The Ethics Cloud Over Ballmer's $2 Billion B-Ball Buy 398
theodp (442580) writes '"It is hard to imagine any more heinous way of earning money than by benefiting from racism," writes Rick Cohen, who argues that Donald Sterling and the NBA owners are being unjustly enriched by Sterling's racism, which led to the $2 billion sale of the L.A. Clippers to ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, a record-high sum for an NBA team. "Indeed, the only losers in the Sterling affair are the players," adds the NY Times. "What held promise as a possible D-Day in the N.B.A., a day when N.B.A. owners stood up to be counted and voted Donald Sterling out of the league, instead turned into a great day for the status quo." Forbes contributor Robert Wood speculates that if he plays his cards right, Sterling's windfall could be tax-free.'
pishaw (Score:5, Insightful)
Ethics? Ethics in the corporate world is what gets you the most cash. The corporate assholes live in a scruple-free culture.
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Re:pishaw (Score:5, Insightful)
Ethics on Slashdot? No one questions that someone was banned for life and was forced to forfeit his property because of something he said in a private conversation that was recorded and published without his permission.
If you are not outraged by this then please do not bother ever complaining about privacy.
Remember racism is not illegal. Discrimination based on race in the workplace is.
BTW I do not like racism at all but this is just too weird for words.
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Forfeit? Nope. He's getting paid for it. TFA and TFS even say so.
Re:pishaw (Score:5, Informative)
A private association had rules governing the association, and one of those members broke one of the rules*. Hence, he was kicked to the curb. No laws are alleged by any part to have been violated.
*He broke the rule that said he wouldn't do or say anything to harm the league financially. Its very broad rule for a reason. This reason.
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And was the league harmed?
Also do you think that any owner can pass that rule if you looked at all their private conversations?
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No one questions that someone was banned for life and was forced to forfeit his property because of something he said in a private conversation that was recorded and published without his permission.
Which is a gross distortion. Had he kept quiet and let that storm pass, he might have gotten to keep the team. (Based on what other owners have said, not just my idle speculation.) But then he had to "defend" himself by having a racist rant on national TV.
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No one questions that someone was banned for life and was forced to forfeit his property because of something he said in a private conversation that was recorded and published without his permission
So? Isn't this just a bigger private corporation/business interest (the NBA) enforcing their rights to include/exclude whoever they damn well please? And in this case they decided to boot him from their little club? What property did he "forfeit" by the way? He didn't lose anything - he SOLD his property on the m
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You know nothing about libertarians.
Libertarians believe it should be legal to a lot of things that leftists don't like, including kicking someone out for bad reasons. However, this does not mean that doing so should not be subject to moral condemnation. Unless you have an example of libertarians saying that what the NBA did should be made illegal, you have no valid criticism.
He lost th
Two-party recording laws (Score:3)
If you prefer to live in a state that requires two-party consent to record [wikipedia.org], be my guest.
Just don't ever complain if a police officer ever takes away your camera as they're beating you senseless. (In other words, when an injustice is being committed, you cannot expect the unjust to permit their acts to be made public. One-party consent states doesn't have this issue.)
Thoughtcrime (Score:3)
Remember racism is not illegal. Discrimination based on race in the workplace is.
Thoughtcrime is currently not illegal, but they (the media + the powers that be) are trying their damned hardest to make it so.
Remember that guy, Harvard University President or something, he was caught saying "maybe we shouldn't be so obsessed with pushing more women into math/science, after all women on average show less aptitude in those fields". He was vilified in the media as being worse than the Devil and Hitler combined. He was fired like the next day. All for saying what pretty much every average Jo
Simple. Wonder why no-one's thought of this before (Score:3, Insightful)
We ought to outlaw selfishness. Everyone should always work towards the common good.
Re:Simple. Wonder why no-one's thought of this bef (Score:5, Funny)
For the hundredth time, vulcan, we're not joining any goddamn federation of planets!
Re:pishaw (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't live for yourself then you live for others. Living for others makes you a slave.
Re:pishaw (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:pishaw (Score:4, Interesting)
Selfishness is a negative, by definition.
Self-interest, however...that's a whole different kettle of fish. Self-Interest is a universal law, like gravity.
As long as you understand it, you can moderate/use it.
