If we can't agree on the same facts, then the air is poison
techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,593
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
17 Nov 2019, 4:11 pm
One thing I meant to say in the above and forgot to and it's also a critical problem - that countries are in economic competition with each other for resources and advantage, and hence the problem is, at least for now, of geopolitical advantage for many countries to throw themselves into wanton abandon over. That reinforces that the solutions have to be quite carefully crafted so that they aren't perceived as national security threats by way of economics and even show enough long-term payout to even be beneficial to national security.
_________________
The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.
17 Nov 2019, 4:13 pm
beneficii wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
beneficii wrote:
But what about things like universal health care, what about things like the kid who is left to die of cancer because of insurance, what about climate change and its building consequences?
You can't just ignore it and pretend everything is OK.
You can't just ignore it and pretend everything is OK.
I don't want to speak on Magna's behalf but I have some thoughts on these examples - they're power problems. While it doesn't serve anyone's interests directly for these things to happen the causes of these sorts of absurdities have some type of beneficial payout to people who have power over the situation and those people, so long as they're obeying the laws as they exist, are very difficult to do much about.
A lot of this comes down to perverse incentives. For example there's a lot about public trading of company stock and boards of directors that creates significant fallout. A CEO of a company is bound to the board of directors and if they don't serve the interests of the board of directors they're fired. The board of directors is interested in earnings and dividends primarily and I've noticed that 'holding company' seems to be the corporate equivalent of red supergiant because the incentives of the company are no longer about long-term success, or at least any non-linear calibration that won't show up directly as quarterly progress, and are much more geared toward quarterly earnings, valuation, and dividends. It's complex stacks of this kind of myopia that keeps us from getting things done properly on health care and a wide range of issue - climate is a wonderful example where the commons are abstract, everyone wants a piece of them, and thus destroyed because no one is directly in charge of preserving them unless you're able to set them aside as government park land and the like.
You make a good point here. The 2 most important things in the world to a corporation are the law and shareholder value. This is actually the problem with deregulation, because it diminishes the role of the law and gives the advantage to the shareholders. Without the law providing the input of the other stakeholders in the system (e.g. the employees, those affected by externalities, the customers, the environment), the only interest that matters is that of the shareholders. This greatly increases the power of corporations in relation to the customers, especially as they grow into oligopolies and monopolies, bringing about that power imbalance you mention.
I know this might sound a bit hyperbolic, but I actually think this metaphor fits, so please bear with me. But in a way, in this system, very large corporations are like cancer. And I don't say that lightly. In cancer, you have a group of cells that are growing out of control because the body's regulation mechanisms have failed to control them. They are now increasingly sucking up the body's energy and resources at the expense of all the other cells. And that seems to be what's happening here with the increasing failure of the law in regulating corporations. Of course, how do you treat cancer? Through excision and eradication.
Yikes.
You and I agree that very large corporations are like cancer, but I think you and I agree for vastly different reasons. I'm assuming that your opposition to very large corporations hinges on "corporate greed", excessive profits, exploitation of workers, etc. Those can be basic reasons that some corporations grow to the size they are and obtain the influence and power they have. My issue is related to the overarching control over as many aspects of people's lives as possible by the hands of corporations and often carried about through legislation. Many believe governments have power over corporations and corporations are ultimately subject to governments. While this may be true in certain cases and instances, it's clear to me that governments are lackeys to mega corporations and those who control them.
17 Nov 2019, 4:28 pm
techstep8generation,
Now this is where our thinking diverges.
For me, I look at other Western countries. These countries have universal health care, and they do make an effort to be more environmentally sound and to make sure their citizens don't get screwed over. Heck, even their regulation is different. I've read reports from other Western countries that regulations in those countries tend to actually be much less burdensome while often providing much better protections. I've read about a person in Scandinavia who hates doing business in the United States for this reason, because of all the strings that come attached. So I think, can't we just do it like that?
But I remember reading an opinion from a lower-class American who married a British man and now lives in London, who shared much of the views above. She said that dealing with paperwork and bureaucracy in Britain is so much easier and you waste so much less time in Britain vs. America. She thinks America should have universal health care, but at the same time she also wishes America would not adopt it, because we'd just do it in a way that would discredit it. She says America would do it in a way that is highly burdensome to people, involves a lot of paperwork, and just becomes a giant hassle.
