Time to Start Paying Attention, America!

[Rainbow Dash]

I can encourage you to take a gun and shoot up the nearest school, that doesn't change that it's a shitty decision and you should know better.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that deregulation is a terrible idea, there is no one right answer here, there are multiple things that could work out just fine, and that's definitely one of them. I'd just like to point out how completely fucking bat shit insane it is to scream REGULATION IS TERRIBLE WAH WAH based on the incredibly poor example of how it was done badly by your government in the past, and how it encouraged retards to make retarded decisions.

[TVTyrant]

The entirety of your reasoning is "the banks screwed us, so we need to regulate the banks more to make things better". It's obvious you've made no effort to examine the issue any deeper than that. It's also obvious who in here is making the substantive arguments and who isn't.

No, the entirety of my reasoning is rich people fucked us and have fucked everyone for centuries. I'm tired of the richest people in our country/world doing whatever they want while the rest of us suffer the consequences.

[Warsaw]

No, the entirety of my reasoning is rich people fucked us and have fucked everyone for centuries. I'm tired of the richest people in our country/world doing whatever they want while the rest of us suffer the consequences.

Logical fallacy here. Not all bankers are rich and not all rich people are bankers. What has been fucking people in the ass is not a lack of regulation, it's the complacency of the general public and an unwillingness to educate itself and vote accordingly. Welcome to America.

[Aerowyn]

Logical fallacy here. Not all bankers are rich and not all rich people are bankers. What has been fucking people in the ass is not a lack of regulation, it's the complacency of the general public and an unwillingness to educate itself and vote accordingly. Welcome to America.

I have a story about regulation for you.

Pennsylvania is the home of the Marcellus Shale, a nice big ol' natural gas reserve. A company from Texas has come in to extract this natural gas.

Their fracking waste has been getting into the state's water sources. I've driven behind a frack truck where the waste has literally been splashing out of the truck and onto the roads. There have been a lot of cases of FLAMMABLE TAP WATER due to these companies being completely irresponsible.

A LOT of people in the state are calling for regulation on these companies so they will stop polluting everything in sight... so, you know, we can all have clean air and drinking water. But Governor Corbett refuses to regulate or tax them for ANYTHING they do because "they might pack up and take their business elsewhere."

.... THEY CAN'T TAKE THEIR BUSINESS ELSEWHERE, THE MARCELLUS SHALE IS HERE IN PENNSYLVANIA!!!

You seem to think de-regulation is a great thing, that it will urge corporations to be responsible so they can keep their valued customers. We haven't regulated the Marcellus Shale companies, and look what they're doing to us--they are ravaging our state and its resources.

And we can't just "choose not to use their natural gas" because IT'S ALREADY TOO LATE FOR OUR WATER SUPPLY. They've already damaged things. Sure, I can not use their natural gas, but much of our water supply will be non-potable due to contamination by the fracking fluids.

Just wondering what exactly you don't get about some regulation being a good thing.

[Warsaw]

Easy fix: give the company an enticing-enough tax break for not polluting. It's not regulation we are against, per se. In case you hadn't noticed, the only time "regulation" gets used in the United States is if it lines somebody else's pockets, and that somebody else is never the general public. That "regulation" has gotten us into the mess we are in now. I don't need to show you proof, the result is already out there for all to see and it isn't getting any better. Everybody is so concerned with spending money we don't have to bail everybody out and preserve the current system that the economy isn't being allowed to rebuild itself into a stronger form.

Don't patronize me as if I'm not aware of what companies do and am just plugging my ears. Right now, the economy needs to be fixed and that takes precedence over ecological problems like that. You can't have your cake and eat it, too. Get the big issue out of the way, then start the fine tuning.

[=sw=warlord]

What use is an economy if there is no population to make use of it?
If lack of regulation is the reason water supplies is getting poisoned then logic suggest that regulation should be used to punish irresponsible companies of falling short on their obligations.
That includes Banks.
You can't just give a child a candy when they're behaving good and expect that to form obedience and discipline, you need to be balanced and punish them when they're being beligerant.
Business is that child, you keep giving and giving, eventually you end up with irresponsible business because they've never felt the trauma of being told No.

[TVTyrant]

Logical fallacy here. Not all bankers are rich and not all rich people are bankers. What has been fucking people in the ass is not a lack of regulation, it's the complacency of the general public and an unwillingness to educate itself and vote accordingly. Welcome to America.

Bull fucking shit. The wealthy are the ones who own the banks. Their the ones who pushed people's credit around to each other. They are the ones who continue to borrow money. Look at the government. Every one of them is a millionaire at the least. Your full of shit if you think that the upper 2% aren't running the show.
Who buys the most stocks? Who sells the most stock? Who are the brokers, the politicians, the CEOs, the people who own the most land. The wealthy.

What use is an economy if there is no population to make use of it?
If lack of regulation is the reason water supplies is getting poisoned then logic suggest that regulation should be used to punish irresponsible companies of falling short on their obligations.
That includes Banks.
You can't just give a child a candy when they're behaving good and expect that to form obedience and discipline, you need to be balanced and punish them when they're being beligerant.
Business is that child, you keep giving and giving, eventually you end up with irresponsible business because they've never felt the trauma of being told No.

