[Preechr]

Originally Posted by ranxer

Did you catch the debate between Badnarik and David Cobb(green party)? It was a debate on the issues the way it's supposed to be done. and of course i liked Cobb's answers on the issues though Badnarik was right on way better than Bush, maybe because you could tell he actually had some reasoned ideas.

the Libertarian idea that Corporations will solve our problems without regulations is so far out there that i can't come close to taking them seriously.. give me a break libs! how can you expect Corporations to care about the welfare of anyone other than thier stockholders in this market? especially without enforced regulations!

A good example of the "if we allow freedom, the moon will crash into the Earth" argument. In this case, ranxer is proposing that, in the absence of governmental regulation, corporations will have liberty to kill us all. Notice the suspicious lack of logic here: what would a business gain by harming it's customers? Did the government stop Nestle from distributing flawed and potentially deadly baby formula in starving countries? No, concerned individuals were the ones working against that. Is the government regulation of industry actually creating a safer, cleaner world? With all the loopholes available for those companies that would cheat, the only businesses that are truly punished by regulation are those that aren't cheating.

True transparency in Commerce is not possible as long as it's actions can be shrouded in governmental regulation. The power of concerned groups of citizens is weakened when a bad company can hide behind the claim that it's actions are technically legal. When crappy companies can buy the influence of government to do whatever they wish, of course anything could be made technically not illegal. "Evil Corporations" use the power of government to gain advantages over each other and us that they would not normally have available to them if their advantages were only gained by excelling at the conduct of their business.

Problem is, most businesses aren't "Evil Corporations." Small businesses make up half our commercial economy, and they are the ones that are least likely to cheat the system while lacking the political pull to get away with it even if they wanted to. Again, the problems you are so concerned about that you are so willing to empower government to solve are actually problems that are only aggravated by government involvement and that could be more efficiently handled by concerned individuals empowered to limit the excesses of Commerce directly.

A good example here is the Tobacco Industry. Penalizing them with higher taxes in order to dissuade the public from smoking by raising the prices only ever strengthened their profits. Regulation exascerbated the threat to society. The recent declines in smoking came about due to increased education of the public that got us working against each other to limit the power of the Tobacco Lobby. We the People hit them in the wallet and affected a positive change to society. I know that much government money went into the public education push (Truth.org and whatnot,) but that's generally the last tactic government is likely to use as is evidenced by the legal shroud over the rest of Commerce.

The Tobacco Lobby had simply become too powerful a rival for government to bear, and it was taken down a notch or two by finally telling the people what it was up to. Up until this recent and sudden change in official policy, the Cancer Lobby enjoyed the privleges of aggressive federal protection for it's income.

When it comes right down to it, polluting the environment, fucking over your employees and your customers and producing dangerous or ineffective products are generally BAD BUSINESS IDEAS. Lack of transparency only fosters the perfect environment for these bad decisions. Government subsidization of faltering industries only ever rewards the bad decisions that were the true threats to their profitablity.

We blame Walmart for refusing to offer benefits because government assistance is so readily available. We blame them for taking advantage of the governmental eminent domain concept and getting landowners kicked out of their homes unfairly, but we consider the government to be blameless in these matters rather than complicit. As you said, we can hardly expect corporations to refuse to take advantage of the system for profit. The problem lies with the system of regulation.

Firing one federal regulator produces ten jobs in the private economy. Do you really believe that firing them all would leave us with no protection at all? I guess that means you consider yourself to be the only one concerned about corporate excess, huh? Without the assistance of Uncle Sam, we'd be powerless to defend ourselves from those that we buy stuff from, right? Uh huh.

If the money spent on governmental regulation were spent instead on educating the public effectively on what those "Evil Corporations" are really doing, we'd be better able to discourage Evilness with our purchasing decisions, wouldn't we? The reason we don't have access to that information is because that would be empowering us to fix something at the expense of government. After all, it would just be unfair to take all that bribe and extortion money away from Uncle Sam, wouldn't it. He NEEDS it, even if it costs us in the long run, right?