What is your ideal political structure?

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  • jamil

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    Without more specifics, it's hard to tell exactly what you're proposing, but with that being said...

    I have a big problem when people start talking about it being the government's job to protect people from their own stupidity. If you're saying that the government should protect people against fraud by passing laws to prevent banks acting a deceptive/dishonest manner, fine. But if you make a law designed to prevent people who shouldn't take out loans from doing so, you've opened a big can of worms, because now it's the government's prerogative to decide whether or not you're ready to take out a loan, and not your decision anymore.

    The fundamental purpose of government in a free society is to protect the rights of citizens. I think your example of preventing people from taking out a loan they can't afford is probably a good example of where the line is. That's clearly something the market can handle. If you can't afford the loan it's not in the best interest of the creditor to loan you money. So they'll likely decline. Markets work in that situation where each party's working in its own interest causes the right thing to happen.

    But on the other side of that line would be where one side has an unfair market advantage to force unreasonable conditions. For example, say the bank requires that you provide them with all social media accounts so that they can monitor your social activity for social conformity. And of course you can tell them to go **** off. But then you don't get the loan. If all the banks require it, maybe because membership to some industry accreditation requires it, you can't get a loan without agreeing to let them monitor your social media.

    Sounds far fetched, and maybe it is. The way things are today, I don't think it's that far fetched. But there really isn't much protecting people from those kinds of policies. I think such hobson's choices should be strictly regulated. I know the free market purists would disagree. But we don't have a free market. I'm not sure a truely free market economy is possible when scaled to hundreds of millions of people and many huge corporations operating with in it. Power has an advantage when the game is self-interest.
     
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    The fundamental purpose of government in a free society is to protect the rights of citizens. I think your example of preventing people from taking out a loan they can't afford is probably a good example of where the line is. That's clearly something the market can handle. If you can't afford the loan it's not in the best interest of the creditor to loan you money. So they'll likely decline. Markets work in that situation where each party's working in its own interest causes the right thing to happen.

    But on the other side of that line would be where one side has an unfair market advantage to force unreasonable conditions. For example, say the bank requires that you provide them with all social media accounts so that they can monitor your social activity for social conformity. And of course you can tell them to go **** off. But then you don't get the loan. If all the banks require it, maybe because membership to some industry accreditation requires it, you can't get a loan without agreeing to let them monitor your social media.

    Sounds far fetched, and maybe it is. The way things are today, I don't think it's that far fetched. But there really isn't much protecting people from those kinds of policies. I think such hobson's choices should be strictly regulated. I know the free market purists would disagree. But we don't have a free market. I'm not sure a truely free market economy is possible when scaled to hundreds of millions of people and many huge corporations operating with in it. Power has an advantage when the game is self-interest.
    I guess I'm more a free market purist. If there's a problem that needs to be solved, and the free market has failed to solve it, than government oversight is simply not going to do any good at all.

    Let's take your example. Say all major banks start requiring to monitor your social media in order for you to get a loan. A certain percentage of the population will find this acceptable, and a certain percentage will tolerate it, and a certain percentage will oppose it.

    In a pure free market, as long as there is a significant minority who oppose it, there will be enough of a market for banks to crop up who will let you take out a loan without requiring to monitor your social media. As such, the only thing required to keep the banks from monopolizing on loans and enforcing this rule universally is a fairly significant minority.

    If we rely on government regulation, however, we will need, at minimum, a majority of voters to support government regulation to stop the banks from doing this. If you already have a majority of people then, the free market would have already corrected the problem. On the other hand, if you've already reached the point where the free market can't correct the problem, then that proves that you don't even have a noticeable minority who care about it, and you'll never get anywhere with trying to implement a solution through law.

    So in short, I definitely agree with you about the dangers of capitalism. I just don't think I can see a scenario where government oversight is going to fix or even mitigate that danger (except, of course, for outright lying, fraud, theft, etc, as mentioned before.) The real problem is people not caring enough, and giving up their rights to a corrupt power, whether that's a government or corporate power. But if the ignorance and complacency of the people has reached the point where they've allowed a monopoly by big corporations who are taking away their rights, then you're already far past the point of any governmental solution, and looking to government regulation to fix the issue is like expecting a guy with a bucket to save your house from burning down where the whole fire department with trucks and hoses failed.
     

    jamil

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    I guess I'm more a free market purist.

