And I quote: "The vast majority of the population is unified under the World State, an eternally peaceful, stable global society in which goods and resources are plentiful (because the population is permanently limited to no more than two billion people) and everyone is happy."
Yea, it's not actually a utopia, it's a dystopia. If you had read a little further from the Wikipedia plot description, you would have seen the great cost to people for this Brave New World:
Natural reproduction has been done away with and children are created, 'decanted' and raised in Hatcheries and Conditioning Centres, where they are divided into five castes (which are further split into 'Plus' and 'Minus' members) and designed to fulfill predetermined positions within the social and economic strata of the World State. Fetuses chosen to become members of the highest castes, 'Alpha' and 'Beta', are allowed to develop naturally while maturing to term in "decanting bottles", while fetuses chosen to become members of the lower castes ('Gamma', 'Delta', 'Epsilon') are subjected to in situ chemical interference to cause arrested development in intelligence or physical growth.... Members of lower castes are not unique but are instead created using the Bokanovsky process which enables a single egg to spawn (at the point of the story being told) up to 96 children and one ovary to produce thousands of children.... People of these castes make up the majority of human society, and the production of such specialized children bolsters the efficiency and harmony of society, since these people are deliberately limited in their cognitive and physical abilities, as well as the scope of their ambitions and the complexity of their desires, thus rendering them easier to control. All children are educated via the hypnopaedic process, which provides each child with caste-appropriate subconscious messages to mold the child's lifelong self-image and social outlook to that chosen by the leaders and their predetermined plans for producing future adult generations.
To maintain the World State's Command Economy for the indefinite future, all citizens are conditioned from birth to value consumption... buy a new item instead of fixing the old one, because constant consumption, and near-universal employment to meet society's material demands, is the bedrock of economic and social stability for the World State. Beyond providing social engagement and distraction in the material realm of work or play, the need for transcendence, solitude and spiritual communion is addressed with the ubiquitous availability and universally endorsed consumption of the drug soma.... The hypnopaedically inculcated affinity for the State-produced drug, as a self-medicating comfort mechanism in the face of stress or discomfort, thereby eliminates the need for religion or other personal allegiances outside or beyond the World State.
You're really trying to claim that the Benghazi "scandal" - where USG allegedly didn't quickly enough label an incident as terrorism - is way more serious an issue than a massive program of covert surveillance?
It's possible, but you seem to have already decided that we know everything about it, and it's nothing but a "too slow" response by some incompetent leadership. If that's the case it's moot, but there is still much unknown. In fact there were 30 survivors that witnessed the attack, and even their identities are being withheld from Congress.
Besides, it really should not be a surprise that the NSA has been collecting phone and communication records of everyone for many years. I mean, seriously, were you surprised by that revelation? Really?
Or even better... child molester. Which is what they did to Kimberly Lindsey who found evidence that the Anthrax sent through the US Mail years ago could not have come from Bruce Ivins (the accused that "committed suicide"), because the strain had to have been manufactured in a very sophisticated industrial facility.
Like most things, the truth is probably in the middle.
I used to think so, but I realize now it is actually not the case. The game is to stir up a controversy with two sides argument from seemingly opposite positions, while both are actually working to obfuscate the real truth, which is never revealed and most don't even look for it. It's a clever slight-of-hand, a distraction from the real issue. Both sides are lying, but the truth isn't in the middle - it's off on a tangent that no one talks about.
There have recently been a flurry of scandals from DC, all showing up at a time when Benghazi was starting to be looked at very closely. Are they all a distraction from that, or something else. There was recently a "member of Al Queida" that claimed Stevens was the victim of a botched kidnapping attempt. I think that's probably true - but I don't buy that it was planned by Al Queida. You can speculate about who may have planned it, I won't do that here.
The IRS scandal is pretty quirky, too. The issue has actually been known about for a couple of years, and all of a sudden the IRS agent in charge releases the admission in an unrelated conference call. What's that all about?
You don't even hear about Fast and Furious anymore, even though it has come out recently that it may have actually been intended to arm the largest Mexican cartel in an attempt to eliminate all the smaller competition. With only one large cartel left to deal with, they could, in theory, be brought under control and reduce the loss of innocent life. That may be a laudable goal but who would be supportive of the method??
I had a point to all this that I think I've lost. I guess it's just that you always have to look deeper AND at the bigger picture. Looking for the truth in the middle is a terrible strategy.
