Corporations deform democracy
They are tools. Not participants.
Nor should they be allowed to be a means to convert and amplify individual economic power into political power.
Nor should they be allowed to be a means to convert and amplify individual economic power into political power.
Comments (65)
I laughed, but it was a morbid laughter.
Preaching to the choir in my case. I expounded a bit here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/61466#Post_61466
A corporation must be a tool, considering it cannot do anything without human activity. That's a given.
Why should people be limited in what tools they can use to raise money for individual use?
If you can cite yourself, so can I. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/63098
Quoting Luke
I suspect you don't know what you're talking about.
http://billmoyers.com/story/kochs-to-rewrite-constitution/
So you have no basis at all for your claim, I take it, apart from your own hyperbole.
The next Hitler is as likely to come from your country as mine.
Wouldn't argue with that. Nor that the Republican party is divided. But pointing out anti-democratic forces is not quite the same a s predicting the next Hitler. These things can be resisted, and even, perhaps especially, by republicans.
The Kochs are involved in a credible orchestrated move to change the constitution, which stands a pretty good chance of succeeding. Exactly how they or others will change it if it succeeds is unknown. So there is a base, unless you have credible evidence that disputes this for a legitimate concern that any changes will be in the interests of corporations and big business rather than the ordinary citizen.
It follows that those who may have thought that the constitution protected them from the excesses of corporate takeover of government have reason to be concerned. To the extent that corporations can rewrite the constitution to suit themselves, the constitution no longer affords protection to the ordinary citizen. My warning is both well based in fact and reason, and in no way 'mongered' since I have zero financial interest either way. I'm not back-pedalling, I'm calling you out for an unreasoning baseless propagandist, trying to blow smoke in the eyes of the readers.
I think the line that 'government is evil' is very convenient for corporates who want to reduce tax and regulations that impede the pursuit of the holy dollar. And indeed the current presidency is slashing regulations, particularly environmental regulations, which are seen by the right as an 'anti-business green left conspiracy'.
So 'freedom' in this formulation is freedom for the powerful to make as much as possible unimpeded by regulation and unburdened with the requirement to support public benefits programs, like affordable care. It presents itself as a kind of rugged individualism but really that is just a nice PR face for plain old corporate greed and the top 1% gaining ever more power.
So - agree with OP.
But it's not. They're explicit about the amendment they want to add. The article suggesting that, once a convention is convened, more amendments (read: "scary corporatist ones") will be added is pure fear mongering and baseless speculation.
Quoting unenlightened
More pot calling the kettle black.
Which are bankrupting the country and don't result in what they purport to do; quite the opposite in fact: they lead to abuse and dependency.
Quoting Wayfarer
Which was a piece of legislation designed to benefit giant corporate interests and has been a miserable failure, with rates increasing (more irony).
The country was taken far closer to bankruptcy by W's budget mismanagement than by healthcare. If T has his way on further tax cuts the deficit will balloon even further. Affordable care has provided health insurance to more than 25 million people who previously didn't have it. The reason the GOP failed to overturn it, was because the country now realises that it's needed, and the Republicans didn't have any real plan to improve it. And that is a fact.
Quoting unenlightened
Why the continued insults? They're really not necessary.
Debatable, but I'm not an apologist for Bush's domestic overspending.
Quoting Wayfarer
You don't know that, and I doubt you know how deficits are created.
Why not? When I tackled you on Trump's obvious incompetence and possible malfeasance, you said 'oh I don't actually like Trump.' Yet you pop up on all these politics threads, singing from the right-wingers hymn sheets.
Quoting Thorongil
Why wouldn't I know 'how deficits are created'? I can read. It's simply an imbalance between expenditure and income. As the main raison d'etre of the Republican party is to cut taxes for the rich you can bet your boots that by the end of this term, the deficit will have grown enormously.
I am in sync with many of your comments on philosophical issues, but in political commentary, I agree with Un. The current administration in the US is indefensible on so many fronts, that I could never respect anyone who defends them, if I meet anyone in the real world who does, I simply walk away.
I could tell you, but then you've have to change your name.
Why do you assume that all conservatives must support everything a Republican does? Conservatism ? the Republican Party. What exactly do you think the "right-wing" is? There is a massive amount of intellectual diversity within the umbrella of "right wing politics." Either you don't know this or are attempting to straw-man the term.
