OPINIONS

1. A large proportion of top "executives" are chancers and posers who don't know what they are doing. When the economy is booming and their companies are doing well they take all the credit and fat rewards, when the economy falters they are seen in their true light and they fall like ninepins, as is happening now.
2. Companies are traps for most people, if they give a person any expertise or experience at all it is mostly peculiar to that one situation and more or less useless if that person wants to go anywhere else. The limited company is an invention of the Devil.
3. Who in their right mind wants to spend their whole life in one company with the same group of people and the same sort of work all the time? It should be far easier to move about, to find some satisfactory social life apart from anything else, some companies and industries are deadly from this point of view.
4. The limited company is designed to enable it's owners to defraud their employees. Employees are usually defrauded of any share of the capital growth of their companies. A few high tech. companies are beginning to correct this injustice now.
5. Limited companies are sordid clubs run for the benefit of shareholders and executives and the exploitation of employees.
6. Should it really be a company's primary purpose to maximise the return it provides for it's shareholders, aren't shareholders parasites? *****Shareholders put their savings at risk and make their money available to others so that it can be used to generate income and profits, aren't they entitled to some return above inflation for their generosity? Yes, they are entitled to a return to encourage them to invest but there is no reason why it should be maximised. The only way they can get a return from their money is by using it in a business themselves or by lending it to someone else for this purpose. Their business could be the letting of property. Muslims aren't supposed to charge interest or pay it. How does their system function - not very well, most people stay poor? The reason is to compete as effectively as possible for further investment? Companies that give the biggest return to investors over one period are not necessarily the ones that should receive more investment in another. Investment should be directed to organisations that have good prospects in the future not good records in the past.
7. Investors are basically parasites who want to get income without working for it, there is no reason for their profits to be maximised. (It shouldn't be necessary to offer investors large returns to attract a large investment to a business that is expected to boom, it should be up to the people who are best qualified to make judgements on which investments are likely to yield the biggest returns to determine where investment money is directed.) There is no reason why the general population should be able to use the Stock Market as a casino and cause booms and busts.
8. Companies shouldn't be the fiefdom of a few individuals. The usual reason for individuals to form a company is so that they can exploit others within it to make a lot of money for themselves.
9. Small businesses should have some sort of attachment to larger ones that can help them with some aspects of their management and, in particular, protect their employees from suffering very limited opportunities and other abuse. The personnel of small companies must have some access to the greater opportunities offered by larger ones.
10. The managers of large and medium sized companies must be properly qualified for their role and must manage according to strict rules, they should be public servants to some extent.
11. Bosses shouldn't be able to set their own pay. (Semler)?
12. No nepotism.
13. Family businesses must only be able to employ close family members, anybody else would be at a hopeless disadvantage within the organisation.
14. Businesses shouldn't be the property of individuals or groups.
15. Founders of businesses should be allowed to play a prominent role in their development but not own them.
16. Businesses of more than ten? people must be limited companies, (or co-ops).
17. The accounts of all businesses should be available for scrutiny to anybody who is interested in them at all times.
18. Small businesses cannot achieve very much, they are usually swallowed by bigger businesses once they look as though they are going to take off. Any British company that starts to thrive is very quickly sold into foreign ownership so that it's original bosses can live hedonistic lives on the proceeds.
19. Companies with more than a certain number of employees or an annual turnover above a certain amount should be managed by Managing and Financial Directors appointed and paid by the Government, to make sure that they are managed fairly, according to the rules and the directors don't have excessive rewards?