Spying on guilty people is not outlandish, but spying on innocent people is absolutely outlandish. After all, if I am innocent, then you have no logical reason to spy on me.
But you're not supposed to mind because you have nothing to hide!
I don't think you did it knowingly, but you just summed up why "free" market capitalism doesn't work. At least the argument against.
Slim is a perfect example. Slim does have a monopoly on the telephone industry and ISPs. He also has other monopolies. Among them, he is currently moving on mines; so are the cartels.
As I pointed out, those monopolies were not a result of anything close to a "free market", they were created as a result of government coercion and taxation. Cartels are just another form of violent coercion. Libertarians view the primary role of government as protecting citizens from coercion and fraud. They have not only failed that role in Mexico, they have participated in it.
How does one become the richest man on earth, especially a half-wit, untalented, and entirely incompetent individual? It's the free-market of owning others' labor. All the while his employees have no rights nor alternatives for employment.
Wrong - it's done with family connections, favorable government regulation, and violent coercion. How you think this is free-market is beyond me. His employees have all the rights that every other human being on earth has. But they are being violated by the government and others. Free markets require the protection of basic natural rights of every individual, otherwise it is not a free market.
In the U.S.A, corporation are doing this as we speak. It's the whole point of outsourcing and insourcing; it's not about short-term profits (that's often claimed here on/.), it's *entirely* about long-term market manipulation. They are strong-arming the market for nationals to accept wages that are lower and oft times unlivable. Yet, the plutocrats make millions. How does that factor into your vision of the U.S.?
This happens in the US due to government regulations favorable to these corporations' activities. Small businesses and entrepreneurs are unable to compete because of the market manipulation by the government.
Mexico isn't an example of fascism... not yet. Mexico doesn't have what it takes to implement fascism; it's a third world country (always will be) that's entirely controlled by classism. It's an example of classic conservatism and it is a good example of right-libertarianism in motion. I understand your economics; I am just saying it doesn't work on the macro level. Unregulated capitalism will lead to fascism. It's a romantic ideology that can't be put into practice while expecting the desired result; it's been tried and done.
Fascism is, by definition, the cooperation of corporations with government. Public-private partnerships, if you will. By definition, capitalism cannot lead to fascism because the government/corporation cooperative does not exist. Perhaps you are thinking of Corporatism? Or Crony Capitalism? It has, in fact, rarely been tried on even a small scale, although the late 19th century and early 20th (before 1913) came probably as close as any, and it worked very well until the warmongers started taking control.
By the way, I am posting AC because I have modded this entire thread whether I agree or disagree. You too got mod points for counter-arguments.
Cute. Yes, I saw you down-modding several of my comments. I think you're violating the spirit and letter of the moderation policy, but of course statists never think rules should apply to them, only to the "little people".
The efficient application of capital is not a valuable service. It creates inflation and unemployment.
Incorrect. The efficient application of capital creates... efficiencies. Banning ATMs because they take the jobs of bank tellers is no way to regulate an economy. And these advances create more time, more productivity, and in a natural economy it results in cheaper goods, not inflation.
Inflation is created by excessively increasing the supply of fiat currency, and that's done by the Federal Reserve.
And the President is supposed to act as a check... NOT to keep Americans "safe"! So nobody is doing their damn job except the watchers....
--------
United States Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 1
Well he takes an oath of office - I'm sure it's in there somewhere, let's see...
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the poor people and women and all the minorities and cripples and people in poor health that need decent health care and feed and clothe them and be really nice and not talk mean to anyone except the bad oil companies and those evil Wall Streeters (unless I put them in my cabinet)”
This lesson was sent home with a friend. He went to a company site for a couple months, and to ensure the battery didn't die on his car, he disconnected it.
When he came back, he found that the car would not start, even with the battery at full charge. Apparently, BMWs force you to go to the dealer to have the car computer reprogrammed if the battery dies, so the computer "knows" the stats on the battery.
NSA is the least of our worries. At least they (tm) have done some good security hardening with SELinux and MAC/MIC policies.
I've don't think I've ever seen such a tortured justification for overbearing government action in my life. Are you taking lessons from NPR or something? If you buy a car like that from a company, you're the idiot for doing business with them. Getting screwed by the NSA doesn't mean you were stupid enough to give them your money, it just means you live in the United States.
You seem to think that emails, phone logs, and all manner of web data are "papers and effects", whereas no US court has ever held such a thing.