Quoting Wayfarer
So explain to me how tax revenues went up and not down after the Bush tax cuts, and how the budget deficit declined after them as well.
Incidentally, I want to say a few more words about healthcare in the US. I'm an Australian, but my son lives there, and furthermore I'm about to be a grandparent of a Yankee baby, so I'm a stakeholder.
The GOP campaign against the Affordable Health Care Act was always a disgraceful piece of scare-mongering founded entirely on the unwillingness of the wealthy to provide public benefits. Their attitude was, it's not 'the American way' to rely on the public purse for anything, so if you can't afford hospital treatment, or insurance, then basically that's your problem. The ACA was derided as 'socialised medicine' for that reason alone, and subjected to the most egregious campaigns of lies, obstructionism and distortion.
Nevertheless, the Democrats did get it working, and now it has become part of the landscape. And that is why the GOP couldn't overturn it. As soon as Trump said 'we'll make it even better', it was game over for the GOP, because they had neither the will nor the means. Ryan and his technocrats never had any intention of improving the healthcare system, all they wanted to do was destroy what they called 'socialised medicine'. But now Ryan has been exposed as the hollow man he always has been, whose sole rationale is to do the bidding of the corporate sector - cut taxes and cut public benefits. Talk about draining the swamp, Trump has actually re-stocked it with worse critters than ever.
Quoting Thorongil
Incorrect. There is consensus that the Bush tax cuts, and the invasion of Iraq, contributed massively to US Government debt, which the Obama administration actually had started to succeed in turning around.
Here it is, in graphics.
Not really. You're generalizing here.
Quoting Wayfarer
They predicted it would be a failure and do the opposite of what it intended, which, lo and behold, has come to pass. I really could give less of a crap about the supposed good intentions of the bill's drafters.
Quoting Wayfarer
Nonsense. Once again you're uncharitably trying to be a mind reader. The fact is that the act has made things worse.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, I'm correct. Tax revenues went up and deficits went down after the tax cuts. The deficits went up in 2008 and 2009 as a result of the bailouts. So, once again, explain to me how tax revenues went up and deficits went down after the Bush tax cuts and prior to the bailouts.
Quoting Thorongil
It isn't baseless. If a constitutional convention is called for by 2/3 of the states, it would meet, establish operating rules, and then would proceed to do whatever it wanted with respect to amendments. Having written one or several amendments, it would send the amendments to the 50 states, 75% of which would have to ratify them.
How likely is it that 3/4 of the states would ratify?
Could be. Don't know. But it's possible.
Conservatives have been diligently at work doing what any political group should do -- strengthen its grip on the political apparatus of the state. The only reason for discussing a constitutional convention is that enough state legislatures are in the hands of Republicans to get quite close to being able to call for a constitutional convention. They may make it.
The convention itself might be bad, and it is quite possible that the political turmoil stirred up would be worse. Much worse.
The ACA attempted to several things: end pre-existing conditions as a bar to health insurance; allow young people to maintain health care coverage for 3 or 4 years after college (until they get a job where they can pay their own way, or receive coverage as a benefit; reduce the number of people without any health care insurance; increase hospital income where emergency rooms supply primary care, and some other points.
The ACA did achieve these things. Was it perfect? Not at all, but it did extend health care to more people who otherwise didn't have it. Did it rein in costs? No, and unless congress eliminates rules of the sort that prevent the government from negotiating pharmacy prices, it won't. It can't.
Single payer with teeth. That's what we need.
The wealthy have a long history of objection to all of the 20th century efforts in the US to create a semi-adequate social welfare program--one that some European countries had had for quite some time.
The wealthy objected to Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Disability Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and various other programs that were designed to enhance or preserve the quality of life (like the EPA).
Charm School has taught the rich not to sound like Ebenezer Scrooge, but that doesn't mean they don't share his views:
Ratify what exactly?
Ratify what? The cloud cuckoo amendments you, un, and that article are soiling themselves over in fear or the ones they have explicitly said they would ratify?
Something to keep in mind: the US is a republic in which the states created the federal government, which was designed to be extremely limited, not the other way around.
Quoting Bitter Crank
You cite two things. Great. Did you know that many Republicans are in favor of those things too? Did you know that they could have been addressed in separate bills, not in a 3,000 page document with 30,000+ pages of regulations?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Did all of those people need to have it? Why must health insurance be essentially forced on people?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Nope. We just need the free market in health care.
