A football league for Church teams of various denominations, there are dozens of teams and around 15 leagues spread around the country all affiliated to the FA.
This is actually the case in almost every country in the world. This is, indeed, what capitalism is. I was involved in the consultations for both the UK 2006 Companies Act and the Community Interest Companies Acts in several countries (in the UK the Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act). This was at a time when there was much talk of âstakeholder capitalismâ - introducing influence in corporate governance from stakeholders other than shareholders, such as employees, customers, local communities.
In the event the Blair government failed the test (in this and so many other ways) - the 2006 Act failed to introduce even the Continental âmitbestimmungnâ model (employee participation in governance) so successful in Germany, Sweden, etc, and instead kept the directorsâ direct responsibility to serve shareholdersâ interests while only âhaving regard toâ the interests of other stakeholders.
Itâs still my belief that relatively small changes in company law could facilitate a big economic transition, retaining free enterprise for small businesses (which in the UK, for example, means over 95% of all businesses) but making the huge corporates - which is where the problem mainly lies - more socially and environmentally responsible.
This article by a former gun industry executive takes a different view, seeing that industry more as âone bad appleâ than typical of the US generally. However, I agree with you Billy - itâs very clear from, say, its food and farming industries, that the malaise of profits-before-people (or any other species!) has already turned the whole barrel rotten.
Iâm not convinced that âitâs not broken, itâs designed to work like thatâ negates the fact that it is broken.
This is just one aspect of American society - we could talk in so many more ways that it is broken - not just gun control but healthcare, abortion, employee protections, the religious right generallyâŚ
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Yes I agree. But I also think driving most of these issues are two underlying structural problems:
- Itâs a post-colonial society. in which there is a strong legacy of racial division - not just racism, but a very significant racial dimension to continuing class exploitation; and
- Its black and immigrant underclass, protected market and âfrontierâ situation created the illusion that capitalism works there - and out of this the legacy of over-powerful and abusive corporations already remarked in this thread.
I see no easy solution.
Interesting Guardian graphic:
Noticeable that most Americans have been in favour of stricter gun laws pretty consistently for the last decade. If only they lived in a democracyâŚ
Very true, but then I doubt that it is possible to have a true democracy when election candidates at every level of government are allowed to spend unlimited sums of money on their campaigns. What you end up with are elected officials who are âin the pocketâ of the big donors. Hardly a good foundation upon which to base a democracy in my view.
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Careful Robert - this is precisely the argument made explicitly by China (though we in the âwestâ rarely get to hear it): the Chinese âdelegateâ model is more democratic because assemblies at local, then district, then regional, then national level each send delegates up to the next level that are directly accountable back down to people that actually know them, whereas the liberal democracy model is in fact undemocratic, because the only significant connection between voters and elected representatives is mediated by wealthy individual and business donor funded campaigns largely over wealthy individual and big business controlled media.
Wonder how this suggestion would play on Fox News?
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