Not quite true. While a recent federal court in South Carolina denied a suit against a prosecutor for accessing email without a proper warrant (the SCOTUS declined to review it), cases in California and the Sixth District Court clearly upheld 4th Amendment protections for email - even when stored full-time on an ISP's servers. So right now, it kind of depends on where you live whether your email is considered private, but it's clearly false that "no US court has ever held such a thing" - several have, including Federal Appeals courts.
Those concerned about wind turbines spoiling the view tend to be climate change deniers.
Interesting assertion. That would be a surprise to people like the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and Walter Cronkite, vocal opponents of wind farms near their homes. Joe Kennedy has written much in support of wind farms, but oppose them near his own home.
Oh, yea, great idea there, Mozilla. Collect contact information for everyone opposed to government surveillance. That will be a nice database to use as a bargaining chip with the federal bureaucrats, won't it now?
It's funny that you think that Mexican markets are "unregulated", or that Slim is "left alone" by government rather than having a lot of control over it. In fact, he is a major player in funding the Mexican senate. And, much of his wealth comes from the Mexican telephone company, which was owned and run by the government until he "bought" it from them. So that's not an example of unregulated markets leading to wealth, but an example of modern fascism.
We have had unregulated markets before, this is not new. They have always resulting in absolute concentration of wealth at the cost of the liberty, health and safety of the common man.
When I asked for an example, you suggested "the 1920s and 1930s in American history". Leave aside that the markets were not unregulated, although there was a lot less regulation than we have recently. There was some concentration of wealth, but far from absolute. It did not result in loss of liberty of common man, they have less liberty today. And labor unions rose to counter them, it was not solved by regulation. Now you're just claiming that it would have resulted in revolution. That's an entirely different argument. Oppression often leads to revolution. Why is it different that oppression of factory workers leads to revolution than oppression by government leads to revolution.
So there is no example of unregulated markets leading to absolute concentration of wealth. There is competition and push-back from the labor force to counter it, and those work.
I give you the example of China. For years their labor force was treated as slaves, and the people were oppressed by the government there. The people attempted to rebel in both cases. When they protested the government, they were run over by tanks and nothing changed. By recently as they challenge the corporate factories, wages are rising, conditions are improving, and their actions are forcing the corporations to change. So it's clear to me that government oppression kills people and is never stopped without massive violence, while corporate oppression is a temporary condition with many peaceful ways of stopping.
Then what is the rate you personally would be willing to pay? You've declared somewhere between 33% and 50% to be too high. What's not too high?
Just as wrong-headed a question. Taxes in the US are not voluntary, even though I've heard politicians make the claim that it is, obstinately and with a straight face. I can tell you that the value I get from the taxes I pay, in innumerable forms and constantly increasing, is significantly less than I get from my money anywhere else. I've been robbed more than once and no one was caught and nothing recovered, transportation around here is horrible even though I pay at the pump and tolls all over the place, and I've never been even responded to when I file complaints. To add insult to injury, the IRS has claimed my mother-in-law's life insurance was unreported income, sent me a bill I could not pay, refused to acknowledge receipt of any correspondence I sent them in response, and I eventually lost my house. The bank got a sweet deal because they got credit for writing off some debt, and the IRS forced me to claim my losses as income!
How much do you think is fair to pay supporting to keep these tyrannical bureaucrats in power?
Your "all or nothing" straw men are getting really tedious. I never said all problems are caused by government intervention, and yet many are. If you think all government solutions are correct and efficient and helpful to the people they claim they are going to help, then you are really very ignorant of the actual workings of governments. I say render unto Ceasar, but these days you can't make a move or a plan or plant a garden or travel from one place to another without prostrating yourself before some office or other and beg for permission first. Unless you're one of the rulers, I guess.
Well since you didn't actually make even a half-hearted attempt to provide any, I had to guess at what you must have been talking about. Pretty disingenuous to then try to claim I'm ignoring evidence that you can't even present.
I'm sure I can find some reason why you can't have a vegetable patch too, if I try hard enough.
So you can take away every property right I try to exercise, and all that it requires is for you to "try hard enough" to find some justification? Well, to me, that makes you a tyrant, just like people passing and enforcing laws like this one and doing crap like this, and that's why I participate in local government: to fight tyranny, and oppose busybodies that sit around in little tin pot committees deciding what to do with other peoples' property.
Technically, what the 16th amendment legalized was taxation "without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration." That the amendment specified "income" is more window dressing than substance.
