Hostile Takeover of Washington is brewing

[Fisherking]

You're missing the fundamentals of competition. There's 3 levels of it. There's fair play. There's self cheating (think doping), and there's destructive play (think poisoning your compeditors).

You don't want the two last ones. Does companies try to abuse the laws to get this space? Yes. Why? Because they're forbidden to do this otherwise, by the same lawmakers. The Rockefellers of the world aren't allowed to use his methods anymore (due to a stronger goverment).
Electrical companies can only properly compete if the grid is declared neutral, (not very free). Some markets aren't very monopolic in nature, some are.

That means that a "hands-off" method will create monopolies in some markets. So my suggestion of higher vigilance in preventing the companies to abuse the law has one problem, while your's about the free market fixing everything, except when it doesn't, has another.

Do you think the Koch brothers are funding libertarians and supporting gutting out the state because they believe in libertarian policies? Or is it to abuse those movements to get more money?



That's nice. Of course free markets promotes psychopathic behavior (that's why they're so common as CEO:s). So don't expect companies to become socially responsible by natural means. And since the US hate unions, you can't get to union/company salary negotiations (to be fair, it took a while before both parts agreed to do proper negotiations, rather than trying to impose on the other). Sweden got no minimum wage btw. Not needed by law, since the unions do the control if companies step out of line and undercuts the salary.

Look, I am not saying there should be no laws regarding fair compaction. I don’t favor a total free market.

I am skeptical of large moneyed interests intervening to get their way. But stronger government is not necessary to prevent the abuses. Stronger government only infringe upon personal liberties.

If you have studied the histories of government interventions you would know that they have never favored fair competition. They have been used as price supports for favored industries or individual companies or corporations. They favor the rich and not the people.

If regulation causes prices to rise or supply to decrease to the level of shortage then I don’t see it as a good thing. I don’t necessarily favor less government regulation I just favor it at lower levels in government. I favor a more decentralized government where it is easier for the people to have a voice over one all powerful central government ignoring the will of the people to favor their rich benefactors.

If I don’t like local government I can try to change it or move some place I like better. If I don’t like a huge central government it gets much, much more difficult to have an impact or to avoid it.

I don’t want a government or anyone else telling me how I must live and what I must do.

A free individual owns himself and his output, which he my contribute to whom ever or what ever his choice.

A slave owes his output to his master who may tell him what he may keep. Just where do you think most of us stand today?

[ICantSpellDawg]

I favor a more decentralized government where it is easier for the people to have a voice over one all powerful central government ignoring the will of the people to favor their rich benefactors.

If I don’t like local government I can try to change it or move some place I like better. If I don’t like a huge central government it gets much, much more difficult to have an impact or to avoid it.

I don’t want a government or anyone else telling me how I must live and what I must do.

A free individual owns himself and his output, which he my contribute to whom ever or what ever his choice.

A slave owes his output to his master who may tell him what he may keep. Just where do you think most of us stand today?

+1000

[Husar]

I would just like to say that indeed Fisherking's idea of tieing wages to company profit or similar measures (such as a measure for shareholder value) of company success is a better idea than a minimum wage.

With a minimum wage you create a temporary fix and will likely increase inflation instead of keeping it low enough so people won't have to care. Companies will see higher costs and adjust their prices to keep the profits and shareholder value they have now (or increase them even). Tieing wages to a measure that reliably represents company success means that if they increase their income they will also increase their labor costs at the same time, not by the same amount, but maybe a certain percentage so that gowth is still incentivized (although a certain upper cap may not hurt actually and could prevent monopole formation).

And no, without a cap it is not punishing success, it is just distributing the success to all who contribute to it. If you do include a cap where being more successful means you generate less profit/shareholder value, then this could be done per branch, so that a clothing company could still become more successful by venturing into the spaceship business. That would actually incentivize innovation, wouldn't it?

[ICantSpellDawg]

I would just like to say that indeed Fisherking's idea of tieing wages to company profit or similar measures (such as a measure for shareholder value) of company success is a better idea than a minimum wage.

With a minimum wage you create a temporary fix and will likely increase inflation instead of keeping it low enough so people won't have to care. Companies will see higher costs and adjust their prices to keep the profits and shareholder value they have now (or increase them even). Tieing wages to a measure that reliably represents company success means that if they increase their income they will also increase their labor costs at the same time, not by the same amount, but maybe a certain percentage so that gowth is still incentivized (although a certain upper cap may not hurt actually and could prevent monopole formation).

