I don’t think your cite is backed up by his cite. At the very least, his cite isn’t backed up by what I assume her cite would be. To simplify, this is probably the legislation Liberal is saying has exemptions for government. However, I can’t find any such thing in the few free minutes I’ve had to check. I’d be interested if you can but it would still be beside the point. Certainly there are exemptions for government not available to the private sector but this just isn’t one of them. Government is still more restricted by regulation than (big) business.
OK, I’ll take one.
agisophia@earthlink.net
Thank you for the refresher on 10th grade US history, Guin. Heavens knows I would have forgotten about Andrew Carnegie or the Triangle fire. :rolleyes:
If I thought you were interested in an answer I’d give one. But when you’re saying things like
that only an utter fool would disagree with, it tells me you’re not interested in that conversation.
Sorry, I can’t accept your anecdote as a “fact;” off the top of my head I can’t think of *any * secretary that fits your stereotype. Most of the secretaries I deal with are middle-aged professionals. The only one that’s under 30 is built like a linebacker.
And again, I don’t see why this should be the case. I’m going to need something more than just your saying so to believe it.
Please. furtigan@hotmail.com
What a great question!
- Governments have been around for longer.
- Providing for military defense is one of the basic functions of government.
- Providing for the punishment of lawbreakers is another of the basic functions of government.
- Under our current system of regulation of corporations (by the government), corporations are prevented from taking many actions that would kill people.
- Under a libertarian system, corporations would be far freer to take actions that would kill people.
Thank god we’ve never seen a libertarian government, then!
Err–that was your point, right?
Daniel
Hell, I’m in: mrsjohnsonscat@stny.rr.com
Monetarism, one of the author’s central tenets, has “not been a success”.
You asked me not to bash your philosophy, and I have not done so since. I did not ask you to return the courtesy because, frankly, I expected you would without being asked. Did you intend to tie my hands so you could stomp on my feet?
furt, what’s your point then?
Seriously, you keep telling me how bad governments are, but it seems corporations are no better.
What IS your solution to problems like this? How would libertarianism solve such problems?
Lib, would you mind taking the martyr routine to the Pit?
When I said not to bash my philosophy, I was asking you not to call folks similar to me “zombies,” not to say that we differed from Republicans only inasmuch as we were interested in wallets rather than zippers. I didn’t ask you to refrain from making arguments against my philosophy, nor did I ask you to refrain from making fun of silly arguments in favor of my philosophy.
John’s insinuation above, that governments were demonstrably more dangerous than corporations, was silly. I make no apologies for pointing out its silliness.
Daniel
I wasn’t addressing you directly, and I darn well know that I never said anything about the innate goodness of corporations.
Both Lib and myself have said that we do not support giving all power to corporations any more than we support giving it to the state. I gave a specific example of a situation where corporations were acting wrongly. I have said that government intervention in the market may at times be a neccessary evil.
You and others have tried to equate libertarianism as a philosophy with “trust” in corporate power, making all kinds of assumptions based on a half-assed understanding. And when we say that no, that isn’t what we advocate, you smirk and say it’s not true, because doggonit you’ve already spent a lot of time getting your stereotypes just the way you like 'em.
Y’know at one time I also thought that there was a solution to all life’s problems. That I could demand answers of people and that anyone that couldn’t give me a nice tidy solution with no side-effects or complications that made everything all better was just a poopy head whom I could ignore. In my defense, I was six.
There is no magic politics that takes us to Nirvana where everyone is happy and loves one another and nobody is pissed because the other guy has more of something. There is no Libertopia, there is no Perfect State. If you disagree, feel free to support any local politician, who will be happy to tell you what you want to hear if you’ll just trust him with your money, your children’s education and your freedom.
If you are unclear on the basics of libertarian thought, Dewey has provided a helpful library. If you sincerly want to ask questions about specific situations or problems in a respectful search for answers, do so.
If, OTOH, you just want to make snarky comments and equate every person in a political movement or party with what the stupidest and most extreme ones say or do, then by all means, open up that Pit thread.
Would you mind confining your insults to there?
Governments have murdered tens of millions — if not hundreds of millions — of people. They have imprisoned people, enslaved people, destroyed the lives and reputations of people. And they have accumulated more wealth than all the corporations put together.
