Corporations

[cowman]

When I open my local paper and see help wanted ads for Safeway and Superstore in the $7/ $7.70 range I get a little disgusted. These large corporations are making a virtual killing on food and they can't even pay $8? Talk about cheapskates! Even Macdonalds pays over $8!
Now lets see they buy old cows for 2 cents, sell them for $1.99 and pay their workers $7? Someone is making a whole lot of money here and it isn't the farmers, the workers or the consumer!

[carebear300]

You just have to love free enterprise at its finest, or is its worst? Those that have the most money have the most control of the system. They are starting to make a confirmed old time free enterpriser such as myself into god help me a socialist. Well not quite yet, but like you cowman am getting dam disgusted at the gouging that goes on in this system..

[ValueChainFX]

I had a chuckle over the socialist comment. I have had people call me that before and I would guess if a socialist is someone that wants people to get paid for what they do and do what they get paid for than I must be a socialist. I believe in the free enterprize system, I just don;t believe it's free when someone is being cheated, lied to and stole from!

[cowman]

What is free enterprize? Is it a corporation that uses it's collective might to get rid of the competition? That buys the politicians to pass laws that eliminate the little independent guy? Corporations are not free enterprize they are socialism for the elite! They use their power to gain an unfair advantage. The fact is they are terribly inefficient and in no way want to have to operate in a truly free market.
A governments duty is to ensure a fair market! True free markets don't really exist anymore, whether it be in education, medicine, or business. For example if I hung out my shingle as a doctor I would be charged with breaking the law. And yet I might be better at it than some clown who went to a school run by more clowns! Same goes for all the "professions". They are mobbed up no different than the Mafia or the Hells Angels! The only difference is they "own" the politicians!

[ivbinconned]

Dianne Francis wrote a book along time ago (forget the title) where she describes the big difference between Canada and the US in respect to anti- combines legislation.
She sheds light on how the Canadian government over the years has aided the developement of monopolies and how that has been a bad policy and that it in no way should be thought of as free enterprise.
Many a canadian corporate elite over the years have waved the flag of "free enterprise, all the while hideing behind trade barriers. Especially if the interests of some central canadian corporation are at stake.

[cowman]

Ivbinconned: Take a look at Bombardier...a classic example of Canadian free enterprize at its best! Or perhaps Peter Pocklington! Now there was a real Canadian capitalist! Why he got more money from the government than he ever got from the marketplace!
Of course we shouldn't leave out some of our free enterprize cattlemen who make a lot of noise about how independent they are while getting the government to pay them to pasture their cows on crown land!
The old NDP had it right when they talked about Corporate welfare bums!

[carebear300]

Cowman I agree with you wholeheartedly, why haven't we got at least one politician in this country that will stand up and say the same thing? I guess they are all bought off one way or another by the big corporations or big unions or other self serving organizations.

[ivbinconned]

In Saskatchewan the cowboy pays the government for crown land pasture (under strict guidelines) and has to pay even if it is so dry it can not be used. Is this just the opposite of Alberta??

[cowman]

Oh no, I think they still have to pay their fees no matter what the weather does.
The problem is they collect a pile of money from the oil companies for seismic exploration, pipelines and drilling sites. You see they claim surface rights instead of just grazing rights.
A few years back the crown grazing leases produced $40 million dollars in surface rights payments while only collecting $3 million in grazing fees. The Alberta government made a move to stop this but the leaseholders basically won. From a standpoint of what is best for the Alberta public it would be much better to cancel all the leases and just make them cow free.
Another problem was the leaseholders were denying access to hunters/fishermen/recreation. Which makes sense to a degree when the cows were in there, but not in the fall when the cows were out. Thus you had wealthy oil men like Doc Seamans holding thousands and thousands of acres for his private hunting preserve.