And no, without a cap it is not punishing success, it is just distributing the success to all who contribute to it. If you do include a cap where being more successful means you generate less profit/shareholder value, then this could be done per branch, so that a clothing company could still become more successful by venturing into the spaceship business. That would actually incentivize innovation, wouldn't it?

Profit sharing would be a better mandate than a minimum wage, although it would just create an outsourcing situation where the profit shows up in the umbrella company, but the bulk of the employees work for a contracting company that works on a shoestring. Laws would need to be passed to eliminate extensive strategy collusion between contractors and contractees, otherwise it is merely loophole.

The mantra is that those people take jobs no one else wants. The truth is that if no one took those jobs at the current pay levels than the employer would have to raise wages in order to find staff.

Sort of - most likely when it comes to low skilled employment the more likely outcome is that the jobs would move to a more "business friendly/human exploitative" international environment

Illegal Immigration is a boon for the private prison system, and most of the corporations that absolutely deny a living wage! Every time I point out that your ideology is corrupted by big business, you say something like:



That's all fine and dandy, but the Tea Party is still a willing proxy for big business. Throughout this thread you've merely confirmed an ideological bias that I told you was there to begin with. How can your party be for the people, if the first steps towards improving conditions are antithetical to your party? C'mon, man. I don't expect you to come around to my view, but I do expect you to understand why the Tea Party will never appeal to most of us on "the left." And it would be nice if you understood why so many of us see them as almost a counter-popular force, a dangerous reactionary insurrection here to do the far right's bidding in the dumbest way possible.

Eh - you confuse the TEA party with Low Tax/Pro Business types. In my experience the TEA party positions are much more populist than that and I think that you are doing yourself a dis-service in equating the two. The reality is that, while the TEA party may be co-opted by the mainstream Republican causes, it is much more blue collar and populist in outlook and the GOP knows this - hence their concerns

You are so worried about left and right and ignore up and down. From my read we have more in common with Milton Friedman than Obama. Hillary is closer to Romney than she is to you. But you would vote for her because she says she is from the left.

Yep

[Ironside]

Look, I am not saying there should be no laws regarding fair compaction. I don’t favor a total free market.

I am skeptical of large moneyed interests intervening to get their way. But stronger government is not necessary to prevent the abuses. Stronger government only infringe upon personal liberties.

It depends very much on how the goverment is formed and how it acts. A goverment can be formed for its people or against its people. The Swedish goverment are stronger than the US goverment. Yet it is towards the lower left in the political compass. It's more free.

Take taxes, that form of slavery (that all are legally forced to be in) you mention. Does paying taxes for free higher education increase or decrease your freedom? Increase, since the financial situation of your parents affect you less.
Paying for social security? Increase, since you don't have to take care of your parents if they've never been able to have very good finances.
Paying for public healthcare and sick leave? Increase, since you don't have to worry for financial ruin when getting sick.

That's the paradox of freedom, reducing a selective few freedoms increases it more in others.

Are the US goverment too much in the pockets of the big companies? Yes. But less goverment is by itself far from a solution. It could very well make the problem worse. Those companies and their money doesn't disappear. And that cooperating oligarcic structure will remain.

If you have studied the histories of government interventions you would know that they have never favored fair competition. They have been used as price supports for favored industries or individual companies or corporations. They favor the rich and not the people.

Goverment intervation is a mixed bag. What they always have is an agenda. Even when the agenda is free market. That's very obvious when breaking up monopolies for the sake if it, the results be damned (sometimes it works, sometimes you end up with worse service for higher prices).

The problem in the US is that the companies set or have heavy influence on the agenda. That can easily happen, but it's not a default situation.

I don’t necessarily favor less government regulation I just favor it at lower levels in government. I favor a more decentralized government where it is easier for the people to have a voice over one all powerful central government ignoring the will of the people to favor their rich benefactors.

It's a tricky odd one. Generally people seem to care less about their local goverment, than the national one. Bobby Jindal would probably not be elected if people really cared. It's a good one, but as always, you'll need an upper structure to take care of the things that can't be properly solved on the local level.