Thank you.

[Warsaw]

Warlord, that is a terrible analogy. I'm not suggesting we give them more money for being clean, I'm suggesting we let them keep the money they earn by giving them a break for being clean. If they aren't clean, we simply tax them harder. The problem here is that corporations have the power to lobby, and the only way to fix this is to make it illegal for companies to lobby directly or to support a lobbying group. And hell, we can still get taxes back out of a corporation by shifting the tax burden towards the wealthy end of the spectrum, that way the top earners of a corporation have to cough it up for the good of the rest of the country. I know this needs to be run. Even still, you say that as if the people around that plant are dying by the thousands on a daily basis and that there will be no more revenue stream within a year. Yes, it's terrible. Yes, it needs to be fixed. But like I said, this is an issue to be tuned once we get the economy rolling again. Hell, you guys over there should be anxious for the US economy to get back on its feet as well, because as I understand it our recession has affected you guys, too.

Oh, and only banks have never been told "No." Most other businesses know the limits, even telecoms. Bush fucked up, and Obama helped it along. Like I said, they should have let them crash. You and TVTyrant and Bod seem to be completely misinterpreting my sentiments.

@TVTyrant: If anybody is spewing nonsense right now it would be you, =sw=warlord, Aerowyn, and Bod. Apparently not a single one of you has any idea how the economy here in the USA works (despite a few of you living here), and you clearly do not understand how to fix the problem by working within the system. Nowhere did I say the upper 2% were not running the show. Nowhere did I say anybody was running any show at all. All I said that is within any range of that idea is that it is the voters' faults for being so goddamn apathetic towards government for so long, and now they are whining because they are getting ass-raped by corporations. Well, wake the fuck up, educate yourselves, and vote you tools. Write to senators, form a community interest group and lobby. Enough people form similar interest groups and lobby and the corporations have to yield. They may be powerful single entities, but WE are the source of their income. Their liquid cash reserves are greatly over-estimated by everybody. Also, vote with your wallets, too. Don't like the practises of a company or a bank? Don't buy their products or use their services. A fair and proper analogy, unlike =sw=warlord's, is that you guys' talking is EXACTLY like the Modern Warfare 2 hypocritical boycott but with real-world consequences.
You also clearly missed that statement by Warren Buffet earlier, where he said the current tax system is wrong and that most of the most wealthy individuals in America wouldn't really care if the tax bracket were shifted to focus on them, because they are still going to be making money.

tl;dr: the REAL problem isn't banks, or regulation; it's Congress. It's the lobbying and the incumbency rate and the apathy of the people towards influencing legislation. Fix Congress so it reflects the people, and the corporations will fall in line. However, before you can get people to start caring, you need to fix the economy. Presently, the best way to fix the economy is to give the companies and the investors confidence that everything will be ok, and the only way to do that is to let businesses be businesses and start turning a profit. They start turning a profit, they will think there are more markets to reach out to and will want to hire more people to meet demand. We need to let them start making money. The banks have learned their lesson for now, so we can let them be. Later on, start tightening the noose so people don't get screwed again.

[Rainbow Dash]

Easy fix: give the company an enticing-enough tax break for not polluting.

If the last 20 years have been any indication, companies would rather not spend money to make their equipment more environmentally friendly, and would instead prefer to deal with fines/taxes, which don't actually affect them much, since they can just increase the price of their product/service to make up the money they lose because of their irresponsibility.

[=sw=warlord]

@warsaw:
Explain how exactly being balanced in terms of ensuring good business ethics is a bad thing?
As I said, the analogy fits the situation perfectly, You cannot expect a business to act to guidelines without some form of punishment to coerce them into form.

You're assuming that an unregulated market would regulate itself, this has been proven time and time again that this is not the case.
The idea you seem to have is that a market without regulations, without pilots would somehow guide it self, it may well do, but the point of regulation is to ensure it moves in the preferred direction and not just slumping.
Blaming this recession on how the markets may or may not be regulated is futile, it's almost as though saying vehicles should never be driven/piloted by humans and should be left up to the vehicles own devices purely because one pilot had a bad experience.

Either you are extremely ignorant or too arrogant to realize this but everything needs some form of regulation, Business especially, I've seen business' being fined huge amounts simply for using simple practices which violate laws such as fly tipping.
Do you honestly think that if there were no regulations to abide by that these business' would actually regulate themselves?

a few examples of regulation:

Building standard code
Electrical installation safety code
Environmental waste code

Reasons for market regulation:

Ensure business' don't simply buy each other out resulting in no competition and one mega monopoly

Collective action/ public good

Professional conduct

Market reliability

When I say that regulation should be used to some extent, I don't mean bail outs, there is no business too big to fail, if it fails then something smaller will grow to take it's place, the business was complacent of the situation and failed to adapt appropriately and thus deserves failure, how ever bail outs are not the only form of regulating markets, you can for instance, tax imports, give subsidies for new business' which encourages more trading in areas where there previously was none to be had.
The list goes on, I would explain a little further but unfortunately I won't be around to see your response as I'm going to be pre-occupied else where for some time after today.