06-07-2019, 08:31 AM
(06-06-2019, 06:58 PM)vine Wrote: Wow.
Americans are so enslaved that they think government agents are holy gods, but since the elites and the government are the same now, asking for government protection from businesses is like asking a thief to watch your house when you go on vacation.
FAA regulates airlines, but airplanes still fail.
It's when airlines choose to dominate markets without concern for profitability (such was the problem with Braniff Airlines) that they fail catastrophically. American Airlines and United Airlines may be near that point.
Quote:SEC regulates stockbrokers, but markets still crash.
It's not the stockbrokers who start the bubbles that implode in panics.
Quote:FDA regulates drugs, but drugs are still dangerous.
That is why many pharmaceuticals remain 'prescription only'. All pharmaceuticals are technically poisons.
Quote:EPA regulates the environment, but the EPA pollutes.
Big business pollutes. Vehicle exhausts and chimneys pollute. The EPA is not and never was intended to be a police force in every board room and every manufacturing plant.
Quote:The USSR was a Socialist utopia, but the Soviet Union was polluted.
Under Stalin the Soviet Union was a Hell... according to Marxism-Leninism, natural resources are worth no more than the labor that goes into extracting them, and nobody is accountable for pollution. Besides, there was no 'environmentalist party in the old USSR' as there was but one Party.
Quote:Maybe the real reason there are food stamps now is because food and banking corporations lobby for them.
I concede that companies such as Safeway, Kroger, Wal*Mart, Publix, Aldi, Spartan-Nash, and Meijer prefer that poor people have food stamps that allow them to buy food as profitable sales for the stores than that they shoplift.
Quote:Maybe the real reason tax filing is so difficult is that tax preparation corporations lobby for complicated tax forms.
Before there were canned, cheap computer programs for filing taxes.
Quote:Maybe the real reason there are laws against ridesharing is because taxi cab companies lobby for regulations against competition.
I see plenty of park-and-ride lots at freeway interchanges for people who share the cost of 60-mile commutes. Where I live, plenty of people have commutes that long -- or even longer.
Quote:Maybe the real reason there are mandatory vaccine laws now is because pharmaceutical corporations lobby for them.
It couldn't be that those illnesses kill and cripple people? No, it could never be that simple.
Quote:Maybe the real reason the US is a police state now is because private prison corporations lobby for it.
Police states have reasons other than profits for jailers -- like suppressing those who criticize the official leadership, as in China, Cuba, Thailand. Watch the lead-ins into Saturday Night Live and ask whether such satire of a President is good for a trip to some American equivalent of a gulag.
Quote:Maybe the real reason the US is a warmonger now is because defense corporations lobby for wars.
On this I have some concurrence -- we need to watch the warmongers who profiteer from war. Tens of millions of lives of 'expendable' people for trillions in profit? For amoral, greedy people with connections to the political leadership, such is all too tempting.
Maybe the real reason there are mandatory health and auto insurance laws now is because insurance companies lobby for them.
Quote:Maybe the real reason there are bailouts and subsidies is because corporations lobby for them.
No, it is because the politicians are all scared of another time like the 1930s.
Quote:Maybe the real reason there are government student loans and grants now is because colleges lobby for them.
The escalating expense of college education has nothing to do with quality. Overpaid professors? Professors used to have a dream existence, but that is over. They are terribly underpaid. What happens? As in Big Business, the bureaucratic elites insist on ever-increasing compensation for treating people badly as customers and employees.
You are onto something here. Karl Marx said that ownership was the cause of all exploitation, but bureaucratic power can do great harm to social equity even without any plutocrats owning the assets. Marx missed the concept of the nomenklatura that appeared in socialist societies, American Big Business, and now non-profit activities such as colleges and universities.
Got a cure? It may take another Great Depression that forces people to start small enterprises in the cemetery of corporate behemoths seemingly too big to fail -- and compels people to insist upon government operation with a concern for economy and efficiency.
Quote:The government takes away your freedom, but won’t protect you.
So don't deal drugs!
Quote:The way to deal with danger today is to do what worked in the past.
Slavery used to exist. Religious persecution used to be commonplace. Mining and manufacturing used to be more dangerous. Don't get me into a discussion of how dangerous cars and roads were in the 1930s.
As for those poorly-labeled but heavily-advertised and worthless nostrums of about 120 years ago good only for masking pain from curable diseases even of the time -- no thanks!
Quote:Government needs to be small and people need to take personal responsibility and embrace freedom.
That is for voters to decide. Personal responsibility is not something to impose upon small children by letting them run wild and learn the hard way. I'll pass on the alleged freedom to molest children, use or deal narcotics, or do stock or bank fraud.
Quote:Being dangerous is not in the best (interest) of companies.