Right, I think that's what I said. The 1895 decision stated that taxing income from property was direct and must be apportioned. The problem is that if they passed a tax on wages that excluded any taxes on other kinds of income it would be political suicide.
Actually, it's less than 50, but your numbers don't list that. And I'm not sure why you think number of employees or amount of payroll has anything to do with productivity - big companies are slow, and grow and shrink very slowly, while small ones can fail quickly, or grow extremely fast when they are successful. Still, even with your numbers, the small companies (less than 100, since you don't list 50), employ more people than the large ones - 171,672,003 compared to 127,838,635.
The US badly needs something like the Swiss referendum and initiative, where the population can overturn pretty much any government decision, although the executive ones are harder to get at because it goes indirectly.
I think that'd shut up the "sole arbiter" complaints (disclosure: I'm Swiss). And if you then also increase transparency and accountability of the government agencies, the whole Libertarian Party starts to look as silly as it would if we had one over here.
+1
If there is any transparency and accountability left in the US federal government, it is fading very fast. I mean, Obama recently appointed a former Monsanto executive as Commissioner of Foods for the Food and Drug Administration, and Tom Wheeler, a powerful lobbyist for the big cable and wireless corporations, was appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission. And, of course, even the most mundane documents from these bureaucracies is categorized as "classified", and of course Edward Snowden is now in hiding for revealing the collaborations between the NSA, AT&T, Verizon, and Israeli technology companies.
And all this corruption is why libertarian ideas are becoming more popular in the US.
You must have missed the 1920s and 1930s in American history.
Ah, yes. "Trust busting"? The fact is, Standard Oil was already LOSING market share before a government bureaucrat decided that he could satisfy his ambition by attacking them. And, of course, back then we had books like "The Jungle" to get people all afraid and beg to give up their rights for protection from the government - they do that these days with CNN and Nightline. And of course, those problems were solved with private citizens banding together and forming unions, not with government intervention. That's the whole "informed society" and responsibility of the populace piece that all free societies require to function properly.
The problem with benevolent governments is that when they get powerful enough there is no incentive for them to be benevolent any more.
I'm amazed at all the ridiculous straw men that people come up with to justify the police-state / nanny-state / overbearing government activity. Playing loud music at 3AM is nothing like a natural right exercised without imposing on others - it is a clear over-the-line case, as in one person violating someone else's rights (the "quiet enjoyment" part of natural property rights). As the saying goes, your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.
At least in your case you didn't try to conflate libertarianism with anarchy, like many others. I'll give you a real-world example with a little less clarity. What if I want to grow vegetables in my front lawn, but the local government has passed a zoning rule that says I can't. And they enforce it by imposing a fine every day that passes that I have not ripped up the vegetable garden and planted "approved" flora. This is happening in many places right now. What do you think, should the collective, that want to require certain "standards" for residential property, be able to impose that kind of rule on the individual's right to use his own personal property as he sees fit, when it violates the rights of no other person, but only the "ideal" drawn up by a few local representatives?
Slashdot Mirror
And I quote: "The vast majority of the population is unified under the World State, an eternally peaceful, stable global society in which goods and resources are plentiful (because the population is permanently limited to no more than two billion people) and everyone is happy."
Yea, it's not actually a utopia, it's a dystopia. If you had read a little further from the Wikipedia plot description, you would have seen the great cost to people for this Brave New World:
You're really trying to claim that the Benghazi "scandal" - where USG allegedly didn't quickly enough label an incident as terrorism - is way more serious an issue than a massive program of covert surveillance?
It's possible, but you seem to have already decided that we know everything about it, and it's nothing but a "too slow" response by some incompetent leadership. If that's the case it's moot, but there is still much unknown. In fact there were 30 survivors that witnessed the attack, and even their identities are being withheld from Congress.
Besides, it really should not be a surprise that the NSA has been collecting phone and communication records of everyone for many years. I mean, seriously, were you surprised by that revelation? Really?
Or even better ... child molester. Which is what they did to Kimberly Lindsey who found evidence that the Anthrax sent through the US Mail years ago could not have come from Bruce Ivins (the accused that "committed suicide"), because the strain had to have been manufactured in a very sophisticated industrial facility.
Like most things, the truth is probably in the middle.