    I used to be until I got hit upside the head with some reality that's just hard to explain away in a practical way. Free market purism is purely theoretical, at least in large scale, mature markets. Don't get me wrong, I think we should strive for the purest markets we can achieve, with the least regulation. But there will need to be some regulation. Free markets depend on the principle of self-interest working to maintain a balance. But, like I said, power tips the scale of self-interest towards its favor every time.

    That's why the biggest concern is preventing crony capitalism. It's bad enough that the big players have big power to boost their own interests above other players. But having the power of the state on their side is a freedom killer.

    If there's a problem that needs to be solved, and the free market has failed to solve it, than government oversight is simply not going to do any good at all.

    Let's take your example. Say all major banks start requiring to monitor your social media in order for you to get a loan. A certain percentage of the population will find this acceptable, and a certain percentage will tolerate it, and a certain percentage will oppose it.

    In a pure free market, as long as there is a significant minority who oppose it, there will be enough of a market for banks to crop up who will let you take out a loan without requiring to monitor your social media. As such, the only thing required to keep the banks from monopolizing on loans and enforcing this rule universally is a fairly significant minority.
    In my example, it was an accreditation that required the monitoring. Trade organizations often have certifications, or accreditation that without which, a business can't survive the competition who does have it. So they all wind up having to get it just to stay in business. The free market cannot overcome that.


    If we rely on government regulation, however, we will need, at minimum, a majority of voters to support government regulation to stop the banks from doing this. If you already have a majority of people then, the free market would have already corrected the problem. On the other hand, if you've already reached the point where the free market can't correct the problem, then that proves that you don't even have a noticeable minority who care about it, and you'll never get anywhere with trying to implement a solution through law.

    That works great in theory. It doesn't work in practice. It isn't just the markets influencing things. A small percentage of the people are woke, for example. Not sure what the proportion is. Some polls I've seen it's maybe 15%. 20 tops. But wokeness is woven into every institution. I'm sure you've heard of ESG. Free markets can't get rid of that. In fact the market is expanding it. Company CEO's think that they need to implement ESG in their company to stay competitive. They think they need to conform to new social standards so that they won't get canceled.

    I doubt Disney really wanted to get into it with DeSantis about the miss characterized "don't say gay" bill. But the CEO thought he had to or they'd get canceled.

    So in short, I definitely agree with you about the dangers of capitalism. I just don't think I can see a scenario where government oversight is going to fix or even mitigate that danger (except, of course, for outright lying, fraud, theft, etc, as mentioned before.) The real problem is people not caring enough, and giving up their rights to a corrupt power, whether that's a government or corporate power. But if the ignorance and complacency of the people has reached the point where they've allowed a monopoly by big corporations who are taking away their rights, then you're already far past the point of any governmental solution, and looking to government regulation to fix the issue is like expecting a guy with a bucket to save your house from burning down where the whole fire department with trucks and hoses failed.
    I don't even look at it as the "dangers of capitalism". It's not capitalism that's the problem. It's human nature. In most ways self interest is sufficient to keep markets working fairly. And human nature is definitely self-interested. Capitalism is the most natural way to organize an economy. It also offers the most freedom to individuals. But, there are some things that free markets cannot overcome.

    Sure people don't care enough. That's not a problem that can be solved. It is an issue of human nature in response to being comfortable. Comfort is a built in feature of capitalism. And so there's a tradeoff. We make perpetually weak generations because capitalism is so good at solving our problems. Except for that one. I think we need a little regulation of power. You're free to do what you want. You're just not free to use excessive power to force people into Hobson's choices. I don't see a free market solution to that.
     

    Tombs

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    I think the US was established with about as good of a system as is possible. We just corrupted it by giving far too many people the ability to vote, which the system wasn't designed for. If we wanted to let everyone vote, we need a different system more resistant to the mob.

    Economically, I think there's things that could provide for a self regulating system that would keep most people happy. The downside is that it'd require an expansion of the state, but I also think that could be managed by the above.

    In my opinion, rather than regulations on the economy, the government should run a public alternative that competes with free market options. By tweaking the costs and options provided under the public alternative, you could steer the private market without regulation getting in the way. This is a far more hands-off method of keeping things from getting out of control, and utilizing the natural self-optimizing nature of the free market. Of course this requires being ran in a good-faith method and not being politically weaponized, but if we're talking about ideal systems we can acknowledge things might not be as fleshed out as necessary to work in reality.