So this makes me think, does America just not know how to govern itself? Is our Constitution really so magnificent as Americans like to make it out to be; maybe it's just an outdated piece of scrap? Because of this, I think America today might be like the Ottoman Empire or the Qing Empire of the 19th century. It's fast becoming the sick man of the West, hindered by outmoded institutions that can't handle modern problems but also aren't easy to get rid of.
But of course, right now, things by numerical models seem fine, the economy's booming, unemployment is low, but that seems to fail to reflect the other problems this country has, that can't be put into numbers. Our military is the best, and cannot be challenged. So because these things seem good, we can't really deal with our problems as we don't accept it.
Does America need to hit rock-bottom first? Would a massive military defeat, like that of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, be what's needed to break America out of its stupor? Or would it be a century of humiliation that would be required, like what China suffered before it finally started to recover? After all, the presence of nukes makes any such situation very dangerous.
_________________
"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,593
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
17 Nov 2019, 5:06 pm
beneficii wrote:
techstep8generation,
For me, I look at other Western countries. These countries have universal health care, and they do make an effort to be more environmentally sound and to make sure their citizens don't get screwed over. Heck, even their regulation is different. I've read reports from other Western countries that regulations in those countries tend to actually be much less burdensome while often providing much better protections. I've read about a person in Scandinavia who hates doing business in the United States for this reason, because of all the strings that come attached. So I think, can't we just do it like that?
But I remember reading an opinion from a lower-class American who married a British man and now lives in London, who shared much of the views above. She said that dealing with paperwork and bureaucracy in Britain is so much easier and you waste so much less time in Britain vs. America. She thinks America should have universal health care, but at the same time she also wishes America would not adopt it, because we'd just do it in a way that would discredit it. She says America would do it in a way that is highly burdensome to people, involves a lot of paperwork, and just becomes a giant hassle.
So this makes me think, does America just not know how to govern itself? Is our Constitution really so magnificent as Americans like to make it out to be; maybe it's just an outdated piece of scrap? Because of this, I think America today might be like the Ottoman Empire or the Qing Empire of the 19th century. It's fast becoming the sick man of the West, hindered by outmoded institutions that can't handle modern problems but also aren't easy to get rid of.
But of course, right now, things by numerical models seem fine, the economy's booming, unemployment is low, but that seems to fail to reflect the other problems this country has, that can't be put into numbers. Our military is the best, and cannot be challenged. So because these things seem good, we can't really deal with our problems as we don't accept it.
Does America need to hit rock-bottom first? Would a massive military defeat, like that of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, be what's needed to break America out of its stupor? Or would it be a century of humiliation that would be required, like what China suffered before it finally started to recover? After all, the presence of nukes makes any such situation very dangerous.
For me, I look at other Western countries. These countries have universal health care, and they do make an effort to be more environmentally sound and to make sure their citizens don't get screwed over. Heck, even their regulation is different. I've read reports from other Western countries that regulations in those countries tend to actually be much less burdensome while often providing much better protections. I've read about a person in Scandinavia who hates doing business in the United States for this reason, because of all the strings that come attached. So I think, can't we just do it like that?
But I remember reading an opinion from a lower-class American who married a British man and now lives in London, who shared much of the views above. She said that dealing with paperwork and bureaucracy in Britain is so much easier and you waste so much less time in Britain vs. America. She thinks America should have universal health care, but at the same time she also wishes America would not adopt it, because we'd just do it in a way that would discredit it. She says America would do it in a way that is highly burdensome to people, involves a lot of paperwork, and just becomes a giant hassle.
So this makes me think, does America just not know how to govern itself? Is our Constitution really so magnificent as Americans like to make it out to be; maybe it's just an outdated piece of scrap? Because of this, I think America today might be like the Ottoman Empire or the Qing Empire of the 19th century. It's fast becoming the sick man of the West, hindered by outmoded institutions that can't handle modern problems but also aren't easy to get rid of.
But of course, right now, things by numerical models seem fine, the economy's booming, unemployment is low, but that seems to fail to reflect the other problems this country has, that can't be put into numbers. Our military is the best, and cannot be challenged. So because these things seem good, we can't really deal with our problems as we don't accept it.
Does America need to hit rock-bottom first? Would a massive military defeat, like that of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, be what's needed to break America out of its stupor? Or would it be a century of humiliation that would be required, like what China suffered before it finally started to recover? After all, the presence of nukes makes any such situation very dangerous.