I used to think so, but I realize now it is actually not the case. The game is to stir up a controversy with two sides argument from seemingly opposite positions, while both are actually working to obfuscate the real truth, which is never revealed and most don't even look for it. It's a clever slight-of-hand, a distraction from the real issue. Both sides are lying, but the truth isn't in the middle - it's off on a tangent that no one talks about.
There have recently been a flurry of scandals from DC, all showing up at a time when Benghazi was starting to be looked at very closely. Are they all a distraction from that, or something else. There was recently a "member of Al Queida" that claimed Stevens was the victim of a botched kidnapping attempt. I think that's probably true - but I don't buy that it was planned by Al Queida. You can speculate about who may have planned it, I won't do that here.
The IRS scandal is pretty quirky, too. The issue has actually been known about for a couple of years, and all of a sudden the IRS agent in charge releases the admission in an unrelated conference call. What's that all about?
You don't even hear about Fast and Furious anymore, even though it has come out recently that it may have actually been intended to arm the largest Mexican cartel in an attempt to eliminate all the smaller competition. With only one large cartel left to deal with, they could, in theory, be brought under control and reduce the loss of innocent life. That may be a laudable goal but who would be supportive of the method??
I had a point to all this that I think I've lost. I guess it's just that you always have to look deeper AND at the bigger picture. Looking for the truth in the middle is a terrible strategy.
Spying on guilty people is not outlandish, but spying on innocent people is absolutely outlandish. After all, if I am innocent, then you have no logical reason to spy on me.
But you're not supposed to mind because you have nothing to hide!
I don't think you did it knowingly, but you just summed up why "free" market capitalism doesn't work. At least the argument against. Slim is a perfect example. Slim does have a monopoly on the telephone industry and ISPs. He also has other monopolies. Among them, he is currently moving on mines; so are the cartels.
As I pointed out, those monopolies were not a result of anything close to a "free market", they were created as a result of government coercion and taxation. Cartels are just another form of violent coercion. Libertarians view the primary role of government as protecting citizens from coercion and fraud. They have not only failed that role in Mexico, they have participated in it.
How does one become the richest man on earth, especially a half-wit, untalented, and entirely incompetent individual? It's the free-market of owning others' labor. All the while his employees have no rights nor alternatives for employment.
Wrong - it's done with family connections, favorable government regulation, and violent coercion. How you think this is free-market is beyond me. His employees have all the rights that every other human being on earth has. But they are being violated by the government and others. Free markets require the protection of basic natural rights of every individual, otherwise it is not a free market.
In the U.S.A, corporation are doing this as we speak. It's the whole point of outsourcing and insourcing; it's not about short-term profits (that's often claimed here on /.), it's *entirely* about long-term market manipulation. They are strong-arming the market for nationals to accept wages that are lower and oft times unlivable. Yet, the plutocrats make millions. How does that factor into your vision of the U.S.?
This happens in the US due to government regulations favorable to these corporations' activities. Small businesses and entrepreneurs are unable to compete because of the market manipulation by the government.
Mexico isn't an example of fascism... not yet. Mexico doesn't have what it takes to implement fascism; it's a third world country (always will be) that's entirely controlled by classism. It's an example of classic conservatism and it is a good example of right-libertarianism in motion. I understand your economics; I am just saying it doesn't work on the macro level. Unregulated capitalism will lead to fascism. It's a romantic ideology that can't be put into practice while expecting the desired result; it's been tried and done.
Fascism is, by definition, the cooperation of corporations with government. Public-private partnerships, if you will. By definition, capitalism cannot lead to fascism because the government/corporation cooperative does not exist. Perhaps you are thinking of Corporatism? Or Crony Capitalism? It has, in fact, rarely been tried on even a small scale, although the late 19th century and early 20th (before 1913) came probably as close as any, and it worked very well until the warmongers started taking control.
By the way, I am posting AC because I have modded this entire thread whether I agree or disagree. You too got mod points for counter-arguments.
Cute. Yes, I saw you down-modding several of my comments. I think you're violating the spirit and letter of the moderation policy, but of course statists never think rules should apply to them, only to the "little people".
The efficient application of capital is not a valuable service. It creates inflation and unemployment.
Incorrect. The efficient application of capital creates ... efficiencies. Banning ATMs because they take the jobs of bank tellers is no way to regulate an economy. And these advances create more time, more productivity, and in a natural economy it results in cheaper goods, not inflation.
Inflation is created by excessively increasing the supply of fiat currency, and that's done by the Federal Reserve.
