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When I think of government, I always imagine it being similar to being forced to live with your parents or with roommates forever. They will claim that you should be forced to live with them because you are better off living with them. That because you split the expenses with them, that you are financially and materially better off. And that living with them, you, and your stuff, will be better protected.
They may even argue that you are morally better off living with them because they can help "keep you on the right track". Or they can "keep you from doing things that might harm yourself".
And while these things might be true. We all know that many of us would still rather live on our own. That we would sacrifice our financial and material well-being for independence. That we would accept being less secure, as long as we are free.
Damn! Did you have a long talk with my wife right after we were married?
She was trying to change me into something she wasn't going to like and definitely not the person she married. She finally gave up!
So apparently government is bad because of corporations and corporations would be good if it wasn't for government. You guys are too much sometimes.
It's more that people in general are "bad" when given power over others. Government is bad, in my opinion, because they can force you to obey. Corporations are bad because they make deals with government, which gives them an unfair advantage. They need government to keep things in their favor.
It's like the big banks...they make bad decisions and almost go under, but government decides they're too big to fail so they bail them out with taxpayer money. That means they can take big risks, give out loans and credit to people with bad credit scores, because who cares? If they mess up, the losses are covered by us. If the risk pays off, they get all the profit.
That isn't fair to small banks or to taxpayers, but the politicians and bankers both benefit. Lucky them...
It's more that people in general are "bad" when given power over others. Government is bad, in my opinion, because they can force you to obey. Corporations are bad because they make deals with government, which gives them an unfair advantage. They need government to keep things in their favor.
It's like the big banks...they make bad decisions and almost go under, but government decides they're too big to fail so they bail them out with taxpayer money. That means they can take big risks, give out loans and credit to people with bad credit scores, because who cares? If they mess up, the losses are covered by us. If the risk pays off, they get all the profit.
That isn't fair to small banks or to taxpayers, but the politicians and bankers both benefit. Lucky them...
Corporations don't need the government to be bad for people, they could easily do bad things when they have little to no regulations. This idiotic move by Congress to reduce bank regulations will ultimately prove that.
In America at least, a thing people seem to forget is that the government is supposed to be us. We The People. We (ostensibly) elect representatives from our own citizenry as representatives to work for our own interests.
Unfortunately, this hasn't been true in quite some time in this country. Not since it became corporatized.
Even so, I find it funny that people think that government automatically equals evil and authoritarian. All too often this is true, or governments evolve in that direction, but we do live in a society and it seems to me we do need some form of structure.
What that form should ultimately take, or what form would be most beneficial to We The People I do not claim to know.
It doesn't seem like it is what we have today, where high-level politicians from BOTH of the two major parties are completely bought, sold and owned by private interests who at this point are actually drafting laws: multinational CEOs, heads of global banks and energy concerns, contractors, lobbyists, etc. The weasely Democrats and the simpering Republicans are equally corrupt and incompetent.
I wish I DID have The Answer, but I don't. I know it doesn't consist of voting for a member of either of those parties for any national-level position. No reasonable person who gives a damn about their rights should ever vote for any Dem OR Repub for any national office ever.
In fact, corporations are a protected class! Corporations are the duchys of today and majority shareholders are the emperors and kings of many or of a powerful corporation with many subsidiaries.
That is the whole point.
A corporation can do things that a government cannot, at least in so-called democracies or nations that claim to be republics. When the Enlightenment forced monarchies to give up their powers bit by bit, corporations began to flourish. One does not negotiate a trade deal with a government these days but with lawyers for the interested corporation (though granted some 'representatives' do double duty for both the government and the company).
There's this democratic appeal to corporations, as if any body could rise up thru the ranks and be a CEO, or create their own and become a king. It really is nothing more than a new wardrobe.
This is true, but not new. Our forefathers knew of the dangers of corporations as they even in that day had corporations as large as nations such as East India Company.
So apparently government is bad because of corporations and corporations would be good if it wasn't for government. You guys are too much sometimes.
It isn't that government is bad and corporations are good. Nor are corporations only bad because of government. Nor is government bad only because of corporations.
The problem here, is that both government and corporations are constituted of men, and men are flawed. In fact, the "types" or "class" of men who become politicians are really the same class of men who become CEO's. They are the kind of people who want money, fame, and power.
They are a class of liars, cheats, and control-freaks.
No one thinks corporations would always be "good" without government. That is like saying that men themselves would always be good without government.
People who defend the market, aren't saying that businesses or their owners are morally righteous, or behave in any sort of unselfish way. No, people who defend the market might even say that business-men are the most selfish class of people in the world. In fact, they might even say that their selfishness(or self-interest) is the best thing about the market.
As quoted by Adam Smith, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages."
The question here is, if we know that corporations are run by greedy, lying, cheating, control-freaks. What do you do about it?
I'm reminded of Milton Friedman's words from 1975.
"People think that when you argue (for the free market) that you’re arguing for selfishness, for greed. That’s utter nonsense. The people who are in positions of power in a political hierarchy are also selfish and greedy. Mankind is selfish and greedy.
(To believe government can prevent that greed) is a false argument, because it assumes somehow that government is a way in which you put unselfish and ungreedy men in charge of selfish and greedy men. But government is an institution whereby the people who have the greatest drive to get power over their fellow men, get in a position of controlling them."
Which reminds me of this video Which talks about insider trading laws. It might show you a little bit about how our elected officials are the angels we imagine.
Regardless, my views of government and business are really analogous to my views of government and religion. And to explain, lets quickly look at a quote by Thomas Paine.
"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. Take away the law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original benignity."
