You should not allow yourself the luxuries of discouragement of despair. Bounce back immediately, and welcome the adversity because it produces harder thinking and harder drive to get to the objective.
Ours is a system of corporate socialism, where companies capitalize their profits and socialize their losses…in effect, they tax you for their accidents, bungling, boondoggles, and mismanagement, just like a government. We should be able to deselect them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote criticizes corporate practices that allow companies to profit while passing the financial burdens of their failures onto the public.
Ralph Nader's quote reflects a sharp critique of the relationship between corporations and the public sphere, suggesting that the current economic system allows companies to make profits while externalizing their losses to society. This dynamic creates a scenario akin to taxation, where citizens bear the costs of corporate mismanagement and failures. Nader advocates for the power of the public to hold corporations accountable, hinting at a need for reform that ensures greater corporate responsibility and transparency.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on corporate accountability, I referenced Nader's quote to emphasize the necessity of reforming how businesses operate.
More from Ralph Nader
All quotes →I once said to my father, when I was a boy, 'Dad we need a third political party.' He said to me, 'I'll settle for a second.'
Power concedes nothing without a demand. The struggle for justice must never be adjourned. The forces of injustice do not take vacations.
The corporate lobby in Washington is basically designed to stifle all legislative activity on behalf of consumers.
We have the most prolonged adolescence in the history of mankind. There is no other society that requires so many years to pass before people are grown up ... Adolescence is nurtured and prolonged by educational processes and by industry that has found a bonanza in embracing the adolescent population and fortifying 'adolescent values.' This prolongation of adolescence robs the country of the population group having the most risk takers, and the highest ideals.
Moral courage is the highest expression of humanity.
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Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
It’s not about the budget; it’s about the power...So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.
I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.
It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.
We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.
It's not just a matter of whether you support Obama or Romney. It's who they have coming with them. I always keep my powder dry, as they say in the military.