Big Business is a human institution, and it is no better than the people in them. At times people cut corners to cut costs or to sell more. When such efforts kill or sicken people, those who make those decisions belong in prison. Note that I have a thread on business failures, and I lauded Kellogg's Corporation for going after Peanut Corporation of America for selling bad peanut butter. The company had gone bankrupt, but some figures got long prison terms for selling bad peanut butter to Kellogg's.
One of the most basic rules of business is: do not hurt your customers, direct or indirect.
That's why we have laws against dealing street drugs.
Quote:The big difference between private business and tyranny is that you can boycott the free market, but the government forces you at gunpoint to do something or not do something.
When Big Business is a monopoly and intertwines with government, we can have only bad results.
Quote:Look not to the politicians; look to yourselves.
Bad politics can kill people through persecutions, wars, and famines. Yes, watch the politicians -- and choose wisely.
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
What do we need government for anyway?
Quote:Everything the free market does is better than what government does.
The competitive market or the market in which Big Business is free to do what it wants? That is a big difference. Very little of the American economy is truly competitive anymore.
Quote:Would you rather graduate from Harvard or the University of New Mexico? Would you rather own a Yugo or a BMW?
If you don't have the grades and board scores, then you may be stuck going to a mediocre college and ending up a letter carrier. Not a bad career, but you won't get rich. If you can't afford a BNW, then consider yourself lucky to be able to buy a used Ford Taurus.
Quote:If a private association like the MPAA can regulate movies, why can’t the private market regulate other things?
The MPAA regulated movies over content -- no profanity, no glorification of villains, no overt sexuality, no ridicule of religion. One was a prohibition of interracial relationships on screen, which would preclude a biopic about the origin of our 44th President.
It's up to you and me to decide that you have no desire for pornography.
Quote:When the TSA fingers your asshole and pulls your cock, is the real purpose to protect you or to make you feel like a degraded slave?
Drug mules have put bundles of illegal drugs up their anal orifices and vaginas.
Quote:When people smoke now, people just call the police on them, but people in the past either took some personal responsibility and ignored smokers, moved away from smokers, or asked smokers to go somewhere else. The problem with a police state is everyone now is either or a slave or a criminal. Who pays the taxes to pay for tyranny?
The vast majority of Americans are now non-smokers. Non-smokers often find cancerweed smoke unpleasant.
Quote:If smoking is dangerous, can’t nonprofits raise funds to pay for educational campaigns that warn of the dangers of smoking instead of outlawing smoking?
They do put up ads such as billboards.
Quote:Can’t people use the BBB to verify if a business is good or not instead of forcing companies to pay fees to get a government business license?
The BBB is good for determining the appropriateness of dealing with businesses that have been around for some time. It cannot rate professional practices. Complaints to the BBB are usually over gouging and non-performance.
Quote:Can’t private charities funded by volunteer donations provide homeless shelters and soup kitchens instead of being at forced at the point of a gun by the government to pay taxes that fund welfare?
In theory they can, but in a really-nasty economic downturn they would be swamped.
Quote:Can’t people use guns to protect themselves instead of relying on the Gestapo?
I would feel safer in the UK, where there are no legal firearms, thank you.
Quote:Can’t neighborhoods hire private security firms to protect their homes?
You would need a neighborhood taxing authority, or you would need it funded in a gated community through rents and residents' fees.
Quote:Can’t the free market provide toll roads?
Toll roads are usually government operations, and the private part comes from leasing the toll roads to outside entities (as with the Indiana Toll Road and the Chicago Skyway). There are situations in which toll roads are appropriate -- as when the people using the toll road are different from the people paying the taxes to support them or the facility is in two different jurisdictions (most bridges across the Hudson and Delaware Rivers) , when the facility is unusually expensive to build and maintain (typically bridges and tunnels), where costs of real estate acquisition or environmental damage (including devaluation of surrounding property) are unusually high)... otherwise, toll facilities are usually much more expensive to build and maintain than free routes.
Two-lane blacktops with unlimited access are completely unsuited to tolls.
Quote:Can’t the free market provide private airports?
Not for giant jetliners or military aircraft.
Quote:Can’t the free market provide private schools?
Not without the profit.
Quote:Can’t the free market provide disaster relief instead of FEMA?
We would need compulsory private insurance that in many cases would be exorbitant.
Quote:Can’t the free market run delivery services instead of the USPS?
FedEx and UPS handle very specialized letters. The postal service would not handle some toxic waste that I collected (a stool sample) for determining whether I have colon cancer. FedEx did. There used to be DHL and Flying Tigers which got merged into bigger outfits.
Quote:Can’t the free market run railroads instead of Amtrack?
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Many people cannot fly or drive. I would take Amtrak again.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.