20. Should dividends be paid to employees as well as shareholders. Should employees earn shares as well as wages?
21. It shouldn't be left to individuals to take the risks of setting up new companies, only the rich can afford to take these risks. Enterprises and industries that are needed often fail to be set up because no individual or small group is prepared to take the risks involved. People or businesses with ideas for new ventures should be able to compete for funds from public? sources without necessarily putting any of their own money at risk. For one thing, they might have brilliant ideas but no money, and for another, they would be foregoing any return on their financial investment because that would be zero and that should be sufficient. Governments make a habit of encouraging people to be enterprising and take risks but they don't provide any help when bankruptcy is the result. We have a massive insurance industry to collectively protect individuals from almost every kind of risk and those who fail to avail themselves of this protection are usually regarded as fools but governments dupe people into believing that taking business risks for which insurance isn't available is praiseworthy and should be extravagantly rewarded when successful.
22. Relying on entrepreneurs to create new businesses doesn't work. Most of them are only interested in easy scams that produce big bucks fast, ie. swindles mostly. They are not interested in the large investments and long hard slogs that are necessary to build many important but unglamorous capabilities. This is one of the reasons why our industrial capability has large holes in it which make it unable to have any presence in fields that other countries get huge profits from, ie. we have been shut out of many high tech. fields by our lack of a significant optical (lens making) industry.
23. The gambling element of investment cannot be entirely eliminated but it should be minimised as far as possible and, in most cases, the risks should be spread among as many people as possible so that nobody is crippled by failure. Important, large-scale investment isn't likely to be forthcoming if these conditions are not observed.
24. Control of companies to be determined by value of shares held? NO. The people who own the most shares aren't necessarily the people most qualified to run a company, it should be the latter who do the job.
25. If shares are turned into cash, the money will only be useable to buy other securities, it won't be useable as personal spending money beyond the max. income per annum, ie. realisable wealth will be no more than the max. income per annum.
26. The government is irresponsible in trying to persuade people to be enterprising and start new businesses. Only a small number of people in a small number of mostly not very rewarding occupations, such as trades, can hope to start successful businesses. Most people who try soon come to grief and find themselves in a worse situation than they were in before. The government knows this is the case but it also knows that it doesn't have to do anything to repair the damage when people's lives are wrecked due to failure of their businesses. It's attitude is that a few successes that produce new Fat Rats outweigh all the failures.
27. For new businesses to have a good chance of success they should normally be created by a group of people with complementary skills and this should probably be done under the wing of an existing successful business.
28. Only the rich, very talented or very lucky can afford to be entrepreneurs, this is the way the prosperous classes like it to be.
29. Most entrepreneurs are people who have made a lot of money in a dubious way. If they are Russian they are referred to as members of a mafia, if they are British they are respected pillars of society.
30. Businesses can't be unaccountable entities serving only the interests of their own members and shareholders any more, they must serve society in general.
31. Employees of all companies to own half the shares?
32. If a business is sold for a profit, everybody in the business (or who has been in the business?) will get a part of the profit (in proportion to the total amount of money they have earned in the business or have invested in the business? In any case, it won't just be fat rats who benefit). Sums of money above the max. allowed income will have to be reinvested and will become assets that can be cashed in the future?
33. Companies must not be anybody's private property to use for their own benefit, they must serve society.
34. Trying to start one's own business is a short route to ruin for most people. Peasant economies are the only ones where most people can be self-employed.
35. Society can't rely on entrepreneurs to create new businesses, they are only interested in making fortunes for themselves, few businesses generate fortunes.
36. Employers shouldn't be treated any differently to workers, they are workers (or should be).
37. The only people who prosper in this society are cheats and swindlers, people who dupe others into paying over the odds for products or services such as double glazing, kitchens, conservatories, computer courses etc. Why aren't schools teaching children how to be bastard, confidence tricksters without any conscience so that they have a chance of an enjoyable life?
38. We have armies of over-paid people selling things but hardly any producing anything except waste paper (advertising material), this is a recipe for disaster.
39. Everybody is being conned and pressured into buying things they don't need and can't afford to keep the wheels of capitalism turning just a bit longer.
40. Some of the most prosperous businesses feed and cultivate the lowest tastes, the porn and pop music industries for example.
41. Companies are poisonous, corrupt organisations designed to benefit a few at the expense of many, only crooks and mental defectives could want to work in them.