So what's the problem here? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it that he's being paid a market price for his team? How could it have been otherwise?
Re:So what's the problem here? (Score:4, Insightful)
He has an opinion that liberals don't like so they think that they should be able to take his property from him without providing compensation.
Re:So what's the problem here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. I don't get all of the talk about how this is a reward. He could have sold the team at any time of his choosing. The price he got isn't because of his racist remarks. It's because there are so few teams available, they don't often come up for sale, and as teams go, the Clippers is actually a pretty highly ranked team. If anything, forcing him to sell actually is a punishment, even at $2 billion. He bought the team for $12.5m 33 years ago. Now it's worth $2b. That works out to an average annual return of almost 17%. It's virtually impossible to find an investment that gives those sort of returns over the long term. When you actually do have one, you'd want to hold onto it as long as possible (unless you have reason to believe its value is about to tank). Forcing him to sell such a fast growing asset is indeed punishment.
Re: So what's the problem here? (Score:2)
Right, Ballmer is expected to make back his investment within a year, with new TV contracts expected to be a minimum of $3B, possibly reaching $7B, any of those far exceeding the operating costs. The competition is high in LA which is why he probably won't move the team to Seattle, at least until the upcoming contacts expire in several years.
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More to the point he's 80 (and possibly suffering from dementia).
It's not like he can take the $2 billion and buy another team with it, the money might not mean anything to him at this point.
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Hopefully the team's value will plummet after the sale is complete.
I doubt it. There are many more people out there that want to buy a team than teams available for sale so prices tend not to drop; and given that many people probably own teams for reasons beyond investment their is a value to owning one, beyond the basic financials, that people are willing to pay a premium to own one.
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Apparently you're under the delusion that just *liberals* don't like Sterling's opinions.
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Is it that he's being paid a market price for his team? How could it have been otherwise?
Well, technically you are correct, but the problem is that before this sale, only the Chicago Bulls ($1 billion) and the Los Angeles Lakers ($1.3 billion), were valued at even one billion US dollars among NBA teams. Basically what we have is a bunch of billionaires who for no good reason got into a bidding war on a team that has never even played for a championship, let alone won one, and the "winner" was the guy who was willing to badly overpay the most. Right now it's difficult to understand how this de
Racism or Thought Police? (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's Slashdot cheering the thought police. The man was baited into saying something in a private phone call. Where are our privacy champions now? What a bunch of frauds. We cheer Snowden because the media tells us to, but then champion spying on someone because the media tells us to.
Re:Racism or Thought Police? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but privacy and free speech and all that only applies if you're saying politically-correct stuff. The second you say "nigger" or even mildly criticize some protected group YOU MUST BE DESTROYED!!!!!
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or Feminists
[John]
Re:Racism or Thought Police? (Score:5, Insightful)
Privacy and free speech apply to government entities, not to ex girlfriends and basketball associations.
Privacy means that what you do with another person should remain between you two, so long as both of you keep it as such
. All bets are off when one of the individuals involved in the private activity decide to disclose what happened. The moral here is to better choose who you decide to associate with in private.
Free speech doesn't mean that you can say anything you want without consequence - it means that the government cannot be the one to bring about those consequences. Public shaming and ostracization are perfectly OK. In this case, it also happens that the statements ran afoul of NBA policy, which Sterling agreed to when be purchased the team in the first place.
Sterling isn't serving any jail time, and he's getting a giant return on investment. I don't see why the right is to up in arms over the outcome. Sterling probably got more money for the sale of the team now (due to the expediency everyone else felt to buy the team out from under him) than he probably would have putting it up for sale on his own before the controversy.
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Privacy and free speech apply to government entities, not to ex girlfriends and basketball associations.
So I guess you'd be cool with it if the NBA choose to enact a "No Homosexual Players Allowed" policy? After all, they're a private organization and don't have to respect anyone's legal rights, right?
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So I guess you'd be cool with it if the NBA choose to enact a "No Homosexual Players Allowed" policy? After all, they're a private organization and don't have to respect anyone's legal rights, right?
Actually, as a private organization, it would be up to them to decide whether to disallow openly gay players and / or owners. Perspective owners and players would need to know of such a rule (and fans would want to know about it, too). Those who don't agree with such a stance would be free to not participate in nor support such an organization. No one's legal rights would be trampled.