There have been some trade-offs for these benefits, you get emigration both ways actually and when people migrate from the UK to the US it's complaints about quality of service and even more often it's their sense that they were working in a permanent contractor economy where no one hired. To that degree I could see a lot of political emigration in both directions depending on political and economic valence.
The biggest problem in the US seems to be that the US is closer to India in terms of demographic size and complexity than many of the European continent countries whose boarders don't enclose such a sweeping space of different geographic and demographic concerns. Actually I would anticipate that as Canada aggressively grows it's population it's likely to run into parallel problems which would center around it's own distinct regional issues. China's a bit different because they have a top-down government that can push things through thus the problem of a billion plus population isn't what it would be if they were a democratic country.
At the same time the US clearly has fewer problems than India because it was able to draw up something like a uniform commercial code quite early on and long-lasting feuds between states or regions is less a feature of the landscape but we're seeing right now where that's bouncing out and where our size and scope as a democracy of 330 million is a real challenge.
_________________
The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.
17 Nov 2019, 5:46 pm
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
beneficii wrote:
techstep8generation,
For me, I look at other Western countries. These countries have universal health care, and they do make an effort to be more environmentally sound and to make sure their citizens don't get screwed over. Heck, even their regulation is different. I've read reports from other Western countries that regulations in those countries tend to actually be much less burdensome while often providing much better protections. I've read about a person in Scandinavia who hates doing business in the United States for this reason, because of all the strings that come attached. So I think, can't we just do it like that?
But I remember reading an opinion from a lower-class American who married a British man and now lives in London, who shared much of the views above. She said that dealing with paperwork and bureaucracy in Britain is so much easier and you waste so much less time in Britain vs. America. She thinks America should have universal health care, but at the same time she also wishes America would not adopt it, because we'd just do it in a way that would discredit it. She says America would do it in a way that is highly burdensome to people, involves a lot of paperwork, and just becomes a giant hassle.
So this makes me think, does America just not know how to govern itself? Is our Constitution really so magnificent as Americans like to make it out to be; maybe it's just an outdated piece of scrap? Because of this, I think America today might be like the Ottoman Empire or the Qing Empire of the 19th century. It's fast becoming the sick man of the West, hindered by outmoded institutions that can't handle modern problems but also aren't easy to get rid of.
But of course, right now, things by numerical models seem fine, the economy's booming, unemployment is low, but that seems to fail to reflect the other problems this country has, that can't be put into numbers. Our military is the best, and cannot be challenged. So because these things seem good, we can't really deal with our problems as we don't accept it.
Does America need to hit rock-bottom first? Would a massive military defeat, like that of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, be what's needed to break America out of its stupor? Or would it be a century of humiliation that would be required, like what China suffered before it finally started to recover? After all, the presence of nukes makes any such situation very dangerous.
For me, I look at other Western countries. These countries have universal health care, and they do make an effort to be more environmentally sound and to make sure their citizens don't get screwed over. Heck, even their regulation is different. I've read reports from other Western countries that regulations in those countries tend to actually be much less burdensome while often providing much better protections. I've read about a person in Scandinavia who hates doing business in the United States for this reason, because of all the strings that come attached. So I think, can't we just do it like that?
But I remember reading an opinion from a lower-class American who married a British man and now lives in London, who shared much of the views above. She said that dealing with paperwork and bureaucracy in Britain is so much easier and you waste so much less time in Britain vs. America. She thinks America should have universal health care, but at the same time she also wishes America would not adopt it, because we'd just do it in a way that would discredit it. She says America would do it in a way that is highly burdensome to people, involves a lot of paperwork, and just becomes a giant hassle.
So this makes me think, does America just not know how to govern itself? Is our Constitution really so magnificent as Americans like to make it out to be; maybe it's just an outdated piece of scrap? Because of this, I think America today might be like the Ottoman Empire or the Qing Empire of the 19th century. It's fast becoming the sick man of the West, hindered by outmoded institutions that can't handle modern problems but also aren't easy to get rid of.
But of course, right now, things by numerical models seem fine, the economy's booming, unemployment is low, but that seems to fail to reflect the other problems this country has, that can't be put into numbers. Our military is the best, and cannot be challenged. So because these things seem good, we can't really deal with our problems as we don't accept it.
