On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 09:02:27AM -0800, Randall wrote:
>
> Lee, I'm on Eric's side on this. See below.
>
> Lee Mairs wrote:
> >
> > Corporations are giving away resources that do not belong to them!
>
> On the contrary, corporations have a duty to their stock holders to
> spend money as necessary to ensure the success of the corporation, and
> ultimate profits to them. The very foundation of buying stock is
> "Here's my money, please spend it to make more money".
Thanks, that was one of the two points I was trying to make
and you said it better.
[..]
> > The insight that Robert Bork has made
>
> Somehow, I wouldn't look to Robert Bork as being an authority on how to
> run a successful business
The Bork quote was arguably appropriate when applied to government
(what Bork was apparently talking about in the quoted material).
However there is a _huge_ difference between government and free-market
business-- in the free market, if you don't like how a company that
you have invested in spends your investment dollars, you are free
to sell your investment and go invest in a different company.
With government, you do not have that choice... and in fact,
investment is mandatory (taxes) and enforced by men with guns (IRS).
This makes government charity wrong-- it's immoral for someone to
force me to give them money and then give it to someone else.
Corporate charity OTOH is not wrong, since I am not forced to
invest in a given company and can choose to invest in a company
that does not do charitable donations if I so desire.
This is off-topic for shop-talk, so this will be my last posting
on this subject here.
Eric
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