    An example would be opening up medicare for anyone to buy a plan from. Keep rates and coverage competitive with private alternatives, and tweak them as necessary to reflect desired outcomes. You can leverage this to keep private market rates from exploding, rather than slapping them over the head with regulations.
     

    jamil

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    To further the point about comfort vs apathy. People in VA were content to continue to vote for woke politicians. Even a politician who intimated that it's fine to kill babies after birth. It wasn't until people found out what they were teaching kids in school that they were pushed out of their comfort zone. I think the story about the school covering up the story about a trans person who raped that girl was the thing that drove every parent to the polls to vote for someone else.

    So I think that gives us some kind of indicator what a new system might look like that could at least solve part of the problem with human nature's reaction to the comforts of capitalism. We need to solve for comfort. Not make people uncomfortable? But just solve for the problem of comfort causing apathy.
     
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    In my example, it was an accreditation that required the monitoring. Trade organizations often have certifications, or accreditation that without which, a business can't survive the competition who does have it. So they all wind up having to get it just to stay in business. The free market cannot overcome that.
    Why can't the free market overcome that? If people are smart enough to see that the nonsense the accreditation requires is taking away their rights, they'll be happy to give their business to companies that don't have it. If their fine with their rights being taken away, they aren't going to vote for legislation to fix it.

    Maybe we're talking too hypothetically here, though. Could you give me a real-world example of a free market economy where powerful corporation were infringing on people's rights (in the manner we're talking about here, not through fraud, deception, criminal activity, poisoning their own employees with deadly chemicals, etc, etc) and the government was able to pass a law that addressed the issue?
     

    wtburnette

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    I doubt Disney really wanted to get into it with DeSantis about the miss characterized "don't say gay" bill. But the CEO thought he had to or they'd get canceled.

    I love to see this garbage corrected. Afraid of a few vocal morons in your company? Time to decide if you want to capitulate to them and lose money, or stick to your core values and **** off those whiney b*tches. I don't understand why corporations are quaking in their boots and making horrid business decisions based on the clamoring of a few people. Fire those idiot employees and get new ones that can do their jobs without injecting politics into everything and don't cave to the woke customers. Since they are a small minority, it's better business to snub them than the majority.
     
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    I love to see this garbage corrected. Afraid of a few vocal morons in your company? Time to decide if you want to capitulate to them and lose money, or stick to your core values and **** off those whiney b*tches. I don't understand why corporations are quaking in their boots and making horrid business decisions based on the clamoring of a few people. Fire those idiot employees and get new ones that can do their jobs without injecting politics into everything and don't cave to the woke customers. Since they are a small minority, it's better business to snub them than the majority.
    It's because the whiny minority are the ones who WILL follow through on their threats. They WILL sue companies, boycott companies, go on big media shows and slander companies, etc, etc. By and large, most of the majority, non-radicalized types won't do any of those things.
     

    jamil

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    I think the US was established with about as good of a system as is possible. We just corrupted it by giving far too many people the ability to vote, which the system wasn't designed for. If we wanted to let everyone vote, we need a different system more resistant to the mob.

    Economically, I think there's things that could provide for a self regulating system that would keep most people happy. The downside is that it'd require an expansion of the state, but I also think that could be managed by the above.

    In my opinion, rather than regulations on the economy, the government should run a public alternative that competes with free market options. By tweaking the costs and options provided under the public alternative, you could steer the private market without regulation getting in the way. This is a far more hands-off method of keeping things from getting out of control, and utilizing the natural self-optimizing nature of the free market. Of course this requires being ran in a good-faith method and not being politically weaponized, but if we're talking about ideal systems we can acknowledge things might not be as fleshed out as necessary to work in reality.

    An example would be opening up medicare for anyone to buy a plan from. Keep rates and coverage competitive with private alternatives, and tweak them as necessary to reflect desired outcomes. You can leverage this to keep private market rates from exploding, rather than slapping them over the head with regulations.
    I think that what you're asking for might be impossible. But it requires too many words at the moment to make the point. I've spent too many words as it is. lol.

    But I'll say this about your medical example. The costs are exploding because it's not actually acting like a market system. The consumer is not in the loop. As a medical consumer I have no bartering power. That is entirely handled by an unholy trinity of providers, insurers, and government. You could even throw in employers in that too. If you severed the connection between the three (or four), and made the consumer the person who barters with insurance companies and health care providers, and made them the final payer, health care costs would have to go down.

    Employers hide much of our pain points for the cost of insurance. So when that goes up we can't take our business elsewhere. When providers raise their price for health care, we can't go elsewhere, because they all have the same cost structure, because that's the agreement between insurers and providers. And they don't care. That just gets passed onto the consumer, ultimately.

