"Get the government off my back"

[wolfpup]

A lot of this sentiment stems from the uniquely American distrust of all government which is deeply entrenched in American culture. It generally centers around taxes and regulation, but that’s only part of it. It was epitomized in Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inaugural address when he said “… government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Remember this is the guy who, years earlier, led the fight against Medicare, claiming that it would irrevocably insinuate Socialism™ in America and precipitate the end of freedom as we know it.

My general take on it is that most of this sentiment is paranoid libertarian bullshit. However, as a general rule, government can potentially get more oppressive as it becomes more local. In the US, you’re generally more likely to get ridiculous legislation from state government than from the federal level, and more likely still to get it from municipal governments, where things like property bylaws can occasionally be silly and truly oppressive. And at a level even more local than municipal bylaws, you have the infamous HOAs – Home Owners Associations – which often end up being run by petty malicious misfits going around measuring the height of your grass.

[We_re_wolves_not_werewolves]

@Kropotkin

Write down the nastiest, rudest, crudest thing you could say to your congress person, MP, whatever. Now imagine saying that to your boss. Now consider the consequences from telling off both people.

I don’t think this is making the point you think it is making. Write down the nastiest, rudest, crudest thing you can think and send it to the CEO of a company you don’t work for. Now consider the consequence of that. Nothing right?! Your example of doing it to your boss and the consequences of it are due to the fact that you need to respect to your boss, or else you get fired. it has nothing to do with with any kind of perceived outsized power of corporations. The result would be the same if you and your boss were a two man groundskeeping crew.

[Chronos]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

Well, sometimes I go to a grocery store or a restaurant or whatever, and see whether the prices they’re asking strike me as reasonable for the food they’re offering; when they do, I say “yes” — and when they don’t, I cheerfully (a) say “no,” and (b) look to see if someone else is offering something I’d say “yes” to — and sometimes I’ve been the one selling food, and people have said “yes” or “no” to me! Anyway, survival has ensued, and, uh, so on, I guess?

But you have to buy food from somewhere, and no matter where you buy it from, you’re going to be doing business with Archer Daniels Midlands.

[crowmanyclouds]

@We_re_wolves_not_werewolves

I don’t think this is making the point you think it is making. Write down the nastiest, rudest, crudest thing you can think and send it to the CEO of a company you don’t work for.

I don’t think this is making the point you think it is making. Write down the nastiest, rudest, crudest thing you could say to your congress person, MP, whatever of a country you don’t live in.

That equivalent.

[Kropotkin]

No, that’s the point: you have to “respect” the boss and do what they say for many of your working hours, and the boss has more direct control over much of your life than “the government.” Note that the bill of rights does not extend into the workplace. That tyranny is as loathsome as that of the government.

[Zoobi]

You will never get conservatives to forget that it was the government that took away their slaves, forced them to let Blacks vote, forced them to let women vote, forced them to integrate their schools, busses, and cities. It was the government that stopped them from lynching who they wanted to lynch. It was the government that forced them to allow LGBTQ people to exist in public. It was the government that stopped them from discriminating against the aberrant.

The government is the only thing that prevents White men from exerting the power and control they think they deserve over their domain.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@Chronos

But you have to buy food from somewhere, and no matter where you buy it from, you’re going to be doing business with Archer Daniels Midlands

I mean, if it were worth it to me, I could presumably spend time and effort fishing for my dinner and so on — but, so long as someone happens to be offering me some food in exchange for less money than I got in exchange for an hour of work at the job that I do instead of fishing, well, I say “yes” if I like the terms they’re offering, and I say “no” if I don’t. If that means I’m sometimes saying “no” to Archer Daniels Midland, and sometimes saying “yes,” then I guess I’m doing business with them when they give me an offer I find acceptable, and I’m not when they aren’t?

[wolfpup]

@We_re_wolves_not_werewolves

I don’t think this is making the point you think it is making. Write down the nastiest, rudest, crudest thing you can think and send it to the CEO of a company you don’t work for. Now consider the consequence of that. Nothing right?! Your example of doing it to your boss and the consequences of it are due to the fact that you need to respect to your boss, or else you get fired.

I think this also illustrates the point I was making about the hierarchy of government levels, and that the more local a government is – or, in general, the more local any government, NGO, or any power structure is – the more readily it can be potentially oppressive. You can hardly get more local than the boss you work with daily and personally.

Of course there are exceptions. The federal government does have enormous power that they can exert at will. During the Vietnam era nearly two million young men were conscripted and their lives put at risk. They had no choice in the matter except to flee the country or risk jail. It doesn’t get more oppressive than that, except perhaps when people are rounded up and imprisoned or deported solely because of their ethnicity. It happened in Nazi Germany, and it looks like it may be happening in the US pretty soon.

[rsat3acr]

It happened in the US in WW2.

[DaveUnknown]

My sense is that we in the USA are about to enter into the largest anti-government brigade of all time, and people will think “Yeah! the government is off my back”… meanwhile, millions are trashed.
Or it’s more right wing trash talk

[Der_Trihs]

@Zoobi

You will never get conservatives to forget that it was the government that took away their slaves, forced them to let Blacks vote, forced them to let women vote, forced them to integrate their schools, busses, and cities. It was the government that stopped them from lynching who they wanted to lynch. It was the government that forced them to allow LGBTQ people to exist in public. It was the government that stopped them from discriminating against the aberrant.

The government is the only thing that prevents White men from exerting the power and control they think they deserve over their domain.