Does America need to hit rock-bottom first? Would a massive military defeat, like that of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, be what's needed to break America out of its stupor? Or would it be a century of humiliation that would be required, like what China suffered before it finally started to recover? After all, the presence of nukes makes any such situation very dangerous.
There have been some trade-offs for these benefits, you get emigration both ways actually and when people migrate from the UK to the US it's complaints about quality of service and even more often it's their sense that they were working in a permanent contractor economy where no one hired. To that degree I could see a lot of political emigration in both directions depending on political and economic valence.
The biggest problem in the US seems to be that the US is closer to India in terms of demographic size and complexity than many of the European continent countries whose boarders don't enclose such a sweeping space of different geographic and demographic concerns. Actually I would anticipate that as Canada aggressively grows it's population it's likely to run into parallel problems which would center around it's own distinct regional issues. China's a bit different because they have a top-down government that can push things through thus the problem of a billion plus population isn't what it would be if they were a democratic country.
At the same time the US clearly has fewer problems than India because it was able to draw up something like a uniform commercial code quite early on and long-lasting feuds between states or regions is less a feature of the landscape but we're seeing right now where that's bouncing out and where our size and scope as a democracy of 330 million is a real challenge.
I'm skeptical of the idea that diversity means you can't have universal health care. Turkey has major ethnic issues, but did adopt universal health care 10-15 years ago. Switzerland also has universal health care, and it has long been demographically complex.
Also, a larger population doesn't mean that universal health care would work less well, because of economies of scale. With a larger population, you get a larger pool, which actually helps keep the system more stable.
The person I read online didn't say that she thought universal health care wouldn't work because the population was too complex; rather that the system was too corrupt, and too unresponsive to the ordinary person.
Immigration from Europe to America has gotten a lot less common over the years; and the thing about being a "contractor", I guess, is that your health care doesn't depend on your job. Why anyone would think that bad is beyond me. Also, the UK has really good unemployment (3.8% per Google), so I'm skeptical of what you're saying here.
_________________
"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
17 Nov 2019, 5:50 pm
beneficii wrote:
I know this might sound a bit hyperbolic, but I actually think this metaphor fits, so please bear with me. But in a way, in this system, very large corporations are like cancer. And I don't say that lightly. In cancer, you have a group of cells that are growing out of control because the body's regulation mechanisms have failed to control them. They are now increasingly sucking up the body's energy and resources at the expense of all the other cells. And that seems to be what's happening here with the increasing failure of the law in regulating corporations. Of course, how do you treat cancer? Through excision and eradication.
There is a political theory that I find quite plausible that states the split between liberals and libertarians (or as others refer to them progressive and classic liberals) is a difference between fear of corporate oppression and fear of government oppression.
In my estimation, people gravely overestimate the power of large corporations. In an economic sense they need to continue to out-compete other corporations on a scaled basis or risk extinction. Sears, GE, A&P grocery chain, Blockbuster Video once all dominated their respective marketplaces and are now no more. Walmart fears Aldi breaking into the US and with good reason. The only time they can truly dominate without a production edge is if they co-opt government authority to work for them. Something that could be solved if government authority to interfere with markets was limited.
In an externality sense, large corporations are no more damaging than small corporations and in many ways less so if they are operating at economies of scale. Say the market equilibrium is 1000 cars produced and sold in a city for a year. It is less harmful to the environment to have a single large factory produce 1000 cars, than for 10 smaller factories to produce 100 cars each.
Governments on the other hand have committed most of the worst atrocities in human history.
_________________
"Ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge is power."
techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,593
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
17 Nov 2019, 5:54 pm
beneficii wrote:
I'm skeptical of the idea that diversity means you can't have universal health care. Turkey has major ethnic issues, but did adopt universal health care 10-15 years ago. Switzerland also has universal health care, and it has long been demographically complex.
Also, a larger population doesn't mean that universal health care would work less well, because of economies of scale. With a larger population, you get a larger pool, which actually helps keep the system more stable.
The person I read online didn't say that she thought universal health care wouldn't work because the population was too complex; rather that the system was too corrupt, and too unresponsive to the ordinary person.
Immigration from Europe to America has gotten a lot less common over the years; and the thing about being a "contractor", I guess, is that your health care doesn't depend on your job. Why anyone would think that bad is beyond me. Also, the UK has really good unemployment (3.8% per Google), so I'm skeptical of what you're saying here.