And the President is supposed to act as a check ... NOT to keep Americans "safe"! So nobody is doing their damn job except the watchers ....
--------
United States Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 1
Well he takes an oath of office - I'm sure it's in there somewhere, let's see...
Yep, you're right!
This lesson was sent home with a friend. He went to a company site for a couple months, and to ensure the battery didn't die on his car, he disconnected it.
When he came back, he found that the car would not start, even with the battery at full charge. Apparently, BMWs force you to go to the dealer to have the car computer reprogrammed if the battery dies, so the computer "knows" the stats on the battery.
NSA is the least of our worries. At least they (tm) have done some good security hardening with SELinux and MAC/MIC policies.
I've don't think I've ever seen such a tortured justification for overbearing government action in my life. Are you taking lessons from NPR or something? If you buy a car like that from a company, you're the idiot for doing business with them. Getting screwed by the NSA doesn't mean you were stupid enough to give them your money, it just means you live in the United States.
You seem to think that emails, phone logs, and all manner of web data are "papers and effects", whereas no US court has ever held such a thing.
Not quite true. While a recent federal court in South Carolina denied a suit against a prosecutor for accessing email without a proper warrant (the SCOTUS declined to review it), cases in California and the Sixth District Court clearly upheld 4th Amendment protections for email - even when stored full-time on an ISP's servers. So right now, it kind of depends on where you live whether your email is considered private, but it's clearly false that "no US court has ever held such a thing" - several have, including Federal Appeals courts.
Those concerned about wind turbines spoiling the view tend to be climate change deniers.
Interesting assertion. That would be a surprise to people like the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and Walter Cronkite, vocal opponents of wind farms near their homes. Joe Kennedy has written much in support of wind farms, but oppose them near his own home.
How do they know who is a US citizen and who isn't?
Check out the Daily Show video and the clip they show from MS NBC, they're basically flipping a coin. 51% accuracy.
Actually, they don't need access to Google and Facebook data, they have direct access to all communications at the connection points.
Oh, yea, great idea there, Mozilla. Collect contact information for everyone opposed to government surveillance. That will be a nice database to use as a bargaining chip with the federal bureaucrats, won't it now?
How about the vastly under regulated markets now?
Where?
Carlos Slim.
It's funny that you think that Mexican markets are "unregulated", or that Slim is "left alone" by government rather than having a lot of control over it. In fact, he is a major player in funding the Mexican senate. And, much of his wealth comes from the Mexican telephone company, which was owned and run by the government until he "bought" it from them. So that's not an example of unregulated markets leading to wealth, but an example of modern fascism.
The claim from the OP was:
We have had unregulated markets before, this is not new. They have always resulting in absolute concentration of wealth at the cost of the liberty, health and safety of the common man.
When I asked for an example, you suggested "the 1920s and 1930s in American history". Leave aside that the markets were not unregulated, although there was a lot less regulation than we have recently. There was some concentration of wealth, but far from absolute. It did not result in loss of liberty of common man, they have less liberty today. And labor unions rose to counter them, it was not solved by regulation. Now you're just claiming that it would have resulted in revolution. That's an entirely different argument. Oppression often leads to revolution. Why is it different that oppression of factory workers leads to revolution than oppression by government leads to revolution.
So there is no example of unregulated markets leading to absolute concentration of wealth. There is competition and push-back from the labor force to counter it, and those work.
I give you the example of China. For years their labor force was treated as slaves, and the people were oppressed by the government there. The people attempted to rebel in both cases. When they protested the government, they were run over by tanks and nothing changed. By recently as they challenge the corporate factories, wages are rising, conditions are improving, and their actions are forcing the corporations to change. So it's clear to me that government oppression kills people and is never stopped without massive violence, while corporate oppression is a temporary condition with many peaceful ways of stopping.
Then what is the rate you personally would be willing to pay? You've declared somewhere between 33% and 50% to be too high. What's not too high?
Just as wrong-headed a question. Taxes in the US are not voluntary, even though I've heard politicians make the claim that it is, obstinately and with a straight face. I can tell you that the value I get from the taxes I pay, in innumerable forms and constantly increasing, is significantly less than I get from my money anywhere else. I've been robbed more than once and no one was caught and nothing recovered, transportation around here is horrible even though I pay at the pump and tolls all over the place, and I've never been even responded to when I file complaints. To add insult to injury, the IRS has claimed my mother-in-law's life insurance was unreported income, sent me a bill I could not pay, refused to acknowledge receipt of any correspondence I sent them in response, and I eventually lost my house. The bank got a sweet deal because they got credit for writing off some debt, and the IRS forced me to claim my losses as income!