As per homosexual players, I think their teammates should have the strongest word, considering that most locker rooms don't h
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Actually, as a private organization, it would be up to them to decide whether to disallow openly gay players and / or owners. Perspective owners and players would need to know of such a rule (and fans would want to know about it, too). Those who don't agree with such a stance would be free to not participate in nor support such an organization. No one's legal rights would be trampled.
As per homosexual players, I think their teammates should have the strongest word, considering that most locker rooms don't have private showers. Personally, I choose which teams to support based on performance on the field and moral conduct of its owners and players. I don't take into account sexual orientation, but will note if the owner cheats on a spouse.
That is insane. If you could do that, you could do the same to people of religion (or lack of it).
It depends. IIRC, sexual orientation is not a federally protected class [wikipedia.org]. Religion IS a federally protected class so anybody denied entrance into the league because of their religion would have grounds to sue. That being said, I believe sexual orientation is a state protected class in California so the Clippers could not participate in such discrimination without running afoul of the law.
Re:Racism or Thought Police? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but privacy and free speech and all that only applies if you're saying politically-correct stuff. The second you say "nigger" or even mildly criticize some protected group YOU MUST BE DESTROYED!!!!!
That's the odd thing. Sterling didn't even use a slur.From what I understood of the tape, he didn't even have a problem with minorities. He told his girlfriend that she could sleep with anyone she wanted. Again, no slurs. Just don't brag about her boyfriends on Instragram or bring them to the game in public.
He didn't tell his ticket sellers not to sell to minorities. He didn't use any slurs. He employed, from what I understand was a general consensus, the worst GM in the NBA for over 20 years who happened to be a minority. He hired a minority coach.
He was illegally recorded and punished for something he said in the privacy of his own home, not for something he did. Not to mention he was goaded. Listen to the tape. She knew what she wanted him to say and she kept at it until he said it.
This is very scary stuff because there isn't one person alive who wouldn't be ostracized, using this ruler, if a select one minute of their private speech was made public.
Re:Racism or Thought Police? (Score:4, Informative)
> Here's Slashdot cheering the thought police. The man was baited into saying something in a private phone call. Where are our privacy champions now?
It wasn't a phone call, it was in person. But, while the recording was what brought his bigotry to public attention, what really matters are all his other public actions, like refusing to rent apartments to blacks and hispanics. It was only a matter of time before all his shit caught up with him.
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-sterling-racist-history-2014-4
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Yeah, but that is NOT why the team was sold, and in fact, had nothing at all to do with it. His ONLY crime was being recorded in a private conversation without his knowledge or consent. You're correct, it doesn't matter what you think about his personal opinions, but they are just that, his personal opinions which he was purposely baited into revealing.
If you're going to hold everyone to the same standard, which we should, have you ever said a negative thing about anyone to a close personal friend, in pri
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Good Troll. Using an anti-racism quote to justify racism.
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not all of us... the most troubling aspects of the sterling case to me, has always been it's issues regarding "court of public opinion", confiscation of property, and privacy. I'm a damn liberal, but civil liberties are more important than that.
I say if sterling makes a windfall from this, it's karmic punishment for people thinking it's a good idea for him to be done so for why he was. Force him out for racism? only when he's caught DOING something racist. not just saying it at home.
Re:Racism or Thought Police? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Are the player contracts with his business or with the NBA directly? I'd say that the players' exclusive contracts probably have more value than the name.
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What happened to Sterling is the exact same thing as someone going into your house, reading your diary, and then getting offended at the content. And then trying to get you fired from your job over it.
Wut?? (Score:4, Insightful)
What an incredibly stupid thing to post on Slashdot. the ONLY link to technology is Ballmer's name.
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Meh. The site changed from the implied "news for nerds who got beat up in school" to "news for anyone who geeks out about something" a while ago. I don't know why we don't see news about Electric Motorcycles.
[John]
It's just proof positive.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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In the age of the internet, bitching has become the number one export of western civilization.
nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Sterling never did anything illegal, he was just an old biggoted man. There exists no punishment society can inflict on him beyond personal actions like boycotting or just not liking him... So what gives? Why do people think that he can be robbed of an asset for being a biggot?