Why was it silly? Sure, I didn’t specify a timeframe, but pick any timeframe you want-- it won’t matter. The reason governments are more dangerous than corporations is that we grant a monopoly on the use of force to governments. And keep in mind that “government” does not equal “the modern US government”. The institution of government, by its very nature, is capable of causing incomparable death and destruction. Even our recent history is full of examples that make any corporate misdeeds pale in comparison.
Why don’t you give us an example of act by a corporation in the last 50 years that is worse than that done by some governments in the same timeframe.
Sure: Union Carbide’s poisoning of people in Bhopal is far worse than any action taken in the last fifty years by the Danish, Swedish, and Luxumbourg governments combined.
Is that silly? Did I distort the question at hand in order to come up with a pat answer?
Why yes, yes I did. That’s why I’m calling what you said “silly.”
Yes, corporations haven’t done anything as bad as governments in general in the last fifty years. Yes, that’s because governments reserve a monopoly on force.
However, it’s totally incorrect to conclude that, if that monopoly on force were dissolved, there would be less instead of more violence.
Instead of having the monopoly on violence at least somewhat under the control of the public at large (the goal, if not always the practical effect, of a democracy), the violence would be under the control of corporations beholden to their shareholders.
And I’m including violence like Bhopal in this category, because forseeable accidents are not accidents.
Daniel
Strawman. When did I ever say that? You are confusing libertarianism with anarchism.
In Libertopia I assume yes?
Can you help me with something? I truly don’t understand the nature of this “strawman”* argument against libertarianism. Where does the idea come from that libertarianism equates to giving political or coercive power to coporations? If a government is simply forbidden from making laws respecting economic concerns, why would corporations want any of that sort of power? Does the prohibition against the governments involvement in religion make religions seek out government relationships?
Please don’t take offense. I am not trying to be snarky or condecending. I am honestly curious about the nature of this “misunderstanding”** of libertarianism.
- I saw strawman because it appears to be a false argument to me. I truly don’t understand it, though, so I put it in quotes to indicate that I could be wrong.
** Again, I don’t want confusion on my use of this term. I place misunderstanding in quotes because I am not sure that the misunderstanding is min or others.
You must have been somehow unable to read my reply above.
Corporations have been around for, what, 50 years. In that time, they have spawned rampant warfare in Africa, spurred governments into dozens of wars, and been indirectly responsible for tens of millions of deaths. Before corporations existed, economic interests were responsible for the enslavement that you attribute to the gov’t.
Given free reign, corporations are no more or less repsonsible or evil than governments - the main difference is that the people don’t elect their CEOs every 4 years.
Ok, I agree in this sense. Corporations are no more or less responsible than governments given that both institutions are simply made up of people. The difference as I see it is that governments are instituted for the purpose of regulating the use of force. Corporations are instituted for any purpose agreed to by the people involved.
If we take for granted that corporate leaders are just as likely as government leaders to do irresponsible things (I think we could argue that point, but it also seems like a reasonable comprimise). Then don’t you think that it is in our best interest to limit the power of both? Doesn’t it seem reasonable to you that neither corporations nor governments should be able to use force to tell you certain things?
Finally, I would like to address the questions in my last post to you (or anyone else) as well. Where exactly have you gotten the idea that libertarianism amounts to “giving coporations free reign”?
BTW, just for reference, coporations have been around for a lot longer than 50 years.
I’m wondering if this whole corporation/government debate is rooted in the misunderstanding of what my original comment was about. In saying that I thought gov’ts are more dangerous than corportations, I did not mean to imply that if corporations existded in an unfettered, anarchic situation they would not be dangerous. We have laws to restrain corporations from using coercion in the same way we have laws to restrain individuals. I’m not putting up an either/or dichotomy here. We need governments and we need corporations.
I’m also not intending to say that corporations are all wonderful organizations. Just because I say that governments can be **MORE ** dangerous, doesn’t mean that I don’t think corporations can’t be dangerous, too.
I don’t think this is entirely your fault, John. One stereotype of libertarianism is that it believes EXACTLY what you feared people thought you believed: that unfettered corporate actions could not cause significant harm. Since this is a thread about libertarianism, it’s easy to make that assumption/connection.