42. Companies are stultifying, they sap the initiative and wreck the lives of most people who work in them. There must be an alternative to working for/with corrupt employers.
43. Being the founder of a business doesn't give one the right to control it for evermore. Once the business has employees, they have the right to take part in the running of the business. The founder might have the right to define the ethical standards the business will observe during his association with it. Really, all businesses should have the same high ethical standards and almost identical structures and management methods.
44. Virtually all traders (except public sector organisations?) are sharks who are trying to maximise their personal gains rather than serving the interests of their customers. The latter activity is only a consideration if the timescale and nature of the trader/customer relationship means it might serve the former one.
45. Salespeople are paid to deceive customers.
46. Salespeople are trained crooks, trained confidence tricksters, they are trained to dupe customers into paying more for things than they are really worth, things they don't need and don't really want, trained to conceal the extortionate profit margin on things, to exaggerate the benefits conferred by them and to denigrate superior rival products. They are given extravagant salaries to persuade them to ignore their conscience and compensate them for selling their soul to the Devil. These are the sort of people who tend to become the chief executives of companies, particularly in the USA where fat rat gurus hold expensive rallies to teach salesmen new, underhand methods. Is it any wonder that several prominent US companies have been found to be cans of worms.
47. Many Chief Executives are little more than whip crackers, that is their only skill. Most of the rest are posers of other kinds or glorified clerks.
48. All employees in a company have the right to know the remuneration and responsibilities of all the other people in the firm, this information should also be provided to job applicants.
49. Companies shouldn't be completely independent organisations, free to do whatever their managers want, they should fit into larger structures, ie. they should have close and formal relationships with the rest of the industry they are part of.
50. Entrepreneurs cannot be relied on to coordinate a collection of companies to perform a function that none of them could accomplish alone, the government should employ people to fulfil this role within an organisation similar to MITI in Japan.
51. Traders who try to deceive and cheat those they do business with are primitives from a bygone age, at least they should be.
52. You don't see many Japanese salesmen in this country, the Japanese have learned that good products sell themselves.
53. Most high ranking people in companies justify their high salaries by the responsibilities they supposedly bear. Most of them are too busy serving their own personal interests to pay much attention to those few responsibilities they haven't delegated to someone else.
54. Every business is organised as a poisonous hierarchy that ensures that a small group of bastards can disenfranchise and exploit everyone else in the organisation. Anyone who wishes to progress has to show that he condones the behaviour of the bastards and is willing to do dirty work on their behalf himself.
55. While we are wasting scarce and valuable resources on temples to folly such as the Greenwich Dome and the new Wembley Stadium the Chinese are investing in the factories and businesses that will probably wipe out our economy.
56. This country has become a slave economy of the USA, Europe and the Far East thanks to the ineptitude and corruption of our business and political leaders and the cretinism and indolence of the general population.
57. The Managing, Financial and Personnel Directors of businesses employing more than 25? people should be Civil Servants who have had proper training, follow strict rules laid down by government and are paid as Civil Servants. Anybody will be able to apply for training to qualify for these positions.
58. The role of entrepreneur will also be filled by Civil Servants rather than greedy, fortune hunting bastards looking to make a financial killing for themselves, at the expense of everyone else involved, out of a quick deal. They will be trained to look for synergies between different businesses and potential cost savings through cooperation, mergers etc.

1. Co-ops are almost certainly a more just form of business organisation than limited companies and a form that should have a better chance of success during the start-up phase of an enterprise since more people would be expected to be involved and sharing the high initial work load. Why do governments encourage the formation of companies but not co-ops? Because they are not corrupt, feudal (capitalist if you prefer) organisations which enable the greedy to get rich I suppose.
2. Disadvantages of co-ops:- Do Banks have difficulty recovering debts from them because of their distributed ownership and does this prevent them getting Bank Loans? Could the Government guarantee loans made to co-ops or could the co-ops have a collective guarantee fund?