He has first amendment protections to be as big of a douchebag as he wants. His privacy was violated by his mistress and he was doing nothing illegal. The NBA has no grounds to force him out or deny him profit from the sale of an asset he shouldn't be forced to sell.
Re:nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't `bring the game into disrepute` a reason? It's their rules...they can have any clause they like. He might not mind not caring what people think of his outdated mentality, but the sport suffers if people boycott it, or if it's embarrassing to have to admit you are involved with it, if for no other reason.
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Progressivism is the current mainstream religion and we are getting closer and closer to the Holy Inquisition way of doing things.
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In our reality it is perfectly Ok to talk against Christians, rich people, whites males etc. To the extent that nothing happened to Sharon Osbourne when she said on TV that a cheating husband deserved to have his penis cut by his wife, just to give you an example.
Now try to talk against black people, gays, or suggest that a cheating woman deserved to be beaten by her husband on TV. Good luck!
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In our reality it is perfectly Ok to talk against Christians,
Yeah, they're one of the greatest scourges on our planet, to the extent that we actually had to found an entire fucking nation to get out from under them.
rich people,
They own 85% of everything and pay less than 30% of the taxes and complain that it's too much. Fuck them right in their selfish, idiotic, undeserving ears.
whites males
Yeah, it always burns when it's aimed at you, huh? Well, I'm a predominantly white male (nobody knows I'm Mexican to look at me, although maybe I look a little Spanish) and I don't like it either, but st
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Illegality only applies to what the government can do to him.
What the NBA can do to him is a matter of contract law.
But what society can do to him is pretty much arbitrary. This is all about society's judgment of him and that's fair - the value of the team is 100% a function of public approval. You didn't hear him complaining when public approval resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of income for him so, live by the sword die by the sword.
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This.Banning him and thus forcing him to sell the team removes his involvement and future ability to profit from the team, and therefore the incentive for a boycott. Problem solved, move along...
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Sterling never did anything illegal, he was just an old biggoted man. There exists no punishment society can inflict on him beyond personal actions like boycotting or just not liking him... So what gives? Why do people think that he can be robbed of an asset for being a biggot?
He has first amendment protections to be as big of a douchebag as he wants. His privacy was violated by his mistress and he was doing nothing illegal. The NBA has no grounds to force him out or deny him profit from the sale of an asset he shouldn't be forced to sell.
Actually, since the agreement between Sterling and the NBA is a private contractual one they are within their rights to do whatever is contractually permitted. How society views him and actions that take are separate from the agreement he has with the NBA.
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The first amendment is irrelevant in this case as it's the NBA's rules he violated. You can argue it violates free speech on broader grounds but that's not synonymous with the first amendment.
I agree that the punishment exceeds the crime, but I also think there wasn't a lot of choice. You can't have someone who holds and repeatedly espouses racist views own a basketball team comprising largely of black people. Before he said anything it could be kept under the rug, but now his view are public everyone knows
Disable Advertising? (Score:5, Informative)
More like "Ignore my checkbox to Disable Advertising". I'm still seeing banners at the top of the content and at the top of the right column.
Worse on mobile! (Score:3)
Mobile Safari gets banners at the top and obnoxious floaters at the bottom. On iPhone the floater often goes off the side and doesn't zoom right, making the dumb "hide" button hard/impossible to get at.
It's better than Beta, but not much.
Think harder Rick (Score:5, Insightful)
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No kidding.
Grow some spine and some thicker skin America, you're turning into the wimps of the "free" world...
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buh buh, if the team (and every other team in the entire NBA) is comprised almost entirely of black players, then the we need some kind of investigation on diversity, and how the NBA can make itself a more tolerant, and diverse organization.
We're sending a strong message to young white, asian, and hispanic children that they cannot be professional athletes, and in 2014 that's a travesty. I thought we were past this as a society.
If Jackson can do this to to Google, then perhaps in the interest of fairness th
I said from the beginning... (Score:2)
...that Sterling would be laughing all the way to the bank on this one, I'm happy for him.
The First Amendment may not apply to corporations (when it should apply to all that do business within the US), too bad he didn't get even more than 2 billion for the team...