    To fix it, if it's fixable at this point. Insurers and providers can't even speak to each other. Employers would no longer provide healthcare, though they can provide for premiums if they want as a part of compensation. So you buy your health insurance from whoever. You go to the doctor, your doctor bills you. You file a claim for your insurer, you get the insurance check. You pay the bill. If your doctor charges too much, you tell them to **** off and go somewhere else. Your insurer raises your rates, you tell them to **** off and go somewhere cheaper. At least give the invisible hand a chance to work in the healthcare market.

    Ah ****. I used up more words than I had. Now I'm in debt.
     

    jamil

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    I love to see this garbage corrected. Afraid of a few vocal morons in your company? Time to decide if you want to capitulate to them and lose money, or stick to your core values and **** off those whiney b*tches. I don't understand why corporations are quaking in their boots and making horrid business decisions based on the clamoring of a few people. Fire those idiot employees and get new ones that can do their jobs without injecting politics into everything and don't cave to the woke customers. Since they are a small minority, it's better business to snub them than the majority.
    It's because of ESG. While everyone was happy and comfortable making stuff, selling stuff, buying stuff, and using stuff, NeoMarxist ideologues were inserting themselves into every institution. Finance, media, manufacturing, religions, education, and whatever else I didn't think of. So now we have ESG infecting every boardroom. It's a social scorecard for business. All the major companies have it. And I think that's what the left hates about small businesses. It's too hard to make them do all that nonsense. Easier to have a few big corporations they can control than to have 10's of millions of small businesses they'd have to infiltrate to control.

    So now that ESG is a thing, to be rid of it, it would take them all coming together to agree to get rid of it. That's not gonna happen. So probably, and I hate to say it, but it would probably take government to get rid of it. And that's definately a sticky wicket too.
     

    wtburnette

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    It's because the whiny minority are the ones who WILL follow through on their threats. They WILL sue companies, boycott companies, go on big media shows and slander companies, etc, etc. By and large, most of the majority, non-radicalized types won't do any of those things.

    That can be more easily weathered that losing major business/money, like what happened to Disney. I hope to see many more examples of this in the future. Maybe that'll convince companies to follow the money instead of always trying to appease the squeaky wheel.
     

    jamil

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    Why can't the free market overcome that? If people are smart enough to see that the nonsense the accreditation requires is taking away their rights, they'll be happy to give their business to companies that don't have it. If their fine with their rights being taken away, they aren't going to vote for legislation to fix it.
    Show me where that's worked out. I mean in a scaled way.

    Maybe we're talking too hypothetically here, though. Could you give me a real-world example of a free market economy where powerful corporation were infringing on people's rights (in the manner we're talking about here, not through fraud, deception, criminal activity, poisoning their own employees with deadly chemicals, etc, etc) and the government was able to pass a law that addressed the issue?
    Yeah, of course we're talking hypothetically. Although I think I gave you a potential realistic example. I don't think we're too far off from that. I've been talking about ESG, which is essentially a social scorecard to enforce a left wing view of social justice. Cultural Marxism. Maybe my imagination isn't powerful enough to see a free market solution. But I'm pretty damn sure it's not laying out in plain sight either.

    Elon Musk has a possible free market-ish solution for the excesses of Twitter. Not guaranteed. Not certain. But, that's definitely something I did not imagine before it happened. So I know better than to assert that my imagination is all-seeing. But how many Elon Musks are there? And that wasn't exactly the invisible hand at work. It's an extraordinary person doing something extraordinary.
     

    jamil

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    That can be more easily weathered that losing major business/money, like what happened to Disney. I hope to see many more examples of this in the future. Maybe that'll convince companies to follow the money instead of always trying to appease the squeaky wheel.
    Companies I think can certainly see a downside to being woke if they get put in place by consumers. In the case of Disney, though it hasn't really solved anything, it was the heavy hand of government (DeSantis) that handed down the consequences for pushing woke ****. Is that enough? I don't think so. And I'm not even sure it's the right way to go about it. Well. ****. I'm sure it was not the right way to go about it, even though it's satisfying to see some comeuppance.
     

    wtburnette

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    Companies I think can certainly see a downside to being woke if they get put in place by consumers. In the case of Disney, though it hasn't really solved anything, it was the heavy hand of government (DeSantis) that handed down the consequences for pushing woke ****. Is that enough? I don't think so. And I'm not even sure it's the right way to go about it. Well. ****. I'm sure it was not the right way to go about it, even though it's satisfying to see some comeuppance.

