
>
>>a number of owners keep their restaurants 100% non-smoking because they
>>found it was good for business.
>
>And if I wanted to tailor my restaurant business to attract smokers only?
>Such as offering free, as-many-as-you-can-smoke cigarettes while you're
>eating supper?
>
>Golly, I just wouldn't be able to try a radical experiment in competitiveness,
>since the government has stuck its paw into how I am allowed to run my
>company.
>

No government hasn't stuck its paw into your company - any company
that is incorporated exists as a result of the fact that it is a 
legal entity that is part of a society.

If you want your company to exist independent of any society - then
find an island to exist on -

This myth that govt should stay out of business is an anti social 
excuse for the worst business practices to be encouraged by the 
society - 

In England during the Industrial Revolution it was realized that
there was a need for government intervention into business - otherwise
businesses committed practices that decimated the society.

Do we have to learn these lessons all over again - by having the 
U.S. society decimated by anti social and self serving businesses?

The Great Depression was an example of the trouble created in the
U.S. by such practices - the Blue Eagle was the acknowledgement that
there had to be rules and regulations over business.

Do you want to drive this society into another Great Depression so
you can conduct your social experiment?

Maybe your business doesn't like the fact that there are traffic
lights because when you drive you can get somewhere faster if you
ignore the traffic lights. In your view it would seem you would feel
it wouldn't matter if your car kills someone crossing the street -
how can the society have any right to interfere with your business.

Well, that kind of self serving ideology is anti any kind of social
institution - and a society is a social institution. 

The reason people formed into societies was that individually they
were worse off.

Only your ideology says that you want the benefits from the society
you are part of - but that your business should be free to wreck
havoc on the society.

It is clear from the history of the need for government regulation
over business - and from the fact that businesses who incorporate
are legal entities under a law of a country - that the self serving
proprietary interests of a business do NOT benefit the society -
that businesses as individuals are subject to the laws of the
society they are part of.

And it also turns out that it is the employees of a business who
have an interest that the government must protect even if the 
interest of the owners of the business is different.

That is the lesson of health and safety regulation - that the
government has an obligation to uphold the welfare of its people
even if the individual business feels that it should have free 
reign to do whatever anti social act it chooses.
 
          Ronda

-- 
Ronda Hauben  Amateur Computerist Newsletter
P.O. Box 4344   other email addr:ae547@yfn.ysu.edu
Dearborn, MI 48126
Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.politics.misc