WILL INDUSTRY, ON ITS OWN, DO WHAT IS RIGHT?

Each one of those examples had a response in the main re: safety. (The EThyl corp was originally owned by a Joint venture among Dupont, General Motors , and Standard Oil. The issues of lead in gas were that it causes excess lead in the environment and actually rotted the exhaust and intakes of the engines. THink about it. When I was a kid, my dad uased to get OLDSMOBILE 98's. These cars were big boats that, no matter how well they were cared for, never lasted much beyond 120000miles. Today, a car is barely bgroken in at 120000, its due, in large part, to the removal of lead in gas.

AS far as cl;aiming that govt regulations caused the demise of GM, ebven your Conservative buddies like gunga would tell you that GM just made crappy autos . They were glacially slow to respond to what the buying public wanted and , because their cars were so unreliable, they lost market share. The foreign cars were subhject to the same regs and managed to sell their products. EVEN with union shops.

Today, JD Powers has identified two of the top 3 cars as AMerican. Thats a lesson too late learned und too late acted on.

Car manufacturers wre som pof the most blatantly dismissive of environmental and safety regs until the EPA and unions became activist,

LArge parts of major contaminant sites in the US were owned by General Tires and Fischer Body.
Creativity can solve the problems of industry and govt doesnt hamper creativity . The last century had huge environmental problems from oil,coal, metal, electronics, auto, tool , steel and aluminum, even food as major contamination sources. regulations that came and grew out of the formation of EPA had been active in identifying cleanups. (During the terms of more conservative presidents from reagan on, and including Clinton-wed lost the initiatives of environmental cleanups and even moved the laws into reverse).

The question becomes the lesser of evils, in light of the premise that "space exploration may well represent Man's best chance for a securing a long-term future" thus my argument still stands firm.

You infer the question: which is more important in the face of long-term 'societal responsibility' Well, as of yet you have posed no significant argument to even suggest that securing Man's long-term future is offset by the short term actions of (for example) Boeing.

Further, to suggest (as one might) that if there was no Boeing the present circumstances would magically-somehow be one in which there would be a higher level of 'societal responsibility' belies the Man's well documented self destructive nature to 'fill the gap of missing evil'.

In order to make your case, you have a tough argument ahead of you to show that your notion of "clean up" supersedes my premise that "space exploration may well represent Man's best chance for a securing a long-term future" thus my argument still stands firm in the context of 'societal responsibility'...which I should also point out, is as of yet ill-defined by yourself, but loosely adopted by me (for better or worse) to mean: net benefit to long term survival in light of man's well documented self destructive nature.

You seem to be arguing a totally different point there chumly. I never said That THE CONCEPT of any industry was faulty or evil. My question was WILL and industry do right on its own (read absent any direction). The entire space program was born out of a war based govt program from the military, and the father of modern liquid fuel rocketry wasnt picked up for use by anyone in the US until Gremany copped his work and grew it into the Penemunde projects. SO Im not even sure what youre trying to say.

I neither said nor implied anything like what youre saying here. My entire thread is predicated that INDUSTRIES WERE ALREADY THERE and not that somehow they would appear as if summoned to fill some need. Most industries have grown and morphed from companies that had little to do with their present day functions.

The initial conditions of the space program (as you claim them to be) are irrelevant to my premise that "space exploration may well represent Man's best chance for a securing a long-term future".

Further as discussed your use of the term 'societal responsibility' is as of yet ill-defined by yourself, but loosely adopted by me (for better or worse) to mean: net benefit to long term survival in light of man's well documented self destructive nature.

Further your response that industry is somehow not a function of Man's nature is absurd.

As such, in the context given, my argument still stands firm and yours..well...as of yet you have posed no significant argument to even suggest that securing Man's long-term future is offset by the short term actions of (for example) Boeing.

I won't carry on with additional "as discussed" because I'm no big fan of argument from repetition. Meet my challenges as posed in my posts and define your terms as would expected, then I'll respond in kind.

Youve missed my entire point chumly.I dont disagree that "Space exploration" is a way to ensure a sustainable future. (ESPECIALLY SINCE WE SEEM TO BE ******* UP THIS PLQANET). My point has been, entirely, that industry , without govt regulation and oversight, will not act responsibly in any of sevearl functions.

SO, based upon the intitial question asked by me, I consider that YOUR position is irrelevant and I believe you just wish to make some point that , while of no consequence herein, may serve as feedstock for a different thread..

I think that the concept of societal responsibility is fairly well defined. Everyone else seems to have "gotten it".You seem to be trying to force fit some generality into my thread.
While I think that space exploration "industry" is a way to escape our planet, my topic has more to do with "If industries took better care of their portion of the little planet we may not have to escape it".
MY thread is entirely focused upon how we seem to need regulations and oversight to do"what is right".

I was not arguing cause and effect or factors underlying success or failure of a business. You asked for an example and I gave one that I thought inappropriate for government to regulate along with examples of what I thought inappropriate for government to regulate.

Again, I stipulated that all industry will not always do the right thing without enforceable restraints put upon it. I also added that, in my opinion, government restraints or requirements for industry is justifiable only to prevent industry from doing violence to others and/or from violating others' constitutional, civil, legal, or unalienable rights.

Now if your agenda was to savage commerce and industry re environmental concerns and or establish a forum for screeds to condemn various industries, fine, but your opening question did not specify that.

Change one of those 'inappropriates' to 'appropriate' in my previous post.

say what? You gave the auto industry as an example. It was answered by two people and the consensus was that the very ideas you say should not be interfered with were the very things that US automakers were depleted in. The US automakers from the 60's on, made peices of **** without much help from the govt.
Their responsibility as purveyors of quality products was ignored . So was their environmental responsibility re their entire manufacture train.

Your argument then, to its logical extension, is "let em fail". I can accept that, IF THAT WERE THE POINT OF THIS THREAD.

Iguess my point , which I wasnt so subtle in making was, INDUSTRY HAS NEVER BEEN KNOWN TO DO THE RIGHT THINGS UNTIL THEY ARE FORCED TO.

Youve been taking "Convolution 101" from spendius?

(There were 2 inappropriates in the same sentence, which one shall we replace?)

It doesn't matter. Change either one and the context becomes correct.

An example of where an industry acted creatively and in the public interest was the DM&IR railroad, (now owned by a CAnadiana firm). DM&IR was running out of good ore to make taconite, there was a problem in the amounts of asbestos in the Mesabi range. So, in 1960's Minnesaota passed a law that limited the ability of the state to tax the Mesabi Iron companies. This influx of money allowed DM$IR to install a huge sluice filtration system that removed about 99.999% of the asbestos from the native rock. NOW, where the GOOD THING WAS, The DMIR, by installing a proper asbestos cleaning ystem was able to mine the lower concentration ore, (They went from 2.5 to 1% iron oxide). The oxide is coqated, mixed with pineoils and surfactants and is rolled into taconite pellets without any asbestos flying around anymore.
Now, the industry did what was right , after the state gave it a tax vacation.

in the past corporate America would sometimes do the right thing by the collective because they felt an duty to do so. The TV networks running massive money losing news divisions is one good example. Today, almost always, this will only be allowed if the right thing is profit neutral or better. That is that someone else needs to pay for it, often with tax breaks....or it needs to build good will that can be turning into money profits at a latter date....or it is part of an organized effort to grow a brand. The only major exception is when they do the right thing in response to overt force, usually from government. A very minor exception is when a company is lead by and charismatic entrepreneur type who owns a lot of the business, and who is flying for his ego.