The injustice of it all... (Score:2)
Lucky Ballmer , MSFT Quashed State Income Tax (Score:2)
Looks like spending $425k on lobbying to defeat the WA State income tax may have helped Ballmer save nearly $200 million on this $2B deal: Income Tax Quashed, Ballmer To Cash In Billions [slashdot.org]
Ballmer's been cheaped (Score:3)
He spent 2.2 Billion just to have the opportunity to throw chairs in public again?
There are many things you can buy for 2.2 Billion. This is one of them.
Good Reason (Score:2)
The signatures on the letter reads like a who's who of ISP industry presidents and CEOs, including AT&T's Randall Stephenson, Cox Communications' Patrick Esser, NCTA president (and former FCC commissioner) Michael Powell, Verizon's Lowell McAdam, and Comcast's Brian Roberts.
Case closed, we all know they know what's best for us, right?
ugh (Score:2)
I know slashdot loves to hate on the rich and all, but lets have some facts here.
This entire gripe seems to be based on the premise that he's filed as an "S Corporation" and therefor "It's not taxed! OMG!"
Well, that's not accurate.
From Wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]
In general, S corporations do not pay any federal income taxes. Instead, the corporation's income or losses are divided among and passed through to its shareholders. The shareholders must then report the income or loss on their own individual income tax returns.
He'll be paying taxes. It's just a matter of how and when.
Then there's the argument that he may win $1billion from the NBA during a lawsuit. Well good. This is the united states. He should be able to say what he wants no matter how stupid and offensive it is, then
the summary is a lie (Score:3)
I just RTFA. Even though some of the techniques the author speculates go beyond questionable into the realm of "no fucking way could he get away with that" (claiming a forced sale, claiming a loss), NONE of them actually eliminates taxes on his gain. They change the amount; they shuffle the timing around; but again NONE of them results in a "tax-free" windfall.
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With the long term capital gains tax rate at 15%, I'd just pay the tax. Odds are that rate is going back up at some point in the not too distant future.
He didn't profit from racism (Score:2)
He merely liquidated assets he already owned that were worth that much.
Planned move (Score:2)
"Section 1033 of the tax code allows you to defer taxes when your property is taken involuntarily, like eminent domain. Mr. Sterling can argue the Clippers sale was forced on him by the NBA."
So who wants to bet Donald Tokowitz and his accountants planned this from the start?
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Section 1033 of the tax code allows you to defer taxes when your property is taken involuntarily, like eminent domain. Mr. Sterling can argue the Clippers sale was forced on him by the NBA.
But it would, with 100% certainly, be a losing argument. There is no way that beginning to prepare to take the actions necessary to force the sale would count as forcing the sale. He sold voluntarily, in a situation where he had multiple buyers competing, with multiple offers way higher than what the value of the team had been believed to be.
Who in their right mind (Score:2)
thought that Ballmer reeked of Ethics?
Moral Swamp (Score:2)
I'd say it swapping one rich dickhead for another. (Score:5, Funny)
But Sterling got rich as a personal injury lawyer, and then mega-rich as a slum lord. He's the one man in America *everybody* can despise. Ballmer has actually found a situation where he can step in and people will heave a sign of relief.
Well played, sir. Well played.
Poor imagination (Score:3)
'"It is hard to imagine any more heinous way of earning money than by benefiting from racism," writes Rick Cohen
I guess Rick Cohen has never been to or heard of a donkey show.
What part of "private association" do you not get? (Score:3)
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I'm pretty sick and tired of this crusade against capitalism all over the world, where anyone who makes a lot of money is either evil, unethical, or oppressive to his employees.
And I'm sick of how statistically speaking, anyone who makes a lot of money is either evil, unethical, or oppressive to his employees.
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I am pretty sure you wouldn't be able to satisfy the standards you want to enforce to the people you envy.
I absolutely would, if a handful of greedy fucks hadn't made that impossible for their own profit.
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Keep using excuses to justify your ugly ugly envy.
I don't envy people for being soulless pieces of shit who are completely detached from caring for their fellow humans because they got theirs.
You are likely much much richer than 99% of the people in this planet,
True.
and I sincerely doubt you are donating 99% of your income to the poor people in Africa.