    I think it was fine the way it happened, personally. They had a tax advantage that they should have never had and when they got to uppity they were smacked down. Yes it was by government, but no one else could have done so in such a manner.
     
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    Show me where that's worked out. I mean in a scaled way.


    Yeah, of course we're talking hypothetically. Although I think I gave you a potential realistic example. I don't think we're too far off from that. I've been talking about ESG, which is essentially a social scorecard to enforce a left wing view of social justice. Cultural Marxism. Maybe my imagination isn't powerful enough to see a free market solution. But I'm pretty damn sure it's not laying out in plain sight either.

    Elon Musk has a possible free market-ish solution for the excesses of Twitter. Not guaranteed. Not certain. But, that's definitely something I did not imagine before it happened. So I know better than to assert that my imagination is all-seeing. But how many Elon Musks are there? And that wasn't exactly the invisible hand at work. It's an extraordinary person doing something extraordinary.
    Let me try putting it this way:

    There ARE governments out there (UK, Australia) who will send police to people's homes and even arrest them for stuff they say on social media.

    There ARE NOT free market economies out there where the majority of banks will refuse loans to people based on stuff they say on social media, because this would lose them too much business. This is the free market working out in a scaled way.

    To get the government to take someone's rights away, you need just greater than 50% of the population to vote for it.

    To get corporations to effectively take someone's right away, you need a super majority of the population to allow them to do so.

    That's why, in everything we talk about in our country where corporations are eroding our rights, the government is already two steps ahead of them. We've only reached the point of companies implementing woke nonsense like ESG after years of government institutions pushing the same thing.

    If you want to get rid of the near-universality of ESG among large corporations, you just need to convince enough people to make up a noticeable market force not to do business with the corporations in question, and instead take their business elsewhere. If you want to get rid of it through law, you need to convince greater than half the voting population to support that.
     

    tackdriver

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    I'm going to disagree. When one is ruled he always has skin in the game...

    Every person who has to abide by the policies of the person in an elected office
    has skin in that game. ...
    (my emphasis)

    The huge problem in our society is the fundamental difference how we see the Constitution and the Government. Some see a consensual contract, others some divine authority.

    I-am-not-ruled-by-anyone-period! I don't have to abide by anyone's polocies just because they got themselves elected. As a child, I was taught that I was ruled. The lessons got reinforced often. I believed it for a while. It drove me crazy, and I thought "this just isn't right!"

    One day I took the Red Pill, realized I had the power to do as I choose. Crap...then I had to decide what to choose. I chose to go to school, because I wanted mom to give me snacks and let me watch TV. Going to school was a prerequisite, so I did it. I appreciate my warm bed and indoor pluming, so I mowed the grass, took out the trash, and did other chores as asked. I soon realized that, as a kid, I had a pretty freaking awsome deal going. My friends on the other hand, were miserable, constantly bitching and moaning about how unfair everything was.

    I can no longer understand how the Blue Pill'ers see and think as adults. I just can't. From my perspective, they just whine and wring their hands about what The Man is doing to them, or making them do, just like a kid. It seems like they never matured past middle school. They don't seem safe, happy, or healthy to me. I do understand that they lose their f'd up minds when free people 'just say no'! "But... but...YOU HAVE TO!" No, we don't. I just can't imagine living with that world view.

    Maybe the Red Pill broke me. I consider that maybe I'm the delusional one. So, I try to rely on facts, reasoning, historical observations, etc. to decide what's real... just in case. So far, facts, reasoning, and honest history seem like Holy water and sunshine to a vampire for those that took the Blue Pill. So...we can't even agree on how to figure things out.

    One thing I do know - Any form of society that relies on me being ruled, or having to do what I'm told, just because I was told, without good reason and my consent...I'm not playing. If that's what you want, you better get the cell ready and hope you have the means to put us in it.
     

    breakingcontact

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    I'm not commenting that much, but I'm reading a lot. I'm sure most of on a forum like this agree that whatever the government type, it should be small/limited.

    I like to try to break complicated things down.

    I question why folks want/need so much government.

    It is because they do not have enough control over their own behavior and that of their families, so then we "need" so much government.

    So, what type of government most empowers the individual to exercise control over their own life so as to not "need" the big government in the first place? A governmental structure that limits its own power and growth?
     

    breakingcontact

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    Ground government in something external or formative such as a constitution, something we can point to as objective standard by which to measure the current government's size and scope is definitely a good thing.

    So...that much I know. We have to write down what we agree to and come back to that contract from time to time to make sure we are adhering to it. (all parties involved)
     
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