That's a response? It has been subject to literallly thousands of pages of newsprint, thousands of hours of media analysis.
Quoting Thorongil
No, news reader. Every single piece of Paul Ryan proposed legislation (which is mercifully scant) comprises winding back public benefits and providing generous tax cuts for the wealthy. This is all on the public record, with which you're apparently unacquainted.
Quoting Thorongil
I provided a reference, which you ignored.
Done discussing politics with Thorongil.
Surely you know the fallacious nature of this statement....
Quoting Wayfarer
Sounds good to me. Why do you equate these things with being opposed to "improving the health care system," though? It's almost like you don't even acknowledge that people might disagree with you on how to do so while still having the same goal in mind. Wow! What was that word I used? Ah, yes, "uncharitable."
Quoting Wayfarer
I did a Google search and saw on the sidebar: "The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is an American think tank that analyzes the impact of federal and state government budget policies from a progressive perspective."
Of course it does.
If you're really that interested, you can just look at the official statistics, published by the Obama administration no less. Go to page 411: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration/eop/cea/economic-report-of-the-President/2012
They may not have wanted health insurance. Perhaps they thought they were invincible. They may have thought they did not need insurance. Actuaries know better.
Quite likely, they just plain couldn't afford insurance.
Sooner or later, most people get seriously ill or have serious accidents. The quite sick and seriously injured will ask for care which they will not be able to pay for -- it just costs too much. Care will not be denied. Rather than the cost of care being distributed over everyone in a large group, it will fall entirely on the hospital to cover.
Further, people who think they need no insurance are also likely to think they need do nothing to prevent disease or injury, and thus arrive at the ER in worse shape than if they had received vaccinations, preventive care, or early treatment--all of which is cheaper and easier than curing advanced disease. Poor people, of course, can't afford these early interventions, or late ones.
If hermits want to go deep into the outback and get sick and die there, fine. But that is not what most people do.
You don't say....
Quoting Bitter Crank
Really? I probably do not need health insurance. I exercise daily, eat a vegetarian diet, do not drink (not even carbonated beverages), do not smoke, do not take drugs, sleep 8+ hours a night, have a perfect BMI, perfect blood pressure, etc. I can't actually remember the last time I had a cold. Anything more serious than that, such as the flu, I haven't had since I was a kid. I've never broken a bone. The only surgery I've had is to remove wisdom teeth, which I did in the 9th grade. Why should I be penalized into paying for health insurance? The most I would need is dental so I can continue my annual cleanings. That's it. And even then, out of pocket cost for those is not much at all. The cost of a computer game for me basically.
A real "free" market in health care would be like the free market in anything else: If you can't afford it, you are shit out of luck.
If you can't afford to buy gold, or trips to Thailand, or high end sports cars -- whatever it is you decide to buy -- your suffering is entirely private and doesn't affect anyone else.
Disease and injury, however, do affect other people and sometimes very quickly.
Treating infectious disease, for instance, limits the spread of the disease. A guy who gets syphilis or gonorrhea and doesn't get it treated can infect a lot of other people (and gonorrhea, in particular, is becoming much more difficult to cure). Someone with TB can infect other people without having sex with them. Just hanging around the same people is sufficient. Yellow fever, hepatitis, Zika Virus, West Nile Virus, various tick-born diseases, mumps, measles, chickenpox, whooping cough, and so on have been suppressed because people availed themselves of health care.
A free market in health care with freely spreading diseases isn't much of a bargain.
I suspect that you're an obnoxious individual with no sense of humour. But tell us again how insults aren't really necessary.
You appear to have a utopian standard by which you judge the efficacy of the free market as a solution to providing people with affordable health care. Will it make it so that no one is shit out of luck? No. Will it do a better job than a government mandate? On the whole, I think so, and that's all I'm committed to, so if you thought I was committed to people being shit out of luck, then you're wrong. There are never any final solutions in life, only trade-offs.
Quoting Luke
I do have a sense of humor. And I wasn't insulting you. Do you know what you're talking about?
Unfortunately, you good physical condition doesn't make you immune to infectious diseases. You might survive them better than somebody who smokes, drinks, is obese, and eats a steady diet of chips and hot dogs, but good health habits doesn't produce immunity to killer influenza, or some other infection.
Maybe you've been healthy because your parents sensibly got you immunized when you were a child. Maybe your parents arranged for a dentist to remove your wisdom teeth rather than just letting them rot out. Did they have health insurance which covered you?