Effectively, without government religion becomes toothless, and therefore benign. Without a legal establishment, the worst punishments that religion could mete out, would be excommunication.
This same principle applies to business. Without government, business is toothless. It cannot extract a single dollar out of your pocket. It can only exist if we voluntarily hand it over money. And without government, it needs to be careful about making enemies. Thus, in the absence of government, people and businesses are forced to behave benignly.
It is only with government support that anyone who can overtly be a selfish prick.
Even so, I find it funny that people think that government automatically equals evil and authoritarian. All too often this is true, or governments evolve in that direction, but we do live in a society and it seems to me we do need some form of structure.
I agree "somewhat".
I think of it like "families". You are obviously going to have a lot of rules within a household. For that matter, there will be rules within communities. An apartment building has a lot of rules. Churches have rules. Schools have rules. There are always rules and structure.
For that matter, I think there needs to be more rules in a place like New York City, than some small town in Kansas.
I'm reminded of my friend from New York City. We were talking about guns and about how New York has so much gun control. He replied "Do you think its a good idea for people to be open-carrying on a packed subway?".
Which reminded me of Japan's public transit system.
Of course, even if a reasonable person might agree that it is probably a bad idea for there to be so many guns in at least parts of densely packed cities. That even if you were trying to defend yourself, that shooting a gun into a packed crowd, or into a packed apartment building, could actually do far more harm than any good.
On the other hand, you cannot say that it is a bad idea for a guy on a hundred acres in rural West Virginia to have a gun.
Basically, I'm not opposed to rules. I'm opposed to a centralized, one-size-fits-all system of rules. I believe all rules should be as local as possible. And the ability to escape bad rules should be considerable. If not universal.
As I said, churches have rules, but no one is forcing you to go to church. When you have laws at a national level, there is really nowhere to escape to.
Whenever a thing as highly corporatized as American society has a government that is centralizing power the way the government we live under has been doing that concerns rational people. This is particularly true if it is all but officially announced who actually controls those who make the laws and that is the corporations. It's not for nothing that 6 out of 10 of the wealthiest suburbs in the country literally surround Washington, D.C.
There was a time (before Apple, Inc.? I correlate a sea-change in society with that successful marketing campaign, point here being how it allowed conglomerates to get their sexy back) when people were aware of this and knew better than to trust multi-billionaires. Sensible people understood why those types had so much and constantly endeavored to get even more and no one sane would ever trust them. Something has changed tho'. I think it is the credit-living, that fake affluence offered up to anyone like a guaranteed winning lottery ticket. Borrow, invest/buy, borrow on the purchase, invest/buy again, repeat. Then there is the scheme to get more money into 'speculation' by funding retirement options thru backing stocks. I know it all sounds plausible... as it should sound, I guess. So what happens to those retirement accounts if those companies go down? They can't, they're too-big-to-fail. Or the hint is in the words of a well-known investment schemer who once said, "The way to guarantee that a venture doesn't ever go belly-up is to get people to associate and back the company with their own money. Not only will they understand the value of their money but how indispensable my company is to that value and how they must support it. You'll see how far they'll go on their own to keep it going and me in the seat." In other words, how easily people will turn their eyes away in the face of certain certainties that they will never question what is done to them if they keep the game going. A proper PR apparatus to keep up appearances also helps.
Then there are the constantly manufactured and maintained divisions. I don't mean business subsidiaries, I mean hot topics and buzzy words full of intent and consequence paraded about like store mannequins everyone should appreciate, must invest time into to be thought relevant and connected. Is there anything more obvious than that? More to the point here, isn't it obvious who is behind it and why? Let's be frank: there is no way whatsoever to apply to our conglomerated media outlets, even cheekily, that they are associated with the concept of a "Free Press". Nothing. At. All. Their announcements and dramas sound more like tropes proclaiming autocracy, where order must be maintained in a calm, rational way with formal decrees from USgov then discussed if not already implemented.
People used to care about such things. Generally, I don't know if it is the goodfeel-demanding angst amongst the elders or the general goodfeel-demanding confused malaise of the younger generations. I think a good amount of it has to be greed, or to put it in a less cold way, a way more easily accepted, the concern everyone has about poverty and being poor themselves. No matter what one feels about the ends, whether it is all just a primer for globalization or consolidated finances or climate change, this situation is making for an unwieldy government that won't always play so nice if it plays by anything other than a cruel whimsy.
Government is a sad necessity for a society to function. I guess what it comes down to is how much and how centralized and to what personal ends we end up living with it. We won't ever have a Soviet-like dictatorship because if you're whole enterprise is based on the idea of freedom then you must offer something that appears to be choice, and in America, keeping fiat money a central motif to that ideal of liberty is how it will be since we are all about fiducial cash, how it keeps us better than all the rest and how we equate having more of it with independence, with personality. What we have is a form of obfuscated serfdom, writ large and quite obstinate, rooted in credits, debits and imaginary finances everyone seems to liken to a sort of algorithm suitable for use on a gaming console and just as heady and gorgeous.
Would it be a tyranny if tyranny were still recognized or could even be defined?
Corporations don't need the government to be bad for people, they could easily do bad things when they have little to no regulations. This idiotic move by Congress to reduce bank regulations will ultimately prove that.
They can do bad things, definitely. In an actual free market they would never last if the customers weren't satisfied. No government to bail them out or stifle competition. Id say things are so messed up right now that any regulation or deregulation isn't going to fix the problem. Our current system is very fascist.
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You guys are too much sometimes.
It's more that people in general are "bad" when given power over others. Government is bad, in my opinion, because they can force you to obey. Corporations are bad because they make deals with government, which gives them an unfair advantage. They need government to keep things in their favor.
