Noonan is off to Bilderberg this year.

Saipanne wrote: »

I tend to read the full thread before posting to avoid making posts like yours.

I have read the full thread. It's only a couple of pages long. What's your point?

Shurimgreat wrote: »

Essentially they are.

Capitalism means the freedom to do what you want, setup a small business or set up a massive corporation.

As for Bilderberg, its increasingly difficult for any small group of people to control anything in the capitalist west.

That being said, of course the heads of Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, large banks and other corporations are going to have huge power and influence. There's nothing new about that.

Essentially there is nothing to see here. Rich, powerful, influential capitalists meet. So bloody what.

Ireland's leaders have always taken on board what the likes Intel, Microsoft, Google etc have to say. Without these companies we'd have nothing as a nation, comely maidens dancing at the crossroads would be the height of it.

You are probably giving out about these corporations using a laptop made by them, using Google to keep up with the story, and driving a car made by one of these "evil" companies.

At the end of the say they are just companies trying to make a profit and providing a service.

This has to be on of the most naive posts I've read in a while. You are parrotting the propaganda of capitalists who have convinced you that you are free. Yes free to be exploited and indebted. I'm fine with a free market model but people like you have so little knowledge of how capitalism, especially unregulated capitalism, works that you just spit out slogans and cliches and have absolutely no idea what you've said.

All the labour reforms and protections that were hard fought for and won over the last 70 years are being stripped back by the IMF and the World Bank and you can bet the farm that the further erosion of these will be high on the Bilderberg agenda as it most usually is.

You talk about setting up a business, as if you know what that involves. Well not everybody has a business head on them or want to, or can, run a business. But the vast majority of people want to, and can, work. Capitalism exploits those who work and rewards those who do the exploiting. It's as simple as that. Capitalists seek to maximize profit and minimise cost. In economics the costs of production are fixed and variable. The capitalist seeks to slash both while maintaining or increasing production. This involves gutting pensions, freezing or lowering wages, abolishing benefits, increasing work hours but also the removal of costly things like minimum safety standards. If you think that there are only two states in which an economic society can exist: (1) the present paradigm of predatory capitalism, or (2) we all break rocks in a Soviet style gulag and aren't allowed to listen to rock n' roll music, then you are pitifully ignorant of economic doctrine and societal structuring.