It is time to recognize that there are actually two different economies working against each other.

The reality is that people make lots of money in the stock market by voting against the interests of working people. Working people need things to be cheaper than they are while the stock market works to keep prices of goods and services higher. This is clear in terms of the fact that the stock market is going down because oil prices are going down.It is also true that the stock market approach to setting prices for goods and services works against the interests of working people to receive living wages for the work they do. To treat these two parts of the economy as complementary under these circumstances is wrong. We must recognize that often times rises in stock prices are the result of most people losing out.

People who make money through earnings for work are often hurt by things that make money for people who primarily make money through making investments. If we actually recognize this we will start to treat the two things differently as really at odds with each other rather than as complementary parts of the same basic economy. Which is how we usually talk about it today.
The economy doesn’t have to be organized in a way that works like this. It could and should be set up so that these two different parts of the system works with each other rather than against each other. This would be possible if we had some recognition in our system that corporations have some social responsibility as well as a responsibility to their stockholders. That would be a much more sensible and socially responsible way to organize our economy but it would require investors to recognize that there are other interests at play here than simply making them as much money as possible.

I believe that if we were to adopt this principle generally it would be accepted by most investors as a reasonable approach to operating the economy in everyone’s best interest. There would certainly be some investors who would consider this unreasonable but I think they would be in the minority given that at this point stockholders include lots of the working people that stand to gain on the other end. Even if this were not the case this principal should still be pursued. This would qualify as a huge change to the way our legal system and economy currently function and make corporations accept a new social responsibility that many of them don’t accept now.

There is nothing in the basic nature of capitalism that suggests that corporations could not have some social responsibility for the actions they take and that is all this proposal would require. The real question would be how to make a choice in any actual given situation. That is a really complicated question to try and answer. I think it would have to be decided by the courts with relation to the level of social difficulty that different corporate decisions would cause.

There would be a whole jurisprudence that would have to grow up around this question as well there should be. Even if the courts took a really limited approach to imposing this responsibility on corporations the situation would be much better8il than it is right now. Today there is absolutely no recognized responsibility to act in the best interests of the entire economy in making corporate decisions that affect the economic interests of stockholders.

Purchasing tickets to events if you are disabled

I have had lots of trouble over the last few years being able to buy more than two tickets together for public events. This seems to be a Ticketmaster problem in part. Ticketmaster is the basic ticketing organization for most of the large venues in the country. It seemed like they impose these limitations themselves without actually checking with the venues.

The ADA regulations make it clear that you are entitled to purchase four seats together in most instances rather than just two. Four seems to me to be a much more reasonable number to Allow. Four is also the number we have been trying to purchase when we have run into this problem.

The full set of rules is much more complicated than this. The number of tickets a handicapped person is allowed to purchase is based on the rules the same venue applies to people without a handicap. If non-handicapped people can only purchase two tickets together that same rule applies to handicapped patrons.

Here in Boston where I live there is a venue that I go to a lot called the Blue Hills Bank Pavilion, where handicapped seats are just seats at the end of a row. In this situation there is no real reason to impose the two ticket limit at all. I also had this limit imposed when I purchased tickets to the Newport Folk Festival, which just takes place in a big field with a second stage that has no particular seating issues. In this situation the handicapped seating area can be made any size that the venue wants to make it and therefore can seat as many people as want to be in it. Then there are other venues like the TD Garden in Boston and other sports arenas where there is a limited supply of seating in the handicapped accessible areas. There are limited opportunities for handicapped seating in these arenas because they have stairs and you have to sit somewhere where the elevator will take you without having to use the stairs. These venues have some better reasons to impose these limits in the venues have a limited areas where handicapped seating can be provided. Even in these facilities there are usually some options the facility has available to increase the handicapped seating area. In many cases these venues use some of the areas that would otherwise be available for handicapped seating to provide standing room only space. Optionally, the rules could be changed to make it clear that when a handicap seat not being used by a handicapped person for that event that standing room only patrons could use the same space. This would eliminate the need for venues to eliminate otherwise available handicapped seating area for the standing room patrons. The current rules that prohibit this are actually designed to help handicapped patrons but if the effect of these rules is to cause these venues not to put seating for handicapped people in places that would otherwise be available for that purpose today it is a bad rule.