No doubt. There are advantages to each form of government.
That to me sounds a bit undemocratic. As far as I know we aren’t electing people for jobs that they aren’t qualified for. We only elect representatives that guide the direction the country is going in. We also get to remove them if we don’t like the way they are doing the job.
Well both sides in the American politics certainly used to treat corporations and governments as opposing entities. The last 8 years have proved them wrong.
I seem to recall someone once describing the difference between government and corporations as something like: “A GS-7 auditor at the IRS, on his own inititative, can garnish your wages, confiscate your bank account, seize your home, and have you arrested. Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and Warren Buffett can do none of these things.”
Also, while idealy this is true in fact it doesn’t really work that way. Nepotism is real and office politics are real. In fact, consistently demonstrating you are better than your boss is a very bad strategy. Also, if you consistently demonstrate that you are more talented than your coworkers, you are not likely to make freinds and this will count against you. In the real world, there is actually some pressure that selects against the most skilled workers.
Only if it wants to be. There isn’t a higher authority than national sovereignty. The United States can opt out of any international agreement it wishes.
“Corporations,” by which I assume you actually mean businesses (not all of which are corporations) must follow the law. Obviously some do not, just as some individual are not, but they’re at risk for punishment.
The USA is not, in any practical sense, at risk of punishment by a higher authority if it defies international law.
While nepotism is real, how big a problem is this in large businesses? I don’t know any two people at my company who are related.
It’s entirely undemocratic. It would be undemocratic to only let people with an IQ over 100 vote in elections, but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t result in a generally wiser and forethinking government.
Yeah, but there’s no one who pays attention to what laws are up for vote, what the various arguments are for and against, who’s playing what games, and so on except for the elected officials themselves, those around them, and the journalists at Congressional Quarterly or what-have-you. Unless a “concerned citizen” does personal in-depth research, they really have no idea who they’re voting for beyond the person’s positions on the top ten issues of the day and how “friendly” the person seems.
Not terribly much. Nepotism only ever gets a person to be at most one position higher than their ability, and that only so long as that is something which causes nothing more than a statistical blip in the overall functioning of the company.
If you look it up, approximately 80% of people who are rich are self-made.
Certainly, but dealing with annoying people in a way that looks favorably upon you is something that gets you your first promotion to manager status. Then it depends on how well you keep to schedule and budget. Following this, how creative you are in coming up with new initiatives. You need all of these talents to make it to the top, and each level blocks you from rising to the next if you don’t have it.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve worked in US foreign policy for quite some time, and to the degree that the US has agreed to various treaties and other forms of international law, it is a process of the US allowing itself to share sovereignty, not surrender it. The President could quite literally tomorrow withdraw from nearly every international agreement the US has made (save for various trade arrangements which Congress would have to act upon) and there would be nothing legally wrong with that.
This is what is called a bad argument. I am a US Government employee. I am subject to various laws and regulations of the US Government. If I leave Federal service, I am still subject to the laws and regulations of the US Government, just not as many. That’s not true if I were a Microsoft employee.
You’re quite clearly conflating any authority structure with being a government. A family has various ways of exercising authority, but a family isn’t a government. Nor is a football team a government. Nor is the Straight Dope Message Board a government. Just because authority exists, doesn’t make that thing a government, otherwise the term government is meaningless. Clearly there’s a difference between the institutions created by the Constitution, Walmart, the Chicago Bears, Woodrow Wilson High School, and your mom and dad. The term government is useful because it only applies to one of those things, and just because other things remind you of governments, doesn’t make it so.