Exactly this, although I’d add “the rich”. That’s also why there’s always been a focus on fearing/neutering/taking over the federal government, since it’s what prevents them from instituting tyranny and persecution in areas they dominate.

[Robot_Arm]

@Jackmannii

Get the government off my back! Kill those consumer protection laws! Eliminate the FDA, let the market decide! We parents own the children*, so no vaccine mandates! I should be able to dam that river running through my property!

If you own a gas station, and you want to tweak the pumps so they only dispense 97% of a gallon, and it looks like it gave you the whole thing, that should be your God-given right. But no, Big Brother will actually send people to check that your gas pumps are giving the customers what they say they are. The nerve!

[puzzlegal]

While i am generally a fan of robust regulation to protect customers and the environment, I’m kinda shocked that no one has yet recognized that government regulation can be frustrating and burdensome.

In many cases, just the requirement to account for something can be a burden. Don’t like filling out your tax form? It’s far worse for many employers. Back when we had little kids we hired a full time nanny. And the reporting requirements were an enormous pain in the ass. When Zoe Baird lost her bid to be attorney general, those specific reporting requirements got a lot of attention, and the next year, they were streamlined, and took about a sixth the effort that they had taken. A lot of other reporting requirements don’t get that kind of political pressure to be cleaned up.

Yes, there are private industry cases of excessive reporting requirements. Ask any doctor about dealing with insurance. But they are far less pervasive than federal govt reporting requirements.

In other cases, avoiding by functional regulations can be burdensome, and even when they come from a good place, they can be absurd in a particular situation. We recently renovated our basement. Some of the basement was reclassified to newly become “living area”, which meant it had to meet current insulation standards. The result was that i spent a fortune to insulate a wall between the “living area” and the “unfinished basement”, which contains the boiler. And that wall has an enormous door which i leave open, because the basement gets no heat without the heat leaking from the boiler into the rest of the basement. “Insulate living space” isn’t a crazy rule, but this particular exercise of the rule is crazy. And it cost me an awful lot of money to meet that rule.

Farmers who want to hire legal labor are frustrated with the hoops they need to jump through to do that. Well, I guess if citizens want to pick the cross it wouldn’t be that terrible (except for those employee reporting requirements, like we did for the nanny.) But generally, they are applying for a permit to allow non-citizens to work. Which is a thing, but a very burdensome thing to actually do. And they also face a lot of well-meaning regulations that they’d prefer not to comply with, some of which, like my basement insulation, are actually silly in their specific circumstances.

The accounting regulations for an insurance company keep dozens of accountants on full-time payroll.

These are just some situations I’m aware of. I’m willing to bet there are lots of others.

[DaveUnknown]

@puzzlegal

I’m willing to bet there are lots of others.

Publicly traded companies need to periodically disclose financials and what they may deem “material” information, but the definition of “material” seems to be another subject of debate.

[DavidNRockies]

I have an old saying that I used to want to make into a bumper sticker:

Unfettered Capitalism: it’s like letting your children raise themselves.

Maybe I just remember “Lord of the Flies” too well.

[We_re_wolves_not_werewolves]

@Kropotkin

No, that’s the point: you have to “respect” the boss and do what they say for many of your working hours, and the boss has more direct control over much of your life than “the government.” Note that the bill of rights does not extend into the workplace. That tyranny is as loathsome as that of the government.

yes but this is not unique to corporations, or even employer-employee relations! I mean, you have to “respect” your parents, your teachers in school, your coach in sports, etc. It’s just the nature of human relationships that society demands a certain amount or respect be given to certain individuals in certain situations. It has nothing uniquely to do with corporations, so I’m not sure its particular relevance to this thread.

[We_re_wolves_not_werewolves]

@wolfpup

I think this also illustrates the point I was making about the hierarchy of government levels, and that the more local a government is – or, in general, the more local any government, NGO, or any power structure is – the more readily it can be potentially oppressive. You can hardly get more local than the boss you work with daily and personally.

yes this is a good observation, and I think you are probably right, with certain exceptions as you well note.

[Crafter_Man]

For the U.S., the most obvious example is law enforcement. Breaking the law, and violating constitutionally-protected rights, is a sport to them.

[Llama_Llogophile]

@puzzlegal

While i am generally a fan of robust regulation to protect customers and the environment, I’m kinda shocked that no one has yet recognized that government regulation can be frustrating and burdensome.

All good points in your full post. While I greatly value heavy regulation in some industries, I’m on board with thoughtful, careful limiting of regulation when it’s needlessly burdensome. But that’s not how conservatives approach it - with them, it strikes me as close to a religion. Get rid of taxes, get rid of regulation no matter what, never mind the consequences or problems it would create.

Frankly, if someone suggested to me that modern conservatives take a thoughtful, nuanced approach to deregulation, I’d quickly begin pointing and laughing.

[Robot_Arm]

@Llama_Llogophile

All good points in your full post. While I greatly value heavy regulation in some industries, I’m on board with thoughtful, careful limiting of regulation when it’s needlessly burdensome. But that’s not how conservatives approach it - with them, it strikes me as close to a religion. Get rid of taxes, get rid of regulation no matter what, never mind the consequences or problems it would create.

Agreed. If someone wanted to make a case that some specific regulations were unduly burdensome or outdated, I hope they would. I might even agree. It’s the “I will cut regulations by 25%” talk that I find rather silly. They treat rules like a bag of rice; one indistinguishable from another, and measured only by quantity.