Bazz, I think there is indeed quite alot going on. Those 147$
per barrel oil prices woke up a great many people, especially
in the USA. The GFC has bought some time, it also showed
how fast consumption can drop if required.

In the last year or two, virtually every single vehicle
manufacturer has started planning for the production of
electric vehicles for instance. Plants to manufacture
lithium batteries and similar components, are being
planned and built right now. These things simply take some
years to roll out, they don't happen overnight.

Silicon Valley venture capital is taking alternative energy
very seriously and is throwing huge amounts of money and brains
at the question. That is how alternative answers will be found.

Yup, Obama is one of the few thinking politicians who is trying
to plan for these things and change the US economy to suit.

I don't really expect it from our 2 bob pollies, for their focus
is more on their own re-election, then what is best for Australia
in the longer term.

Yabby,

Your response is diversionary attempting to change the topic from admitting that
1. Corporation don't recognise concepts like 'fair', or 'enough'

2. They pervert the concept of Evolution 'adaption' but prefer 'law of the jungle,' the biggest most ruthless wins.

3. Unlike humans that have propensity for compassion, which is the basis for morality (live and let live is one approach)and a key factor in humanity. Dare I say the purpose of societies.This line of thought includes caring for the weak/needy and those that have no 1st person functionality. This is clearly the antithesis of Corporations.

4. Corporate "generosity" is self seeking (advantage not compassion).

5. Corporations deliberately use 'bean counting' cost of remedy (following safety, good product design,recalls etc) V opportunity cost.

6. As stated corporations encourage/demand the abrogation (by its culture and organizational psychology) the better side of human nature.

Your arguments on topics like "value for money invested", are subjective and display no consequential thought or the acceptance of the undeniable FACTS

Points like historical Qantas, Telstra are base around a world culture that doesn't exist anymore. (i.e. the Catholic once preached "Tremble and Obey or suffer eternal consequences" and forced conversion to suggest that is an argument to ban the Church now is as ludicrous as obsolete.

NB Nobody is saying that government instrumentalities don't have issues ....clearly they do. But they don't substantially negate "feral Capitalism of Corporations".

*Points like historical Qantas, Telstra are base around a world culture that doesn't exist anymore.*

Of course it still exists. Most countries of the world however,
have realised and accepted, how useless and expensive goods and
services are, when produced by Govt monopolies.

What you simply can't seem able to get you little mind around,
is that corporations are simply paper entities, commonly owned
by hundreds of thousands of people, to achieve an objective.

Each of those people are free to take their share of profits and
do as they please, feed the sick and the lame, environmental causes,
you name it. Meantime corporations still pay billions of $ in taxes
and charges, from which everyone benefits.

The world's largest philanthropists are indeed Americans. Usually
people who made money based on the corporate structure, then give
it all away by the billions. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, the list
is endless. Ted Turner even gave a billion $ to the UN!

So I'll explain it again. When Microsoft takes your money, you
clearly spend it with them, as it's the best option that you have
in the marketplace, if you want their products or services.

Its not up to Microsoft to give that money to charity, but up to
its individual shareholders, like Mr Gates and his wife do.

http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/culture/buffetts-call-to-billionaires-20100617-ygxn.html

There you go Examinator. If this leads to 600 billion $ being
given to charitable causes, that is hardly a bad thing.

Perhaps you have simply just never taken the time to understand
the motives of some of those "greedy, evil capitalists".

Dear Yabby,

I used to think that the original impulse
of capitalism was: to supply the consumer
with the best possible product at the
lowest possible price. and then I learned
about "paper entrepreneurialism." The pursuit
of profits, not by producing goods or services,
but by using clever accounting procedures,
manipulating the tax laws, and buying, selling,
or dismembering other corporations.

Some leading corporations have become conglomerates,
whose primary business is taking over other
corporations. Each year, many American corporations
are taken over or merged with others. You may say
that these moves often make economic sense, but
sometimes they seem to represent little more than
piracy. One practice, for example, is one in which
a hostile investor buys a large stock in a corporation
and threatens to take it over and perhaps fire its
executives and sell off its assets; the coporation
then buys back the stock at a premium price to
persuade the investor to go away.

Billions of dollars have been "earned" in this way.
A whole vocabulary has arisen around corporate
takeovers. For example, "the white knight" a friendly
investor who buys control of a threatened corporation
to rescue it from a hostile investor. The "poison pill,"
any provision such as huge debts that makes a corporation
less attractive as a takeover candidate; and the
"golden parachute," a guarantee by a target corporation to
give huge severance payments (often of many millions of
dollars) to its senior executives in the event of a
takeover.

As I said at the beginning of this post these various
activities of "paper entrepreneurialism," brings us
a long way from the original impulse of capitalism,
at least as far as what I understood it to be.

Yabby,

You just don't get reality the give to charity because it's good business.
They aren't altruistic they want Quid pro Quo. Business bang for their buck.

BP are currently doing what they are because if they don't a bigger power i.e. The US Government will make getting oil from US controlled ground impossible.

Hardies only agreed to fund the compensation because they would have lost Govt business.

Big tobacco simply passed on the costs to the consumer.
Big Coffee, big Chocolate, etc ad nauseum simply pass it on in reality the consumer pays for the largess of the company it doesn't reduce the earnings it is written off to advertising and tax.
Do I really need to list them.

"Big bad corporations" is YOUR Jump to an extreme.I don't view them that way.

In essence I have advocated that Capitalism as it is practiced today especially by the 'big' is feral and needs controlling for the benefit of the people on a wider scale.
I am not against profit or business but I am against unelected few via corporation often from other country perverting and or subverting our elected government of any colour. Finish Capute end of, the rest is in projection on your part.i.e. the highly dubious assumption that the absence or muting of one extreme automatically mandates the other extreme. .....BOLLITICS