The best health habits in the world won't prevent your injury if some drunk runs over you. Let's say you survive -- you'll still need extensive medical care.
I'll grant you this: You might make it all the way to the grave at an advanced age without getting sick or getting injured. (In which case, you'll be dying of a heart attack or stroke.) It does happen. But it doesn't happen to most people--and it never has happened to most people--even the ones who didn't smoke, drink, eat poorly, and so on.
NEXT
Do you mean that you didn't intend to insult me? Or are you unaware that you insult people when you tell them that you suspect they are ignorant?
Whatever amendments a constitutional convention passed on to the states. (The convention itself has no power to effect the amendments. The states have to approve them.
Normally, constitutional amendments go through congress to the states, with 3/4 approval needed. The present constitution allows for the states to bypass congress by calling a convention. (So far, this has not been done.)
Quite so. But I could also drop dead tomorrow for some random reason. What is the statistical likelihood that I will contract some serious disease and why should I care?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Naturally, but this only highlights my point: they both had jobs and were much older than I am now. I am not opposed to getting health insurance. Indeed, I want health insurance and would prefer to have it than not. By the time I hit 40 or so, it may become useful. But I also don't see why I should be throwing my money away for overpriced insurance right this moment. It's useless for me to complain, though, because I will be forced into doing so anyway very soon.
Quoting Luke
Why would it be insulting that someone suspects you of being ignorant, on a philosophy forum no less? I often enjoy being proved ignorant. I did the same thing to @Wayfarer earlier, accusing him of being ignorant regarding the Bush tax cuts. He seems to have bowed out of that conversation, but I think I definitively proved him wrong. Despite that, I have a lot of respect for @Wayfarer and very much enjoy reading his comments - just not his political ones, as he more or less noted about me.
I said, I'm not discussing politics any more with @Thorongil. Doesn't mean I think you're correct about any of it, but I meant it.
Yeah, that's fair and probably best for both of us. (Y)
Insurance companies intervene in the free market. They negotiate special deals with the hospitals, deals which the uninsured cannot get, so that the uninsured individual may have to pay many times more for the same treatment than the insurance company would pay. No matter how you look at it, insurance is nasty business. Insurance of any type should not even be allowed to be a business. It's extortion.
Yes, I was asking about the content of these supposed amendments. It would have to be an issue that's potent enough to unify a bunch of people who've been at each other's throats for a while now. I thought that when you said a constitutional convention is possible, you were saying such a unifying issue is on the scene.
For many people, "balanced budget" is code for "reduce federal social spending': medicaid, welfare, education, medicare, unemployment insurance, social security, etc. Balancing the budget is NOT code for reducing defense spending or greatly increasing the level of taxation on wealthy people (the top 10%, particularly the top 1%. It's code for anything but that.
You know, prior to 1920, government was financed through excise taxes on alcohol, tariffs on imports, and the like. The income tax was passed in preparation for prohibition, which would end that source of tax revenue. Obviously, the scope of government activity was much smaller then. Paleo-conservatives want to devolve the federal budget to spending levels not seen in a century.
World War II created a huge debt which was, eventually, paid off (around 1970, if I remember correctly). Vietnam together with an expansion in social spending (Medicare, medicaid, Great Society programs) greatly increased federal indebtedness. Before that had been paid off, Reagan's and Bush I's military programs (like Star Wars) greatly increased debt again. After Star Wars, it was Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Great Recession which jacked up federal spending to the current very high debt levels.
The chart below depicts discretionary spending. Debt service and social security are not included (because they are mandatory spending items).
The second pie chart shows how mandatory spending is distributed.
Military spending though, isn't blamed, usually. It's Social Security, Medicaid, and the like which are blamed. Exactly what share military, social spending, and debt service (plus everything else) have can be manipulated by including mandatory spending, or just talking about discretionary spending.
The fact is, though, that past and current military spending, and debt service on that spending, accounts for a huge chunk of the budget.
I don't think it's unifying because it's politically self-defeating. Europe starved itself to get through the recent economic mess. Americans never starve themselves on purpose.
Of course, the rich and the legislatures are all people, who possess greed the same as we all do. It is the system that is at fault.
What we need is a way to defuse the power of money on economic decision-making, releasing the economic factors from the narrow channels of money flow that keep enriching the economically high and mighty. This needs to be effected without blocking individual’s ability to acquire wealth, which motivates economic production. It is best to achieve this economic power diffusion with least interference from other entities, like continued manipulation by government.