Also, a larger population doesn't mean that universal health care would work less well, because of economies of scale. With a larger population, you get a larger pool, which actually helps keep the system more stable.
The person I read online didn't say that she thought universal health care wouldn't work because the population was too complex; rather that the system was too corrupt, and too unresponsive to the ordinary person.
Immigration from Europe to America has gotten a lot less common over the years; and the thing about being a "contractor", I guess, is that your health care doesn't depend on your job. Why anyone would think that bad is beyond me. Also, the UK has really good unemployment (3.8% per Google), so I'm skeptical of what you're saying here.
I'm sure corruption is a lot of it although figuring out where exactly that corruption is rooted takes a fair amount of digging. Actually Bret Weinstein and Katie Herzog did land on some of these issues in that Dark Horse #6 podcast and from what Bret was saying it was the Republicans who first were able to figure out how to strike great deals with corporate America and that it was the Clintons who set the Democratic party on the same trajectory which meant that neither party stood for the common person any longer. This seems to fit as well with Pia Malaney's suggestion, or at least as Eric Weinstein relays it in some of his interviews, that a large part of current identity politics in the US is a result of the contributors to the Democratic party saying 'labor's too expensive for votes - do you have anything cheaper?' which seems to fit that selling out to globalist capitalism motif well.
_________________
The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.
Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 17 Nov 2019, 5:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
17 Nov 2019, 5:55 pm
Antrax wrote:
beneficii wrote:
I know this might sound a bit hyperbolic, but I actually think this metaphor fits, so please bear with me. But in a way, in this system, very large corporations are like cancer. And I don't say that lightly. In cancer, you have a group of cells that are growing out of control because the body's regulation mechanisms have failed to control them. They are now increasingly sucking up the body's energy and resources at the expense of all the other cells. And that seems to be what's happening here with the increasing failure of the law in regulating corporations. Of course, how do you treat cancer? Through excision and eradication.
There is a political theory that I find quite plausible that states the split between liberals and libertarians (or as others refer to them progressive and classic liberals) is a difference between fear of corporate oppression and fear of government oppression.
In my estimation, people gravely overestimate the power of large corporations. In an economic sense they need to continue to out-compete other corporations on a scaled basis or risk extinction. Sears, GE, A&P grocery chain, Blockbuster Video once all dominated their respective marketplaces and are now no more. Walmart fears Aldi breaking into the US and with good reason. The only time they can truly dominate without a production edge is if they co-opt government authority to work for them. Something that could be solved if government authority to interfere with markets was limited.
In an externality sense, large corporations are no more damaging than small corporations and in many ways less so if they are operating at economies of scale. Say the market equilibrium is 1000 cars produced and sold in a city for a year. It is less harmful to the environment to have a single large factory produce 1000 cars, than for 10 smaller factories to produce 100 cars each.
Governments on the other hand have committed most of the worst atrocities in human history.
That's why governments need a leash, and they have one in Western countries, generally. When the people are holding the leash, then the government becomes a tool of the people, which is something that I don't think libertarians give enough value to. Raising taxes is done not because the government wants to impose, but because that's what the people wanted to do.
_________________
"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,593
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
17 Nov 2019, 5:58 pm
Magna wrote:
My issue is related to the overarching control over as many aspects of people's lives as possible by the hands of corporations and often carried about through legislation. Many believe governments have power over corporations and corporations are ultimately subject to governments. While this may be true in certain cases and instances, it's clear to me that governments are lackeys to mega corporations and those who control them.
I wanted to say earlier - this goes with what I've heard suggested that minarchism and minimal government quite often just means a flip of abuse in the direction of something like corporate neo-feudalism.
Seems like there are a lot of dark paths we could go down and it's a heck of a project to figure out which doors to close and which ones to open if we want to pass up the worst of the unintended consequences.
_________________
The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.
techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,593
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
17 Nov 2019, 6:10 pm
beneficii wrote:
That's why governments need a leash, and they have one in Western countries, generally. When the people are holding the leash, then the government becomes a tool of the people, which is something that I don't think libertarians give enough value to. Raising taxes is done not because the government wants to impose, but because that's what the people wanted to do.
