[ExI] stossel on optimism

[Adrian Tymes]

2012/1/5 spike <spike66 at att.net>:
> With big evil corporations, you have a
> choice of working for them or not,

Assuming you can afford to not be working.  Or you don't live
in a town that's supported by one single employer (see any
number of towns that essentially died once their factory or
mine shut down) - granted, one could in theory move, but if
this was a trivial choice for most people then said small &
dependent towns wouldn't exist.

> and the choice of buying their goods or
> not.

Save for monopolies, or near-monopolies, in areas where you
have to buy something from that sector.  For instance, farmers
have to buy seeds.  (Or quit being farmers, but this is not
remotely practical for many of them: their capital is sunk into
their farm, and training for any other industry takes long enough
that they need a source of income in the mean time.)

http://www.newwest.net/city/article/big_ag_forces_farmers_to_buy_ge_seeds_report_says3/C8/L8/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122498255

> With governments, your choice is to play along or face their guns.

Unless and except where corps effectively become governments.
The line is not so clear as it might seem.