This can be achieved by limiting the number of persons any business can employ. In conjunction with this there has to be a limit to the maximum percentage interest an individual can own in all other businesses.
If we were to enforce a balanced Federal budget through a constitutional amendment with no way out, it would mean not just metaphoric starvation, but likely real starvation for some people. It would be an economic disaster for the country as a whole, and would probably trigger a global economic recession. Never mind paying off the National Debut of $13.62 trillion.
It is unlikely that enough states would ratify the amendment. If they did ratify it, and it were seriously enforced, I predict a severe social reaction would be ignited, which would result in a repeal.
In my opinion, the federal budget should, over time, be put in balance. The national debt should, over time, be reduced. Private (personal) debt should also be reduced over time. All of this debt reduction and budget balancing would require very committed thrift and a major extraction of wealth from the richest segments of the population. My call for a balanced budget is code for reduced defense expenditure, increased taxation on the rich, and a major shift in spending priorities. (Is my coded proposal likely? Sadly, no.)
A little-remembered moment from the GW Bush presidency was that, shortly after getting into office, he ordered the military to restart R&D into "Star Wars," leading to god knows how much more money pissed down the drain on that boondoggle. Then 9/11 happened, and, well, the rest is history. Depressing, depressing history.
Star Wars still has its defenders, though. Some claim that our outrageous military expenditures were actually an economic weapon against the USSR, as the latter bankrupted itself trying to keep pace with our spending, thereby hastening its downfall. At least one conservative commentator (i.e. Dennis Prager) has claimed that Israel's mostly-successful Iron Dome missile shield vindicates the concept of Star Wars. Because, of course, defending a nation the size of New Jersey from small missiles armed with conventional explosives using a ground-based missile system is the exact same thing as shooting down nuclear-armed ICBMs with x-ray lasers fired from orbiting satellites to protect an entire continent.
And some claim that the new Russia is a staunch ally, so that ended well.
This point goes two ways though. We are now dependent on satellites for just about every aspect of our lives, and a lot of this technology probably came about from the R&D push for "Star Wars". War and defence motivates R&D, but the technology developed can have a wide range of applications.
Man is a social animal. In a community, attitudes of the perceived leaders set trends, and the followers reinforce each other’s thinking accordingly, creating euphoria over time. This is how ordinary people gear up for heroic efforts in times of community crisis, like wars. Now big money makers have become roll-models, and have too high an influence on community’s thinking. As a result, now ruthless greed generated by reckless enterprise has become popular world over. Too many of them heedlessly fall in the spider web of our luring credit industry, sinking deeper in misery. And seeking and pursuing quick money-making schemes makes one abhor hard work. Being valuable to society by honest work has gone out of fashion.
Simply defined, morality is: ‘Do unto others as you would have done unto you’. The existing degenerate environment of greed forces new entrepreneurs to compromise their moral convictions and adopt cunning ways. This craving for quick gratification is evident in mature and growing economies all over the world. Look at how processed food is made unhealthy with harmful preservatives and cheap ingredients, the quality of food in chain restaurants has degraded over the years, farm produce is made unhealthy by high-breeding, and the quality of dairy products by rampant use of hormones and antibiotics.
The U.S. seems to be leading the way. This makes the nation fat and unhealthy, requiring more medical attention. On the other side, medical drugs/treatments are marketed at exorbitant prices, and once they are in circulation, our medical drug industry shows instances of suppressing and discouraging immerging cheaper/better remedies, and of suppressing discoveries of dangerous side effects. The common man is getting squeezed from every side. Our automobile industry ignored, or bought and shelved technical innovations, to avoid prerequisite expensive modifications to production processes, loosing against foreign completion in the end.
A revolution almost always has wide spread economic hardship at its base. Too much wealth in the hands of a few robs democracy of its effectiveness. The present worldwide wave of expression of dissatisfaction for the existing political establishments is only the beginning. Man’s pursuit of happiness is ever existing formidable force. Each new generation brings forth clearer perspective of the prevailing reality. The majority of the world population feeling safer than before has shifted its focus to achieving comfort. The biggest obstacle to comfortable living, the common man sees now, is the unjust distribution of wealth. As a result the demand for more profound socialism is forming in the mind of the world masses. Often, at the beginning, revolting masses are acutely aware of their pain but not clear about remedy. Unless the real underlying decease is addressed, treating the symptoms only with political adjustments will not mollify the masses. It seems like the next lesson on humanity’s curriculum is that, ‘unchecked commercial greed is detrimental to community’s happiness’.