The thing that sucks about something like direct democracy - it can add a confounding layer, like Andrew Yang's suggestion that the government give every US citizen $100 in donating power to the candidate of their choice that gets repealed if they donate to no one (dilute the power of bribery), that seems fine if it's about the selection of representatives but I notice so few people are subject-matter experts that it's a problem if 'the people' is a literal statement because they can be bought and paid for like politicians in similar ways.
It seems like our elites and intelligentsia need a house-cleaning and that fundamentals like being data-driven need to be returned to. There's something else that Jordan Greenhall talks about - ie. blue church vs. red religion, as sense making networks where the blue church is top down, loses signal on complex issues (he likens it to a rowing captain directing rowers on a boat - which is powerful for synchronizing effort but demands conformity and has the problem of group-think), and is losing steam because our current climate is lots of highly diffuse and complex issues whereas the red religion is something like an organic grass-roots sense making network of people across the globe having conversations and even debates that are intended to clarify or find truth rather than scalp each other for power and that this later network will grow and either replace the blue church or, what I think the better solution would be, act as an alternative market for ideas of equal power that has a reciprocal capacity to handle these really abstract problems (like commons and environmental issues) and perhaps even develop a symbiosis with the blue church like helping it align it's massive laser beams on better targets which, through it's own mechanisms alone, it might not have been able to see.
_________________
The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.
17 Nov 2019, 6:27 pm
I would love to have a better healthcare system, but no country can afford universal healthcare and a porous border.
Corporations are more than just a CEO and the board, don't ignore the prosperity they provide workers and their families.
Treating corporate success punitively leads to an exodus.
17 Nov 2019, 6:28 pm
beneficii wrote:
That's why governments need a leash, and they have one in Western countries, generally. When the people are holding the leash, then the government becomes a tool of the people, which is something that I don't think libertarians give enough value to. Raising taxes is done not because the government wants to impose, but because that's what the people wanted to do.
The more powerful a government, the more likely it is to break that leash. Taxation concentrates power in the governments hands. Democratic control of that power does not prevent tyranny of the majority. If you had an all-powerful government that did everything by direct democratic decision, it would mean that 51% of the people would have all the power. It would still reflect "the will of the people" and be tyrannical at the same time.
_________________
"Ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge is power."
techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,593
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi
17 Nov 2019, 6:30 pm
Antrax wrote:
The more powerful a government, the more likely it is to break that leash. Taxation concentrates power in the governments hands. Democratic control of that power does not prevent tyranny of the majority. If you had an all-powerful government that did everything by direct democratic decision, it would mean that 51% of the people would have all the power. It would still reflect "the will of the people" and be tyrannical at the same time.
Socrates's doctor vs. candy store owner running for president comes to mind here.
_________________
The loneliest part of life: it's not just that no one is on your cloud, few can even see your cloud.
17 Nov 2019, 9:15 pm
Antrax wrote:
beneficii wrote:
That's why governments need a leash, and they have one in Western countries, generally. When the people are holding the leash, then the government becomes a tool of the people, which is something that I don't think libertarians give enough value to. Raising taxes is done not because the government wants to impose, but because that's what the people wanted to do.
The more powerful a government, the more likely it is to break that leash. Taxation concentrates power in the governments hands. Democratic control of that power does not prevent tyranny of the majority. If you had an all-powerful government that did everything by direct democratic decision, it would mean that 51% of the people would have all the power. It would still reflect "the will of the people" and be tyrannical at the same time.
How does this respond to my point?
_________________
"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
17 Nov 2019, 9:29 pm
beneficii wrote:
Antrax wrote:
beneficii wrote:
That's why governments need a leash, and they have one in Western countries, generally. When the people are holding the leash, then the government becomes a tool of the people, which is something that I don't think libertarians give enough value to. Raising taxes is done not because the government wants to impose, but because that's what the people wanted to do.
The more powerful a government, the more likely it is to break that leash. Taxation concentrates power in the governments hands. Democratic control of that power does not prevent tyranny of the majority. If you had an all-powerful government that did everything by direct democratic decision, it would mean that 51% of the people would have all the power. It would still reflect "the will of the people" and be tyrannical at the same time.
How does this respond to my point?
How does it not? Seems like a pretty direct response to me.
Governments need a leash -> Governments can break that leash if they become too powerful
Taxation is will of the people -> Will of the people can be tyrannical if the government is too powerful, and taxation concentrates power in the hands of the government.
_________________
"Ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge is power."
