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[tyrone_slothrop]

i decided to read a newspaper today. the guardian. but my god, i realised why i stopped reading the bastard things. the world is a horrible, horrible place. one of the articles in it demonstrated why capitalism is inimical to freedom. apparently, the boss, the people who get to the top, demonstrate a far higher degree of narcissistic and histrionic

Comments

[born_to_hula]

i currently love the independant, for their green issue today :D

[tyrone_slothrop]

the independent is a bit too serious for me though. if i want to know about the outside world, it's gotta be broken to me real gentle

[thenew7up]

I recommend it to you on Thursdays when Mark Steel does a column, he's quite funny about that sort of thing.

[tyrone_slothrop]

Hmm, I'll check that out, I do like the Steel.

[tyrone_slothrop]

Ah, Glitz, do you ever feel so completely at odds with the modern world that you just don't know what to do other than throw your hands uo in despair??

[boomblast]

Lol. Isnt this explanation based on some book or film called The Corporation? Some friend was telling me (tho it was late and I was pissed) that if a firm were a person it would be a total sociopath...

[tyrone_slothrop]

Kind of, but I think there's a distinction in the causes of the psycopathy (which may amoutn to the same thing in practice though). The corporation is psychopathic because of the structure it is in - it needs to get higher profits so that it is able to compete against its neighbors effectively - if it does not, it will not survive. As such, psycopathic behaviour is a precondition of the survival of the corparation. The structure produces the psychopath.

The point of the article, though, is that whilst the internal structure of a corporation could be neutral in this regard, the person who gets to the top will always be the person who is already psychopathic - so the structure allows an already existing psychopathy to rise to the top. At which point, he wants everybody in the corporation to act like him, so his mental illness becomes the normal behaviour for the corporate employee.

[pigseatingfigs]

Hang on, how exactly does game theory refute capitalism?
I mean, I get this *best outcome for individual 1* and *best outcome for individual 2* may together not provide maximum utiliy, but that depends on the initial values you give the problem (I assume you are thinking of the Prisoners' Dilemma here, i.e. by trying to protect yourself at the expense of another you will end up suffering). BUT that doesn't work for something like Two-fingered Morra where the individual best outcomes combine to make a best outcome for just one of the players.
Circumstances, Mike.