Ah yes, I refer to this as the "Why doesn't Warren Buffet just pay more taxes, then?" argument. Admittedly, it's not a very wieldy name. However, it does underscore the limited amount of thinking you've put into this issue. No matter how much money I can spend to try to make the world a better place, some people with a lot more money than me a) could do a whole l
Re:Crusade against capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand if you increase government powers, those same employees can be "screwed over" without any chance to defend themselves under the threat of force. And even worse this force can be bought by those rich guys.
So if you want to prevent damage from being done you should defend that governments should be as small as possible and that violence and coercion, which are the tools of any government, should be kept at a minimum.
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Rich people are not "harming" anybody. Much on the contrary. Someone with employees is providing the employees jobs that otherwise wouldn't exist.
[citation needed]
On the other hand if you increase government powers
It's not the other hand. It's the same hand, because business runs government.
So if you want to prevent damage from being done you should defend that governments should be as small as possible
Corporations are running government, so your solution is less government, so that corporations can run everything without government.
My solution is less centralized government, so that people have control over their own destinies, but so that they still have control.
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And if you want citations just check the countries at the top of economic freedom ranking of the heritage foundation and those at the bottom, then compare it to the standards of living of the average people in those same countries. The freer the economy the better the quality of life of the common person.
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The point is, corporations cannot run everything without government.
By the time the corporations are running things, it's called governance.
Rich people are not "harming" anybody. Much on the contrary. Someone with employees is providing the employees jobs that otherwise wouldn't exist.
[citation needed]
And if you want citations just check the countries at the top of economic freedom ranking of the heritage foundation and those at the bottom, then compare it to the standards of living of the average people in those same countries. The freer the economy the better the quality of life of the common person.
How is that a citation for the people at the top not harming anyone? Try, try, try to stay on topic. Or else we'll have to assume that you're just avoiding answering the question because you have no good answer.
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> I'm pretty sick and tired
Have a lie down. And then see a doctor. And try and think of a reason other than sympathy towards your sorry plight for others to be interested in your opinions.
Re:Crusade against capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
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Crony capitalism only exists when there is a big government to buy.
That is a staggeringly though not shockingly stupid thing [for you] to say. Collusion can exist in the absence of any government.
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I defy you to find monopolies that resisted for more than a few years without government protection, in the form of barriers, subsidies or regulations.
Yes, that's how monopolies work. But if there were no governments, the megacorporations (or of old, the companies) would simply grow until they themselves were governments. Indeed, they did act as governments in their own areas of influence.
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Re:Harder Idea - Shutter the team (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Harder Idea - Shutter the team (Score:5, Insightful)
bear in mind this man is guilty of nothing more than saying something politically incorrect within the privacy of his own house.
What happened here? 1984 much?
Re:Harder Idea - Shutter the team (Score:5, Informative)
Let's not forget that Sterling has been a Grade A fuckwad for decades before this. He has been sued multiple times for his racist housing discrimination practices. He lost one case outright. The terms of the other were confidential, but he had to pay millions in attorney fees, so let's guess how that one ended.
http://www.latimes.com/local/l... [latimes.com]
That's just the tip of his douchebag iceberg. He should have been run out long ago, but the league is a bunch of cowards. Fortunately, the players forced their hands by pretty much promising that no one would play for him again after this season.
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How big of a court case would you like to have on your hands?
"for the masses"? (Score:2)
Ah, no. Unless there is a plan to divy up $2B that I don't know about.
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No, he should have never been forced to sell the team at all.
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Donald Sterling _is_ a piece of shit racist bigot. He has long had a history of being one prior to this whole situation. People who follow the NBA closely have known this for years. It's only now that this video has come out and gone viral that anyone feels like doing anything about it.
Jealous of his success? Where are you pulling this from? If I were jealous of his success wouldn't I be just as jealous of Ballmer? Or anyone else with money? And thus, wouldn't I agree with the article that seems to be on a
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Would you care to explain yourself further? I'm an open minded person and if I'm wrong, I'll admit it. But you have to actually tell me why you disagree with me if you think I should see your perspective.
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But they have to compete with the Lakers for eyeballs. The Clippers happen to be at a high point and the Lakers at a low point--that's the only reason why anyone in LA has been remotely interested in the Clippers lately. I honestly don't expect their value in LA to last that much longer once this era of the team is over. Maybe they'll wait until that time to move the team, but I expect it to happen sooner or later.