What we need is a way to defuse the power of money on economic decision-making, releasing the economic factors from the narrow channels of money flow that keep enriching the economically high and mighty. This needs to be effected without blocking individual’s ability to acquire wealth, which motivates economic production. It is best to achieve this economic power diffusion with least interference from other entities, like continued manipulation by government.
This can be achieved by limiting the number of persons any business can employ. In conjunction with this there has to be a limit to how much interest an individual can own in how many businesses.
I wouldn't say that this is possible, would you? Take a look back at your moral edict, "do unto others...". So long as an individual perceives oneself to be getting the short end of the stick, that person will not obey such an order. Why should I be nice to those who have everything, are giving me very little, and taking whatever they can get from me? The corporations have figured out how to charge us $X per month for everything right up to the air that we breathe (and that's probably next), nickel and diming us, tapping us until we're sapped out, leaving us two choices, hate them for their unreasonable charges, or join the gravy train. If we hate them, we will not be inclined to "do unto others..." toward them. And joining the gravy train requires that we invert the moral edict, so that it now reads "do unto others what others have done to you". Welcome to the pyramid project.
American political philosophy has vehement opposition to socialism, because it only visualizes socialism operated by government, fearing abuse of society’s resources due to any of the combination of inefficiency, unjust system, and unscrupulous implementation. But we already have some socialism; our graded income tax and the safety-net programs. What we need is to introduce a rule by which our greedy behavior is restrained, the same way as the existing laws restrain our violent behavior.
A large business can produce more cheaply, when in tough competition, than a cluster of small businesses. But in unrestricted free enterprise, giant businesses tend to quell down competition by mergers and absorptions. Then in complacent times wasteful lethargy and inefficiency seeps in easily. On the other hand a small business tends to remain vigilant due to closer watch of its stake holders, afforded by shorter pyramid of the organization. In some commodities the system may put us at a disadvantage for a time against giant foreign businesses. But higher creativity and innovations generated by broader participation of collective mind will override the disadvantage soon enough by improving the products, finding cheaper substitutes, moving to higher technology items, etc. The desire for profit would shift its focus from squeezing consumer to creatively adding values. Euphoric motivation growing from the new hope would make the system start bearing fruits quickly, and the pace would keep accelerating until the process is close to saturation. In less than two generations from the time the system is adopted, the transformation of the community should be awesome.
Since autocracy can act more swiftly, the rest of the world used to think that democracy has no chance of survival against it. What it forgot to consider is that the governance of democracy is more in tune with the well being of all its citizens, and so it receives highly motivated support of its population, and can sustain itself against all kinds of foreign tyrannies. The results of the conflicts over the last hundred year period prove this: monarchy and dictatorship are all but dead, and communism is dying, but democracy is alive and spreading. Similarly, diffused economical power will prevail against all attacks from large foreign corporations due to massive, highly motivated, creative participation. Comparatively insignificant American colonies of merely three million people won against the then mighty British Empire, because of self respecting and fiercely independent minded citizens. Top leaders like Washington were supported by hundreds of courageous and dedicated second and third category leaders. Such a system of restrained capitalism, as addressed in here, will create a society full of upright citizens, interspersed with tens of thousands of bold and innovative economic leaders.
American political philosophy has vehement opposition to socialism, because it only visualizes socialism operated by government, fearing abuse of society’s resources due to any of the combination of inefficiency, unjust system, and unscrupulous implementation. But we already have some socialism; our graded income tax and the safety-net programs. But such a scheme, as proposed here, transfers operational control to society, negating state’s potential for inefficiency and abuse.
Larger the organization, the more it is open to mismanagement and abuse to the cause. The activities of government should be confined mainly to security, order within, disaster relief, and keeping eyes for trouble spots. To regulate the behavior within the country it should only make blanket laws, and should stay away from micro-management. Otherwise, we are asking for inefficiency and bad management. Being so large, it can hardly be proactive, slow in reacting, and many times use remedies that are off or worse than the problem.
This approach can make our government small and more effective. As it is, departments just grow in size, and the outmoded one refuse to die. The employees resist loosing their jobs or prestige, or taking on competitive amount of work. We all are selfish to a degree.