How much do you think is fair to pay supporting to keep these tyrannical bureaucrats in power?
Your "all or nothing" straw men are getting really tedious. I never said all problems are caused by government intervention, and yet many are. If you think all government solutions are correct and efficient and helpful to the people they claim they are going to help, then you are really very ignorant of the actual workings of governments. I say render unto Ceasar, but these days you can't make a move or a plan or plant a garden or travel from one place to another without prostrating yourself before some office or other and beg for permission first. Unless you're one of the rulers, I guess.
Well since you didn't actually make even a half-hearted attempt to provide any, I had to guess at what you must have been talking about. Pretty disingenuous to then try to claim I'm ignoring evidence that you can't even present.
I'm sure I can find some reason why you can't have a vegetable patch too, if I try hard enough.
So you can take away every property right I try to exercise, and all that it requires is for you to "try hard enough" to find some justification? Well, to me, that makes you a tyrant, just like people passing and enforcing laws like this one and doing crap like this, and that's why I participate in local government: to fight tyranny, and oppose busybodies that sit around in little tin pot committees deciding what to do with other peoples' property.
Technically, what the 16th amendment legalized was taxation "without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration." That the amendment specified "income" is more window dressing than substance.
Right, I think that's what I said. The 1895 decision stated that taxing income from property was direct and must be apportioned. The problem is that if they passed a tax on wages that excluded any taxes on other kinds of income it would be political suicide.
Actually, it's less than 50, but your numbers don't list that. And I'm not sure why you think number of employees or amount of payroll has anything to do with productivity - big companies are slow, and grow and shrink very slowly, while small ones can fail quickly, or grow extremely fast when they are successful. Still, even with your numbers, the small companies (less than 100, since you don't list 50), employ more people than the large ones - 171,672,003 compared to 127,838,635.
The US badly needs something like the Swiss referendum and initiative, where the population can overturn pretty much any government decision, although the executive ones are harder to get at because it goes indirectly. I think that'd shut up the "sole arbiter" complaints (disclosure: I'm Swiss). And if you then also increase transparency and accountability of the government agencies, the whole Libertarian Party starts to look as silly as it would if we had one over here.
+1
If there is any transparency and accountability left in the US federal government, it is fading very fast. I mean, Obama recently appointed a former Monsanto executive as Commissioner of Foods for the Food and Drug Administration, and Tom Wheeler, a powerful lobbyist for the big cable and wireless corporations, was appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission. And, of course, even the most mundane documents from these bureaucracies is categorized as "classified", and of course Edward Snowden is now in hiding for revealing the collaborations between the NSA, AT&T, Verizon, and Israeli technology companies.
And all this corruption is why libertarian ideas are becoming more popular in the US.
You must have missed the 1920s and 1930s in American history.
Ah, yes. "Trust busting"? The fact is, Standard Oil was already LOSING market share before a government bureaucrat decided that he could satisfy his ambition by attacking them. And, of course, back then we had books like "The Jungle" to get people all afraid and beg to give up their rights for protection from the government - they do that these days with CNN and Nightline. And of course, those problems were solved with private citizens banding together and forming unions, not with government intervention. That's the whole "informed society" and responsibility of the populace piece that all free societies require to function properly.
The problem with benevolent governments is that when they get powerful enough there is no incentive for them to be benevolent any more.
I'm amazed at all the ridiculous straw men that people come up with to justify the police-state / nanny-state / overbearing government activity. Playing loud music at 3AM is nothing like a natural right exercised without imposing on others - it is a clear over-the-line case, as in one person violating someone else's rights (the "quiet enjoyment" part of natural property rights). As the saying goes, your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.
At least in your case you didn't try to conflate libertarianism with anarchy, like many others. I'll give you a real-world example with a little less clarity. What if I want to grow vegetables in my front lawn, but the local government has passed a zoning rule that says I can't. And they enforce it by imposing a fine every day that passes that I have not ripped up the vegetable garden and planted "approved" flora. This is happening in many places right now. What do you think, should the collective, that want to require certain "standards" for residential property, be able to impose that kind of rule on the individual's right to use his own personal property as he sees fit, when it violates the rights of no other person, but only the "ideal" drawn up by a few local representatives?