Col,

Well, this is a first. I agree with the points you make about corporations and countries in your 31/12 10.23am post. The other point I want to add is that corporation profits are really the profits of the shareholders who have invested their savings in the corporation. (I know, some profit is retained and not distributed.) Many superannuation funds, of ordinary working people, invest in corporations, so we have become a shareholding democracy.

I would never want a centrally controlled economy, though I would have more rules than you would about corporate behaviour, but that is a different issue.

For the record, RaeBee, I live in a rural area west of the Great Divide.

<< HE CANNOT SELL THE PROPERTY! >>

Says who, and why not? I don't suppose you'd like to back up that shouted claim?

Hey Chris, I also see the sense in the semi-free market economy. What disturbs me is the trend.
After a crisis of companies being “to big, to be allowed to fail”, the response was to allow them to get even bigger; and reduce the number of competitors. The “51%” is a recent statistic, and still growing.
Also, this concept of 'efficiency' bothers me. In economics, where prices are largely (if not wholly) governed by the labour input, efficiency could be simply described as more product per unit of labour. In a growth economy, this must be a good thing.
In a stable or contracting marketplace however, any increase in 'efficiency' simply leads to a concentration of profits at the top, and a reduction of jobs at the bottom.
Good for corporations, since corps, don't have to deal with unemployment, but bad for countries.
Also, the idea that share returns are proportional to invested risk seems to have become a thing of the past; ie
Now it seems 51% of the world's largest financial entities believe they should have the right to privatise (keep) profits, while nationalising (palming off to the 49%) the losses.
In the banking industry, the manufacturing industry, the mining industry and the agricultural industry we are told that it is more 'efficient' to be bigger, and have fewer competitors.
What happens when there is only one bank, and one car producer, and one mining company, and one agribusiness?
Libertarians are locked into the paradigm that only governments pose a threat to private ownership.
As homes are become less and less affordable for 'average' people worldwide, and banks begin to consider renting the houses to the people who couldn't afford their mortgage, as the largest companies merge and amalgamate,and swallow or destroy small, innovative businesses, and the constant squeezing of small farmers off the land by bigger farmers in the name of 'efficiency' in this and other countries, that paradigm seems naive indeed.

Hey Chris (continued)
On your other point about your dog, I too have witnessed such acts by many kinds of animals.
I think the point I am trying to make lies in the difference between the words 'empathy' and 'sympathy'; the difference between just feeling sorry for someone and actually understanding how it must feel. I have myself been the recipient of doggy sympathy at times when I've been hurt or sick. In hunter gatherer societies, there was/is almost always a tradition of hunters thanking their prey for their sacrifice, so the hunter's family may live. I think empathising with prey/enemies is something humans are best at; although I admit it is more a matter of degree, than a simple yes/no.
I think in times of war, many or most soldiers are forced by their humanity to engender at least a profound contempt, if not an absolute hatred of their enemies, in order to overcome this empathy.
I believe what we desperately need to do now to address the current economic and environmental crises is to extend that empathy to everyone everywhere, and stop thinking that what we do in our little corner doesn't affect anyone else; or that no one else will go short, if we take too much; or that one person should have greater rights than others merely through the accident of birth.
A libertarian would no doubt describe this as 'piety'. I would describe it as simple common sense.

Chris C “I would never want a centrally controlled economy, though I would have more rules than you would about corporate behaviour, but that is a different issue.”

Since I have not defined the extent to which rules should be imposed, I fail to understand how you can presume you would like more than I.

However, my personal view, having spent many years observing corporate behavior is

I see no point in pointless rules

I believe simple rules are more difficult to circumvent than the complex machinations

Many rules are not there to regulate but simply to inhibit or rectify an emotional challenge (eg FBT) which makes them fundamentally, bad rules / laws.

No amount of rules will ever protect the gullible from the easy talk of the con man or those with criminal intent, who ignore the rules anyway; they will only burden those who are not likely to need regulating anyway.

Grim mentions “trends”

my personal observation to trends is what appears as the drift toward greater monopolies in trade.

Typically the Woolworth / Safeway and the Myer / Cole amalgamations, which did serious damage to the “balance of power” in the wholesale produce markets as well as the retail sector,

Hence it is with delight I see new players, like Aldi and Costco setting up to challenge market dominance yet I still wonder why the Hawke / Keating governments endorsed the amalgamations?

I further see the role of Telstra in the telecomms industry as too powerful and would rather the wholesale (network) arm be divorced from the retail domestic corporate interface, just as the US FTC is still chipping away at Microsoft with their anticompetitive operating system source code access.

Australia suffered for decades the folly of the two airline agreement and is challenged with the current petrol concentration

Breaking / preventing monopolies and oligopolies, regardless they be publically owned or privately owned, is the only way to protect "free market" competition and is the area of proper “regulation”, not simply building what amounts to “hurdles” to new participants in commerce at any level.

I would like to say that environmentalists and greenies are two very different creatures. Greenies are politically motivated, many of them hiding behind a tree to hide their true communist/socialist colours. They are rabid and most have no idea of Australia's native ecology.

Environmentalists are not like greenies. We are people who know that all must coexist. We are annoyed, offended and upset when we farms being landlocked while rainforests, forests and important bushland destroyed for mining and poor urbanisation. We do not want farmers attacked and abused.

Environmentalists call for areas like the remaining areas of the Daintree Rainforest be classified as carbon sinks to counter carbon as that makes more sense, as well as protecting essential ecology.

Environmentalists recognise a financial worth and see how it can help to protect. We do not seek to stop backburning as we know that it is essential for the preservation of native flora.