Who Can Beat Trump?

[David Horn]

(09-24-2018, 03:34 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The supposed veneration of work by Republicans can't continue. Robots are taking over most jobs, and humans won't even be needed for most of them much longer. The issue then, is why should the owners of the machines get all the income from production? They don't deserve them. Robots were supposed to save labor; they can't do that if all they do is kick people out of their jobs to starve on the street.

David pointed out the other kinds of welfare. Corporate welfare is a big deal. Military payments go to people and products who never do anything for our country but fight sometimes in wars to protect the oil business, which we don't need anymore anyway. It is the biggest "make-work" welfare industry. Conservative libertarians assume that everyone can be self-reliant, and any help from government is dependency. But it is really insurance, which we all might need, because bosses are capricious and fire people for no reason, or for reasons out of their control, or to ship their jobs overseas, or replace people with robots, or buy out companies for "efficiency" which also means firing workers. And people are not paid a living wage, which means they must go on welfare or food stamps, which means that it's really the companies that refuse to pay their workers, whom our welfare taxes are paying for.

Libertarians also say people in the free market can just take their talents and energy elsewhere and get better wages at another company. But not only are most companies corporate oligarchies these days, and collude to keep wages down, but most companies don't pay living wages without the government requiring them to do so, so there's no other jobs to go to. Libertarians also say that if companies put out bad products, they will go out of business in the free market. But before liberals like Ralph Nader came along, or the muckrakers of the progressive movement, companies put out bad products anyway, and consumers had no say. There were no alternatives. Before unions and government regulations, workers had no ability to bargain for decent working hours, conditions or wages, and they didn't have them. The free market provided none of the alleged opportunities, except for a few greedy rich bosses, whom the libertarians protect. And the environment became a junk heap with poisoned air, water and land. Libertarians are just stupid; that's one reason why their party never gets anywhere.

Yeah, they don't want the government involved, because the government is 'force', and they don't want private sector alternatives like unions either.  The third alternative is violence, because the people meekly dying to keep the rich in clover is not going to happen.  It's the inherent fallacy that never gets addressed by the people most invested in the idea.